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On This Week with Jake Tapper, David Axelrod points out that we already know what Republican ideology does to the economy. I hope they start pounding home that message, because voters really need that reminder:

TAPPER: So the president's popularity among independents is sinking. It's a real problem for him politically. One year ago, he was at 56 percent approval with independents. Now it's 38 percent. Why do you think independents are turning away from the president?

AXELROD: Well, first of all, there are all kinds of numbers out there, so this is one set of numbers. There are other sets of numbers.

But, look, I think I've said this to you before. When I -- when I sat down with the president and his economic advisers, a group of us in the middle of 2008, and they told us what was about to ensure and -- about the recession that we were well into at that point, I said to him, you know, we're going to -- your numbers are going to suffer here, and we're going to have a difficult election, because these are going to be difficult times for the country.

Our job is not, though, to worry about that, Jake. Our job is to worry about how we get people back to work, how we move this country forward, and if -- if we do our job, the rest will take care of itself.

And, remember, elections -- the presidential election is an eternity away. Elections are about choices, though. They're not referendums. And on the other side of the ballot in November will be a party that has an economic theory, and it was tested, and it led to catastrophe.

We lost 3 million jobs in the last six months of 2008. The financial market almost collapsed. They turned a $237 billion surplus that Bill Clinton left into a $1.3 trillion deficit. And they're running on the same policies.

Kids who play by the immigration rules get stuck waiting in the bureaucratic bottleneck for permanent residency turn 21 while they're waiting forever of course...and surprise they're eligible for deportation!

Poor Man Institute: Welcome to the Chevron 2012 Presidential Election.

Ian Tindell: The top ten craziest things said by Pat Robertson (#9 is a classic).

Sparklepony - who knew anti-abortion protesters were so into accessorizing?

Zaius Nation: Compare and Contrast

Round up by Blue Gal; send tips to bluegal AT crooksandliars DOT com

Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show yesterday, via Media Matters:

You -- In 2008, in our presidential election, we had a, a, a war veteran, Vietnam War veteran, John McCain, against an elitist, five-minute career senator of a hundred and fifty days. That senator was running as a Democrat, and had actively sought the defeat of the U.S. military in Iraq -- had actively sought to undermine General Petraeus, who was the author of the surge that led to a turnaround in Iraq and a victory. And now that same man is dithering in Afghanistan while American soldiers -- not Bush soldiers, not Obama soldiers, American soldiers -- are dying. At record numbers.

The threat that people in this country who want to be free face is now within our own borders. That's the stark reality. We'll be back.

Obama and the liberals are, in the land of the Limbaughst, the True Enemies of America.

If only Limbaugh really were "just an entertainer." Then we could dismiss him as a clown. But "entertainers" don't have audiences of "dittohead" acolytes who absorb their every word as gospel truth. "Entertainers" don't make condemnations of half the country as being the "enemy within" and actually stand -- and actually stand a chance of the other half nodding its head in agreement.

This, of course, is how you whip up violence: You scapegoat, you demonize, you dehumanize, and most of all, you paint a target on people's backs and say they're they Enemy. And you can't help but suspect Limbaugh is perfectly aware of this.

I devote a fair amount of space in The Eliminationists to Limbaugh. For a lot of reasons. Obviously, he's been doing this for awhile. But he's also stepping it up quite bit.

PROMOTIONAL NOTE: I'll be speaking tonight in Mount Vernon, Wash., at the Lincoln Theater at 7 pm. I'll be discussing my book as well as the recent visit to the city by Glenn Beck.

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After quitting her job in Alaska while many Americans struggle to make ends meet, a new CBS poll found that most Americans think she's not up to the task of being President---including a huge majority of Republicans.

If Sarah Palin is resigning her position as Alaska's Governor to run for president, she faces doubts – even from Republicans – about her ability to be an effective one, according to a new CBS News poll.

Less than one in four Americans, 22 percent in particular, say she does have the ability to be an effective president. Only 33 percent of Republicans say she does. Sixty five percent of all Americans, and 51 percent of Republicans say she does not.

In this CBS News Poll, conducted one week after Palin announced she would resign, these assessments are even more negative than they were among registered voters before last year's presidential election. Then, 37 percent of all registered voters thought Palin could be effective if it became necessary for her to take on the job, and 53 percent did not...read on

I'd say that's terrible news for her, and it shows that America isn't buying the reasons she gave for quitting with a year and a half left in her term during the nutty press conference she staged. And what was with all the animals quaking in the background?

Another CBS poll, which was released on July 13th, now shows that most Americans believe she quit to help her own political career.

A majority of Americans believe that Sarah Palin is resigning as governor of Alaska not because it's in the best interest of her state but because it will benefit her political career, a new CBS News poll finds.

Just 24 percent of those accept Palin's explanation that she resigned because it was the right thing to do for Alaska. More than twice that percentage – 52 percent – cited her political ambition as the reason for her resignation. An additional 14 percent said they don't know the reason.

Even Republicans are skeptical of the explanation, with a higher percentage saying Palin resigned for her political career (36 percent) than saying she did so for Alaska (31 percent).

Wonder if all those right-wing talking heads who were touting the earlier polls showing strong GOP support for Palin will bring these polls up ...

Wow, Iran is actually more like America than I thought! I wonder when the president's going to send in his thugs to shut down the vote count?

TEHRAN, June 13 -- Iran's election commissioner declared Saturday that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a decisive victory in most of the country's electoral districts in Friday's presidential election, but the incumbent's leading challenger protested the results, charging widespread vote fraud and vowing to resist a "dangerous manipulation" of the balloting.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who waged a heated campaign against Ahmadinejad's bid for reelection, urged his supporters to reject a "governance of lie and dictatorship."

"I'm warning that I won't surrender to this manipulation," Mousavi said in a statement posted on his Web site Saturday. He said the announced results were "shaking the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran's sacred system" and represented "treason to the votes of the people." He warned that the public would not "respect those who take power through fraud."

Mousavi made the comments after Iran's election chief, Kamran Daneshjoo, said on state television that Ahmadinejad received nearly 21.8 million votes, or more than 63 percent, of the nearly 34.4 million valid votes cast in 346 of Iran's 366 electoral districts. He said Mousavi received 11.7 million votes, or 34 percent.

However, officials delayed without explanation an expected announcement of the complete results, which news agencies said suggested intervention by Iran's Islamic authorities to tamp down a potentially volatile situation.

Riot police cordoned off the Interior Ministry, which directed Friday's voting, and stood guard around key government buildings.

Plainclothes officers fired tear gas to disperse a cheering crowd outside Mousavi's campaign headquarters after the pivotal presidential election ended in confusion, with both sides claiming victory.

UPDATE:

NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario – The U.S. on Saturday refused to accept hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim of a landslide re-election victory in Iran and said it was looking into allegations of election fraud.

"We are monitoring the situation as it unfolds in Iran, but we, like the rest of the world, are waiting and watching to see what the Iranian people decide," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said at a news conference with Canada's foreign affairs minister, Lawrence Cannon.

Minutes after Clinton spoke, the White House released a two-sentence statement praising "the vigorous debate and enthusiasm that this election generated, particularly among young Iranians," but expressing concern about "reports of irregularities."

During tonight's Presidential Debate Senator John McCain made the claim that he "warned" about the impending economic crisis. That's amazing, seeing as he said in 2007 that he was in fact surprised by it and failed to predict the disaster he, President Bush and the GOP brought upon America. Think Progress has the video and more:

I don’t know of hardly anybody, with the exception of a handful, that said “wait a minute, this thing is getting completely out of hand and is overheating.” So, I’d like to tell you that I did anticipate it, but I have to give you straight talk, I did not.

Obama nails him in tonight's debate:

Obama: Now I've got to correct a little bit of Senator McCain's history, not surprisingly, but let's first of all understand that the biggest problem in this whole process was the deregulation of the financial system. Senator McCain as recently as March bragged about the fact that he is a deregulator. On the other hand two years ago I said we've got a subprime lending crisis that has to be dealt with, I wrote to Secretary Paulson, I wrote to Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and told them this is something we have to deal with and nobody did anything about it. A year ago I went to Wall Street and told them we have to re-regulate, and nothing happened.

I don't want to tempt fate, but things are looking pretty bad for the GOP in the coming elections.

For instance, Al Franken looks like he's giving incumbent Republican Norm Coleman nightmares in Minnesota. He's ahead by 43 to 34 percent in the latest poll there, published Saturday by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. The new poll suggests that one reason for Franken’s gain is voters’ reaction to the abrasive advertising in the campaign. The Independence Party candidate, Dean Barkley, is also drawing support from Coleman says the poll.

And there's more good news both for Dems looking at voter registration as a way to tip the scales in November, as well as for third party aficionados.

The poll detected a significant increase in Minnesotans who label themselves as Democrats. Forty-two percent of likely voters identified themselves as Democrats, compared with 27 percent who said they were independents, and 26 percent who said they were Republicans.

According to the poll, Coleman’s support has slid among men and those in upper- and lower-income brackets. Last month, Coleman led Franken among men, 46 to 36 percent; in the recent poll Franken is ahead, 45 to 34 percent.

Continue reading »

Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden makes a personal introduction to voters in his first official campaign video. Biden seems very much at ease and his no-nonsense, candid demeanor really comes across as he talks about his life, experience and his goals for the campaign. He makes no bones about being outspoken -- and with the ugly, Rove-style campaign the McCain camp is waging, I don't have a problem with that.

I can appreciate how difficult it must be for a news outlet like the Associated Press to find new and interesting things to write about when it comes to the presidential campaign. For that matter, I can even appreciate that, once in a while, a story with a human-interest angle might help break things up a bit.

But as part of my ongoing fascination with the AP’s awful coverage of the campaign, I’m afraid this item is just silly.

If the presidential election goes to the dogs, John McCain is looking like best in show.

From George Washington’s foxhound “Drunkard” to George W. Bush’s terriers “Barney” and “Miss Beazley,” pets are a longtime presidential tradition for which the presumed Republican nominee seems well prepared, with more than a dozen.

The apparent Democratic nominee Barack Obama, on the other hand, doesn’t have a pet at home. The pet-owning public seems to have noticed the difference. An AP-Yahoo! News poll found that pet owners favor McCain over Obama 42 percent to 37 percent, with dog owners particularly in McCain’s corner.

The AP quoted one person saying, “I think a person who owns a pet is a more compassionate person — caring, giving, trustworthy. I like pet owners,” and found another willing to argue on the record that if a person owns a pet that “tells you that they’re responsible at least for something, for the care of something.”

This poll and related story are even worse than the usual palaver. Mark Blumenthal has the definitive take-down.

(Guest Blogged by Heather)

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Bill Moyers Journal, which unfortunately is probably not on the top of most Americans TIVO list for Friday nights, dove head on into some of our country's darker days. Days that many in the South would probably prefer to forget, when slavery was no longer legal, but still practiced by an economy addicted to slavery, and unwilling to let it go. Bill Moyers interviewed Douglas Blackmon, author of the book, Slavery by Another Name, and it is truly worth your time to watch the entire interview.

With a Presidential election that has brought the issue of race front and center and forced us to confront the reasons for racial divides, understanding the past and how it relates to the racial tensions that still exist in this country is an important discussion for anyone who would like to finally heal those wounds. Hopefully, one day we may move to a place where race is no longer an issue, or a way to keep a segment of the population from ever achieving equality.

Douglas Blackmon delves into a time that has helped to shape the views of African Americans towards our judicial system, our law enforcement, and our legislators. Open dialogue about what happened during those dark days, and how we move forward to make sure that it does not continue today is a discussion I hope more Americans have as we ponder whether we may have our first black President and what that will mean for our country and the future of race relations.