Oh noes!!!!! Barack Obama told a room full of ordinary people last night that "voting is the best revenge" and today Mittens and his Brigade of Stupid are out in force pimping it on every cable station (including their 24/7 campaign constituent Fox) as that mean scary President doing mean scary things.

Some people need to grow the eff up, and I mean YOU, Mark Halperin. Yes, today on a conference call about the state of the race, Mark Halperin actually asked the campaign "what revenge the president was referring to."

Evidently a guy who supposedly writes and talks for a living can't parse a simple sentence, or sequence of sentences. Here's what the president said, specifically, via TPM:

The new line of attack stems from an Obama rally in Springfield, Ohio on Friday in which he briefly interrupted his speech after the audience booed House Republicans and Romney.

“No, no, no — don’t boo, vote,” Obama said. “Vote. Voting is the best revenge.”

Now if you've been watching any of the Obama rallies, you're familiar with the "don't boo, vote" line. He uses it at every rally when he's describing Romney's actions with regard to the auto industry. It's a stock line and he's used it a zillion times. Obama says "Romney wanted the auto industry to go bankrupt." The audience boos. Obama tells them to vote.

This time he added "voting is the best revenge" to the mix.

PROTIP for Mark Halperin: It would be revenge for a policy that would have put all of those workers in the auto industry or related to the auto industry out of work.

DUH. Were you really that stupid or just doing your impression of a Fox News reporter, Mark?

Romney has seized upon it to "other" President Obama. See the ad at the top? The Romney campaign cut that ad within hours of Obama's remark, juxtaposing it with Romney's "vote for love of country."

As if Romney loves anything more than his fat Caymans IRA. Please.

From the Democracy for America email:

On Friday, we asked DFA members to vote on which Republican to target next with our new TV ad exposing the Republican attacks on Medicare, Social Security and education.

It was close, but the winner was clear: Republican Eric Cantor.

Now, we'll hit him hard across his Virginia district before he heads back to Washington after Labor Day. You told us what to do. Please help make it possible by contributing $5 to get the ad on the air.

The link goes to ActBlue. It would be fantastic to have this ad flood Cantor's district, reminding voters of the costs of supporting the Republican agenda. In fact, while Labor Day is a great start, I hope DFA runs this ad again and again as we near the election.

Women finally earned the right to vote 91 years ago today - after 72 years of largely unappreciated, back-breaking, work. It took another 66 years before we elected the first Democratic Senator in her own right - today Barbara Mikulski is the longest serving female Senator. And she shares the chamber with 11 other Democratic women.

I'm proud and lucky to be a part the community of campaign staffers who has worked to get women elected. The work that we have all been able to do is because of the women who paved the way for us and 91 years later, there have been over 100 pro-choice Democratic women elected to the halls of the U.S. Congress, and more than 500 women to state and local office.

And those are the women who are standing up for us fighting everyday - but there aren't enough. We've seen what happens when Republicans are in charge - since day one it's been an all-out war on women and families: they've tried to repeal health care reform, strip funding for family planning, eliminate collective bargaining, gut education, end Medicare, and destroy the economic safety net for many Americans.

If we stand together - just like we've done so many times already this year - we can stop the Republicans and elect people who will fight for us every day. I can tell you right now, 2012 will be game changer if women get to the polls. So on the 91st anniversary of the 19th Amendment, I'm asking women across the country to stand up and pledge to vote in 2012.

The suffragists paved the way for our success - and now, it's up to us to continue their fight. We have the chance to change things in 2012 - by mobilizing our families and friends and getting women to the polls to help elect Democrats up and down the ticket.

With each race we win, each new staffer that is trained, each blog we write, we are working toward that victory, but we need everyone together. There is so much we can do and after 75 years of struggle for suffrage we must be united in standing for those who will always stand for women and families. I want to take this anniversary to thank all of those brave women who came before me, and all of those young women just joining the fight. The suffragists gave us the right to vote in 1920, and in 2012, I'm sure as heck going to use it.

Crossposted from EMILY's List Blog

Today the superhero of the economically disenfranchised announced she is filing paperwork to open an exploratory committee for the U.S. Senate race against Scott Brown who replaced Ted Kennedy after his death.

Scott Brown has been no friend to regular Americans. When it comes to big banks on Wall Street, Brown refused to vote for a tax on banks and hedge funds with over $50 billion in assets. When everyday families can't make ends meet, surely Brown could support them over companies with over $50 BILLION in the bank?! But no. Americans took the hit once again because Brown refuses to put people first.

In a piece by Yves Smith on Naked Capitalism Elizabeth Warren becomes the target of a fantasy Presidential run, but the same benefits of her unwinable race against President Obama can also be true as a viable challenger to Scott Walker.

Warren has been branded as a scourge of banks. Even though it should be common sense that selling exploding toasters is bad business, the fact that she talks repeatedly and persuasively about the need for rules to have markets work well makes her a threat to much of Corporate America. Note that their heated opposition to the idea of fair play reveals the importance of treating customers badly, looting the official coffers, or both to their business models.

Continue reading »

The Goliath Andrew Bynum, or at least the people who manage his cracked image, knew enough to apologize for his assault on the scrappy Lilliputian named J.J. Barea. And he will cough up $700,000 in fines and lost wages.

The GOP? Not so much.

While crippling the middle class, demonizing and de-funding the poor and the unemployed, while walling off the wombs of women like a condemned lot full of slums, even while killing Medicare, the Republicans and their billionaire puppeteers simply sneer all the more. Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, Rick Scott, Dan Snyder, Boehner, Cantor, Bachmann and the Pauls seem genetically incapable of remorse or fair play.

They will never stop throwing their vicious "Koch-ed" elbows into the neck of nearly every American. They will never apologize. And with their bought-and-corrupted legislatures and Supreme Court, they will never be fined or suspended.

Splat, splat, splat we all go. It stings. It’s demoralizing. And still there is one thing that these bullies remain deathly afraid of: that we all pick our battered bodies off the hard floor again and again and vote them out of the game.

This is NOT democracy at work. After a Democrat finishes his debate time and yields the floor, there's a "flash vote" and the Republican majority passes it.

Talking Points Memo:

After much buildup in the 61-hour debate -- of Republicans wanting things to be over, and Democrats railing against Republicans who they said would cut off debate -- at about 1 AM Speaker Pro Tempore Bill Kramer (R) announced that he would hear a voice vote for a roll call on final passage. Immediately, the majority Republicans shouted their ayes, and the Democrats were booing, as they tried to be recognized to demand a separate motion to cut off debate.

Then Kramer called the vote. Within seconds, the digital vote system on the wall announced 51 ayes and 17 nays, and voting was suddenly closed. With a total of 96 members, that got to a majority for the bill but left 28 members who hadn't had a chance yet to vote.

At that point, the Democrats got up, chanting "Shame! Shame! Shame!" and similar exclamations, as the Republicans filed out of the room.

Shame, indeed. After agreeing to hear debate on amendments, cutting that debate off in what certainly appears to be a coordinated and orchestrated move isn't democracy and certainly not representative democracy. It is, however, a taste of the arrogant Republican thuggery that seems to be all the rage these days.

One of the concerns over this flash vote was the possibility that the Capitol building would be closed to protesters, who have created a little city inside during the protest. According to the WSJ, all but the first floor will close to overnight protesters now that there are no legislative hearings or sessions.

I don't think that will deter anyone, especially after seeing the strongarm tactics of the Birch Republicans in Wisconsin.

Update: The National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) just released a statement in solidarity with the Wisconsin workers.

New York, February 25, 2011 -- “Last night’s vote by the Wisconsin Assembly was an attempt to undermine organized labor and the men and women across the country who depend on their unions for a voice in the workplace. The NBPA proudly supports our brothers and sisters in Wisconsin and their stand for unequivocal collective bargaining rights.” – Billy Hunter, NBPA Executive Director

“Wisconsin public-sector workers tirelessly deliver services on a daily basis to millions of Wisconsin residents. The right of these hard-working men and women to organize and bargain collectively is fundamental. Wisconsin’s workers deserve better than last night’s vote. Today, our union stands proudly with our fellow union members throughout the state as they continue their fight.” – Keyon Dooling, NBPA First Vice President, Milwaukee Bucks

UPDATE: Lawrence O'Donnell talked to Democratic Assemblyman Cory Mason and Republican Assembly Majority Leader Scott Suder on the outrageous and unprecedented behavior of the Assembly Republicans. Watch how Suder employs the Republican playbook of deflecting all of O'Donnell's questions and talking over Mason's airtime.

• The Fed says we're going to experience more crappy growth and

  Top Federal Reserve officials expect the unemployment rate to remain around nine percent at the end of next year and eight percent at the end of 2012, according to internal forecasts that drove the central bank to take new efforts to boost the economy three weeks ago.

  The 18 top leaders of the central bank expect the U.S. economy to grow at a 3 to 3.6 percent pace next year, which by their calculations will be enough to bring joblessness, currently at 9.6 percent, down to the 8.9 to 9.1 percent range in late 2011. In projections made in June, the same officials had been more optimistic, forecasting 3.5 to 4.2 percent growth in 2011 and an unemployment rate that would decline to the 8.3 to 8.7 percent range.

  Sadly, my experience with watching forecasts is that they're rarely gloomy enough. So based on that I'd actually expect unemployment to remain close to double digits well into 2012.

  How does Obama think he's going to get reelected with that sort of record on jobs again? One of the most baffling aspects of this administration has been its seeming total obliviousness to the economic fundamentals that drive people to vote in different ways. As in, "When there's 10% unemployment and a quarter of mortgages are underwater, voters are very likely to vote our sorry butts out of power." It's not too hard to understand.

• Top o' the mornin' to ye! Ireland is still an unholy mess! And the International Monetary Fund, which has traditionally done bang-up work in places like Argentina, are urging the Irish to slash its social safety net even more to pay for massive bank bailouts:

  Ireland should gradually lower unemployment benefits and cut the level of its minimum wage in order to boost employment, the International Monetary Fund said in a paper released on Monday.

  The paper, approved by Ajai Chopra, the IMF's mission chief negotiating terms of a joint rescue package with the EU in Dublin, said Ireland should introduce stricter job search requirements, give more resources to unemployment agencies to promote job search assistance, and review the level of minimum wage to make it consistent with a general fall in wages.

  This sort of report makes me wish that The Leprechaun really existed so he could jump out of the shadows and bite the IMF economists in their faces while saying, "You'll never give me pot o' gold to Deutsche Bank, ye scumbag!"

• Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini is probably right that Greece, Ireland, Portugal and maybe even Spain and Italy might have to leave the Eurozone after they restructure (i.e., default on) their debts:

  "We started with private debt, we socialized it and it became public debt. Now we have sovereigns in trouble being bailed out by essentially super sovereigns, IMF, euro zone, EU," Roubini told Reuters Insider. "But there's not going to be anybody coming from Mars or the moon to bail out the IMF or the euro zone." [...]

  Asked if the 16-nation euro zone would eventually disintegrate, with some of the more debt-ridden members dropping out, Roubini, head of RGE Global Economics, said:

  "Eventually that's likely, but before some of the weaker members exit the monetary union, the more likely scenario that's going to affect the markets is a corrosive but orderly restructuring of their public debts."

  He said that process would not be painless.

  "The risk is that you start with one and it unravels," he warned.

  The reason the bond vigilantes have been circling Greece, Ireland and the other PIIGS countries is because of the Eurozone's poorly-designed currency regime. If you can issue your own debt but not your own currency, well, that makes it very tough to devalue your currency to increase your exports' competitiveness during a brutal recession. It also makes it impossible to monetize your debt (i.e., print a bunch of money and shovel it to your creditors) while implementing austerity measures.

• Turning back to the States, Greg Sargent reports that some recently-elected Tea Party candidates might actually be working on something useful by eliminating some of the government's truly wasteful farm subsidies for Ethanol:

  DeMint and Coburn, two leading conservatives, are calling on fellow Republicans to support letting the subidies expire as a way to prove the GOP is serious about reining in government spending. Just as the battle over earmarks did, ethanol subsidies could put GOP Senators who have supported them in the past -- such as Grassley and Orrin Hatch -- in an awkward spot, driving a wedge between them and conservatives who want a harder line on spending.

  Now Grassley has responded to our story, firing off an angry Tweet at DeMint and Coburn, asking them rhetorically if they're also willing to back the expiration of tax subsidies for the oil and gas industry. [...]

  Coburn, however, appears ready to accept Grassley's challenge. [...]

  With Coburn throwing down the gauntlet and saying not even subsidies for the oil and gas industries should be off the table, it seems like there's a clear opening here for an unorthodox alliance between conservatives like DeMint and Coburn and green groups who also condemn such subsidies. It's unclear as of yet how hard DeMint and Coburn will push this crusade, but Coburn in particular does seem pretty serious.

  Can I just say that if Coburn and DeMint are really, truly serious about this that they deserve a round of applause? One of the hallmarks of the Banana Republicanism that ran our country into the ground over the past decade was the horrifying way the GOP let Corporate America use the federal government as its personal ATM machine. I'll be watching closely to see if they stick to their promises, but if they follow through they deserve a thumbs-up.

• Media Matters has a pretty hilarious rundown of various Fox News personalities attacking Warren Buffett for daring to suggest that the richest people in America should pay more in taxes. My favorite reaction was Greta's:

  I always thought it was sort of appalling when they said to the rich, 'the rich need to pay their fair share,' as though they weren't paying their fair share -- although maybe Warren Buffett isn't paying his fair share -- that it was designed to create class warfare.

  I do love this sort of construction. "Class warfare," you'll notice, is always seemingly waged by the poor and middle class against the wealthy. Rich people would never, ever dream of waging class warfare themselves by, say, clamoring for more tax cuts while demanding cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

• And finally, your Daily Doom Index:

  -Ten-year treasury yields closed up by 1.46%

  -Gold futures finished up 1.5% on the day and closed at $1,377.60. You gold bugs are going to feel really, really foolish paying that much for gold if the world doesn't end. Unfortunately, I'm somewhat reluctant to take the other side of the bet you're making...

  -Bonus doom metric: The North Koreans are acting like a-holes yet again. That makes the world feel a little more doom-ier than most days.

DOWNLOADS: (325)

PLAYS: (943)

Embed

It sure was a weird finish in Colorado. Late last night, Ken Buck led Michael Bennet in Colorado by 400 votes or so. At least, I think that was the case. After holding a small lead all night, Buck suddenly surged about the time Boulder County results were coming in. According to the video here, there may have been a transposition error by the AP or by the Colorado Secretary of State.

Later the AP asserted there was no error. Which meant that the Colorado Senate race was headed for an automatic recount.

But then this morning, Bennet was declared the winner. The remaining votes to be counted, it seems, are from precincts where he was already running strong.

DOWNLOADS: 728

PLAYS: 475

Embed

If you can't win the vote fairly, suppress voters. This has been a Republican tactic for years, and it's running rampant in Wisconsin. While polls are showing Russ Feingold at a shocking disadvantage to his teabagger opponent Ron Johnson, the GOP and Americans for Prosperity are working behind the scenes on a voter suppression scam that is on a far wider scale, but no different than Republicans have used for years.

Here's how it works: A mailer is sent to registered voters. Any mailers returned by the post office are put in a database and those voters are submitted to be purged from voting rolls. Of course, the targets are never Republican voters. They're Democrats, and generally minority voters in particular. Here's a better explanation from the Brennan Center for Justice:

Voter caging is the practice of sending mail to addresses on the voter rolls, compiling a list of the mail that is returned undelivered, and using that list to purge or challenge voters registrations on the grounds that the voters on the list do not legally reside at their registered addresses. Supporters of voter caging defend the practice as a means of preventing votes cast by ineligible voters. Voter caging, however, is notoriously unreliable. If it is treated (unjustifiably) as the sole basis for determining that a voter is ineligible or does not live at the address at which he or she registered, it can lead to the unwarranted purge or challenge of eligible voters. …Moreover, the practice has often been targeted at minority voters, making the effects even more pernicious. [Brennan Center, “A Guide to Voter Caging,” 6/29/07]

That audio file at the top is a recording obtained by One Wisconsin Now of a meeting of Wisconsin Tea Party leaders. Here's the plot:

According to the statements made on the recordings, Dake lays out the plans, detailing contact between himself and Reince Preibus, the Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair and Mark Block, state director of Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin:

1. The Republican Party of Wisconsin will use its “Voter Vault” state-wide voter file to compile a list of minority and student voters in targeted Wisconsin communities.
2. Americans for Prosperity will use this list to send mail to these voters indicating the voter must call and confirm their registration information, and telling them if they do not call the number provided they could be removed from the voter lists.
3. The Tea Party organizations will recruit and place individuals as official poll workers in selected municipalities in order to be able to make the challenges as official poll workers.
4. On Election Day, these organizations will then “make use” of any postcards that are returned as undeliverable to challenge voters at the polls, utilizing law enforcement, as well as attorneys trained and provided by the RPW, to support their challenges.

In the case of students, this is particularly insidious, since a student may indeed be a registered voter in Wisconsin but not have the same address, given their tendency to move at the end of a semester. But you can see what's going on here -- it is a concerted effort, funded and pushed by Americans for Prosperity -- to suppress minority and young voters, and in so doing to win an election by strongarm rather than by votes.

One Wisconsin Now has uncovered this plot with evidence, but don't assume this is limited to Wisconsin. I guarantee you it isn't. They are targeting as many states as they can, but particularly swing states. Expect Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona just to name a few to have the exact same operations afoot.

Voter suppression undermines democracy. It is a bully tactic to disenfranchise minority and young voters. If you're as angry about this as I am, consider visiting Save Wisconsin's Vote and taking action.

Good news for those of you left hanging by a thread by the fight over unemployment extensions -- they finally passed them yesterday, thanks to a new Senator. For those of you hoping and praying for Tier 5 benefits? Sorry, even though your situation may be even more desperate, you're plain out of luck. But do feel free to call your elected representatives and let them know what you think:

The Senate voted 59 to 39 Wednesday to restore emergency jobless benefits to millions of people who have been out of work for more than six months.

House leaders said they will ratify the measure Thursday and send it on to the White House, where President Obama plans to immediately sign it.

The bill would authorize states to provide retroactive support to an estimated 2.5 million people whose unemployment checks have been cut off since federal benefits expired June 2. It would also make available up to 99 weeks of income support through the end of November to millions more who have exhausted state benefits, which typically last for 26 weeks. Advocates for the unemployed say it could be several weeks in some states before the checks are in the mail.

The vote comes after a months-long battle over whether to pay for the $34 billion measure or add that sum to the nation's mounting national debt. Both parties have agreed in the past not to pay for emergency jobless benefits during periods of high unemployment, in part because cutting spending or raising taxes to cover the cost could depress economic activity.