Mitt Romney hopes to add velocity to his political momentum with a victory in the caucuses of Nevada, a state in which the former Massachusetts governor has focused a number of resources.
The threadhog emerged, saw its shadow, and settled upon at least six more weeks of blogging.
- For evidence of a war on workers, look no farther than the rise of the lockout, by Laura Clawson.
- The controversy and conversations sparked by the “UnFair” anti-racism campaign in Duluth, Minnesota, by Denise Oliver Velez.
- Why Obama? An Argument to Reluctant Progressives for Supporting the President’s Reelection, by Armando.
- Making new friends, while keeping the old, by Scott Wooledge.
- Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s curious relationship with the science of cancer prevention, by Laurence Lewis.
- Komen’s hypocrisy: Let us count the ways, by Georgia Logothetis.
- The curious relationship of the Republican Party to the very poor, by Dante Atkins.
Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin has just passed on word that the Business Committee of Uganda’s Parliament will discuss the proposed “Kill The Gays” bill next week. Despite rumors to the contrary, the bill did not die at the end of the last session of Parliament, nor were its death penalty provisions removed. It is unclear to what extent the measure will advance beyond next week’s debate. The measure would impose the death penalty or life imprisonment for some homosexual acts (which are already illegal), require people to report every LGBT individual they know, and criminalize so-called LGBT advocacy.
The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has vowed to repeal a proposed gay marriage law being debated in Washington state.
The Senate on Wednesday approved the measure with a larger than expected 28 to 21 vote. Supporters outnumber opponents in the House, making a vote in that chamber just a formality.
…
Opponents cannot begin a referendum campaign until after the bill is signed into law. They will need to collect 120,577 valid signatures by June 6 to put the issue on the November ballot.
Obviously, the hope is that they can’t collect the signatures. But if they do, let’s make sure that the people of Washington vote to uphold basic rights and begin the cascading rejection of NOM’s agenda.
During a campaign speech delivered in Missouri on Friday, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum did his best to make his audience shake in their boots with the specter of an Iranian nuclear attack.
“Once they have a nuclear weapon, let me assure you, you will not be safe, even here in Missouri,” Santorum predicted.
According to The Hill, Santorum is hoping to attract conservative votes in Missouri, where Newt Gingrich is not on the ballot.
Because we all know the Missouri suburbs are prime terrorist targets, a fact with should leave people like me who live in places like Los Angeles feeling pretty comfortable.
Corporate tax receipts as a share of profits are at their lowest level in at least 40 years.
Total corporate federal taxes paid fell to 12.1% of profits earned from activities within the U.S. in fiscal 2011, which ended Sept. 30, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s the lowest level since at least 1972. And well below the 25.6% companies paid on average from 1987 to 2008.
So in short, no. Making rich people even richer will not help the economy, and if reducing corporate taxes could make the economy better, it should already have been booming by now.
It’s Super Bowl weekend, and you’re either psyched for the game to begin—or you can’t wait until the whole thing is over. Because this is Daily Kos, we wanted to find out for ourselves exactly how America feels about this annual spectacle, so we threw this question on to our :
Q: Who are you rooting for in the Super Bowl: the New England Patriots or the New York Giants?
Giants: 37
Patriots: 27
Unsure: 36
I’m a long-suffering Jets fan (is there any other kind?), though I have nothing against the Giants. But I do, of course, have everything against the Patriots. So I’m definitely rooting for New York—along with, I might add, a plurality of my fellow Americans. How about you? Take our own in-house poll below!
Over the last year, we’ve had lots of fun at anti-semite George Rockwell’s expense (see for an example, where he claims Justice Scalia will bring me to trial at the Supreme Court). That seemingly came to an end in , when he announced:
friends don’t coordinate jew attacks against friends. and the irony is that your only chance of freeing yourself from jew servitude was to listen to me. now you have lost both your chance at freedom and a friend. good bye, markos.
I wasn’t exactly torn up, but he had been a great source of hate mail material! Well, he couldn’t stay away. The latest on that soap opera (and updates on the Supreme Court bench trial against me) below the fold.
According to TPM, Senate Democrats when it comes to the $600 billion of defense cuts Republicans agreed to in the debt deal, only to (very, very predictably) vow to renege on that same deal now:
Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has not only vowed to hold the line on the cuts, but he recently suggested Dems could use it to force the Republicans’ collective hand.
“The purpose of the sequester is to force us to act to avoid the sequester,” he said. “That sword of Damocles can not be splintered,” he continued, “if it’s going to have its effect.” The effect he said he meant was to “move the rigid ideologues to deal finally with revenue.”
Hmm. Color me skeptical, though we’d all love to see it. From the outset I thought the debt deal was absolutely because Republicans would turn around and nullify the supposed defense cuts long before they ever took effect. That was so obvious a move that the Democratic resistance to acknowledging it was . And the leverage Republicans would have in such a fight is the same leverage they always have: calling Democrats “weak on defense,” or saying it will “impact military readiness,” or suggesting that Democrats want the terrorists to win. Then the Democrats predictably start sweating, and then they predictably fold, and the Pentagon gets another few so-expensive-they-should-be-carved-from-platinum jet fighters as trophies of the short-lived fight.
What Sen. Levin is suggesting here is perfectly reasonable, and is in fact the obvious strategy: Use these cuts to force Republican ideologues to choose between their desired defense budget and their entrenched opposition to raising any tax, under any circumstance, since it is obvious to any rational observer that the two goals cannot possibly be reconciled. But it presumes Democrats will honestly be willing to make that fight, and to block attempts to remove the defense budget from the budget agreement even as Republicans warn that the entire future of the free world depends on giving the Pentagon more and more and more money, and that you’re a dirty communist and/or hippie and/or traitor if you think otherwise. What history exists here that would suggest Democrats would not cave in? Democrats have established a history of caving in nicely, which is exactly why the demands of the Republican leadership have gotten more and more extreme during each hostage-taking session.
Republicans willingly signed on to the defense cuts only a few short months ago. Now they’re seen as apocalyptic, and impossible, and so dangerous that only a fool would do it. They knew, even back then, that they weren’t going to honor the deal. And now, just as with every other goddamn negotiation of the past three years, we’re reliant on an aimless Democratic caucus to negotiate for whatever hostage Republicans take this time around.
I will be very happy if Levin is right, and there is stomach this time around (perhaps thanks to Republican self-immolation on the payroll tax cuts) to hold firm on this issue and finally force Republicans to recognize that “tax cuts for rich people” is not the be-all, end-all of all national policy. The only evidence of it, however, would be that clearly non-conservatives cannot continue to acquiesce to these hostage-takings indefinitely—they are causing too much damage, economically, for the country to blithely accept—and so statistically there should be some point at which more moderate voices have gotten fed up enough to say “no more.”
AP – Mitt Romney listens. Newt Gingrich lectures.
Politico – Most people have probably forgotten that Maine’s caucuses also begin today.
Politico – The plan would allow about 3.5 million homeowners to refinance their mortgages.
AP – Mitt Romney expects Nevada’s caucuses to kick off a month of primary and caucus contests to keep momentum on his side in the race for the GOP presidential nomination.
AP – With its 24-hour casino gambling, legalized prostitution and drive-through wedding chapels, Nevada seems anything but conventional. When it comes to voting in presidential elections, it’s as mainstream as it gets.