Voices of Central Pa aggregator

DailyKos Headlines: Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Mitt Romney's possible running mates

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 07:35:49 -0400

Visual source: Newseum

Michael Crowley at TIME looks at the Marco Rubio chatter:

Now that Mitt Romney has, in an important psychological sense, clinched the Republican nomination, the conversation is turning to the question of his running mate. And everyone seems to agree that Florida Senator Marco Rubio is a compelling option: young, telegenic, Hispanic and from a critical swing state. There’s just one problem–Rubio insists he doesn’t want to be vice president.
It’s true that, at times, he has offered something less than a completely airtight, LBJ-style “will not accept” statement. But in October he called the prospect “off the table” and said yes when asked if he was “ruling that out.” Just yesterday, he declared, “I’m not going to be Vice President.” To my ears this is a solid notch more negative than the typical coyness of someone who covets the number-two slot but doesn’t want to appear overeager. By contrast, Ohio Senator Rob Portman, another likely veep candidate, declined a similar chance to rule out the prospect to Politico recently, although he too downplayed his interest.
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Crooks and Liars: Open Thread

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 23:30:13 -0400

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Credit: MAD Magazine

h/t Batocchio, Who said it, Romney or Mister Burns from The Simpsons? (click image for larger)

Open Thread below...

DailyKos Headlines: Open thread for night owls: Grand Bargains are the bane of 'bipartisanship'

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 23:30:03 -0400

digby writes:

Brad DeLong has a question for Ezra Klein about Grand Bargains:
As a Clinton administration staffer, a question for Ezra. Suppose we do a bipartisan deficit-reduction deal over the next two years. Why don't you think that the next time the Republican Party gets back into power afterwards they won't do what they did the last time they had working majorities everywhere in 2001-3, and indeed the time before that they had working majorities in 1981-2: large tax cuts for the rich that destabilize America's public finances.

It's hard for any veteran of the Clinton Administration to reach any conclusion other than that fixing America's long-run fiscal dilemmas requires first the complete destruction of today's Republican Party, and those of us who care about America's fiscal future need to turn all of our energies to that end. Can you give me reasons not to believe that?

This is a really good question. It's not as if the Democrats haven't done a ton of Grand Bargaining over the past couple of decades—and the result is always that the Republicans demand more. I recall having an argument back in 2000 with a long time Democratic operative who insisted that the Republicans could never demagogue them again because Clinton balanced the budget and left a surplus. Surely the people now understood that the Democrats were fiscally responsible. How'd that work out for us?
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Crooks and Liars: C&L's Late Night Music Club with Steve Martin and The Steep Canyon Rangers

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 23:00:41 -0400

Title: Atheists Don't Have No Songs

Artist: Steve Martin and The Steep Canyon Rangers

Happy Holy Weekend to our atheist friends, and G-d bless. :D

Crooks and Liars: Whoops. Another Radioactive Water Leak in Fukushima!

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 22:00:06 -0400

This was the second time in 11 days they've had this kind of leak, so you might get the impression that the plant isn't all that stable. This sort of thing might also explain why the seaweed on the West Coast is testing so much higher for radiation lately.

But the question I have is, in a place where the radiation is so high that it's not safe for robots, why the hell would they use plastic pipes?

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said as much as 12 tons of radioactive water leaked from a pipe at its crippled Fukushima nuclear station, the second such incident in 11 days at the same pipeline, raising further doubts about the stability of the plant.

Part of the water may have poured into the sea through a drainage ditch, Osamu Yokokura, a spokesman for the utility, said by phone. The company known as Tepco stopped the leak from a pipe connecting a desalination unit and a tank today, he said.
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Crooks and Liars: Republicans Threaten Judges, Accuse Obama of Judicial Intimidation

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 21:00:42 -0400

(Clips of Tom Delay and John Cornyn quoted below start after the 1:00 mark.)

On Monday, President Obama unsurprisingly expressed confidence that the Supreme Court would uphold the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Even less remarkable, Obama rightly reminded Americans that "conservative commentators" have for years said "the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint -- that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law." Nevertheless, Republicans quickly accused the President of "unprecedented" effort to "intimidate the Supreme Court."

Crooks and Liars: RNC Chair: GOP 'War on Women' Fictional Like 'War on Caterpillars'

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:00:51 -0400

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The chairman of the Republican National Committee is denying that his party is waging a war on women, saying it's as fictional as the "war on caterpillars."

In a interview that will air on Saturday, Bloomberg TV's Al Hunt asked RNC Chairman Reince Priebus how big of a problem it was for Republicans that recent polls showed President Barack Obama with a 2-1 lead among female voters in battleground states.

"If Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that the Republicans have a war on caterpillars then we would have problems with caterpillars," Priebus explained. "The fact of the matter is that it's a fiction."

"This started as a war against the Vatican that this president pursued," the RNC chairman said, referring to the Obama administration's mandate that health care insurance provided by religious institutions cover contraception for women. "He still hasn't answered Archbishop Dolan's issues with Obama-world and Obamacare."

"How do we combat it? We make the case to women and everyone in this country -- no matter what you background -- that, number one, this president hasn't fulfilled his promises. Number two, we can do better in this country in regards to jobs and the economy."

Crooks and Liars: Rove Calls Obama a 'Political Thug' for Supreme Court Remarks

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 19:00:54 -0400

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President George W. Bush's former senior advisor on Tuesday said that President Barack Obama was "some kind of political thug" because he suggested that it would be "unprecedented" for the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the health care reform law.

During his show on Tuesday, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs asked Karl Rove how Obama was handling the possibility that the court might overturn all or part of the Affordable Care Act.

"Not too well," Rove insisted. "This is a bad way to start off, looking like you are some kind of political thug at the White House threatening the Supreme Court and basically telegraphing to them, 'You better uphold my law or there's going to be political damage created and I'll help do some of the creating.'"

"I thought it was very unpresidential and probably shows the mindset of what the president might do if it's declared unconstitutional," he added.

As Bush's former top political adviser, Rove was also accused of strong-arm tactics like improperly firing U.S. Attorneys for their political beliefs and engineering laws against LGBT rights to turn out conservative voters.

(H/T: Media Matters)

DailyKos Headlines: Appeals Court revives billion-dollar suit against YouTube

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:28:11 -0400

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit today has overturned a previous grant of summary judgment in YouTube's favor, and revived a billion-dollar lawsuit alleging intentional copyright infringement back during YouTube's early days (the mid-Aughts), which was brought against it by a broad coalition of plaintiffs, including Viacom, Paramount, the Premier League and others. (Seriously, there's a six-page listing of all the lawyers involved.)

The decision is here. Basically, while the Court generally agreed with YouTube about how broad the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA were, it disagreed with YouTube (and the district court below) as to whether YouTube qualified for such protections. The Court ruled that there was sufficient evidence that a reasonable jury could determine that YouTube had actual knowledge or awareness of facts that indicated specific and identifiable instances of infringement and failed to stop it. As such, this case goes back to the trial court to determine what YouTube knew, when it knew it, and when it decided to stop the problem. What kind of evidence? Follow me below the magic gnocchi:

Crooks and Liars: Darwin: Scientist But Not Economist

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:00:53 -0400

I wrote a book that came out in early 2009 called, “The Progressive Revolution: How The Best In America Came To Be,” that talked about the history of the American political debate. One of my fundamental arguments was that conservatives are using the same arguments against modern day progress that their ideological ancestors used against the progress we made throughout history. What I underestimated, though, is how fiercely and broadly the modern conservative movement is trying not only to block advances in progress, but to actually roll back the gains of our history. Things that had seemed long settled only a few years back when I wrote that book are now being fought over anew, and not by trivial people on the fringes of our politics but by most of the leaders in the Republican Party.