Political Ruminations

Morning Quote: President Obama and Mitt Romney on Paying for a College Education

Mitt Romney tells young people to borrow money from their parents to get a college education or start a business, because, you know, only those who have parents with the means deserve to get a hand up:

“ This kind of divisiveness, this attack of success, is very different than what we’ve seen in our country’s history. We’ve always encouraged young people: Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.”

Mr. Silver Spoon Romney doesn’t seem to understand that in these days of raging income inequality, most parents don’t have the money to provide a college education for their kids. And, most parents can’t afford to loan their kids money to start a business. They spend most of it simply surviving.

But, Mr. Romney doesn’t get those simple basic facts because Mitt Romney has never had to struggle financially for a single day in his entire life.

President Obama gets it. He and First Lady Michelle Obama did not grow up with the proverbial silver spoon, and had to see to their own educations by taking advantage of student loans and scholarships:

“ I'm only here today, and Michelle is only where she is today, because scholarships and student loans gave us a shot at a great education. That’s how we succeeded.”

“[.....]We’ve got to make college more affordable for more young people. We can’t put the middle class at a disadvantage. We can’t price out folks who are trying to make sure that they not only succeed for themselves but help the country succeed. We can’t price the middle class out of a college education.We can’t do it -- especially when most new jobs in America will require more than a high school diploma. Higher education whether it’s at a four-year institution or a two-year program at a community college -- it can’t be a luxury. It’s an economic imperative every family in America should be able to afford. ”

UPDATE: A new program instituted under President Obama is a huge, huge, huge boon to people who use student loans to get through college. You can check it out here.

Karl Rove Electoral Map Predicts Obama Win

Karl Rove released his first electoral map today, predicting an Obama win.

Sweet.

Morning Quote: President Obama and Mitt Romney Views on Climate Change

President Obama talks climate change in his recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine:

“ I suspect that over the next six months, this is going to be a debate that will become part of the campaign, and I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we’re going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way. ”

Mitt Romney on climate change in October 2011:

“ My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.”

Chart of the Day: Obama Wins on Economic Policy

Simple chart. Simple premise. Easy to see which economic policies worked. In this case, it was President Obama’s economic policies that beat the austerity policies of the UK and the Euro zone hands down.

Mitt Romney needs to stop running around shrieking about how Obama's economic policies didn't work.

SB1070 Supporters Shout Out Their Hate Outside Supreme Court

SB1070 supporters, by their very nature, are despicable human beings. And now we know they aren’t afraid to be counted and recognized. Think Progress:

WASHINGTON, DC — As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on the constitutionality of Arizona’s “papers, please!” immigration law, supporters rallied outside with hate-filled jabs at Latinos and immigrants in general.

Though outnumbered by opponents of SB 1070 at least 20-to-1, supporters made up for their timid numbers with unabashed hate and racism. Among the things SB 1070 proponents said that were overheard by ThinkProgress:

• “Go back to your third-world armpit if you don’t like it!”
• SB 1070 supporter, pointing to SB 1070 opponents, many of whom are Latino: “We can read, unlike some of the people over there”
• Select lyrics from a song called “God Save Arizona” that compared Attorney General Eric Holder to Japanese bombers at Pearl Harbor: “On a clear Sunday morning 1941…they sank the Arizona in a cloud of fire and smoke…And years later in 2010, Arizona is a target once again…Attacked by drug lords, terrorists, and our own Attorney General”
• A button that read, “Don’t Blame me… I voted for the American.”
• “Mexico doesn’t even want them.”
• SB 1070 supporter to a nearby opponent: “Why don’t you put that sign in Spanish?”
• SB 1070 supporter, pointing to SB 1070 opponents, many of whom are Latino: “Those people over there are trespassing!”
• “Obama can’t even come up with a decent birth certificate.”

Obama Campaign Rally at Ohio State

If you’re able to go to the first official Obama rally of 2012, see the details below, via Kay @ Balloon Juice:

What: Rally with the President and
First Lady in Columbus

Where: The Schottenstein Center
The Ohio State University
555 Borror Drive
Columbus, OH 43210

When: Saturday, May 5, 2012 Doors open at 10:30 a.m. (time subject to change)

Morning Quote: Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant

Not long after he signed into law a bill which would shut down Mississippi’s lone standing abortion clinic, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) told the racist, misogynist conservative radio host, Tony Perkins, that Democrats have only “one mission in life”, and that is “to abort children”:

“The hypocrisy of the left that now tried to kill this bill, that says that I should have never signed it, the true hypocrisy is that their one mission in life is to abort children, is to kill children in the womb.”

Yeah, that's our mission alright, and Gov. Bryant is evidently aching for a seat on the crazy train.

Political Punch:

The recently-signed bill to crack down on Mississippi abortion providers is one of the most stringent to be passed by a state. It requires all doctors who perform abortions to be certified in obstetrics and gynecology and have admitting privileges at a local hospital.

Opponents of the law claim it “endangers women’s health.”

“Make no mistake, this law is based on a political agenda, not medical necessity,” said Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, in a statement following the law’s passage last week. “Politicians are again trying to reach into complex personal decisions with a bill that could have very broad consequences for women’s health.”

Reminder: Nationwide protests are taking place on April 28th in states across the country, speaking out against the Republican War Against Women. Visit www.unitewomen.org to get together with protesters in your state.

Video and Text Transcript: Speech by President Obama on College Affordability in Iowa

Watch the video or read the text transcript below the video:

Read the text transcript:

University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
Wednesday, April 25, 2012

THE PRESIDENT: Hello, Hawkeyes! (Applause.) It is good to be back in Iowa! (Applause.) Can folks please give it up for Blake for that outstanding introduction? (Applause.) And I want to thank the University of Iowa Pep Band for firing everybody up. (Applause.)

There is some good hospitality here, and I should know. I spent a little time here in Iowa, spent a little time here in Iowa City. I’m glad that my hometown of Chicago will get to return the hospitality when your football team kicks off its season at Soldier Field. (Applause.)

Awesome Image: President Obama Heisman Pose

President Obama delights the U.S. Air Force Academy football team, who requested that he strike the Heisman pose during an awards ceremony at the White House today.

Via ABC’s Political Punch:

The U.S. Air Force Academy football team put the commander-in-chief on the spot today during an East Room ceremony, presenting President Obama with a game ball and jersey — and the request that he strike the Heisman pose.

Obama did not disappoint, cradling the football with his right hand and thrusting out his left arm to mimic the iconic figure on the prestigious Heisman Trophy.

The Trophy is awarded annually to the best player in college football. It’s bronze figure was crafted by sculptor Frank Eliscu and modeled after 1934 NYU star Ed Smith.

Image credit: Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

Finally.

According to ABC News, Newt Gingrich is ending his presidential campaign next Tuesday:

Newt Gingrich will officially suspend his presidential campaign on Tuesday, ABC News confirmed today. The former House speaker will make the announcement from Washington D.C., where he will be in town for the White House Correspondents Association dinner this weekend.

It is "highly likely" Gingrich will endorse Mitt Romney during Tuesday's announcement, a source close to the campaign said.

It’s about damn time.

Morning Quote: President Obama

President Obama relates to college students at the University of North Carolina yesterday, talks about his student loans:

“Check this out, all right. I’m the president of the United States. We only finished paying off our student loans off about eight years ago. That wasn’t that long ago. And that wasn’t easy–especially because when we had Malia and Sasha, we’re supposed to be saving up for their college educations, and we’re still paying off our college educations.

I didn’t just read about this. I didn’t just get some talking points about this. I didn’t just get a policy briefing on this.

We didn’t come from wealthy families. When we graduated from college and law school we had a mountain of debt. When we married, we got poor together. We added up our assets and there were no assets. And we added up our liabilities and there were lot of liabilities—basically in the form of student loans.”

If you think that Mitt Romney gives a rat’s derrière about your college debt, you would be......seriously delusional.

Via Ashby

Sen. Jeff Sessions is a Racist, Misogynist Pig

And Senator Sessions (R-Al)has an unreasonable dislike of Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. Think Progress, emphasis mine:

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions knows something about what it means to be unfit for the federal bench. In 1986, the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected Session’s nomination to a federal judgeship in Alabama after a Justice Department attorney revealed that Sessions called the NAACP and the ACLU “un-American” and “Communist-inspired.” Unfortunately, rather than gaining some humility from this incident, the now-Sen. Sessions seems to be finding questionably qualified nominees under every rock he can lift:

Sessions was one of [Justice Elena] Kagan’s toughest critics on the Senate Judiciary Committee when she was nominated by President Obama in 2010. Last week, he revived his complaints about her when he became one of only two committee members to vote against Maine lawyer William J. Kayatta Jr., whom Obama nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit.

Kayatta’s transgression, according to Sessions, is that he was the lead investigator for the American Bar Association panel that gave nominee Kagan its highest rating — “Unanimous Well-Qualified.”

Given that Kagan had never been a judge and had little experience in private practice, Sessions said, such a rating “was not only unsupported by the record but, in my opinion, the product of political bias.”

The fact that Justice Kagan is imminently well qualified for her position is not too difficult for doubters to ascertain, since her employment history is a matter of public record, as Think Progress points out:

For the record, Justice Kagan was the sitting Solicitor General, a former Dean of the Harvard Law School, a former White House attorney and senior policy staffer and a former law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall when she was nominated to the Supreme Court. The idea that she wasn’t well qualified for her current job is absurd.

These thuggish effing Republicans make me sick.

Fox News Channel "The Five" Lacking Serious People

Political pundit Bob Cesca describes the show and the panelists of said show, “The Five” (airs on Fox News Channel):

“The Five” — an obvious cable news knock-off of The View (and all of its imitators) in which four conservatives and one liberal (for balance) snark about the issues of the day. If Fox News was trying to create a show that would augment the intellectual stature of the usually moronic Fox & Friends, they totally succeeded.

The moderator of the show is serial race-baiter Eric Bolling and the panel consists of a Lazy Susan of cackling simpletons. Greg Gutfeld, whose previous credits include both Fox News Channel’s overnight show and The Huffington Post where he blogged about his calf muscles and made hilariously smart cracks about Cenk Uygur’s name, is evidently the designated jokester, dickbag and misogynist of the group. There’s also former Bush press secretary Dana Perino and legal analyst Andrea Tantaros. “Democratic strategist” Bob Beckel, who recently said “fuck” on the Hannity show, is the token liberal and, in keeping with Fox News policy, makes really weak points and often appears to be drunk. A perfect target for the conservatives on the panel.

Just in case you were wondering.

Adding...“a Lazy Susan of cackling simpletons” –bwahahahahaha

Morning Quote: John Boehner

In an interview with Fox News that will air today, House Majority Leader, John Boehner (R-Oh), said that he believes Republicans have a 1 in 3 chance of losing the House in the November elections:

“I would say that there is a two in three chance that we win control of the House again but there's a one in three chance that we could lose and I'm being myself, frank. We've got a big challenge and we've got work to do.”

I haven’t looked at a poll in a couple of weeks, but my guess is that the chance of Republicans losing the House is greater than that. At least one would hope Americans have been paying attention to the lunacy running amuck in that branch of our government.

Adding....in January, Boehner said Republicans "would rule the House for years".

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman on Mitt Romney’s lies:

“Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are? If you’ve been following his campaign from the beginning, that’s a question you have probably asked many times.”

Programming Notes

I apologize for my unannounced absence of the past week....it was not by choice!

Long story short, after a long week offline, dealing with family and personal issues, I'll be posting again as of tomorrow, and still, posting will be very light for a couple more weeks.

See you tomorrow!

 

Morning Quote: David Plouffe

David Plouffe, a senior adviser to President Obama, on the purchasing power of Republican super pacs during an interview with Bloomberg TV:

“You’ve got a few dozen people who are going to write $5 million, $10 million, $15 million, $50 million checks to try and purchase the White House on behalf of Governor Romney.”

David Plouffe to Romney: Show the People Your Tax Returns!

David Plouffe, a senior adviser to President Obama, told Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” re Mitt Romney’s tax returns:

“If he’s got nothing to hide, then there’s nothing to lose.”

The Obama Campaign has been ramping up the pressure on the former private equity executive in order to get Romney to release 23 years of earlier tax returns which were shared for a background check when McCain considered Romney for the veep slot in 2008.

The returns are “just sitting in a box or vault or something,” Plouffe said. “The American people want to have trust in their leaders,” he said.

He also said Romney’s campaign is being backed with independent television advertising funded by the oil and gas industry [i.e., the Koch brothers] and Wall Street, suggesting they expect a Republican president would “take care of their bidding for them.”

Plouffe made his remarks the same day Obama and Vice President Joe Biden released their 2011 tax returns and as the administration is promoting a proposal to impose a minimum tax on those making $1 million a year or more. In keeping with the theme, the White House and Obama’s political aides have been emphasizing that some of the nation’s top earners pay a lower tax rate than many middle-income Americans.

We know that much (millions) of Romney’s investment earnings evade U.S. taxes by residing in Cayman Island accounts.

And, the income that he does pay taxes on is dwarfed by the income from his investments, which is taxed at the cap gains rate of 15% max.....that is, if that money is even in the country.

I don’t know about you, but I’d really, really like to see those tax returns.

Morning Quote: President Obama on the Buffet Rule

President Obama on how tax policy is unfairly tilted to benefit the very wealthy, or the reason that the Buffett Rule is necessary, and one of the major reasons for wealth inequality:

“I’m not the first president to call for this idea that everybody has got to do their fair share. Some years ago, one of my predecessors traveled across the country pushing for the same concept. He gave a speech where he talked about a letter he had received from a wealthy executive who paid lower tax rates than his secretary, and wanted to come to Washington and tell Congress why that was wrong. So this president gave another speech where he said it was ‘crazy’ — that’s a quote — that certain tax loopholes make it possible for multimillionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary. That wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior was Ronald Reagan.

"He thought that, in America, the wealthiest should pay their fair share, and he said so. I know that position might disqualify him from the Republican primaries these days but what Ronald Reagan was calling for then is the same thing that we're calling for now: a return to basic fairness and responsibility; everybody doing their part. And if it will help convince folks in Congress to make the right choice, we could call it the Reagan Rule instead of the Buffett Rule.”

Watch:

As you are highly likely to have noticed, President Obama also offered to name it the "Reagan Rule" to make it more palatable to Republicans. And to make the Buffett Rule more easily understood, the White House has created a Buffet Rule calculator so you can see how it works.

Via Steve Benen

Tweet of the Day

“Every mother works hard, and every woman deserves to be respected.”

First Lady Michelle Obama on Twitter in response to Hilary Rosen’s comment that Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life".

Adding........another perfectly legitimate perspective from Kathy Kattenburg:

Let's get one thing straight. Ann Romney knows ZERO about the economic struggles of American women. Raising five boys is hard work, no kidding. Raising ONE child, boy OR girl, is hard work. But if Ann Romney had raised 14 children, all of them hell-raisers and trouble-makers, she would know ZERO about the economic struggles of American women. Nor would she know what kind of hard work it is to raise even one child, much less five, when you're a single mom working in a bar at nights to feed your kids. Or if your husband has been unemployed for a year or more and there's no work to be found. Or if you and your husband are both trying to make ends meet and still can't do it when you're both working two or three or more jobs. Hey, Ann Romney: Try raising five children on $40,000 a year. Now try raising five children when one of them has a serious chronic medical condition, like Rick and Karen Santorum's daughter, but without any of Rick and Karen Santorum's resources. Or your husband's. Or yours. Try raising two or three or four or five children with no health insurance.

Morning Quote: Mitt Romney

Romney won’t rule out Rick Santorum as a running mate when asked by a voter if Romney would consider Santorum:

“Everybody is on my list. I’m not taking anybody off the list, alright?”

Morning Quote

HuffPost columnist Bennet Kelley on Mitt Romney and the GOP as a political party:

“Wind him up and Mitt Romney will tell you that the solution to the near economic catastrophe that the Bush administration led us into, is to do the exact same thing as Bush. That may make sense to a crash test dummy, but it will not go over well with those who have endured the worst downturn since the Great Depression and are now saddled with the bill for Bush's lost decade.

It is fitting that Romney's emergence comes as Newt Gingrich's think tank files for bankruptcy. For Republicans, whose party is led by a robot and the strongest argument to be made in favor of their policies is that "at least we didn't cause a depression," are already there.”

Mitt Romney is a Lying Liar

Watch Mitt Romney distort reality:

Another Right Wing Lie About Obamacare and the Deficit

An article in the Washington Post today promotes yet another right wing lie about Obamacare aka the Affordable Care Act, claiming that the ACA increases the deficit rather than reducing it:

President Obama’s landmark health-care initiative, long touted as a means to control costs, will actually add more than $340 billion to the nation’s budget woes over the next decade, according to a new study by a Republican member of the board that oversees Medicare financing.

Jonathan Chait proceeds to nail the Koch-funded author of the paper, Charles Blahous (all emphasis in this piece is mine):

That sounds pretty legit, right?

Actually, no. It’s not even remotely legit.

The first thing to understand here is that this is not a study by a government agency. It’s a paper by Charles Blahous. Who is Charles Blahous? He’s a Republican policy guy. By tradition, the president appoints a member of each party to serve as a trustee of Medicare and Social Security. Blahous, who served under George W. Bush and was active in his attempt to introduce private accounts into Social Security, is the Republican trustee. But the other trustee, Robert Reischauer, has zero to do with his paper. It was published by the Mercatus Center, a Koch-funded organization that produces some quality work as well as a fair amount of schlock that does not meet the standards of your typical university economics paper. This paper is an example of the latter.

The Affordable Care Act spends a bunch of money to cover people who are too poor or sick to afford their own health care. To pay for that, it raises some taxes and cuts a bunch of spending from Medicare. The new revenue and the spending cuts outweigh the cost of the new spending, which is why the Congressional Budget Office projected it to reduce the deficit. Projections always have a margin for error attached, but the CBO’s two year update actually bumped up the savings projections a bit.

According to Chait, Blahous obtained his measure of the bills’s cost  using a conceptual trick:

Morning Quote: Mitt Romney

According to Steve Benen, Mitt Romney continues to lie about the Affordable Care Act:

“The employees of the Catholic Church have to be provided by the Catholic Church with health care that gives them free contraceptive and free sterilization treatments and morning-after pills despite the fact that this violates the conscience of the Catholic Church.”

Romney is lying.

Romney’s Car Elevators

President Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, mocked Mitt Romney’s (Mr. 1percenter) car elevators:

“Romney trying to say someone's out of touch is a little difficult when he's shopping for car elevators.”

Another Birther in the House

The 112th majority Republican Congress now has at least two birthers to call its very  own. The latest lawmaker to claim birther status is Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO). Think Progress:

Another Republican member of Congress has stepped forward as a birther, calling into question President Obama’s birth certificate at a town hall meeting. Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) told a crowd of her constituents that she is no more convinced of President Obama’s birth place as anyone asking the question:

I don’t know, I haven’t seen it. I’m just at the same place you are on that. You read this, you read that. But I don’t understand why he didn’t show that right away. I mean, if someone asked for my birth certificate, I’d get my baby book and hand it out and say ‘Here it is,’ so I don’t know.

The questioner asked Hartzler if she believed the certificate of live birth that President Obama released last year was a forgery, citing Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s comical news conference from last month as evidence of a conspiracy. To her credit, Rep. Hartzler appeared to dismiss Arpaio’s investigation, saying “I have a lot if doubts about all that.”

But in case there was any question of her birther bona fides, Hartzler doubled down on her skepticism at a press availability after the event:

I have doubts that it is really his real birth certificate, and I think a lot of Americans do, but they claim it is, so we are just going to go with that.

Vicky Hartzler was not the first member of Congress to out herself as a birther. Yes, indeed, we have at least two known crazies in Congress, people! The first was Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) back in March, who outed himself at at town hall:

New video of a February town hall shows Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) pandering to birthers and raising questions about the legitimacy of President Obama’s birth certificate.

When Stearns met with constituents on February 25 in Belleview, one of the first questions came from an elderly gentleman who insisted that Obama was not born in the United States and ought to be impeached. Rather than correcting the man and informing him that the president is indeed a natural-born American citizen, Stearns coddled the conspiracy theory by implying that Obama’s birth certificate may be a forgery — “is it legitimate?” Stearns wondered aloud.

Adding.......Apparently, Vicky Hartzler is also the most virulently anti-gay member of Congress.

Morning Quote: Paul Begala

Paul Begala, Democratic strategist and former adviser to Bill Clinton, on Mitt Romney’s choice of a vice presidential running mate, emphasis mine:

“You heard it here first: Mitt Romney is going to select Rob Portman, the junior senator from Ohio, to be his running mate. I have no insight into how Romney will make this decision. But I had a front-row seat at what I believe was the best veep choice of my lifetime

Bill Clinton was blown away by his meeting with Al Gore and settled on him quickly, even though Gore was the same age, same region, same religion, and same ideology... I'm betting that Romney's choice will reflect who he is: a bloodless technocrat who wants to double down on trickle down.”

Rob Portman is the junior senator from Ohio.

Morning Quote: Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney tries to blame Democrats for the contraception wars (which culminated in the bombing of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Wisconsin)  and blusters his way through an interview with the right wing website, Newsmax:

“But there's no question that over the past several weeks, that a discussion about religious liberty was distorted into a discussion about contraceptives. And there was the somehow Republicans are opposed to contraceptives. I think it was most unfortunate twist by our Democrat friends. I think this will pass as an issue as people understand our real position.”

There has been no misunderstanding by Democrats of Republican positions on women’s concerns, Mr. Romney.

And, apparently Independent women understand the Republican position as well. Taegan Goddard:

The Washington Post digs into the latest USA Today-Gallup poll of a dozen battleground states and notes that "among independent women -- a key group of swing voters -- Obama had been trailing Romney by five points in a series of surveys late last year. But that number shifted dramatically in polling conducted in February and March, and the president took a 14-point lead over the former Massachusetts governor, marking a net gain of 19 points."

When Reince Priebus,  the Chairman of the Republican National Committee feels free to publicly make a remark such as this one, it becomes crystal clear exactly how Republicans feel about women.

Wall Street Loves Them Some Republicans

Think Progress on a new CNN Money survey that shows 70 percent of Wall Street analysts and money managers want a Republican president [emphasis mine]:

The stock market may have risen dramatically under President Obama, but 70 percent of Wall Street investment analysts and money managers still want a Republican president to win the 2012 election, according to a CNN Money survey released Wednesday. Wall Street prefers the loose regulatory policies and lower tax rates — particularly on investments and capital gains — favored by the Republican candidates, the survey found. Some strategists are hoping Obama wins, though. “All Republicans want to do is cut government spending, but you can’t stimulate the economy without it,” Donal Selkin, chief market strategist at National Securities, told CNN. “Wall Street is just interested in its own pocketbook.”

70 percent. In spite of a booming stock market.

Morning Quote: Reince Priebus

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on the GOP war on women:

“If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars. It’s a fiction.”

Quote of the Day: The GOP Five as the Rear Guard of the Republican Army

Journalist Robert Parry on The Washington Post’s admonishment to President Obama over his remarks to the Supreme Court’s five right wing, highly partisan, justices:

“Official Washington’s polite society – led by the neocon Washington Post – is chastising President Barack Obama for his faux pas in defending the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act and in urging the Republican-controlled Supreme Court to show due deference to a law approved by the elected branches of government.

Since Monday when Obama uttered his statement, the Post’s editors have been suffering from the vapors – publishing two breathless editorials and various columns – and sputtering about Obama’s “jarring” comment.

While rapidly fanning themselves and trying to control their heart flutters, the Post’s editors lamented again on Wednesday that Obama’s “comments strayed perilously close to a preemptive strike on the court’s legitimacy if it were to declare the individual mandate unconstitutional.”

The Post’s editors were apoplectic, too, “that some liberal supporters of the law are preemptively trying to delegitimize a potential defeat, as if no honest justice could possibly disagree with the mandate’s constitutionality. The president’s initial remarks added unnecessary fuel to this contention.”

The Post then lectured Obama about maintaining his proper posture while in the Establishment salons of Washington. “Given the power of the bully pulpit, presidents are wise to be, well, more judicious in commenting about the high court,” the Post said.

What you’re seeing in the Post’s overwrought reaction is its protection of a favored fiction of Official Washington, that the deeply partisan GOP Five, who now run the High Court on behalf of the Republican Party, are not really partisans at all, just responsible jurists fairly applying constitutional principles.

You are not supposed to notice the ugly truth that the GOP Five (like an earlier incarnation of the group in the Bush v. Gore case in December 2000) has set itself up as the rear guard of the Republican army.

Thus, if somehow democracy breaks through the Republican lines – whether a state-court-ordered presidential recount in Florida or a new federal program pushed by a Democratic president – the GOP Five are there to mount a last-ditch counterattack, charging down the hill while shouting incoherent constitutional “principles.”

At other times – when the battle is less pitched – the GOP Five provide logistical support for the frontline political warriors, either opening supply lines for the delivery of massive campaign money from billionaires (via Citizens United) or empowering police to strip search (and thus terrorize) anti-corporate protesters.

That’s the troubling reality: the Supreme Court’s majority has become a reserve battalion of the GOP army. But the Post’s editors and other protectors of the hollowed-out pillars of the Republic can’t acknowledge this fact because it would threaten to crumble the thin layers of marble that remain of the pleasing façades of the capital.”

Pink Slime: It’s Delicious...REALLY

And like it or not, it’s on the market, deceptively called “lean, finely textured beef” aka "boneless lean beef trimmings.”

Except it’s really the remains of the animal after all the meat normally cut has been removed. Or something like that.

Pink slime is the pejorative term for "lean finely textured beef," a product designed to recover useful bits from carcass trimmings. These are warmed, centrifuged to remove the fat, treated with ammonium hydroxide gas to kill pathogens, and compressed into blocks that are frozen for later use.

There’s a brouhaha going on, apparently. About our children being fed this pink slimy stuff in school lunches.

School food advocate Bettina Siegel collected 230,000 signatures on a letter to the USDA to ban LFTB. She wrote, "It is simply wrong to feed our children connective tissues and beef scraps that were, in the past, destined for use in pet food and rendering, and were not considered fit for human consumption." The USDA buys loads of LFTB for school hamburger because it is cheap. Districts that choose higher-quality meat will have to pay more for meat. Can they afford to?

And then there’s the asshat politicians who’ve been paid off by the meat industry and are now calling for a congressional investigation into food safety?

Reports over weekend showed that Beef Products' top executives and workers have given $820,750 to congressional and presidential candidates over the past decade, with all but $28,400 going to Republicans. Branstad, a Republican, received $150,000 over the past two years from people tied to Beef Products, his spokesman Tim Albrecht said Monday.

Nope. If you thought it would be food safety, you were wrong. Instead, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad called for a Congressional investigation into who started the “smear campaign” against the pink slime. Seriously.

“Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad called Monday for a congressional investigation into how what he called ‘a smear campaign’ against the meat product commonly called ‘pink slime’ got started,” the New York Daily News writes. "‘We have a smear campaign going on against a product that is healthy and safe,’ Branstad said at his weekly news conference. ‘If they get by with this, what other food products are they going to attack next?’ … ‘It's clear this is a safe product. It's a lean product, it helps reduce obesity and there is a spurious attack being levied against it by some groups. You can suspect who they might be. They are people who do not like meat. … He also called on students at agricultural colleges in Iowa to use their social media skills ‘to counter what Hollywood and the media elites and the people who are spreading this misinformation are doing. It's their future that's being threatened by this.’”

So now, Republicans are waging a campaign against parents of schoolchildren, along with other well-meaning Americans, because they don’t think pink slime sounds entirely appetizing. And they’re apparently doing so in order to stop our protests against the pink slime.

Unf—king believable.

Chart of the Day: Trajectory of Unemployment Claims 2007-2012

Steven Benen explains:

In fact, the new figures are the best since April 2008, and even exceeded positive expectations.

The number of Americans who filed requests for jobless benefits fell by 6,000 last week to 357,000, the U.S. Labor Department said Thursday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had projected claims would total 360,000, seasonally adjusted, in the week ended March 31. Claims from two weeks ago were revised up to

Despite last week's annual revisions, the same metrics still apply: wh363,000 from 359,000. The average of new-benefit applications over the past four weeks, meanwhile, dropped by 4,250 to 361,750.en jobless claims fall below the 400,000 threshold, it's considered evidence of an improving jobs landscape, and when the number drops below 370,000, it suggests jobs are actually being created rather quickly.

And with that, here's the chart -- which reflects the revised, seasonably-adjusted data -- showing weekly, initial unemployment claims going back to the beginning of 2007. (Remember, unlike the monthly jobs chart, a lower number is good news.) For context, I've added an arrow to show the point at which President Obama's Recovery Act began spending money.

UPDATE

More good news on the economic front from The Washington Post:

Add Mark Zandi to the growing chorus of economists who believe that the U.S. is finally headed for a real turnaround. The chief economist for Moody’s Analytics just revised his outlook for 2012, and the biggest change to his forecast involves the unemployment rate. Back in January, Zandi predicted that the rate, which is currently at 8.3 percent, would stay above 8 percent through the end of the year. Now he says it “appears set to fall below 8 percent by year’s end” and believes it will fall below 7 percent by the end of 2013, as he explains in his latest note.

Video: President Obama Speech at AP Luncheon

Sorry for the delay on this. I posted the text transcript of President Obama’s speech at the Associated Press lunch on the day of the speech, but the video was not yet available.

Watch:

Morning Quote: James Carville

Democratic strategist James Carville described Rick Santorum after Santorum lost  three primaries to Romney on Tuesday:

“He was like a chicken with his head chopped off. The chicken is dead. The only person that don’t know it is the chicken.”

Scott Brown + Mitt Romney Are BFFs

Sen. Scott Brown (R-Ma) has been making strong efforts to cozy up to President Obama in order to distance himself from Mitt Romney and GOP branding, since, well, since it’s highly unlikely that Mitt will win the general election. In fact, recent polls show that the likelihood of President Obama winning re-election is 85-99%.

So, here’s this great video showing the reality of the relationship between Mitt Romney and Scott Brown......why, they’re best friends!  Watch:

Sen. Scott Brown Cozying Up to President Obama

MSNBC’s First Read on Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-Ma) efforts to back away from Romney and GOP branding, emphasis mine:

It’s not every day you see this kind of press release from a Republican senator: “Two major pieces of legislation introduced by U.S. Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) will be signed into law by President Obama at White House ceremonies this week. As the first to introduce both the STOCK Act and crowdfunding legislation in the Senate, Senator Brown was invited and will attend both signing ceremonies. ‘I’m honored to receive these invitations from President Obama and I look forward to standing next to him as he signs these bills into law.’” So we’ve seen likely Democratic opponent Elizabeth Warren star in Obama’s campaign documentary. And now Brown is shouting from the mountain top that he’ll be standing next to Obama at signing ceremonies this week. Brown has two major hurdles to overcome if he’s going to win a full term: One, he’s trying to win as a Republican in a blue state during a presidential year. And two, how does he avoid getting defined by Romney? Well, we see what Brown is TRYING to do, have photo-ops with Romney’s opponent. Here’s betting we see Brown use his appearances at these signing ceremonies in TV ads while trying like mad to avoid appearances with Romney.

Actually, Brown is running as an Independent  in Massachusetts, against a real champion of the middle class, Democrat Elizabeth Warren. The Koch brothers have contributed heavily to Brown’s campaigns.

Need any more be said?’

UPDATE: Brown + Romney = BFF’s!

VIDEO: Jon Stewart on Sarah Palin’s Gig With the Today Show

Watch (try not to gag):

Thoroughly funny takedown from Stewart.

But I have to say that I am really pissed off at the Today Show for allowing that miserable witch illiterate shrew in eyeglasses to get on their show and spew comments about Obama’s “failed socialist policies”, and so forth, without any pushback from, say, Matt Lauer, who didn’t follow up on that comment at all. At all. Seriously.

Morning Quote: President Obama on the Ryan Plan

Yesterday afternoon, President Obama gave a terrific speech at the Associated Press luncheon. Yes, he got in a few digs at Mitt Romney, but he had much more to say about Paul Ryan’s 2013 budget (a budget which Mitt Romney called “marvelous”- said that he wanted to see one just like that on his desk the first day of his presidency):

“This congressional Republican budget ... is something different altogether. It's a Trojan Horse... Disguised as deficit-reduction plan, it's really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It's nothing but thinly-veiled Social Darwinism. It's antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who's willing to work for it -- a place where prosperity doesn't trickle down from the top, but grows outward from the heart of the middle class. And by gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that's built to last - education and training; research and development -- it's a prescription for decline.”

MSNBC-First Read prior to the speech:

Senior administration officials are billing Obama’s address -- coming on the same day as another round of GOP primaries -- as an important speech, and they say it builds off his remarks in Kansas last December (when he invoked Teddy Roosevelt’s “square deal”) and his State of the Union in January (when he talked about an economy “built to last”).

You can read the full text transcript here.

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