Daily Kos

Open thread for night owls: OFA gets some pushback over Keystone XL

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Tue, 21 May 2013 03:30:11 UTC

Jon Queally reports Organizing For Action, say critics, cannot address climate change and remain silent on tar sands pipeline:

Organizing for Action, the so-called "grassroots arm" of the Obama administration, was designed to harness the youthful and hopeful energy of its members, and bring the political energy generated during the previous presidential campaigns to help support the current White House agenda.

In the last week, however, the group itself has become a target for progressive activists who are fed up with the president's refusal to take a firm position against tar sands development in Canada and the growing threat of climate change.

Specifically, OFA has drawn ire for refusing to take a stance against the Keystone XL pipeline which remains under review by Obama's State Department. Even as its members reportedly want Obama to reject the project, OFA has followed the White House's lead by refusing to discuss the matter until the State Dept. review is complete.

“If you’re going to be a grass roots, you have to actually listen to the grass roots,” said Daniel Kessler, spokesman for 350.org, in an interview with Politico on Monday.

“I think they’re going to have to respond to calls to address these issues,” he added. “You cannot expect to have the passion of the people if you’re not satisfying what their demands are.”

Politico's reporting explores how groups like Bold Nebraska and CREDO Action have voiced regret that OFA refuses to engage in an issue that so many have clearly been galvanized by:

They’re pointing to talking points OFA has handed out to supporters and people who attend its events in which the group says that “if people believe that Keystone XL is the primary fight to be engaged in, there are many groups who have taken a position, and we are happy to make suggestions about who volunteers might work with on that or other issues.”
Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska said OFA can’t avoid Keystone forever. […]

Last week, Buzzfeed obtained a "climate change fact sheet" put out by OFA to its regional leaders and members. In part, the circulated talking points come with a warning: “Volunteers from Credo Action or other organizations may attend your planning session and want to demand that we work on the Keystone XL pipeline."

As Buzzfeed noted, CREDO Mobile had called on its 3 million members to attend OFA planning sessions “to make sure stopping Keystone XL is part of the conversation.” In that story, Buzzfeed also interviewed 350.org's Kessler who said the memo talking points showed a “real anxiety within OFA — and maybe at the White House — that their supporters want a rejection and that in some way they need to be held in check.” […]
Ryan Grim and Lucia Graves report:

Climate activists were initially heartened by OFA's decision to tackle their issue, which has remained in the background in Washington since Congress failed to pass cap-and-trade legislation in 2009. But the organization's failures to address Keystone, an issue that's been at the core of the environmental advocacy movement for years now, signals an identity crisis for OFA as it seeks to emphasize its grassroots credentials.
"OFA can't keep ignoring the pipeline in the room," said Jamie Henn, a spokesman for the climate advocacy group 350.org. "Environmentalists, young people, and progressives have made it very clear that Keystone XL is their top climate priority for the president, because it's a decision that he gets to make all by himself. OFA working on climate without advocating against Keystone XL would be like the president campaigning for LGBT rights without taking a position on gay marriage."

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2004—Ahmed Chalabi Gets a Night-time Visit:

If it were not for all awfulness in the news coming out of Iraq, it would be almost impossible to suppress some glee at the fork-tongued Ahmed Chalabi’s current predicament. With a host of enemies in his homeland, and Bush allegedly telling King Abdullah he could “piss” on him, Chalabi now has to contend with armed searches of his house in the dead of the night.

As a result of the raid, Chalabi says he has cut off relations with the U.S.-guided Coalition Provisional Aurhority. "I am America's best friend in Iraq;” Chalabi said, and “if the CPA finds it necessary to direct an armed attack against my home, you can see the state of relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people."

Uh-huh. And I have a bridge over the Euphrates I’d like to sell you.

Tweet of the Day:

I love sleeping. It's like death without the commitment.
— @GrumpyAssCat via HootSuite

On today's Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin confirmed that the political world froze in place in the middle of last week, so we looked elsewhere for news not involving unfounded comparisons to Watergate. After a brief detour into the Umbrellacaust, we reviewed more context on the IRS, from Garance Franke-Ruta's (and yes, I know I mispronounced archetype!), David Cay Johnston, and Stephanie Mencimer. Off on a tangent, Keenan Steiner's unexpected story of a retired detective who somehow became the biggest campaign donor in the US. Back to guns, the tragic story at Hofstra U., and a fascinating look at the concealed carrying teachers of Utah.

High Impact Posts. Top Comments.

Economics Daily Digest: Why the internet moves at the speed of indifference

rss@dailykos.com (Roosevelt Institute) — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:56:41 UTC

By Tim Price, originally published on Next New Deal

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

Telecom's Big Players Hold Back the Future (NYT)

David Carr profiles Roosevelt Institute Fellow Susan Crawford and explores her crusade against the telecom monopolies that offer high fees instead of high speeds. Every time you wait for a video to buffer, you're experiencing the magic of the market at work.

Sheila Bair: Dodd-Frank really did end taxpayer bailouts (WaPo)

Roosevelt Institute Fellow Mike Konczal talks to the former director of the FDIC about why skeptics are wrong to doubt the agency's commitment to winding down failed banks and why it's important to raise leverage requirements so it doesn't have to prove it.

Obama Urged to Make Economy a Bigger, Bolder Topic (AP)

Jim Kuhnhenn reports that with the CBO projecting a lower deficit and the GOP scrounging for scandals in the couch cushions, Obama advisers and critics are asking the president to change the conversation by laying out a real second-term economic agenda.

The 1 Percent Are Only Half the Problem (NYT)

Timothy Noah argues that while runaway wealth at the top contributes to rising inequality in the U.S., there's also the growing educational divide and resulting skills-based gap. But if the left and right discuss both problems, they risk an agreement breaking out.

Boom or Bubble? (New Yorker)

James Surowiecki has good news (1) and bad news (2) for analysts who think stock prices are overinflated because GDP isn't keeping up with corporate profits: (1) corporate profits are only barely connected to the real American economy these days, and (2) see (1).

Global Capital and the Nation State (Robert Reich)

Reich notes that big corporations are hiding their money from tax collectors while extorting sweetheart deals from national and local governments, but right-wing nationalist parties are convincing more and more voters that cooperation is the new exploitation.

Food Stamps Get Licked by Cuts (Prospect)

Monica Potts writes that the House and Senate farm bills would make food stamp funding less generous and kick millions off the rolls even as more Americans are going hungry. In other words, let them eat cake, just as long as they're paying for it out of pocket.

This Week in Poverty: Fighting Poverty Through Wall Street Accountability (The Nation)

Organizer and activist Stephen Lerner tells Greg Kaufmann that one of the challenges in fighting poverty is that there are so many different root causes, but one advantage of focusing on Wall Street is that behind most of these big problems there's a big bank.

Mad Men: The Crash (6.8)

rss@dailykos.com (Adam B) — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:39:44 UTC

Don Draper meets a new friend. (Courtesy AMCtv)

Friends, I've seen some messed-up stuff on television in the past week: a Scandal finale with a jaw-dropper of a last line; leeches employed on Game of Thrones in surprising ways; Prince reinterpreting "Let's Go Crazy" as a Hendrix-era jam; a stunner of a Phillies comeback.

All of that, I can explain. Last night's Mad Men, not so much. Whether this all-drug Mad Men represented a giant Vietnam metaphor or a post-RFK fugue, or something else, it didn't quite work for me. Zoller Seitz:

More so than any Mad Men episode I can recall, it doesn’t quite feel like a Mad Men episode, but a bunch of half-formed ideas for a Mad Men episode; I bet if you totaled them up you’d have six-hundred-and-sixty-six ideas, pace Stan, inadvertently name-checking the number of the Beast. Some of the ideas are great, others stunningly bad; still others don’t quite feel like ideas, even if you squint. It feels like the TV-drama version of one of those papers that every halfway-smart student writes when they’re exhausted and can’t come up with an idea, and decides to write about their inability to come up with an idea instead, and hope they’ll be so clever that they’ll get an A anyway. That might be the whole point of this episode, but is it a point worth spending an episode to make? “If this strategy is successful, it’s way bigger than a car! It’s everything!” Don barks, playing the role of Brilliant Idea Man while Peggy stares at him blankly, as tired of his b.s. as we are.

The episode constituted a weird cheat: by writing out Joan and Pete from the episode for no real reason, the show eliminated the two characters who, had they been there, never would have put up with this nonsense. Frankly, I've had enough with the flashbacks to Li'l Dick Whitman and the whorehouse, and enough with Mad Men's racial problem:

Remember when Roger and Joan got mugged and the mugger was black? Or when Dawn Chambers helped someone clock out early? Or Carla the maid gets fired by Betty, meaning that Don had to take Megan on vacation as a nanny? Or “the biggest, blackest prostitute you’ve ever seen” from two weeks ago?... Grandma Ida bugged the holy hell out of me not simply because she’s a black criminal—although a rich-looking white woman burglar would have been way creepier. It bugs me because her appearance underscores that the portrait of this world is incomplete. So why make her black at all? Why tease us with skin color, as if this great simmering issue will finally be addressed, only to retreat again? Why is this great and lingering theme in American culture not addressed as fully as the show addresses, say, capitalism, or gender?

I appreciated the audacity of this episode. I'd rather that shows experiment, dare, and fail than stick within a formulaic rut. But if the question is whether I enjoyed this episode, or feel confident about where this is going? Nope, sorry, this did not work for me—though I did appreciate Ken Cosgrove's dancing.

Oklahoma tornado: Late updates

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Tue, 21 May 2013 02:00:18 UTC

via @OkCountySheriff

A massive and devastating tornado hit Moore, Oklahoma today, sweeping through a suburban area of schools, shopping centers, and thousands of homes south of Oklahoma City. The tornado was either a powerful EF-4 or EF-5, with wind speeds of 200mph or more. Reporters tracking the storm describe it as at least a mile wide and on the ground for at least 11 miles; the "debris ball" of the tornado was at points over two miles wide. Rescue efforts are ongoing. Late updates:

Several schools were in the direct path of the tornado; at least two, Briarwood and Plaza Towers Elementary, suffered catastrophic damage. Rescue efforts tonight are focused on Plaza Towers, which was completely destroyed. At least seven children are confirmed dead; local stations are reporting that more fatalities are expected in the collapsed building, and may "more than two dozen". A late KFOR report, however, suggests that some of the missing students may have been found safe at another location.
The state medical examiner's office has at this point confirmed 51 deaths. The number, however, is expected to rise. AP reports at least 120 patients have been treated in local hospitals, 70 of them children.
Moore Medical Center took a direct hit, but all staff and doctors have been accounted for. All students at Briarwood Elementary are now reported to be accounted for, though with some injuries.
Southeastern Oklahoma City residents are asked to stop using water, as the water treatment plant was damaged in the tornado and is now offline.
The National Guard has been mobilized. President Obama spoke with Gov. Mary Fallin today, pledging "all available assistance."
Moore, OK was the site of a horrific tornado in May, 1999, a storm that killed more than forty and damaged thousands of homes. This tornado took a very similar track through much of the town, but in both fatalities and damage, today's events have eclipsed even that storm.
Aerial footage of the storm (time lapse.) Another view. Before and after pictures of one neighborhood.
The Red Cross has opened a shelter and reunification site at St. Andrews Church, SW 199 & S. May. You can donate to Red Cross relief efforts here.

Destroyed homes in Moore, Oklahoma

Report: Hillary Clinton was pushing the administration to close Gitmo

rss@dailykos.com (Laurence Lewis) — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:17:47 UTC

Hillary Clinton

If she decides to run for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton is going to have to create some separation on some issues from the policies of both her husband and her former boss, and we will see that process unfold in the coming years. Hopefully for the better. Hopefully on principle. This could be an example.

A recent article on President Obama's attempts to close Guantánamo Bay describes the president as wanting to close the prison, and frustrated at his inability thus far to work the politics of doing so. And then there's this:

One recent plea, two sources told Newsweek, came from Hillary Clinton, who, just before she left office in January 2013, sent a two-page confidential memo to Obama about Guantánamo. Clinton had, during her years in the administration, occasionally jumped into the fray to push her colleagues to do more on the issue. One of those occasions was at a White House meeting of Obama’s national-security principals in August 2010. “We are throwing the president’s commitment to close Guantánamo into the trash bin,” she chastised White House aides, according to three participants in the meeting. “We are doing him a disservice by not working harder on this.”
But at the end of the day, Clinton had little leverage to get the White House to act. Now, in one of her last moves as secretary of State, she was making a final effort to prod her boss to do more. Her memo was replete with practical suggestions for moving ahead on Gitmo. Chief among them: Obama needed to appoint a high-level official to be in charge of the effort, someone who had clout and proximity to the Oval Office. Further, Clinton argued that Obama could start transferring the 86 detainees who’d already been cleared for release. (Congress has imposed onerous restrictions on the administration’s ability to transfer Gitmo detainees—including a stipulation that the secretary of Defense certify that detainees sent to other countries would not engage in acts of terrorism. In her memo, Clinton pointed out that the administration could use “national-security waivers” to circumvent the restriction.)

The Clinton missive perturbed White House aides, who viewed it as an attempt to put them on the spot, according to a senior administration official. It’s unclear how Obama himself reacted to the memo; there’s no evidence that it spurred him to action. (The White House declined to comment for this story.) But whether or not the memo played a role in changing the president’s thinking, the mere fact that Clinton felt the need to write it was noteworthy, because it suggested the degree to which Guantánamo, four years into the Obama presidency, remained an irritant for her—and for many other high-level administration officials as well.

But emptywheel notes:

I thought to myself as I read this, “but Clinton’s departure is precisely when the Administration moved backwards on this front, by reassigning Daniel Fried, who had been in charge of resettling detainees.” Fried’s reassignment was reported January 29. That was technically while Hillary was still at State — Kerry took over on February 1.
Still, whoever transferred Fried, she must have written that memo (which pissed off Obama’s minders) at almost precisely the moment State eliminated the person most focused on working towards Gitmo closure.

Which causes emptywheel to wonder about the timing: With Clinton pushing and providing strategies, why reassign the person most motivated and best positioned to carry her ideas through? In public statements, the president continues to say the right thing:

"I've asked my team to review everything that's currently being done in Guantanamo, everything that we can do administratively, and I'm going to re-engage with Congress to try to make the case that this is not something that's in the best interests of the American people."
He said the facility is expensive, inefficient, "a recruitment tool for terrorists" and hurts America's international standing, and he took Congress to task for blocking its closure.

Obama conceded that it may be a difficult case to make to the American people that the detainees should be transferred out so the facility can be shuttered, because, "I think for a lot of Americans, the notion is out of sight, out of mind, and it's easy to demagogue the issue. That's what happened the first time this came up.

So, perhaps there is a good explanation for the reassignment of Fried. Hopefully, we will learn more. Because Gitmo remains an abomination, and everything legally possible should be done by the administration to get it closed, as soon as is possible. Ideally, it will be closed before the next presidential campaign really begins. But as we look ahead to 2016, it's good to know that the leading potential Democratic presidential candidate not only was privately urging the administration to get the job done, but she also was brainstorming how to do it.

Hotel union protesting Hyatt heir's nomination as commerce secretary

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:14:28 UTC

Lorena and Martha Reyes were fired from their jobs as Hyatt housekeepers after they objected to pictures with their heads pasted on bikini-clad bodies.

President Obama's nomination of Hyatt heir Penny Pritzker as commerce secretary is drawing protest from UNITE HERE, the hotel and restaurant workers union. The union has been leading a boycott of Hyatt, but hadn't immediately opposed Pritzker's nomination; however, according to the New York Daily News, D Taylor, the union's president, said that:

His opposition was spurred by his just learning that the Senate Commerce Committee was moving up its confirmation hearing for Pritzker.
The union had been led to understand that hearing would take place perhaps well after the Memorial Day weekend. But the surprise decision to move up the hearing forced the union's hand.

UNITE HERE is staging a protest in Chicago Monday afternoon. The union's quick move will push other unions, and the AFL-CIO, to consider their positions. Hyatt's poor labor practices—including replacing longtime housekeepers in Boston and Cambridge with low-wage temps—are of particular relevance to hotel workers; as activist Hyatt housekeeper Cathy Youngblood said, "Under Pritzker’s direction, Hyatt has led the hotel industry in a race to the bottom by aggressively subcontracting out career hotel jobs to minimum wage temps. This is not the model that will lead our country to a bright economic future."

But even beyond Hyatt's array of labor issues, there's a lot for unions, and progressives more generally, to dislike about Pritzker. As a member of the Chicago school board and as a donor, she's pushed anti-teacher education policies. She was on the board of a bank that did a big business in subprime mortgages and then collapsed. And her family makes enough use of offshore accounts that Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, of all people, kind of has a point when he says "It isn’t just about her or the offshore stuff, it’s about the fact that the president made a big deal out of Romney’s offshore accounts." The president was right to make a big deal out of Mitt Romney's offshore accounts. But the problem with Pritzker is not because Grassley and other Republicans are looking for excuses. Rather, it's precisely because the president was right about the problems with Romney's offshore accounts that his nomination of Pritzker should raise eyebrows among his supporters.

Is there any government agency that ISN'T investigating Michele Bachmann?

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:54:52 UTC

Michele Bachmann may find it hard to explain away all the investigations she's under.

Add the FBI to the list of agencies investigating alleged unethical or illegal actions by Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign. The Office of Congressional Ethics, the Federal Elections Commission, and an Iowa state Senate ethics committee were already on the case, looking into questionable payments to an Iowa state senator, the theft of a home-schooling group's email list, using money from her PAC to fund her presidential campaign, and more. The FBI's involvement:

[...] raises the possibility that there were potential criminal violations. In addition to the alleged theft of the home-school list, the FBI is said to be looking into the campaign's demand that certain former employees, whose pay was withheld at the end of the campaign, sign non-disclosure agreements before receiving their compensation.

Bachmann won only narrowly in 2012, despite her district's strong performance for Mitt Romney. Now, Public Policy Polling finds her trailing Democratic challenger Jim Graves by two points in a poll commissioned by Graves; Bachmann's favorables were also in negative territory. And that poll was done when Bachmann was only ("only") under investigation by the FEC, the Office of Congressional Ethics, and the Iowa state Senate. Sure, being under FBI investigation may make some conspiracy theorists see her as a victim of government oppression, but let's face it, those are the people who will still be supporting Bachmann if she ends up in jail as a result of these investigations. Swing voters may be less enthralled by having a representative whose ethical problems they can't even keep track of.

Peggy Noonan jumps the shark

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:40:11 UTC

Help her.

It seems more and more people are noticing that Peggy Noonan is losing her mind. Or rather, that she's making it a bit too obvious to shrug off anymore. The whole purpose of the Sunday shows, after all, is to showcase Important People who have lost their minds, an endless spring break of the soul in which a few dozen highly paid alcohol abusers all tell us to hold their gin and tonics and to watch this, America—then they do a nice swan dive from a third floor balcony into the shallowest end of the idea pool. Thwap.

The dog whistle quote came via NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday from Peggy Noonan, who can no longer be taken seriously as a writer or pundit. When host David Gregory pressed her on the lack of evidence for her claims that the IRS scandal was worse than Watergate, Noonan insisted that the president “was giving a dog whistle to people who could launch this thing.” The former Reagan-Bush speechwriter vividly summed up, in her thousand points of crazy style, where the IRS “scandal” went over the last few days: Obama didn’t need to order the tax agency to harass Tea Party groups (and his critics don’t need proof that he did so): his criticizing the group during the 2012 campaign, as well as blasting the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, represented an implicit order to do so.

(Noonan, who we must presume as entirely blotted all of pre-2008 Republican history from her mind, also said "this IRS thing is something I've never seen in my lifetime," which is known Washington-wide as a phrase that signals a need to call the number on the speaker's medical alert bracelet.)

To be fair to Noonan, she's not entirely off the farm on this one (or, rather, the whole farm is tagging along with her; the fences are in a bit of a state of disrepair, these days.) The "dog whistle" bit seems to be the new purported explanation for why something that apparently didn't involve Obama in fact deeply involves Obama, and is worse than Watergate precisely because it didn't involve Obama, or some such. Obama is so evil that he doesn't even have to tell his subordinates to target his enemies, they just do it on based on evil osmosis. Nixon specifically ordered the IRS to go after his opponents. Obama didn't, you see, and that makes the Obama administration … worse. If you can understand that, you are either a Republican political strategist or under the influence of a drug you don't have a prescription for.

So now we've finally reached the point where they're saying it outright: For a Democratic president, campaigning on his own behalf is toeing the line of impeachable offense. Merely criticizing his opponents is scandal enough; there doesn't need to be anything more than that. The Noonans of the world are willing to work themselves into a rabid lather over things like Death Panels, and whether the president maybe secretly wanted Americans to die in Benghazi because something-something-pineapple, but a Democrat pointing out that a certain Supreme Court decision is a catastrophudge, now that's over the line of propriety. Noonan floated through Iran-Contra like it was a mosquito buzzing in the nation's ear, but a president lavishing insufficient praise on his clumsily self-rebranded "Tea Party" opponents, now that we will not abide. (Did the president even address the Tea Party much, during his campaign? If he didn't make a speech calling them conspiracy-humping rednecks with rampant literacy problems, he wasn't hard on them.)

They're not even trying anymore. The pundit circuit is just a Roman orgy, at this point, there for the glittering self-pleasure of the thing. The same new pseudo-conservative wisdom that went from saying "government is bad" to actively Not Goddamn Governing has now decided that, eff it all, there's just no point in supervising the discourse at all, anymore, not when you get paid the same either way, and get to attend the same social functions, either way, and when you can get ten times the praise for saying something stupid than you can saying something smart. Worse than Watergate because Obama didn't do it? Screw it, go with it, now let's go get drunk.

GOP scandal-mongering making Obama more popular, GOP most unpopular in CNN polling history

rss@dailykos.com (kos) — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:16:16 UTC

Nice try, wingnuts, but America still likes the guy.

The media and Republicans may be screeching about President Barack Obama's scandals, but the American people are seeing through the bullshit.

CNN reported on Sunday that 53% of people questioned in the survey said they approve of the job the president is doing, with 45% saying they disapprove. The president's approval rating was at 51% in CNN's previous poll, from early April. The two point rise was well within the survey's sampling error.
The new numbers indicate that Obama remains popular, with 79% of Americans saying the president is likable.

But it's not just Obama. The Democratic Party went from a 46-48 favorable-unfavorable rating a month ago, to 52-43 in this latest poll. That's a net gain of 11 points.

As for impeachment-screeching Republicans? They're DOWN a net eight points from 38-54 a month ago, to 35-59 this week.

It turns out that:

* The American people just don't think that it's the worst scandal since Watergate that Obama called the Benghazi consulate attack an "act of terror" as opposed to a "terrorist attack".

* The American people just don't care that the IRS spent extra time looking at the applications of political groups—none of which had their applications rejected, mind you. (Well, except for that one liberal group.)

* The American people can't be bothered to care that some reporters were spied on, after the GOP spent the last decade pushing for increased wiretapping powers in the name of "national security". This is exactly what Republicans wanted. No one believes they're really that outraged about it now.

So after the president's supposed worst week ever, with Republicans jumping in glee at the scandals, we find that the president's popularity has inched up, the Democratic Party's popularity is significantly up, and Republicans, at 59 percent unfavorable, are at their highest unpopularity level since CNN started polling the question in 1992.

Way to go, sherlocks.

Open thread: Venomous edition

rss@dailykos.com (Barbara Morrill) — Mon, 20 May 2013 22:15:09 UTC

Massive tornado hits Oklahoma

rss@dailykos.com (Jen Hayden) — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:41:49 UTC

A mile-wide tornado struck southwest Oklahoma City and Moore, Oklahoma, this afternoon:

The massive tornado first touched down in Newcastle and churned toward Interstate 44 and S.W. 149th Street. It ripped down Santa Fe and hit Briarwood Elementary School, destroying the building. Parents ran to the school, trying to make sure their children were all right. Firefighters and police are also on scene, trying to rescue trapped students and staff.
The tornado left behind incredible destruction. It wiped out entire neighborhoods, leaving behind piles of debris.

Emergency crews are busy searching through debris and helping survivors out of their leveled homes. Meanwhile, the tornado is still moving through eastern Oklahoma. News9 in Oklahoma City has a live feed and they are actively following the tornado. As of 4:30 CT, the tornado is on the ground, headed directly towards Meeker, Oklahoma.

Sadly, this isn't the first time Moore, Oklahoma, has been hit by a tornado. It was devastated by one of the most destructive tornadoes ever recorded on May 3, 1999:

On May 3, 1999, an unusual confluence of atmospheric conditions in Oklahoma spawned dozens of tornadoes that swept across the state in an hours-long parade of destruction. Thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed, and 19 counties became disaster areas.
The worst toll was in human lives: 44 dead, including three children. Hundreds more were injured.

To learn more about the storm or follow the live discussion, weatherdude has an informative liveblog here.

McCain stumps for Gomez, reverts to 2004

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:24:38 UTC

Gomez the swiftboater.

The fevered obsession in the GOP with 9/11 fearmongering still hasn't died, apparently. Sen. John McCain relived the bad old days of GOP fear-mongering in Massachusetts Monday, campaigning with Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez (the guy who tried to swiftboat Obama for the bin Laden killing). It's a sign of Gomez's slipping approval numbers that he's resorting to old, tired ~~campaigners~~ attacks and fear-mongering against Ed Markey.

At a VFW hall in Dorchester with the 2008 GOP presidential nominee standing by his side, Gomez attacked Markey for voting against a 2004 resolution expressing sympathy to the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and a similar 2006 measure.
“One thing that I just can’t understand is how my opponent, Congressman Markey, has voted more than once against a very basic Congressional resolution, to simply honor the victims of 9/11,” Gomez said.

There was a very good reason Markey, and 15 other members, didn't vote for that resolution. It's because it was election-year politicking that didn't just honor the victims of 9/11; it perpetuated the lie that Iraq was involved in the attacks and was the justification for that war. Here's, in part, what the resolution said:

Whereas three years after September 11, 2001, the United States is fighting a Global War on Terrorism to protect America and her friends and allies;
Whereas since the United States was attacked, it has led an international military coalition in the destruction of two terrorist regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq while using diplomacy and sanctions in cooperation with Great Britain and the international community to lead a third terrorist regime in Libya away from its weapons of mass destruction; [...]

Markey voted against this 2004 resolution because it was politicizing the 9/11 attacks and falsely justifying Bush's war in the lead up to the 2004 election. He voted against this resolution because it perpetuated the biggest and most destructive lie of the Bush administration. Markey also repeatedly voted against reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act because, as a Markey spokeperson said, he did not support "giving permanent, overly broad powers to investigate private records without consistent oversight and public debate." Gomez and McCain attacked him for those votes, as well.

Gomez is attacking Markey for standing up for the truth. Far from refusing to honor the victims of 9/11, Markey was refusing to participate in the crass politicization of their deaths. It's pretty clear from this stunt from Gomez and McCain which is the candidate with principles.

Please contribute $3 to Ed Markey.

The GOP's IRS struggle

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:45:09 UTC

GOP aides tell me the struggle will be to take this IRS thing from being about TP victims to being about an administration's corruption
— @robertcostaNRO via web

Who needs facts when you have conclusions? Sure, having reality on your side might be nice, but if you live in the bubble, you don't need facts to spin the bubble—and you don't care about what happens outside the bubble.

White House learned of IRS inquiry last month; Issa informed in mid-2012

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:00:14 UTC

Say it ain't so, Joe!

In more news from Scandalnavia, the place from whence all Obama scandals come:

The chief White House lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, learned last month that a Treasury inspector general had concluded an audit of the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups, weeks before the matter became public, according to a senior White House official.

Whoa! She learned about it weeks beforehand! If that's not a scandal, then what is? I mean, during those weeks, the administration easily could have ... wait. Hold on, what exactly could it have done? I mean, the stuff that was being investigated started in 2010 and ended in 2012. So time was not of the essence. And the White House couldn't very well have released the IG report any earlier ... because it wasn't yet complete. So, this seems like another Scandalnavian nothingburger.

But if you disagree and think this is a huge deal, then consider this fact:

The Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration sent a letter to Congressman Darrell Issa and Congressman Jim Jordan on July 12, 2012 informing them they would be auditing the IRS in response to their concerns that certain groups might be receiving extra scrutiny. The letter came in response to a June 28th letter of that year from Congressman Issa and requests for an investigation.
The letter states that after meeting with the staff of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which Issa chairs, the IG Office of Audit began work on the issue. The IG offered in the letter to provide a status update to the staff of the committee throughout the investigation as well as provide copies of interim and final reports.

So to all those Republicans who say that Obama was obviously covering up the IRS scandal in 2012 in order to steal the election from Mitt Romney, the rightful heir to the presidency, I have just one question: what do Darrell Issa and Jim Jordan have against Willard?

Midday open thread

rss@dailykos.com (Barbara Morrill) — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:15:08 UTC

Today's comic from Tom Tomorrow is A bedtime story:
What you missed 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
Condolences to family and friends:

Lincoln Gabriel Diaz-Balart, son and namesake of a former congressman and nephew of a current U.S. representative, died Sunday at the age of 29.
The family has asked for privacy and time to grieve. [...]

U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart is a sitting Republican representative. His brother, Lincoln Diaz-Balart retired from congress after the 2010 elections.
A crisis being ignored while Washington chases pseudo scandals:

Up to one in five American youngsters — about 7 million to 12 million, by one estimate — experience a mental health disorder each year, according to a new report billed as the first comprehensive look at the mental health status of children in the country.
And the rate is increasing, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which produced the study, released last week.
Have you ever wondered what an internet troll was like in person?
What are the odds?

Romenesko reader and Alexandria Times executive editor Derrick Perkins writes: “Check out the last name of the gentleman who wrote a great, entertaining piece on the local bug-phobic population. It’s great on so many levels, enough so that I’m wondering if it was arranged.”
After Perkins sent his email, I saw that @phogan tweeted: “The reporter who wrote this great article on insect phobias is darrylfears. I assume he covers the phobias beat?” Fears’ reaction? “With a name like mine, you get that all the time, Jim. Since grade school.”
If you're in the line of fire, take precautions and be careful:

A vast area of the central U.S. was warned to prepare for storms on Monday, after tornadoes killed one and injured 21 in Oklahoma and also hit Iowa and Kansas.
“After over 300 reports of severe weather on Sunday, another round of dangerous severe weather is expected Monday with the greatest threat once again in the southern Plains targeting Oklahoma and parts of Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas,” the National Weather Service said. “However, severe weather is possible much further north towards Chicago and Madison as well."
On today's Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin confirmed that the political world froze in place in the middle of last week, so we looked elsewhere for news not involving unfounded comparisons to Watergate. After a brief detour into the Umbrellacaust, we reviewed more context on the IRS, from Garance Franke-Ruta's (and yes, I know I mispronounced archetype!), David Cay Johnston, and Stephanie Mencimer. Off on a tangent, Keenan Steiner's unexpected story of a retired detective who somehow became the biggest campaign donor in the US. Back to guns, the tragic story at Hofstra U., and a fascinating look at the concealed carrying teachers of Utah.

House set to vote Wednesday on whether to snatch Keystone XL approval from president's hands

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:02:11 UTC

There's a process for approving projects like the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry petroleum from the tar sand deposits of Alberta to the refineries of the Texas Gulf Coast. That process is set by the National Environmental Protection Act that requires approval of an environmental impact statement, which includes a response to any public comments delivered to agency in charge. In this case, that is the State Department.

Because the pipeline would cross international boundaries, the process also requires a presidential permit under George's Bush's 2004 Executive Order 13337, which is an amendment to the 1968 Executive Order 11423, which states "... the proper conduct of the foreign relations of the United States requires that executive permission be obtained for the construction and maintenance at the borders of the United States of facilities connecting the United States with a foreign country." The president must determine that any such project serves the national interest.

Not good enough for certain members of Congress, mostly Republicans, but including some Democrats. They want an immediate decision on the pipeline. To get it, they seek to short-circuit NEPA and the presidential permit process by taking authority over the pipeline's approval out of the president's hands. On Wednesday, they will vote on HR 3, the Northern Route Approval Act. The bill:

Declares that a Presidential permit shall not be required for the pipeline described in the application filed on May 4, 2012, by TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, L.P. to the Department of State for the Keystone XL pipeline, including the Nebraska reroute evaluated in the Final Evaluation Report issued by the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality in January 2013 and approved by the Nebraska governor.
Deems the final environmental impact statement issued by the Secretary of State on August 26, 2011, coupled with such Final Evaluation Report, to satisfy all requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and of the National Historic Preservation Act. [...]

Directs the Secretary of the Army to issue permits pursuant the Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act of 1899 for the construction, operation, and maintenance of the Keystone XL pipeline. [...]

Prohibits the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from prohibiting or restricting an activity or use of an area that is authorized under this Act.

The bill likely will pass the House. And unlike many other bills originating there, this one has at least a chance of gaining support in the Senate. In March, the Senate voted in favor of the pipeline 62-to-37 in a symbolic, non-binding resolution. Seventeen of those votes were Democrats. But the president has repeatedly made it clear that he will never agree to a law that takes away his authority to approve or reject the pipeline. Below the fold, you can read about why the decision on the pipeline is likely many months away.

Falling in love with another girl lands Florida teen in criminal jeopardy

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:48:30 UTC

Florida teen Kaitlyn Hunt, 18, is seeing her young life turned upside down and her future jeopardized simply because she fell in love. Unfortunately for her, she fell in love with a younger girl who has vindictive bigots for parents.

Hunt was a highly respected student at Florida’s Sebastian River High School with good grades and participation in cheerleading, basketball and chorus. She was even voted “most school spirit.”
All of that changed when she started dating a fellow student, a girl she met on the basketball team, at the beginning of the school year.

She was kicked off the basketball team because of the potential for "drama" her presence created. She's been vilified by fellow students, called “criminal,” “rapist” and “child abuser.” She was expelled from school. And far worse. She's facing a lifetime label of "sex-offender," because the other girl's parents brought criminal charges against her despite the fact that the relationship was consensual. What's more, according to Hunt's parents, Hunt was 17 when the relationship began, but the other girl's parents waited until after she turned 18 to go to police.

Unbelievably, prosecutors have decided to press the criminal charge. Now Hunt is faced with two choices, either of which could ruin her life: an outrageous plea deal or taking a chance in her conservative community on a jury trial. The deal she's being offered is to plead guilty and be sentenced to two years of house arrest, being allowed only to go to work or school. A judge would then determine if she would have to register as a sex offender. Her alternative is to face jury trial in her conservative community, where she could face a 15-year prison sentence and be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of her life.

Because she and another girl fell in love with each other.

Please sign our petition asking the state attorney to drop this prosecution.

GOP congressman comes up with new theory for impeaching Obama

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:05:09 UTC

A new reason to impeach President Barack Obama (my emphasis):

Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, says President Barack Obama may face impeachment over his administration’s response to the Benghazi attack.
“They purposefully and willfully misled the American people, and that’s unacceptable,” Chaffetz tells me. “It’s part of a pattern of deception.” [...]

“This is an administration embroiled in a scandal that they created,” he says. “It’s a cover-up. I’m not saying impeachment is the end game, but it’s a possibility, especially if they keep doing little to help us learn more.”

In other words, if Obama doesn't do more to help House Republicans figure out why they should impeach him, then House Republicans might not have any other option than to impeach him. In case you were wondering why it always seems like Groundhog Day with these guys, there's your answer.

Gillibrand offers bill to lower student loan interest for millions

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:06:31 UTC

Most people with student loan debt are struggling with higher interest rates than mortgages and many other loans carry. And in most cases, refinancing isn't an option for student loan debt. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is seeking to change that, with a bill that would allow government-backed student loans to be lowered to a fixed rate of 4 percent, reducing the rates on an estimated 90 percent of federal student loans:

The Center for American Progress, a left-leaning policy and advocacy group, estimates that Gillibrand’s proposal in its first year would save borrowers about $14.5 billion off their student loan payments, boosting U.S. economic activity by $21.7 billion.

Gillibrand isn't the only Democrat looking for ways to ease the $1 trillion student debt burden; Sen. Elizabeth Warren has proposed giving students the same interest rates as big banks, among several other proposals. These proposals inevitably meet with "how are we going to pay for it?" objections from Republicans, and reporting on them goes along with that, presenting lowered student loan interest rates as a cost to taxpayers. That's because right now, student loan interest—paid by working- and middle-class people, people who couldn't afford to just write a check for the full cost of college tuition—is a significant revenue source:

Washington’s increased interest in student loan issues comes as the Education Department is forecast to generate a $51 billion profit this year from lending to college students and their families, a figure higher than the 2012 earnings of Exxon Mobil, the nation’s most profitable company, and roughly equal to the combined net income of the four largest U.S. banks by assets.

Reducing the interest rates on government-backed student loans is effectively a tax cut, in other words, but since it's a tax cut on the wrong kind of people (non-wealthy, non-corporate people), it's a tax cut Republicans don't like. So efforts to lower the student loan interest rate are always met by cries of "but how will we pay for it," as if tens of millions of recent graduates and their families weren't already paying for it. With interest rates again slated to double to 6.8 percent on July 1, something needs to be done to help students and recent graduates build their lives as adults without massive debts hanging over them, constraining the choices they can make about jobs, about taking risks, about starting families.

Republicans and business push to expand guest worker programs

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:46:16 UTC

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)

Guest worker visas are resurfacing as one of the most contentious parts of immigration reform negotiations. Despite the compromise deal between the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO that went into the bipartisan Senate proposal, there are a number of Republican efforts to increase numbers of guest worker visas or weaken oversight of the programs.

The Senate bill increases the number of H1B visas for higher-skilled workers from 85,000 to 135,000, but pairs that increase with a requirement that companies actually try to find workers in the U.S. before recruiting abroad. It also includes a 15,000-worker cap on construction visas. Republican senators are planning to offer amendments weakening the limits on both of those. Texas Sen. John Cornyn will try to lift the construction-worker cap, while Utah's Orrin Hatch is focused on H1B visas:

One of Hatch’s amendments would require employers to show a U.S. worker wasn’t available only when a foreign employee is initially hired, not with each visa extension. Another would allow individuals who intend to immigrate to the U.S. to be counted as U.S. workers under certain circumstances.

Because to Republicans, regardless of what unemployment looks like in the United States, companies should still always be able to shop around for the cheapest worker available in the entire world. If you're not sold on the degree to which expanding guest worker programs is a problem for workers who are in the U.S. to stay, consider this juxtaposition: Republicans want fewer immigrants with the opportunity to become citizens, and more guest workers. That's not random coincidence.

Meanwhile, despite these and dozens of other Republican efforts to weaken or outright kill immigration reform in the Senate, somehow it's Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy's amendment to bring marriage equality to immigration, allowing U.S. citizens to sponsor their same-sex spouses, that keeps being labeled a deal-breaker.

Republicans do have a couple unions on their side in opposing immigration reform, though. While the AFL-CIO and SEIU have been pushing hard for meaningful reform with a path to citizenship, the unions that represent immigration and customs workers are vocally opposed to the Senate bill.

CNN poll: Republicans only ones wrapped up in scandal

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:10:09 UTC

Something about Democratic presidents drives Republicans nuts

President Obama's net approval rating in CNN's latest poll has gone from -3 in March (47 percent approve, 50 percent disapprove) to to +8 in May (53 percent approve, 45 percent disapprove), a gain of 11 points.

Yeah, you read that right. According to CNN, President Obama is now more popular now than he was two months ago. People think he's doing a better job.

So much for a presidency in disarray. In the aftermath of the GOP holding hearings with "Benghazi whistleblowers," the release of Benghazi talking points emails, the IRS scandal, and the AP phone records subpoena ... Obama isn't just unshaken, he's stronger than he was two months ago.

For Republicans, this wasn't the plan. Americans weren't supposed to be shrugging this stuff off—they were supposed to be lapping it up. Obama was supposed to be on the ropes, maybe even pondering resignation. Instead, outside the GOP bubble, it's a big "meh."

But there is some "good" news for Republicans. Greg Sargent looked at the numbers and reports the GOP base is still solidly in the bubble:

In the case of the IRS and Benghazi stories, the lurid and nefarious view of Obama’s involvement in them being peddled by the right is held only by Republicans — big majorities of them — while most moderates and independents, i.e. the middle of the country, believe the White House’s arguments.

So, congratulations Republicans. You still have your base. They still hate Obama. And now you've convinced them there's not one, not two, but three reasons to impeach him. Good luck with that.

In 'defense' of ABC's Jon Karl

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:56:43 UTC

As John Aravosis notes, ABC's Jonathan Karl issued a strange nopology yesterday for his report on the Benghazi talking point emails:

“Clearly, I regret the email was quoted incorrectly and I regret that it’s become a distraction from the story, which still entirely stands. I should have been clearer about the attribution. We updated our story immediately.”
-Jonathan Karl, ABC News Chief White House Correspondent

"Entirely stands?" You write a story based on emails that weren't accurate (I'm being charitable) and your story "entirely stands"? Seriously? I mean, isn't this a case of "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?" Yeesh.

But let's step back for a moment and try to be fair and balanced. If you think about it, Karl actually does have a point here. The revelation that his story was based on inaccurate summaries of emails provided by Republicans eager to score political points hasn't actually changed the fact that his original report wasn't a blockbuster to begin with, even if it had been right. So his story still entirely stands—if by "entirely stands" you mean "is, was, and forever will be a complete yawn."

Yes, Karl's original story may have seemed like it was interesting—but only if you weren't actually paying attention to the substance. The thing that made it seem interesting was that the White House supposedly had weighed in on behalf of the State Department to cover up information suggesting that terrorists, potentially linked to al Qaeda, were suspected of participating in the attack. Of course, as we now know from the actual emails, that never happened, but you didn't need the actual emails to understand that point.

Remember, the root of the controversy here isn't the talking points per se, but what Susan Rice did and did not say on those Sunday talk shows. And if she was covering up the involvement of al Qaeda or terrorists she did an abysmal job, because as everybody in Washington, D.C. seems to have forgotten, she did say this:

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.

Unless you're going to get on her case for saying "extremists" instead of "terrorists," there was no covering up there. Yes, she relayed the inaccurate information that the attack had begun as a reaction to the video that had inspired protests at other U.S. embassies in the region. But there's nothing new about that. She's long-since apologized for that mistake. Moreover, as the the emails show, her statement was in fact based on the CIA's assessment.

So, to return to my original point, the revelation that Jon Karl's emails were fabricated by Republicans doesn't change his original story. It was a nothing burger then and it's a nothingburger now.

It does, however, create a new story, and it should be a bit of scandal: Who in the Republican Party leaked the false emails to Jon Karl and why did he report them? After all, whoever did this is (a) privvy to classified information and (b) is more interested in scoring political points than protecting the country's national security. It's a question worth asking, not that there's a chance in hell Jon Karl will answer it—or that Darrell Issa will investigate it.

A bedtime story

rss@dailykos.com (Tom Tomorrow) — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:50:08 UTC

Click to embiggen

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Ken Cuccinelli finds a soul mate for a running mate

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:22:21 UTC

Ken Cuccinnelli couldn't be happier to be hitched to a lunatic like E.W. Jackson

Ken Cuccinelli, the Virginia Republican Party's right-wing nut job gubernatorial candidate, has a new BFF:

The newly minted Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia once compared Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan and bemoaned black voters’ “slavish devotion” to the Democratic Party — past statements that are likely to inflame the culture-war politics of the state’s 2013 elections.

Cuccinelli and Jackson are completely on the same page here. Earlier this year, Cuccinnelli said reproductive freedom was like slavery, and Jackson "wholeheartedly" endorsed Cuccinnelli's position.

And like Cuccinnelli, Jackson is quite the bigot when it comes to sexual orientation, saying things like there's a "direct connection" between gay people and pedophilia, and saying that gays are "frankly very sick people" who try to "sexualize" the young at early age to become "pawns" for their movement.

It's pretty amazing stuff for 2013. But seriously, did you expect anything less from the party that nominated Cuccinelli to be its candidate for governor of Virginia?

Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: Karen Handel to run for Senate in Georgia

rss@dailykos.com (David Nir) — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:00:10 UTC

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

Leading Off:

• GA-Sen: As expected, former Secretary of State Karen Handel has entered the GOP primary for Georgia's open Senate seat. Handel's path was cleared when Rep. Tom Price, a political ally of hers, decided not to join the race last week. Handel is the only Republican running who's been elected statewide, and she also came exceptionally close to winning the governorship in 2010, when she lost a GOP runoff to now-Gov. Nathan Deal by less than half of one percent.

Handel is also notorious for her stewardship of the breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure, during which she cut funding for Planned Parenthood on utterly specious grounds that were a pretext for her anti-abortion views. The incendiary move led very quickly to her abrupt resignation last year and rendered her a true villain in the eyes of progressives. Of course, she also made herself a hero to the right, something that only ought to help her in the primary, where she faces (at the very least) Reps. Jack Kingston, Paul Broun, and Phil Gingrey, and possibly wealthy businessman David Perdue as well.

Daily Kos Radio is LIVE at 9am ET!

rss@dailykos.com (David Waldman) — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:30:09 UTC

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

I forgot to look at the world and see what happened this weekend, but my guess is that we had it right last week, and the Sunday shows pretended that the political world froze somewhere around Wednesday. I dunno. Greg will tell me.

I'm sure the news will occupy us, and there's always a backlog of wacky stories to go to in case the Internets break or all the newspaper people get abducted by aliens. In fact, it sounds like Virginia Republicans might've just nominated an alien for Lieutenant Governor. I bet there's some good air time in that story.

We'll find some good ways to pass the day, while we all pretend to do work this week while we wait for Memorial Day weekend.

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Cheers and Jeers: Monday

rss@dailykos.com (Bill in Portland Maine) — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:17:00 UTC

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

The Seed

A seed blew through my window one day
And settled on the floor
It must've blown a long long way
Three hundred miles? Maybe four?
Twas very small and very light
What could it be, I did wonder.
So I potted it in soil that night
Nestled 'bout two inches under.

It sprouted quick, then grew some more
Six inches…then a foot.
The stalk was green with shoots galore
This thing had taken root.

It bore some food that I could eat
From plate or pan or jar.
I served it with a slab of meat
And a frosty PBR.

But now I curse that demon seed
Cuz I'm sitting here in jail.
That seed was a Monsanto seed
Now please, sir or madam...can you help me make my bail?

Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Abbreviated pundit round-up: A few real scandals to mix with the fake ones

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:30:09 UTC

Matthew Rothschild at The Progressive writes House Republicans say no free lunch for poor kids:

[T]he poor and the hungry shouldn’t have to suffer because of Wall Street’s excesses and George Bush’s wars.
If Republicans wanted to make reasonable cuts out of the Farm Bill, they should have gone after corporate welfare to the giant food companies.

But no, they’d rather take a poor kid’s meal away.

Greg Grandin at The New York Times writes Slaughter Was Part of Reagan’s Hard Line:

Once in office, Reagan, continued to supply munitions and training to the Guatemalan army, despite a ban on military aid imposed by the Carter administration (existing contracts were exempt from the ban). And economic aid continued to flow, increasing to $104 million in 1986, from $11 million in 1980, nearly all of it going to the rural western highlands, where the Mayan victims of the genocide lived.
This aid helped the Guatemalan military implement a key part of its counterinsurgency campaign: following the massacres, soldiers herded survivors into “model villages,” detention camps really, where they used food and other material supplied by the U.S. Agency for International Development to establish control.

Ellen Bravo at In These Times writes The Right to Call In Sick:

In each location, the movement for paid sick days is backed by a broad coalition that includes dozens of partners from labor (including unions like UFCW and AFSCME, and Working America and the Working Families Party) together with small-business owners and groups that advocate for women, children, seniors, public health, racial justice and LGBT rights (Portland’s coalition is a member of the Family Values @ Work Consortium, a network of 21 state coalitions working for policies like paid sick days, of which I serve as executive director). But what’s most notable is how these groups have engaged new activists like Lund, who hadn’t been politically active before, but who share the common experience of fearing for their jobs if they or their child gets sick.

Below the fold are more pundits to read.

Open thread for night owls: Austerity and debt wreck lives of working American families

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:30:09 UTC

The following excerpt, via Alternet, comes from Robert Kuttner's new book, Debtors' Prison, titled Austerity and Debt Conspire to Wreck the Lives of Working American Families:

“Living within one’s means” is an appealing but oversimplified metaphor. Before the crisis, some families and nations did borrow to finance consumption—a good definition of living beyond one’s means. But this borrowing was not the prime cause of the crisis. Today, far larger numbers of entirely prudent people find themselves with diminished means as a result of broader circumstances beyond their control, and bad policies compound the problem.

After a general collapse, one’s means are influenced by whether the economy is growing or shrinking. If I am out of work, with depleted income, almost any normal expenditure is beyond my means. If my lack of a job throws you out of work, soon you are living beyond your means, too, and the whole economy cascades downward. In an already depressed economy, demanding that we all live within our (depleted) means can further reduce everyone’s means. If you put an entire nation under a rigid austerity regime, its capacity for economic growth is crippled. Even creditors will eventually suffer from the distress and social chaos that follow.

Take a closer look at moral hazard ex ante from ex post and you will find that blame is widely attributed to the wrong immoralists. Governments and families are being asked to accept austerity for the common good. Yet the prime movers of the crisis were bankers who incurred massive debts in order to pursue speculative activities. The weak reforms to date have not changed the incentives for excessively risky banker behaviors, which persist.

The best cure for moral hazard is the proverbial ounce of prevention. Moral hazard was rampant in the run-up to the crash because the financial industry was allowed to make wildly speculative bets and to pass along risks to the rest of the society. Yet in its aftermath, this financial crisis is being treated more as an object lesson in personal improvidence than as a case for drastic financial reform.

The last great financial collapse, by contrast, transformed America’s economics. First, however, the Roosevelt administration needed to transform politics. FDR’s reforms during the Great Depression constrained both the financial abuses that caused the crash of 1929 and the political power of Wall Street. Deficit-financed public spending under the New Deal restored growth rates but did not eliminate joblessness. The much larger spending of World War II—with deficits averaging 26 percent of gross domestic product for each of the four war years—finally brought the economy back to full employment, setting the stage for the postwar recovery.

By the war’s end, the U.S. government’s public debt exceeded 120 per- cent of GDP, almost twice today’s ratio. America worked off that debt not by tightening its belt but by liberating the economy’s potential. In 1945, there was no panel like President Obama’s Bowles-Simpson commission targeting the debt ratio a decade into the future and commending ten years of budget cuts. Rather, the greater worry was that absent the stimulus of war and with twelve million newly jobless GIs returning home, the civilian economy would revert to depression. So America doubled down on its public investments with programs like the GI Bill and the Marshall Plan. For three decades, the economy grew faster than the debt, and the debt dwindled to less than 30 percent of GDP. Finance was well regulated so that there was no speculation in the public debt.

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Gallup: Moderates, liberals flee GOP:

Gallup is out with an interesting new survey showing where the Republican Party has lost the most ground over the past eight years, and conservatives aren't going to like what it reveals.

The narrative spun by the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys and Dick Cheneys of the world is that the GOP's problem is that it hasn't been conservative enough, and that rather than moderate its policies, the GOP should focus its rebuilding efforts on the party's conservative base.
But the Gallup survey tells a completely different story. According to Gallup, only 1 percent of self-described conservatives have left the Republican Party over the past eight years. In fact, the only group more loyal to Republicans were those who attend church weekly. Meanwhile, even as Republicans held their conservative base together, 9% of moderates and 8% of liberals left the party.

Tweet of the Day:

Awesome. MT @MaxBlumenthal: Billy Nye, Science Guy, booed in Waco, Texas for explaining moon reflects the sun's light http://t.co/...
— @billmon1 via TweetDeck

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Big-thinking Cato Institute: 400ppm haz got what plants crave

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Mon, 20 May 2013 01:45:09 UTC

Whatever keeps the checks coming, I guess

I continue to be impressed at just how devoid of sentient thought you can be and still land a gig at a "think tank." In this case, the Koch-founded, hypothetically libertarian Cato Institute:

The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) has recently reached a “milestone” of 400 parts per million (ppm). In some circles, this announcement has been met with consternation and gnashing of teeth. The proper reaction is celebration.

Hooray! The announcement that our planet's atmosphere has now been bent to something not previously seen in all of human existence should be heralded, you see, because it means we're getting really, really awesome at using fossil fuels. It's like when your house catches on fire and you beam in pride at all the smoke because hey—that just means you had a lot of expensive crap in there. Celebrate your success, fella. Soak it in.

It's not just the planet is getting warmer and that that's an awesome thing because woo, free heat; the even more awesomer thing is that fossil fuel pollution HAS GOT WHAT PLANTS CRAVE!

There are two primary externalities that result from our emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—1) an enhancement of the greenhouse effect, which results in an alteration of the energy flow in the earth’s climate and a general tendency to warm the global average surface temperature, and 2) an enhancement of the rate of photosynthesis in plants and a general tendency to result in more efficient growth and an overall healthier condition of vegetation (including crops). There’s incontrovertible evidence that the planet is both warmer and greener than it was 100 years ago.

Point (1) is a rather sterilized way of saying that millions upon millions of people are about to see their homes go away, but point (2) is super-better. Dumping all those greenhouse gases into the air is practically like turning the whole planet into, well, a greenhouse—just think of how great all our crops are going to grow now! I mean sure, maybe they won't grow anywhere we're currently planting them, but where they do grow, look out. We're talking serious, serious photosynthesis, baby. Shale oil HAS GOT WHAT PLANTS CRAVE! The Koch brothers, who help produce the stuff and who coincidentally are the driving force behind the Cato Institute, are practically gods among men for their work in making our future planet so lush and green!

This is so awesome, in fact, that we can barely stand it. Did you know that hitting the 400ppm threshold, a milestone marking the beginnings of serious climate change that could "result in an alternation of the energy flow in the goddamn earth's climate itself," changing weather patterns in unpredictable and possibly nation-shattering ways, means that we are no longer so beholden to that stupid weather? Of course you don't—but that's because you don't realize changing the atmosphere of the planet HAS GOT WHAT PLANTS CRAVE!

400ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should remind us of our continuing success at expanding the global supply of energy to meet a growing demand. That success which ultimately leads to an improvement of the global standard of living and a reduction in vulnerability to the vagaries of weather and climate.
400pm is cause for celebration. “A world lit only by fire” is not.

Wooo! Now that we have accepted climate change is happening, we also realize that it is awesome! We have the ability to affect the atmosphere of the entire planet, and that means we have been doing awesome! Party time! All you people in coastal cities, the Koch brothers are gonna spring for free inner tubes for the lot of you (not really) so you can enjoy your new backyard pools, complements of Mother Nature and our Most Awesome and Well-Heeled Energy overlords! Release the nukes, the radiation will make our newly awesome super-green mega-crops f--king glow! BIGGER BOOM GOT WHAT PLANTS CRAVE!

Cough—excuse me. Anyway, the very serious Cato Institute, often hailed as the very pinnacle (snicker) of libertarian/conservative "thinking" (snicker), was recently the subject of an intense power struggle between the staunchly Republican Koch brothers and the more traditionally libertarian members of Cato's board. The essential battle was over Cato's continued independence or whether they would evolve, as the Koch faction desired, into a more reliably conservative, Republican, corporatist and nakedly partisan outfit. There was a lawsuit and everything.

I'd tell you which side won, but really, does it matter?

Life back in the canopy

rss@dailykos.com (DarkSyde) — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:10 UTC

"Room with a View," copyright by climber-photographer Greg Epperson. Used here with his permission. Click image for more breathtaking climbing shots at Greg's homepage.

If you hang out up high with rock climbers, or anything involving naked exposure to dizzying altitude, sooner rather than later most novices will experience complete, total paralyzing fear. Climbers call it being gripped. And soon after being gripped, maybe while sheepishly checking your clothes for stains on the ground, a kindly veteran climber may comfort you with "the apes that were afraid of heights learned how to walk." After a few climbs, fear turns into exhilaration. Pretty soon, you're up high looking down, and instead of nervous you feel safe up there, downright privileged in fact. Like "neener neener neener, you can't get me!" I often wondered if that wasn't an even more ancient evolutionary hangover, an echo from an earlier life, before we learned to walk, a life high in the canopy. Thanks to present day habits, our descendents may quickly discover, or rediscover, if that's the case. Let's explore below the fold.

Welcome to the Darrell Issa Hall of Shame

rss@dailykos.com (Jon Perr) — Sun, 19 May 2013 22:15:09 UTC

With Washington engulfed in scandals real and imagined over the Benghazi tragedy, the IRS' handling of applications by political groups for tax exempt status and the Justice Department's seizure of AP phone records, California Congressman Darrell Issa is enjoying his moment in the sun.

For Republicans "energized" by the prospect of bludgeoning President Obama over his supposed misdeeds, Issa is the perfect hatchet man. After all, given his own past troubles including "the gun conviction, the three allegations of car theft, the arson allegation, the allegation that he dismissed an employee while brandishing a gun, and the mysteries about his finances," Darrell Issa is well acquainted with wrong-doing. Before becoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in January 2011, Issa served as the Bush administration's attack dog in Congress. (That explains why in June 2010 he was already planning to double his committee staff and planning to issue subpoenas to "get the very information that today the White House is either shredding or not producing.") And perhaps most helpful in his current role, Darrell Issa appears to be lacking the embarrassment gene altogether.

You don't have to read his long rap sheet to reach that conclusion. A brief tour of the Darrell Issa Hall of Shame will suffice:

Details for each follow below the fold.

The most vulnerable House members in 2014, in two charts

rss@dailykos.com (David Jarman) — Sun, 19 May 2013 20:29:08 UTC

Jim Matheson (UT-04), most vulnerable Democrat

Over the last couple weeks, we've been talking about the 2014 House election, and in particular, which members might be especially vulnerable. First, we discussed House members in "crossover" districts: Democratic members in Republican-leaning districts, and vice versa. And then last week we discussed House members who had the closest races in 2012, some of whom vastly underperformed their districts' leans.

However, each of these approaches has its disadvantages. There's a number of members in swingy districts who, by virtue of a moderate profile or lack of a strong opposing bench in that area, routinely have little trouble winning re-election (the little-known but highly durable Frank LoBiondo is the example I've often cited). And there is also a number of members who have a knack for finding themselves in competitive races but who are in such solidly blue or red districts that they have enough of a cushion to always survive (Michele Bachmann is the archetype). So, what we need is a way of quantifying only the most vulnerable members: the ones who fall into both of those categories.

That all-in-one metric is the House Vulnerability Index, which is something I developed back in the Swing State Project days. It proved to be quite accurate in predicting who was most vulnerable in the 2010 election (Okay, maybe that wasn't that hard ... everybody was vulnerable in that election ... but it did hint at some losses that no prognosticators expected, like Solomon Ortiz and Melissa Bean), and, by way of testing it out, it also was very good at retroactively predicting the losses in the 1994 election. (I didn't compile an index for the 2012 cycle, because the etch-a-sketch got so thoroughly shaken by redistricting that year; many incumbents were facing many new constituents, so the measuring stick of the previous cycle's electoral results wasn't instructive anymore.)

How the Index works is by combining the two elements that I discussed in the two prevoius weeks' diaries: The House districts occupied by Republicans that have the most Democratic-friendly presidential results (and vice versa), and the districts where the incumbent members won the narrowest victories the year before. That way, it downplays members who had a close call (probably because they were running in open seats, without the benefit of incumbency) but who are likely to be protected by the blueness or redness of their districts, and it downplays members who are in "crossover" districts but have gotten entrenched and rarely attract top-tier competition. Instead, it casts the spotlight on those House members who fall into "perfect storm" territory of future vulnerability, of being in both difficult districts and having had a difficult election themselves.

Here's an example of how it works: Take, for instance, the Democratic House member that the Index deems most vulnerable, Jim Matheson of Utah's 4th congressional district. If you refer back to the earlier diaries, you'll see that he had the second-closest race of any House Democrat in 2012, winning against Mia Love by only 0.3 percent. And he has the reddest district of any House Democrat in 2012, as measured by the Cook Partisan Voting Index, clocking in at R+16 (thanks to Barack Obama getting only 30.2 percent of the vote there in 2012). Add together 2 (for the 2nd closest race) and 1 (for the 1st most red district), and you've got a total score of only 3 (a lower number means greater vulnerability). No other Democrat tops that, although Mike McIntyre, who had the closest race and is in the 3rd reddest district, NC-07, comes very close.

Nevertheless, there are reasons to think that the model's emphasis on near-certain doom for Matheson may be wrong, even if as expected, Dem turnout falls off in the 2014 midterm after a strong presidential year. For one, Matheson has shown unique staying power, perhaps in a way the model can't account for: he survived both the 2010 wave, and a huge target painted on his back by the Utah legislature's gerrymandering efforts in 2012. (He's the son of a former governor, and the Matheson name still seems to hold a lot of cachet in Utah.)

And for another thing, 2012 in Utah was no Dem high-water-mark; instead, GOP performance was juiced by having a favorite son at the top of the ticket. (Of Mitt Romney's five home states, Utah was the only one where he significantly overperformed John McCain.) Matheson seems likely to face off against Love again in 2014, and the question may be, if she couldn't get over the top amidst a banner year for Utah Republicans, what can she do differently this time?

We'll look at the remaining Democrats (and the most vulnerable Republicans as well) over the fold ...

Midday open thread

rss@dailykos.com (brooklynbadboy) — Sun, 19 May 2013 19:30:10 UTC

Google's Sergey Brin wears some scary lookin ish.

Lawmakers questioned Google about privacy concerns with it's Google Glass technology. I'm no Luddite, but this thing is a bit ummm...unsettling:

Google followed all its privacy and data collection policies with Glass, he said, and built social cues into the device to help prevent certain privacy violations. For instance, users have to press a button or speak to Glass to take a photograph or record video, and look directly at whatever they are shooting.
Still, one developer said he had already built an app for Glass that enables users to take a photograph with a wink.

Don't be evil.
President Obama's new Energy Secretary, MIT Professor Ernest Moniz, was confirmed unanimously this week. The fracking and coal fan isn't expected to change the administration's hands off policy towards fossil fuels and promotion of renewables.
It has been one year since the notorious Facebook IPO. The stock is up off its all time low, but at $26 it is little better than it was at the starting point.
Online advertising broke another record this year recording over $10 billion in revenue for Q4.
Entrepreneur? Starting a website is so 90's. Don't even bother. These days, if you want success you need an app. Like our own Jed Lewison's SnapStill. Inspired by Jed, I'm building my own app for something. Your website merely needs to be a place to download the app. Future is moving fast folks.
Speaking of apps, it is interesting for me to speculate how the move towards apps will affect the HTML based websites, including this one. And how it will affect the advertising business. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this topic. I used to always browse the ESPN and SBNation websites for my sports news. Now I just use the app. Interesting times.

The hard lessons of the post-partisan unity schtick

rss@dailykos.com (Armando) — Sun, 19 May 2013 18:15:08 UTC

Ezra Klein recently wrote a piece imagining President Obama going Bulworth, including this pretend exchange:

Q: Sir, you've been criticized in recent weeks for being overly passive. And as you say here, it's your view the government isn't doing enough on the problems facing the American people. Isn't it up to you to lead?
OBAMA: Let me be clear. This kind of question right here is the problem. You have no idea what it actually is that you're asking. If you did, you wouldn't use the word "lead." You'd be specific. You'd say, shouldn't I be putting forward a budget that includes serious compromises on entitlement spending to show I'll meet the Republicans halfway. But I did that. You'd say shouldn't you be reaching out more to the Hill, trying to build some personal relationships with more congressional Republicans, maybe invite Paul Ryan to lunch? But I did that. [...] [Emphasis supplied.]

President Obama did indeed "do that." In fact, his entire tenure has been marked by him "doing that." How many Republican votes did any of his initiatives receive as a result? Let me save you trouble, none. Zero. Zilch. Folks like Greg Sargent complain about the Green Lantern theory of "leadership" that permeates the Media:

At today's press conference, President Obama spent a fair amount of time pushing back on what some of us are calling the "Green Lantern Theory of Presidential Power." This theory—which seems to hold broad sway over many in the press—holds that presidents should be able to bend Congress to their will, and any failure to do so proves their weakness and perhaps even their irrelevance.

But what Sargent and most of those complaining about the persistence of the Green Lantern theory seem to be forgetting is that it was in fact a key part of his political pitch in his 2008 Democratic presidential primary run, what I dubbed the Post-Partisan Unity Schtick. In competition with Obama in 2008, Hillary Clinton ridiculed the Green Lantern Theory of Change in the clip that tops this post. Prior to that, I was critical of the Green Lantern Theory of Change. Here is an example from February 2008:

[T]he question is do they really believe a President Obama will be able to wave a magic wand and make the Republicans play nice? And if not, how exactly do they expect a President Obama to achieve change?

Five years later, we now all know there is no magic wand, there was no breaking of the "fever," there was no "coming together." Or in Hillary Clinton's words, "the skies did not open." Did Obama believe he could persuade Republicans to meet him halfway? I don't think so, but I do think he thought could persuade the Media to take his side and declare, as so many say, that Obama was the adult in the room. On this point, I believe Obama badly miscalculated.

So what could the president have done? Of course, the results of an alternate path can never be tested, but on the flip I'll lay out my views.

Climate change isn't AN issue, it's THE issue

rss@dailykos.com (Laurence Lewis) — Sun, 19 May 2013 16:30:10 UTC

Home

Nicholas Stern has been a lecturer at the University of Oxford, a professor of Economics at the University of Warwick and the London School of Economics, chief economist and special counsellor to the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, World Bank chief economist, second permanent secretary at H.M. Treasury, and head of Britain's Government Economic Service. Since 2008 he has been chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, and in July he will become president of the British Academy. In that curious British tradition, he also has been made a baron, and therefore is referred to as a lord.

In 2005, the British government asked Stern to lead a team of economists in preparing a review of the economic impacts of climate change. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is the seminal work on the issue, and it is an overwhelming read. But he now says it is dated. He now says it underestimated the dangers and the damages. Last week, he succinctly summarized his new understanding of the depth and intensity of the climate crisis:

It is increasingly likely that hundreds of millions of people will be displaced from their homelands in the near future as a result of global warming.

More specifically:

"When temperatures rise to that level, we will have disrupted weather patterns and spreading deserts," he said. "Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to leave their homelands because their crops and animals will have died. The trouble will come when they try to migrate into new lands, however. That will bring them into armed conflict with people already living there. Nor will it be an occasional occurrence. It could become a permanent feature of life on Earth."

Almost two years ago, I wrote that climate change is the most important issue humanity has ever faced. As Stern's words make clear, the crisis has only grown worse. The research and reports come in almost daily.

On Monday, a British newspaper reported on America's first climate refugees. That same day, British and Australian scientists announced that without climate mitigation, more than half of all plant species and one third of all animal species will lose more than half of their climatic range by 2080, with biodiversity declining almost everywhere. On Wednesday, came news that after a year that saw privately insured property losses of $35 billion, which is $11 billion and almost 50 percent above the past decade's average, the insurance industry accepts the scientific reality that by burning fossil fuels humans are causing climate change, which the industry expects to get worse. On Wednesday, we also had this:

“We are in the midst of dramatic assault on the security of the food supply,” said Dr. Robert S. Lawrence, director of the Center for a Livable Future, part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The group promotes ecological research into the nexus of diet, food production, environment and human health.
The primary culprit of all this menu mayhem is climate change, which is choking off certain crops already weakened by both genetic tinkering and chemically based farming, some experts contend.

A couple weeks ago, the World Meteorological Organization announced that 2012 was the ninth hottest year on record, and the years 2001-2012 were among the hottest thirteen on record. That same week, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography reported that atmospheric carbon dioxide had reached levels not seen since before humans existed, a time when the Arctic was a stunning 14 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it is now.

And the climate crisis is growing worse.

Join me below the fold to find out more.

Republican outreach report card: Graded 'F' for Fail

rss@dailykos.com (Denise Oliver Velez) — Sun, 19 May 2013 14:45:09 UTC

Students holding report cards

We have had numerous articles here in recent days about Jason Richwine, his racist Republican sponsored research on Latino low IQ (and about blacks too) for which he received a doctorate from Harvard, and the ideas he continues to spew.

Schoolwork has real-life consequences. In this case, one was the resignation of Florida's RNC Latino Outreach Director, Pablo Pantoja. Pantoja, who was born in Puerto Rico, is no longer a Republican.

He stated in his email:

A researcher included as part of a past dissertation his theory that “the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ.” The researcher reinforces these views by saying “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.”
Although the organization distanced themselves from those assertions, other immigration-related research is still padded with the same racist and eugenics-based innuendo. Some Republican leaders have blandly (if at all) denied and distanced themselves from this but it doesn’t take away from the culture within the ranks of intolerance. The pseudo-apologies appear to be a quick fix to deep-rooted issues in the Republican Party in hopes that it will soon pass and be forgotten.

I'm not surprised.

Each year since 1914 the NAACP has issued a Civil Rights Legislative Report Card on "bread and butter" civil rights issues relating to the voting records of members of Congress. So as a teacher, a blogger, and a voter, I've decided to issue my own report card, and grades for the faux efforts of the Republican Party to pay lip-service to its stated intentions of conducting outreach to Latino voters.

See more on how below the fold.

The next biggest scandal ever, until the next one

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:00:19 UTC

Yes, Mitch McConnell. IRS bureaucrats targeting "tea party"-related groups is a conspiracy. Everything is a conspiracy. Everything is a conspiracy meant to distract from all the other conspiracies, and everything is orchestrated by the top mastermind of all conspiracies everywhere, ~~Bill Clinton~~ ~~George Soros~~ ~~ACORN~~ ~~Hillary Clinton~~ Barack Obama:

“This is just getting started,” he tells me. “Finally, people get it. This is a lot bigger than just one person. This a whole effort by the administration, across the board, to squelch their opponents, to shut them up, and, finally, they’ve done it in a way that will allow us to call attention to it nationwide.”
McConnell is open to the idea of a special prosecutor, but he hasn’t decided whether to ask for an appointment.

Oh pah-leeze. Yes, the Obama administration has been shutting up opponents at a breakneck pace. That's why you don't see any opponents. They're all squelched. Barack Obama personally goes out to all the individual government offices and says, "Hi there, can you make life slightly more irritating for some random guy in Texas who doesn't like me? I'm thinking maybe have him fill out an extra form or something. Yeah. Yeah, that'll do it. Take that, you tea party bastard."

Yes, these bozos in the branch office shouldn't have done it. That's why the IRS made them stop, and had an investigation, and apologized, and why heads are probably going to roll and then some. On the other hand, it's not exactly hard to see why any person of average human intelligence would note that there have been a metric bucketload of organizations cropping up these last few years with oddly partisan names like "Tea Party Wankers" or "Anti-Tax Patriots for Electing Republicans On The Sly" and claiming to be tax-exempt, nonpartisan organizations and think to themselves that there were likely to be a considerable number of scammers mixed in with that lot. Mind you, Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS is one of these 501c4 outfits that gets somehow deemed sufficiently unpolitical, making the whole category into something of a scammer's paradise from the get-go; again, though—bad IRS bureaucrats. Bad.

Still, I find it difficult to get too worked up with world-shattering apoplectic outrage over it, which makes me a bad person, or possibly (even worse!) just not a conspiracy theorist. That's the problem; from McConnell down to the Kings and Gohmerts and Stockmans, all of conservatism has devolved into one big conspiracy theory. It's Breitbartism, all the way down. It's writ right into the movement now, and defined as synonymous with patriotism. You can go from Agenda 21 to ACORN to United Nations gun-grabbers to the powerful solar panel lobby to Benghazi all in one sweeping step; what the precise conspiracy is supposed to be or whether there is f--k-all worth of evidence to support your pet theory is unimportant; it's all about the theater, the very important and very politically motivated and very career-enhancing performance art of presuming everything to be connected to everything. Some IRS officers in a branch office screwed up? For real? Good God—Darrell Issa was probably rendered near-unconscious on his office floor when he heard it, breathing into a paper bag and waving off staffers asking him whether they should call for an ambulance.

Yes, yes, I should be more outraged. Sorry. I already have outrage fatigue, and I've had it for 10 years. The reasons, below the fold:

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!