Today's edition of quick hits:
* It's hard to even fathom a power outage affecting 600 million people, but for two days, that's exactly what's happened for half the population of India.
* New sanctions: "President Barack Obama announced new U.S. sanctions on Tuesday against foreign banks that help Iran sell its oil, efforts that he said would increase pressure on Tehran for failing to meet its international nuclear obligations."
* I have no idea what Ed DeMarco is thinking: "The independent federal agency that administers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said once again on Tuesday that it would not let the mortgage finance companies offer debt forgiveness to homeowners, rejecting the entreaties of Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration."
* Krugman makes the case that it's time for DeMarco to be fired immediately.
* After two years of accusing President Obama of being inspired by Europe's economic policies, Mitt Romney said today we should emulate Poland's economic policies. (Poland, incidentally, is in Europe.)
* DOMA: "U.S. District Court Judge Vanessa Bryant, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled on Tuesday that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional."
* Hmm: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has what he says is an informed explanation for why Mitt Romney refuses to release additional tax returns. According to a Bain investor, Reid charged, Romney didn't pay any taxes for 10 years."
* Obama believes he has the authority to maintain a "kill list" featuring the names of suspected terrorists. Congress wants to know where this authority comes from.
* The judicial confirmation process is broken: "Senate Democrats failed Monday evening in an effort to end a [Republican] filibuster on the nomination of Magistrate Judge Robert Bacharach to a seat on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals." His nomination enjoyed broad, bipartisan support.
* One-in-four Americans believe they'll have to pay the individual mandate penalty. The actual number? One-in-100 Americans will actually be affected.
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
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One-in-four Americans believe they'll have to pay the individual mandate penalty. The actual number? One-in-100 Americans will actually be affected.
Further proof of the efficacy of Faux Snooze disinformation and the fact that the average American couldn't find the zipper on their fly with both hands on a clear day. "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
Political Wire is reporting that Romney did not pay TAXES for 10 years and is worth more than he is reporting...This from a Bain insider reporting it to a mormon-- Sen Reid!
The repub lies are out of sight on the HC rules..,.This needs to be stopped! The Dems, not just the President, need to grow a pair and tell the voters the truth...Total BS!
It is becoming more painfully obvious that the Republican Party serves no legitimate purpose.
There's a silver lining, though. Thanks to Fox lies, President Obama doesn't need to do anything fancy to get people to like the ACA. No rhetoric, no narrative, no deep exhaustive conspiracy. All he needs to do is get a big enough microphone and...tell the truth about it!
Isn't the moral high ground fun?
I saw the demarco story on cnbc. While I understand his concerns, it's a bit late for him to be claiming 'moral hazard' as a reason not to provide government assistance to an economic sector. I suspect that the real hazard has something to do with late night phone calls from bank CEOs.
If DeMarco gets a pink slip...you're going to want to watch where he ends up.
Oh for pete's sake. This is our own damn fault in putting up with Senators clinging to stupid traditions that will be blown away the second they are inconvenient for the GOP. We are just blowing our own foot off. My own senator, Dan Inouye is guilty of blocking this reform. I understand his defense of our only real power as a small state, but he is clinging to a delusion that the GOP will respect unwritten traditions.
Why is DeMarco , a Bush appointee the acting director? Because the GOP refuses to confirm an Obama nominee- the last one being Joseph Smith, who withdrew his name in 2011. (source)
The only obstacle to replacing DeMarco is Reid's refusal to use the nuclear option to change senate rules so that debate is not unlimited on nominations.
After 3 days of debate, this would be over. There is no constitutional requirement of 60 votes for confirmation votes.
My first thought, when I heard about half of India having a power outage this morning, my only thought, was this:
Is India's power grid collapsing?
US media is so much of this, so much of that, these numbers, those numbers. Blah blah blah.
In India, those are phenomenal numbers. Mind-numbing numbers. Even with the people who are not routine users of electricity, because infrastructure depends on it, even when poor people in slums or shanties may not be directly hooked up to the grid.
I've ridden on a bus through southern India at dusk (a very long bus ride to a very wonderful place), and watched how lights DID NOT go on in the areas we were driving thru. Not street lights, not headlights. Cars and buses "beep-beeped" at each other in that unique way of "speaking" that they have, a language, to be sure ("Horn Please!"), but we all kept driving in the dark, even well after the sun had set.
Which made for an odd landscape to see, out the window. We'd see huts, clusters of huts, small towns. In the dark, except for one thing. Every fifth lean-to style propped up shack or so would have that tell-tale glowing blue light. It stood out because no other lights were on. TV.
Once I figured that out, I squinted to see better, and could eventually pick out the odd electrical lines, run here and there, through the cobbled-together spaces, strung from building to building, sometimes propped up on a pole. (you also see scenes like this in the film "Slumdog Millionaire," as they show people in all settings watching the game show as it moved to its conclusion. It gave me a twinge of distant familiarity to see that particular detail).
The early 2000s were such an odd time for me. So wrenching, because of where I worked through that bit of history (CNN/HLN).
I wouldn't trade it for anything, but flashbacks are strange. The 2003 Northeast Blackout was like that. It was such a freaky chain reaction, from the initial reports, and then it just spread and spread and spread. That story fascinates me to this day, because it is so disruptive (like so many of the disruptions of that time)-- so many things you forget to notice on an ordinary day just break down.
And it was scary then, too, because back in the early 2000s, we didn't know what was going to happen next, what was going to be hit next, what was going to break down utterly.
And I wondered at that time if our power grid was literally collapsing. This thing in India DWARFS that. Try to think of the scale. Those systems are all networked together, are all interdependent. It could have been hacked. It could be a hidden infrastructure terrorist attack, a continuation of what was attempted in Mumbai. It could be a lot of things.
It is just such radical strangeness, to exist in a place where a common service is there one day, not there another. Freeing, but also terrible. Like it was in 2003 here.
I think what came to my mind in the 2003 blackout (upstate NY) was the silence. Not really knowing what happened and the silence that fell over everything. Then, some noise here and some noise there when people began to fire up their generators and even then, that noise was strange. You don't realize how much noise you are subjected to on a daily basis until there is none.
For Reid to publicly state this about Romney's taxes, the source must be extremely credible.
Although in reading the article, I also see Reid states it can't be verified. But given Romney's multiple offshore accounts and his refusal to release any more information...hmmn, indeed.
There is no way the republicans are going to let any judges get confirmed before the until after the election because they hope to create a big backlog and fill the with republican appointees just as they did at the end of Clinton's presidency. No shocker there. Just treachery.
btw what is up with the website today. I watch msnbc online and can't get the segments as usual. Frustrating...
Seriously does anyone know what is up with msnbctv? Is it down for the day or for good. Will Maddow show segments still show somewhere here?
" I have no idea what Ed DeMarco is thinking"...
Ed DeMarco is thinking: "If I make the fat-cat banksters happy while I occupy this position, they will give me a cushy, lucrative job in return. Following Obama's directives doesn't put money in my bank account (or my secret offshore accounts). Ultimately, the only thing which matters is my own personal wealth."
Greed uber alles.
There is a weird giggling going on out there on the USPS not meeting their funding obligation. Considering how much Amazon, pharmacies and even FedEx/UPS depend on USPS to deliver to the 'sticks. I wonder why they are taking such pleasure in it.
Re: Romney spokesperson’s response of the Press to “Kiss my *ss - this is a holy site’. As one of the Church every Sunday, prayer before meals kind of guy, I went to my research bibles to gain some insight on the basis for such a ritual.
I failed. Of course I understand the Mormons have some surprising practices but to the best of my knowledge there is no biblical recommendation to kiss asses at Holy sites. Quite the contrary. Exodus 20:17 recommends we do not covet our neighbors wife or ass, and in 23:5 states “If you see the ass of one who hates you lying under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it, you shall help him to lift it up. “
So it seems to me the press was doing its holy duty not to convey affection on the ass, but to relieve the ass of his unbearable burden:
.
His candidacy.
LOL, John! Now I know my Holy Duties toward Asses!
John,
Brilliant post!!
Now I have to go clean the coffee off my screen.....
Thank goodness we have such a learned scholar of religious texts among us.
I haven't opened a Good Book in a while, but wasn't there something in there about rendering to Caesar what belongs to Caesar? Because for all their religiosity, I think the Republicans have forgotten that bit.
LOL, bravo John.
Thanks John. You prompted me to look at the New Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Comfort Printed Edition) pg.61 Under ass I found the following:
"deliver unto his neighbor an ass" (Ex 22:10)
"Am not I thine ass" (Num22:30) (I think this could apply to Romney)
"smitten thine ass these three times" (Num 22:32) (Now one could debate what "smitten" means here. Is it smitten as in fond of therefore kissing of the ass maybe possibe? Or smitten as in strike therefore certainly no kissing of ass would apply)
But my favorite ass quote is .... "the dumb ass speaking with man's ... (2 Peter 2:16) (this I think applies to the Romney aid)
According to Strong's there are 88 reference to ass in the bible and none for certain dealing with kissing in places holy or otherwise.
"Ed DeMarco is thinking" that he was brought in to run Fannie and Freddie as professional financial institutions, finally, not political institutions, and protect the taxpayers from another round of bailouts. He's not playing "the game". Good for him.