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Comment by doone on June 27, 2012 at 6:51am

Browse more Sports infographics.

Comment by doone on June 27, 2012 at 6:35am

Yes, I agree they are sending out annoying emails with too much frequency 

WHY I WISH THE OBAMAS WOULD STOP INVITING ME TO DINNER

Walter Kirn in The New Republic:

The problem with these small-stakes lotteries that are currently clogging up our inboxes isn’t that they cheapen politics (it is what it is, especially lately) but that they reveal, in a depressing way that makes the whole enterprise seem almost futile, just how insanely expensive it has become. They offer as prizes places at power’s table that simply aren’t available to anyone but the odds-beating elect. They ritualize a sense of mass despair at ever achieving influence in normal ways, from getting somewhat but not filthy rich (R) to getting organized (D). Whatever they generate by way of cash or names and addresses for campaign mailing lists is canceled out by the cynicism they spread (or partake of and embody).

At a time when political idealism is hard to come by at any price, suckerball is an extremely dangerous game. It doesn’t help that the hucksters who promote it, the Ed McMahons of this particular sweepstakes, are tied to the candidates by blood and marriage. Tagg Romney sent me a note the other morning that opened with an encomium to fatherhood, the holiest of conservative institutions next to the debt and equity markets themselves (“Dad taught us a lot of lessons, including the importance of having fun as a family, but the most important lesson he imparted to us was the joy in helping others”), and closed with an invitation to wager five bucks on a chance to rub shoulders with his “Papa,” a famously tight-fisted, high-stakes gambler who’d never take such lousy odds himself, not even if tickets were a penny a pop. The deal stirred doubts in me about Tagg’s upbringing as well as contempt for his estimation of mine.

More here.

Posted by Abbas Raza at 05:20 AM | Permalink 

Comment by doone on June 26, 2012 at 8:59pm

From ABL - Republicans now want to tie Abortion to Flood Control

Rand Paul is Trying to Attach a Personhood Amendment to a Flood Ins...

By ABL 2.0 June 26th, 2012

Noted Libertarian and neck-stomp enthusiast Rand Paul loves him some small government.

He loves it so hard that he’s running around trying to attach a “life begins at conception” amendment to a Flood Insurance bill.

A FLOOD INSURANCE BILL, PEOPLE.

From Politico:

More »

Comment by doone on June 26, 2012 at 1:45pm

How The GOP Won The Spin War

Paul Krugman and Robin Wells credit Republican unity:

[W]hy did the right do so much better a job than Obama and company of seizing the moment? We’ve already seen part of the answer: Democrats in general, and Obama in particular, were too close to Wall Street to deal effectively with a crisis that Wall Street had created. [Thomas] Frank also makes an important point: in the recent political climate, ignorance really has been strength. You might think that the hermetic intellectual universe the right has created for itself, a kind of alternative reality walled off from any evidence that might contradict faith in the wonders of free markets and the evils of government intervention, would be a liability for the GOP. And it does indeed wreak havoc with actual policymaking. In political terms, however, it has given Republicans unity and certainty where Democrats have been weak and divided.

Comment by doone on June 26, 2012 at 12:52pm

Wilkinson quips that this "looks to me more like a list of things Mr Fallows finds upsetting than the slow-motion demise of American democracy." Jonathan Adler also counters Fallows:

The problem with these characterizations of the court is that if by “judicial activism” one means a willingness to overturn precedents and invalidate federal laws, the Roberts Court is the least activist court of the post-war period. As a recent NYT analysis showed, thus far the Roberts Court has overturned prior precedents and invalidates federal at a significantly lower rate than its predecessors.

And when you look back at how the Court tried to sabotage the New Deal under Roosevelt - under far more desperate economic circumstances - you see that naked politics has never, alas, been absent from the Court. What's different now is a reversal of roles in which the president is acting according to the old norms and the court is actively reactionary. Under Roosevelt, the Justices were being conservative, trying to preserve the old order under radically changed circumstances. Under Obama, they are reactionary, seeking to undo a century of precedent for federal power. If the ACA is struck down on these radical new grounds, the stakes will be very clear. If the Tea Party keeps control of the GOP and the GOP wins another presidential election under Romney, the next appointees are likely to be more radical still. If there's one thing Romney will aggressively pander on (is there anything he won't aggressively pander on?) it's the Court.

So this is not a coup. It's just the system at work, when one side has gone rogue. When that happens, the answer is not to call the refs but to win the presidency and win back the Congress and reshape the court through the constitutionally appropriate way: by appointing new Justices. After his disastrous attempt at Court-packing, that's what FDR did. It's what Obama has to do. He's in that rare position of being a president whose entire legacy depends upon being re-elected. And as each day passes, the historical importance of that re-election becomes clearer.

Comment by doone on June 26, 2012 at 12:52pm

A SCOTUS "Coup"?

Fallows fears that the GOP, in alliance with a GOP-packed Supreme Court, is subverting democracy:

[W]hen you look at the sequence from Bush v. Gore, through Citizens United, to what seems to be coming on the health-care front; and you combine it with ongoing efforts in Florida and elsewhere to prevent voting from presumably Democratic blocs; and add that to the simply unprecedented abuse of the filibuster in the years since the Democrats won control of the Senate and then took the White House, you have what we'd identify as a kind of long-term coup if we saw it happening anywhere else.

He follows up here. I agree that the Supreme Court - after Bush vs Gore, its modernist interpretation of the Second Amendment and then the coup de grace of Citizens United - is in one of its more aggressively political modes. It's also become trashier: Justice Scalia's dissents are perfectly at home on the Rush Limbaugh show at this point. And all this will not help the Court if it strikes down the Affordable Care Act with a similar partisan rhetorical flourish, or on flimsy, clearly partisan grounds.

Comment by Adriana on June 26, 2012 at 10:25am

How sad...when will this kind of violence end??

Comment by doone on June 26, 2012 at 9:40am

 Miranda Leitsinger / msnbc.com:

Teen lesbian couple found shot in Texas park  —  Police are investing the shooting of two teenage girls in a small Texas community along the Gulf of Mexico.  KRIS reporter Lindsay Curtis has the story.  —  Two teenage girls in a relationship were found with gunshot wounds to the head in a south Texas park …

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Discussion: Towleroad News #gay, Riehl World View and The Raw Story

Comment by Adriana on June 25, 2012 at 1:20pm

Of the Rich, By the Rich, For the Rich

June 25, 2012

The Supreme Court on Monday reaffirmed its disastrous 2010 ruling that lifted limits on corporate spending to influence elections. Justices reversed the Montana Supreme Court and struck down a state law. "The U.S. Supreme Court's absurd 5-4 ruling two years ago in Citizens United was a major blow to American democratic traditions. Sadly, despite all of the evidence that Americans see every day, the court continues to believe that its decision makes sense," Sanders said.

"In recent weeks, multi-billionaires such as the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson have made it clear that, as a result of the Citizens United decision, they intend to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy this election for candidates who support the super-wealthy. This is not democracy. This is plutocracy. And that is why we must overturn Citizens United if we are serious about maintaining the foundations of American democracy.

"I intend to work as hard as I can for a constitutional amendment to overturn this disastrous Supreme Court decision.

"In his famous speech at Gettysburg during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln talked about America as a country ‘of the people, by the people and for the people.' Today, as a result of the Supreme Court's refusal to reconsider its decision in Citizens United, we are rapidly moving toward a nation of the super-rich, by the super-rich and for the super-rich. That is not what America is supposed to be about. This Supreme Court decision must be overturned."

Comment by doone on June 23, 2012 at 11:06am

DIMITRIS TAXIS RESPONSE TO THE GREEK ELECTIONS

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