One of the (few) benefits of living in Texas is that we aren't a swing state (yet), so we (mercifully) aren't inundated with political ads 24/7 the way they are in Ohio & Florida. For that other 4/5ths of America, I started compiling a list of "Reasons to NOT vote for Romney" back in March of this year, updated constantly, the list has since grown to well over 200 solid reasons why the man shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office. Early entries noted how the governor... once a champion of health care reform... had since done a total flip-flop on the issue, with later entries becoming far more detailed, like how... while governor of Massachusetts... Romney vetoed an astounding 844 bills (do the math: that one veto every 1.7 days) passed by the mostly Democratic Massachusetts state legislature, over 700 of which had to be overridden just to pass. And not just by Democrats. Governor Romney's 2006 veto of an increase in the minimum wage was overturned unanimously by both Republicans and Democrats alike. So it is beyond belief in these closing days that Governor Romney is running TV ads and giving stump speeches touting his ability to "work across the aisle" while governor of a state with an "85% Democrat legislature."

Tip #1: If you want to convince Democrats of your willingness to reach across the isle, don't use "Democrat" as an adjective. Not only is it bad grammar, but Republicans deliberately misuse the Party name in that way as a pejorative purely to irritate Democrats.

Tip #2: If you want to accuse your opponent of a lack of "bipartisanship", make sure you don't have the GOP Senate leader on tape saying "the single most important thing" (not "political priority"; that came later) his Party "should want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

Tip #3: If you are going to accuse your opponent of "partisanship", make sure he didn't adopt YOUR health care reform law over protests of those in his own Party calling for (at the very least) a "public option".

Tip #4: Hint: Don't run a TV ad during your first run in 2007 entitled "I Like Vetoes" bragging how you obstructed a mostly Democratic legislature.

Tip #5: Make sure the keynote speaker at your convention isn't going around praising your opponent's efficiency and refusal to play politics in the midst of a natural disaster just a week before the election.

Another wealthy Republican with "daddy issues" who dodged the draft, thinks "tax cuts" are the answer to every problem, and is already saber-rattling against nations in the Middle East trying to convince voters that he's "a uniter, not a divider"? What could possibly go wrong?

Breitbart is carrying on in his usual fashion. Did you know he's Juan Williams now? FWIW, Alaska's KTVA has denied all claims made by Palin and Andy.

I was asked to go on ABC's Arizona event with Breitbart and I declined. The Plum Line makes a good case on why this matters.

Time and time again, Breitbart has shown himself willing to manipulate information in order to make easily falsifiable claims, a pattern that has most news organizations displaying greater caution in adopting his "scoops."

ABC News' decision to host Breitbart isn't a matter of ideological balance, since there are conservative media critics just as partisan who aren't as prone to distorting the truth who might have been tapped.

In this context, ABC News' decision to host Breitbart, in any capacity, is a political act that extends credibility where none has been earned. It legitimizes a figure the mainstream press should have learned by now to be suspicious of. It sends the message to other media organizations that Breitbart is someone who can be trusted not to deliberately mislead an audience that is presumably coming to ABC News to be informed about matters of politics and public policy, when evidence suggests the opposite is true. Most importantly, it's the first step in Breitbart's journey back to mainstream legitimacy.

And Kos knocks down more garbage from a man who is a vicious race-baiter.

From the lying sack of crap, Andrew Breitbart, on being invited on ABC News:

Apparently, a Daily Kos blogger has also been asked to participate. Daily Kos, as many of you may know, has been widely discredited for spreading malicious falsehoods and political extremism

Ha ha ha. No, we're not going to be on ABC News website this election night. We have our own website to focus on. Nice try, trying to drag us into this, Andrew, but why would we want to share a stage with a pathological liar?

I also find it funny that Breitbart is going around bragging about being an analyst, while ABC News furiously claims otherwise. Memo to ABC News: You invite a pathological liar and paranoid schizophrenic on your network, and he will lie. Lesson learned?

Tuesday will be a busy time for this website and truth and facts do matter to all of us here. Not so much with Andrew. He's been helping to drag this country backwards in race relations since he began to selectively edit audio and video. I made the mistake of doing a panel with him for a small charity event months ago for the LA Weekly and he turned it into a farce. So I won't be part of this event. He's not interested in policy or analysis -- only smears, racial resentment and distortions. And here's some info about his pal, Dana Loesch.

Digby caught Spitzer calling Loesch out on her nonsensical spin, which he described as "hoax and hokum from the Tea Party."

I think Spitzer did the best thing -- just call it gibberish, hokum and a hoax, which it is. If you grant this crap any validity at all, you've already lost the argument.

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Rupert Murdoch believes Fox News is handily winning the cable ratings wars because all the rest of the media are so liberal.

He was on Neil Cavuto's show to brag about his newest reports on quarterly profits, and explained his company's success can be explained thus:

Murdoch: Well, I think as far as Fox News goes, it's very simple. You know, ah, it's very powerful, it's very good, and it's very balanced. And everybody else, every newspaper other than ours, and every -- it may be an overgeneralization, but by far most newspapers -- and certainly the other television networks sort of are, um, on one side, the liberal side of things, we're -- I think the population of this country is pretty worried about its direction, and you know, they turn to Fox News.

But only a few breaths before this, Murdoch bragged about all the money being brought in to Fox by James Cameron's Avatar -- about $200 million this quarter alone, with more on the way (apparently the DVD/Blu-Ray release is really raking it in).

I dunno about you, but having watched Avatar a few times, one cannot describe its political POV as anything other than "liberal." Certainly there's no question that Cameron himself is one.

So if Fox News is winning because it's conservative, why are most of his company profit's actually being generated by a liberal movie?

I think a better explanation of Fox's success is equally simple: Murdoch has discovered that news sells better as entertainment, and partisan propaganda is infinitely more entertaining than straight news. But YMMV.

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When news came that Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I looked at my husband and said, "just watch, the wingnuts will lose it over this." And sure enough, I was right. But what threw me for a loop was how nakedly partisan CBS's Chip Reid was in attacking Obama for having the audacity to win the Nobel Prize, something even the great St. Ronnie didn't do:

REID: I mean, most Democrats have praised it, and most Republicans have said, you have got to be kidding me -- Ronald Reagan didn't get one, but Barack Obama, nominated 12 days after he was sworn in, gets a Nobel Peace Prize. And the fear among some, even some Democrats, is that this is going to widen the partisan divide and make things even more difficult to accomplish on every front.

Really? Even more difficult than reflexively fighting *every* *single* Obama agenda item now? How is that possible?

It's touching, isn't it, to hear Chip Reid's concern that this will widen the partisan divide? After all, past winners have included Al Gore and Jimmy Carter...obviously the Nobel committee loves them some Democrats.

But here's the thing that all these insulated Beltway Villagers continually forget: Outside of DC, life is more than Republican vs. Democrat, something that Gibbs gently tries to suggest to Reid:

GIBBS: I'll leave the pundicizing to the pundits. The notion that somehow this is going to more greatly divide America, you know, I think it should be mandatory that pundits spend a certain amount of their days each year outside of the friendly confines of the viewership of the Washington, D.C., media market.

Of course, that goes right over Reid's head. For Reid, this is all about dismissing the Nobel committee -- in Norway, mind you, and not subject to the mind-numbing partisan reduction that Reid seems to breathe as oxygen -- as some liberal organization. He just can't get his head wrapped around the fact the Ronald Reagan -- the man who ended the Cold War! -- was never awarded the Peace Prize. As my friend, Steve Benen says:

A few thoughts here. First, when White House correspondents from major news outlets start sounding like members of Grover Norquist's "We Love Reagan" fan club, it's not a positive development.

Second, the notion that Reagan "helped bring the Cold War to an end" is, at best, a dubious proposition.

Actually, I think Chip Reid is unintentionally letting us into his psyche more than he realizes. He's continually been a go-to guy for Republican talking points for years. He routinely criticizes Democrats for things he lets pass by Republicans and uncritically passes on Republican attacks without context or fact-checking. And here again, he mouths the GOP mentality.

But think about it: if the Nobel Peace Prize only supports liberal causes, isn't Chip Reid admitting that peace is liberal? Then we need never look to conservatives again, because they will never bring peace. Right, Chip?

Transcript below the fold

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Tweety's as aggressive as I've ever seen him with these organized town hall hijackings. Tonight he had Max Pappas, VP for Public Policy at FreedomWorks, the astroturf "non-partisan" group founded by Dick Armey and pushing the healthcare disruptions, and Gerald Shea from the AFL-CIO, whose members will now be turning out to attend the healthcare forums. (The low-key Shea mostly sat back and watched as Matthews went on the attack.)

"You're basically plotting at stuff," Matthews accused, stabbing the air with his pen. "Are you astroturf, or are you grassroots?"

"We're not astroturf, we don't do that," Pappas said. "Ours are all volunteers." He pointed out that "their signs are hand-painted." (Yeah, because no astroturf operation ever turns out hand-painted signs to hand out.)

"You want it both ways. You want to be seen as compassionate without doing anything," he told Pappas.

I swear, I could forgive Chris Matthews every dumb thing he's ever said for the pitbull approach he took with this corporatist weasel. You go, Chris!

Wow, it's going down to the wire with many NO votes...207-226 right now.

The Market is tanking badly too...And Newt Gingrich issues a statement that I heard on MSNBC which says he would reluctantly vote for it...Hmmm....

UPDATE: It failed....No one trusts Bush and McCain did nothing....

This mess shows that Conservatism is a failure. I know we are dismayed by our politicians, but don't forget that under conservative leadership, we've had the total collapse of our financial sector and we can never stop saying that.

And if the media tries to portray Republicans as hero figures I'll start my own drinking game.

Crying Boehner is saying it's Pelosi's fault because she gave a partisan speech. What jokers. A speech made them vote against it. They are saying it is not a partisan crisis, but an economic one. Sure---that was caused by Republican/McCain hunger for deregulation.

Will McCain suspend his campaign again and try to cancel Palin's debate?

Unbelievable. Wesley Clark just destroys the media narrative that being a prisoner of war is somehow the "experience" necessary to be Commander in Chief, much to the dumbfounding of host Bob Schieffer. It's a fantastic appearance--much like this earlier one that Jesse at GroupNews recounts:

The media simply couldn't argue the POINT, which Clark made clear without saying word one directly about them to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, that they have been lazy goof offs who are brutally biased for McCain, against Obama, and are not doing their damn jobs. Or they would already have reported this obviously well-grounded assessment/interpretation about McCain's national security ability -- "Largely Untested and Untried" -- over which Clark was taking them to school. They couldn't argue the actual point. It was that clear, that obvious, that elegant a takedown. In effect, Clark's hit on McCain took out two targets with one shot.

So how does CNN characterize this tête-à-tête? That Wesley Clark was SWIFTBOATING John McCain!

Rick Sanchez's lead-in to his next segment just now on CNN:

"Wesley Clark tried to Swiftboat John McCain today."

I'm liveblogging. He goes on to say:

"It will reverberate for weeks. Wes Clark tried to diss McCain's military record, that his service doesn't qualify him to be president."

Rick Sanchez is mad.

No, not mad...just a huge partisan hack. Now that "swift-boating" has entered the vernacular, let us remember that the original SwiftBoat Veterans for "Truth" were for the most part neither in their hope to take down Kerry's candidacy. Has Wesley Clark in some way made any untrue allegations in saying that being a POW and a non-combat era fighter pilot does not necessarily qualify you for the highest elected office in the land?

Iraq veteran and political activist Rafael Noboa adds his 2 cents here.

3 quarks daily: The vast majority of people now see Guantánamo as so illegitimate that it approaches absurdity.

Brad Setser: At least we know how the U.S. financed it's trade deficit in April (and March).

The Washington Independent: The Pentagon's numerous, pricey, high-tech failures triggered bipartisan disgust at a House hearing.

Respectful Insolence: Anti-vaccinational activism versus measles in the U.S.

Tennessee Guerilla Women: While misogyny rules in America, gender equality is a top priority in Spain

Catsandbeer: One of the most delusional denizens of Wingnuttia, Glenn Beck, has a simple request.

Good for Rep. Mike Doyle...

The United Nations has designated April 2 as World Autism Awareness Day. To mark this historic occasion, the Autism Society of America, the World Autism Organization and the Co-Chairs of the bipartisan Congressional Coalition for Autism Research and Education (C.A.R.E.), Rep. Chris Smith and Rep. Mike Doyle, will hold a press conference on the Cannon Terrace to build support for critical legislation that would provide needed autism services in the U.S. and around the world.

In February 2008, a bi-partisan group of legislators joined Congressmen Smith and Doyle in introducing the Global Autism Assistance Act, (HR 5446). This landmark legislation will establish a global health and education grant program related to autism spectrum disorders and provide support to families, educational institutions, clinics and medical centers in developing nations...read on

Related: Above shows L.A. Skyline by Stephen Wiltshire, who is diagnosed with autism. Click image for larger and read more about him and his work here. The PRI program Studio 360 had an excellent show this past weekend on Art and Autism which can be streamed and/or downloaded for free.

NonnyMouse sent this article from The Motley Fool UK, and while this is focused on the UK banking system, it was still as disturbing to me as the thought of Madonna trying to make an updated version of Casablanca set in Iraq (which is to say, on so many levels). But it also occurred to me that given the hyper-partisan and crony-favored atmosphere fostered by the Bush administration, this wouldn't be a completely out-of-left-field thing to be happening here in the US too, if only tacitly:

You may have noticed that, for the past few years, this website has compared personal loans. Thousands of people have used the comparison tool.

As a writer, my involvement with it has largely been limited to looking through data to see patterns in the loans market. We survey users to find out how their applications went, so that we can identify patterns and provide better guidance in our articles. We've found that, of course, sometimes people don't get the loan they apply for, or that the lender offers them a worse rate than the typical APR that was shown.[..]

However, analysing the data we've collated, it's clear that who you vote for in elections affects whether you'll get a loan with a bank. If the bank supports one political party through donations or other means, and you vote for that party, you're more likely to get a loan. If you aren't a known supporter, you're less likely to get the loan. If you're a known supporter of a different party, you're even less likely.

Also, you're more likely to get the cheapest rates (the 'typical' APRs) if you support the same party as the bank!

This has serious implications about data protection, amongst other things.

I'd be curious to know how private banks in the UK would get voter information...but it should serve as a HUGE red flag on the dangers of the Voter/REAL ID cards here in the US.