Daily Kos

I'm no political strategist, but I'm pretty sure that if someone asks you whether or not your candidate's economic plans are the exact same ones as promulgated by George W. Bush, Worst President in Modern History, policies that went so badly awry as to help cause an economic catastrophe so bad that people are still arguing about what to call it (The Great Recession? The Long Recession? Depression 2: Financial Boogaloo?), a worldwide bloodletting that we will be digging ourselves back out of for the next 10 years or so, you probably should say no.

During an interview last week on The Fernando Espuelas Show, Alexandra Franceschi, Specialty Media Press Secretary of the Republican National Committee, said that the Republican party’s economic platform in 2012 is going to be the same as it was during the Bush years, “just updated”:

FRANCESCHI: Well, it’s a message of being able to attain the American dream. It’s less government spending, which a Tarrance Group poll, came out last week actually, shows that the majority of Hispanics believe that less government spending is the way out of this deficit crisis. It’s lowering taxes so small businesses can grow and they can employ more people, because we understand that the private sector is the engine of the economy. It’s not the government. [...]

ESPUELAS: Now, how different is that concept from what were the policies of the Bush administration? And the reason I ask that is because there’s some analysis now that is being published talking about the Bush years being the slowest period of job creation since those statistics were created. Is this a different program or is this that program just updated?

FRANCESCHI: I think it’s that program, just updated.

No! No, you don't say that! Yes, the policies are the same. Yes, the demand for tax cuts on rich people, and fewer regulations on businesses, and more aggressive pro-clusterfuck deregulation of Wall Street are all identical, but you're supposed to at least pretend you are not going to do the exact same thing that landed us up Poop Creek without a working septic pump.

Here's the thing: Nobody wants to go back to the Bush years. Not even Republicans want to go back to the Bush years, which is why you will hear Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum or All The Rest talk about the Bush years approximately never, plus or minus one "when hell freezes over." There was no aspect of those years that wasn't a foul up of epic, can't-believe-you-could-even-fuck-up-that-bad proportions. The first rule of Republican Fight Club is that you do not talk about George W. Bush. You don't even talk about George H.W. Bush, because you still have to say "George" and "Bush." No, as far as campaigning Republicans go, you've got Ronald Reagan, then a whole lotta nothing happened for 20 years until Barack Obama showed up and was mean and stuff.

When you've got an actual press person for the RNC saying that the plan is to go back to the Bush economic program (he was "the CEO president," remember that?), I can only come to two conclusions. One: This person is off script, and badly. Two: The Republicans have learned absolutely nothing from the Bush failures. Not a damn thing.

I'm not sure how you can look around at the outcome of Bush's supposed economic policies and honestly say to yourself, "Yeah, that was great. We should do that again." Which part was it, exactly? The rampant financial corruption? The deficits? The no-jobs part? That recession-thingy that people still seem to be mentioning? Still, though, we're getting the nonsense about lowering taxes on rich people and stopping government from regulating stuff is going to make everything all better, and totally not do the thing it did that last time around. Or the time before that. Or any other time.

As bad as it is that the RNC has an actual press strategist who doesn't understand that Republicans still need to distance themselves from Bush policies, having a Republican Party that honestly, truly seems to think those same policies were the bee's knees is much worse. They really have learned nothing. They want a do-over—and we haven't even recovered from their last try at it yet.

Here's Elizabeth Warren's latest ad, talking about education: "Today, Washington lets big corporations like GE pay nothing—zero—in taxes, while kids are left drowning in debt to get an education. This isn’t about economics. It’s about our values."

Warren can talk about how important education is and how hard it can be to obtain because she lived it. And, as a professor, values it deeply. If you can believe a cross-section of Warren's former students, her concern for young people, and particularly students, isn't just for political show.

“I remember her saying once that despite having done this for years, she’s still nervous about it,” [former student Adam] Levitin says. “As the first day of class approaches, end of August, she says: ‘I start to feel ill because I get nervous about how the teaching is going to go this year. Am I going to be able to do a good job training these students?’ So even someone who is so poised and so practiced in this, she cares about it so much that it worries her.”

Then, you've got Warren't opponent, Sen. Scott Brown, who shut a bunch of students out of his office last Thursday when they were trying to meet with him about a summer jobs program.

About 25 students, along with several community activists and Councilor Felix G. Arroyo of Boston, were hoping for a meeting with Brown when they were intercepted at the entrance to the John F. Kennedy Federal Building. They were told that Brown’s office could not accommodate a group of their size and were denied entry. [...]

“These are young people who want to work this summer, them and their brothers and sisters,’’ Arroyo said. “Brown voted against summer jobs funding, and we wanted to ask him to reconsider if the issue comes up again.’’ [...]

Being denied access to the public building rankled the kids and their mentors.

“They were denied access to a public building by a man who claims he’s holding the people’s seat,’’ Arroyo said. “ ‘The people’ should include them. They’re constituents.’’

The students were hoping, at the least, to leave a petition supporting the summer jobs act with Brown's staff. Instead, they were denied even access to the building, though two of Brown's staff did come out to talk with them on the sidewalk in front of the building. They are kids who want to work, want to have a chance to help their families, maybe save a little money so that they can possibly think about going to college, or just gain work experience.

Brown just didn't have time for them. Doesn't do much to burnish his common man image, does it?

Please donate $5 to help Elizabeth Warren get to the Senate to represent the rest of us.

With all of the whining Mitt Romney has done about the left-wing media conspiracy against him, there are two important things to say. One: Shut up. Two: Shut up.

In fact, let's make that three things ... remember last week when the first couple of daily tracking polls from Gallup came out, showing Romney leading President Obama by a whopping few points? Here are just a few (emphasis on "few") of the breathless headlines that day:

• Gallup: Romney Beating Obama in First Daily Tracking Poll
• Does Gallup poll show the race is starting to tighten?
• Romney to Obama: 'Start packing'
• Mitt Romney leads Obama in first Gallup national tracking poll
• GALLUP SHOCK POLL: ROMNEY 48% OBAMA 43%...
• GALLUP SHOCKER: ROMNEY UP FIVE OVER OBAMA

And one week later, now that the daily tracking shows Obama up over Romney 47-44 percent, there must be a media firestorm ... headlines blaring the news that Obama is winning, speculation on what caused Romney's spectacular dive in the polls and of course a screaming siren at Drudge, right? Not so much—from the Moderate Voice:

• Polling Shift: Obama Up in Gallup Daily Tracking: Romney Loses Gallup Daily Tracking Poll Lead As Obama’s Numbers Inch Up

So Mitt? Shut up.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), primary sponsor of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) bill, is "confident" that the House will pass his bill on Thursday, despite the fact that the White House has criticized the approach taken in the bill, suggesting President Obama might not sign this version.

You might have heard that there were amendments that made the bill less dangerous. The ACLU, along with many other groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, Free Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Constitution Project, are still opposed to it because it still poses serious dangers to individual privacy.

1. CISPA still allows companies to share lots of sensitive and private information about our internet use with the government. [...]
2. CISPA still lets military agencies such as the National Security Agency directly collect the Internet records of American citizens who use the public, domestic, civilian Internet. [...]
3. CISPA still lets the government use the private information it collects about us for any purpose it deems fit outside of regulation. [...]

The bill still allows private companies to share information about their customers with each other and with the government with little more than an assertion that this information sharing is necessary for national security. No warrants, no subpoenas, and this law supersedes any other privacy protection law. Oh, and this, too: it would immunize companies from either criminal or civil liability for personal data shared under CISPA. So they have basically no incentive not to collect as much information as they can about their customers.

It's still a bad bill. Tell Congress to stop CISPA.

It looks like, once again, Planned Parenthood is the target of a hidden-camera, actor-with-fake-questions sting operation. This time, instead of the good old pimps-n-hos routine, it's sex-selective abortion:

According to Planned Parenthood spokesperson Chloe Cooney, clinics in at least 11 states have reported two dozen or more "hoax visits" over the past several weeks, in which a woman walks into a clinic, claims to be pregnant and asks a particular pattern of provocative questions about sex-selective abortions, such as how soon she can find out the gender of the fetus, by what means and whether she can schedule an abortion if she's having a girl.

Subtle! The anti-choice crowd's big new thing is that, in the words of National Right to Life president Carol Tobias, "the real war on women" is that "roughly half" of abortions "are performed on unborn girls." Since roughly half of pregnancies are girls, that makes a general sort of statistical sense, though since the vast, overwhelming majority of abortions are performed long before sex can be determined, it's absolutely beside the point when it comes to a war on women. But that claim is the new shiny toy of the right's attempts to distract us from the very real war on women they're waging, so coming up with a video suggesting that Planned Parenthood staff would advocate specifically aborting girls is just the sort of thing they'd think would be a major victory.  

The best bet is that this sting attempt is the work of Live Action, this sort of thing being that group's raison d'etre. However:

Kate Bryan, a spokesperson for Live Action, would not confirm whether the group was behind the newest Planned Parenthood sting. "As you can understand, Live Action does not comment on any investigations until after public release," she said.

Translation: As you can understand, Live Action will not comment on this until we've established whether our footage will allow us to edit together a sufficiently misleading video. If so, we'll release that sucker far and wide. If not, we'll never admit it was us.

Even though Planned Parenthood has blown the whistle before any misleading videos can be released, and even though the media should have learned by now exactly how full of lies videos from Live Action and other James O'Keefe imitators are, Planned Parenthood needs our help fighting off this kind of attack. Click here to donate to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund on Act Blue.

Well, this will no doubt get Mitt Romney in hot water with his fellow Republicans:

"Particularly with the number of college graduates that can't find work and can only find work well beneath their skill level, I fully support the effort to extend the low interest rate on student loans," Romney said. "There was some concern that that would expire halfway through the year and I support extending the temporary relief on interest rates on students as a result of student loans obviously, in part because of the extraordinarily poor conditions in the job market."

Given that half of college graduates are unemployed or underemployed, which makes paying off those student loans all but impossible, that's a pretty good reason to keep the interest rates low on their loans, as President Obama is proposing.

But of course, since Republicans hate students and college and people who struggle to make ends meet—Rep. Virginia Foxx, for example, has "little tolerance" for those deadbeat college graduates who have student loans—the Republican Party isn't exactly in favor of such a proposal. At least, not unless they get something out of it. That's why Mike Huckabee has proposed extending the disastrous Bush tax cuts in exchange for keeping student loan rates low.

And then there's the Romney-endorsed Paul Ryan budget, which would slash the hell out of Pell grants, which currently makes college affordable for nine million students. Pell grants, by the way, happen to be one of the many programs that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has specifically said to members of Congress must be protected and funded because of Jesus and stuff.

So even though his party has a specific plan to screw college students—a plan Mitt Romney thinks is peachy and freedomy—he's going rogue and getting behind the president's plan, and the reason is pretty clear: His deficit with voters 18-29 is just about as ugly as his deficit with women voters.

But maybe a few pretty words can fix all that for Mitt, so he's telling students their low interest rates are just the right height. And if he says just the right words, maybe it'll make that 17-point gap disappear. At least, that's what Mitt's hoping:

"I think young voters of this country have to vote for me," Romney said.

Sure they do, Mitt. Sure they do.

Tell House Republicans not to let student loan interest rates double.

Reposted from Comics by Barbara Morrill

Remember Sandra Fluke? She's the law student who sent Rush Limbaugh into a multi-day rage for daring to speak out on behalf a friend who needed access to contraceptives for non-reproductive medical reasons. As a result, Limbaugh decided she was a promiscuous slut and prostitute who needed to videotape herself having sex for Limbaugh's own sexual gratification.

Overall, Limbaugh attacked Fluke an astonishing 53 times over three days. We took snippets of each of those attacks and spliced them together for the world to see, then uploaded it to YouTube.

Today, we got notice from YouTube that the clip had been pulled for copyright violation:

Dear dkostv:

We have disabled the following material as a result of a third-party notification from The Rush Limbaugh Show claiming that this material is infringing:

53 of Rush Limbaugh's most vile smears against Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke
http://www.youtube.com/...

The video is clear Fair Use. It's not even a close call. We've already asked YouTube to reconsider. And I'd be happy to litigate this issue with Limbaugh's lawyers in court, if they want to take it that far.

But I am perplexed—why is he suddenly so shy and retiring about his views on Sandra Fluke? He should be thrilled that us liberals are helping spread his noxious views. Or is he now embarrassed by them? In either case, we put the video up on Vimeo:

This isn't 1823, no matter how much Limbaugh might wish it so. He gets the video pulled from one place, it'll simply pop up somewhere else. If he really wants it offline, he's going to have to meet us in court. And even that won't do the trick.

That darn First Amendment will get in his way.

Mitt Romney on Friday...

I happen to have met him about four or five years ago. I had a dinner in Washington, DC, where we were both invited to tell some jokes about our respective parties, and I found him to be a nice guy. I think he's a nice person, I just don't think we can afford him any longer.

...and on Sunday:

He tries to divide the American people. That's what we're in for. You're going to see one person after the other castigated. This is a president who is dividing America.

And of course the real reason Mitt's so ticked off is that dividing America is HIS job as the GOP nominee, damn it gosh darn it.

Welcome to the third contest of this year's GOP Madness tournament, where we seek to crown the top moment of this year's GOP nomination battle!

Many of you have asked, what standard to use when picking these moments? The funniest, the craziest, the most hateful? The answer to that question is "yes."

Here's the bracket so far. Today's contestants:

1. Newt groomed by Callista.

Oops. Wrong clip. I meant this one:

An asinine moment for an asinine candidate and shallow third spouse. As if any amount of grooming could ever make Newt Gingrich look attractive or presidential, or convince anyone that his prime motivation was ever anything more than to sell a few more books.

2. Mitt Romney speaks to empty Ford Field

Romney was scheduled to give a big economic policy speech to the Detroit Economic Club, and that was too complicated for their logistics team to handle. Because rather than find a nice cozy venue for the club's 1,200 members (Detroit has them), they ended up, well, here:

The speech was a dud, of course. Something about tax cuts for Mitt Romney's friends. But for a campaign struggling to generate a feeling of excitement, they managed to do the absolute opposite.
And really, they shouldn't have worried about looking for space for the club's 1,200 members. Too many of them didn't bother to show:
Note, this was the THIRD attempt to make Romney's speech appear more packed than it was.

They scrapped three earlier plans: one to have Romney stand in the end zone, speaking up to guests seated in the stands; another to have him on the sidelines near midfield, speaking to guests seated in the stadium's middle sections, and an initial plan to hold the event at the Westin Book Cadillac, which quickly became oversold.

Steve Grigorian, chief operating officer for the Economic Club, said the two earlier Ford Field plans were changed because camera angles would have made it appear there was no one in the stadium but Romney.

Mission not accomplished.

• Today's comic by Tom Tomorrow is Mitt Romney: man of the people:
  
  
• What you missed on Sunday Kos ...
  

  • Sunday's comic was Fracking everything up, by Matt Wuerker
  • Republicans manufacture a crisis for the Postal Service, and too many Democrats go along, by Laura Clawson
  • A Guide to Reading Polls and Preserving Your Sanity, by Steve Singiser
  • The Five Types of Political Friends on Facebook, by Georgia Logothetis
  • A conversation with Prof Jack Balkin about "Living Originalism" and the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, by Armando
  • Manning Marable wins posthumous Pulitzer for his biography of Malcolm X, by Denise Oliver Velez
  • Anatomy of a middle class tax return, by Dante Atkins

• Bad news for Mitt Romney and the Republican Party:
  

  The U.S. economy will grow faster than expected this year, despite the headwinds of higher gas prices and Europe's financial crisis, according to USA TODAY's quarterly survey of economists.

  Their median estimates are higher than in January for everything from this year's business investment to hiring.

  Economists think job growth for the rest of the year will be about 20% stronger than they did after Christmas.

• Shut up:
  

  The attorney for George Zimmerman apologized for the apology his client offered to the parents of Trayvon Martin during his bond hearing last Friday, saying he did not understand the victim's family would find the timing of his remarks inappropriate.

• In related news:
  

  Sanford, Florida, Police Chief Bill Lee is expected to resign Monday, 57 days after his department declined to arrest neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, according to a city official familiar with the matter.

• And these guys are supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility:
  

  The debt-plagued Republican Party of Minnesota is getting kicked out of its party headquarters near the state Capitol.

  Massachusetts-based Hub Properties Trust filed paperwork in Ramsey County on Wednesday to evict the state GOP for failing to pay more than $96,000 in rent over the last year.

• A handy guide if you're following the John Edwards trial.
• The only good thing to say about this is that they weren't in Florida:
  

  The Newton County Sheriff’s Office is investigating why a couple was confronted at gunpoint by neighbors and then arrested and forced to spend the night in jail when they tried to move into the home they had just purchased, Channel 2 Action News reported. [...]

  But when Jean Kalonji and his wife, Angelica, started working at the home, an armed man and another person who appeared to be the man’s son allegedly confronted them. [...]

  The neighbors didn’t believe the couple when they told them they had bought the home and called the Newton County Sheriff’s Office. The Kalonjis didn’t have the closing papers with them, so deputies arrested them, charged them with loitering and prowling and took them to jail.

• In case you missed it, convicted felon and Nixon henchman Charles Colson died.
• Seen at the end of "The Simpsons" episode marking its 25 years on television:
  
  
• Trying to picture the want ad to replace this woman:
  

  A “kind and generous’’ Long Island mom donated a kidney to save the life of her boss — who then turned around after she got what she wanted and helped fire the poor woman, according to an explosive new legal complaint.

  “I decided to become a kidney donor to my boss, and she took my heart,’’ Debbie Stevens, a 47-year-old divorced mother of two, sobbed to The Post.

• The wit and wisdom ... Phyllis Schlafly is an idiot.
• Step right up and nominate a fellow-blogger, or apply for yourself, to get a Netroots Nation Scholarship:
  

  Democracy for America and America's Voice Education Fund have teamed up to provide financial assistance to fifty outstanding bloggers and activists so they can attend this year's Netroots Nation conference.

  We want to see you in Providence, so sign up today!

Remember the story of Scott Brown drinking beers with a female reporter joking that if she got drunk enough, maybe he could get her to dance in the back of his pick-up? Remember the date of that story? In case you don't, it was Thursday, April 12. Here's a quick refresher:

The road yesterday took Brown to the Blue Hills Brewery in Canton, where the buttoned-down Wrentham Republican invited this Herald reporter to loosen up and sip brews from small sample cups.

“You can pound those pretty good,” Brown said as he tasted one of the lighter brews. His favorite was a hoppy beer called Red I.P.A.

Which is kind of interesting, not only because it shows what a skeezy guy he can be, but because of what he told a reporter last Friday, April 20.

BOSTON — U.S. Sen. Scott Brown says he's given up drinking throughout his long re-election campaign.

Brown said Friday during an interview on WTKK-FM that he won't be drinking alcohol until the night of the election in November.
Brown said he's not had a beer or any other alcoholic drink since Jan 1, opting instead for soft drinks like Coca-Cola.

Scott Brown is a big, fat liar. Surprise. PolitiFact, get on the case!

Have extra beer money? Chip in $5 to help Elizabeth Warren send Brown, and his wagon, out of D.C.