A basket case of sick puppies

Carl Hiassen, The Guardian:

The Florida Republican primary: a basket case of sick puppies

Between Mitt hoping Fidel Castro will ‘self-deport’ from the planet and Newt’s moon shot, it’s a weird GOP race. But this is Florida
…
In the debates, Romney doesn’t twitch like Rick Santorum or ramble like Ron Paul. He doesn’t get confused. He doesn’t blurt stupid things. His line about the voluntary “self-deportation” of illegal immigrants didn’t cost him many votes among conservatives.

Usually, Mitt stands orderly and composed, doing his standard Mitt thing. Many Florida Republicans are underwhelmed, because suddenly it’s a close race. As a result, Romney has been forced to ramp up his rhetoric, which doesn’t come easy for the guy.

Campaigning in Little Havana last week, Romney said:

“If I’m fortunate enough to become the next president of the United States, it is my expectation that Fidel Castro will finally be taken off the planet. We have to be prepared.”

The phrase “taken off the planet” was a weird choice, conjuring an image of Fidel being dragged by pointy-headed aliens into a spaceship. What Romney should have said was: “Castro is old and sick, and soon he’ll be dead. We need to be ready for change in Cuba.”
…
Castro has outlasted 10 American presidents, yet Gingrich without a smirk promises to be one who will vanquish the 85-year-old tyrant. He didn’t reveal his secret plan for eliminating Fidel, but perhaps the CIA could devise an exploding Depends.

More on Oakland mass arrests/updated

Figuring out exactly what happened is going to take some time. However, one key piece of information is this from the NYTimes:

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Oakland Police Department to consult with a court-appointed monitor before all major decisions, bringing the department one step closer to a federal takeover.

The order comes less than a week after the court-appointed monitor released a report that cited “serious concerns” about the department’s handling of the Occupy protest and its capacity to “adopt and hold true to the best practices in American policing” on its own.

The department has been under court monitor since 2003. The monitor was supposed to help carry out necessary reforms within five years.

Nine years later, Judge Thelton E. Henderson said sufficient changes still had not been made.

So the protests are taking place within the context of serious past abuses.
(Click for more)

Shh! Don’t Let On That The Freeloading 1%ers Are The Problem!

The exercise today for you, the reader, is to connect the dots between the following stories and bits of information:

– The real news (and the motivation for the otherwise-inexplicably-appropriate move by the usually-1%-loving French leader) is buried at the end of this Bloomberg article on Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to charge a 0.1% tax on all French financial transactions:

Socialist candidate Francois Hollande leads in the French presidential election polls. He has the support of 31 percent of voters in the first round, 6 points more than Sarkozy, and his second-round lead has risen to 20 points at 60 percent, according to a CSA poll published last week. Hollande, too, has pledged to impose a tax on financial transactions, if he’s elected.

– Fred Hiatt once again whines that we must kick Grandma and Grandpa in the groins yet again and finish giving to the 1%ers the last remaining nickels from the pockets of what used to be America’s middle class, all in the name of “deficit reduction”. Dean Baker eviscerates him for us: “The House is on Fire and Fred Hiatt is Worried About What Color to Paint the Kitchen“.

– Prominent American Enterprise Institute wingnut-welfare recipient, Powerline darling, and 1%er apologist James Q. Wilson gets caught echoing Ayn Rand worshiper and idiotic 1%er apologist Paul Ryan’s lies about taxes and upward mobility; contrary to Wilson’s and Ryan’s shared spew, upward mobility is greater in the nations that actually tax their rich — such as most of Europe — than it is in America.

Oh, by the way, the Powerliner who waxed so wet-pantily over Wilson’s prose? None other than Steven Hayward, a typical hypocritical libertarian stand-on-your-own-two-feet kinda guy who has seldom if ever held a real job and who has depended most of his adult life on Claremont and AEI wingnut-welfare subsidies for his daily bread — subsidies that are themselves provided in part by the lumber firm Weyerhauser, which pays him to trash environmentalists.

Betty McCollum On Boondoggle Bridge: “Albatross”, “Bad Policy”

Proponents of the Boondoggle Bridge proposal are fond of mythmaking. One favored myth is that there is no sensible alternative to a $700 million four-lane bridge that will see less than 20,000 cars a day and which will connect a small Minnesota river town with an even tinier Wisconsin river hamlet in an area where the real-estate bubble’s bursting has pretty much ended for the next few decades the dream of its becoming the next major Twin Cities exurb. Another favored myth is that the Boondoggle Bridge is unstoppable and that resistance is futile.

My congresswoman, Betty McCollum, begs to differ with both of these myths. From her newsletter:

Congresswoman McCollum Reacts to Senate Passage of St. Croix Legislation (S. 1134)

This week, the Senate passed legislation, which would authorize the construction of a $700 million extra-dosed mega-bridge over the St. Croix River. S. 1134 would also grant permission for this bridge to violate the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act – an essential environmental protection. For over 20 years, Congresswoman McCollum has advocated for a smaller, more cost-effective solution that doesn’t violate environmental policy. Local officials, community advocates, and Minnesotans agree.

“It’s no surprise that Senator Klobuchar’s bill passed the Senate,” responded Congresswoman McCollum. “But in the House, we need to find a common sense compromise because a $700 million bridge across the St. Croix River is bad fiscal policy, bad transportation policy, and bad environmental policy.”

This is where we get to see how serious Republicans are about avoiding pork-barrel politics.

Just how big of a wasteful, platinum-plated, luxury albatross is this thing? It’s planned to cost nearly three times as much as did the new I-35 bridge in Minneapolis, which was built with top-of-the-line materials, carries 140,000 cars a day, and was built for less than $250 million. They weakened the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act for this?

DeSmogBlog And PolluterWatch: Two Good Blogs To Follow

Here are some good links from both DeSmogBlog and PolluterWatch:

http://www.desmogblog.com/alec-model-bill-behind-push-require-climate-denial-instruction-schools

http://www.polluterwatch.com/category/freetagging/desmogblog

Into the blogroll they go!

Oakland: mass arrests

KTVU:

A group of protestors gathered at the YMCA at 2350 Broadway allegedly attempted to enter the building and were placed under arrest, according to Oakland police.

After a failed attempt to take over the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center Saturday afternoon, Occupy Oakland protestors regrouped and set out on a second march from Frank Ogawa Plaza around 5:30 p.m.

Protestors and police clashed earlier Friday when a crowd that police estimated at around 450 to 500 marched from Frank Ogawa Plaza and attempted to take over the building.

Oakland police used tear gas and”flash” grenades Saturday to break up the Occupy protesters after some demonstrators started throwing objects at officers and tearing down fencing. There were at least 19 arrests and no reports of serious injuries.

Watch your democracy decomposing here

My next pet

Via Eli:

But no snuggling in bed.

Murdoch phone hacking scandal smolders on

Lisa O’Carroll and Josh Halliday, The Guardian:

Four current and former senior Sun journalists and one serving police officer have been arrested as part of Scotland Yard’s investigation into police corruption.
…
The four Sun employees arrested are understood to be Mike Sullivan, the Sun’s crime editor, the former managing editor Graham Dudman, the executive editor, Fergus Shanahan, and Chris Pharo, a newsdesk executive.

The arrests came after information was passed to the police by News Corporation’s internal investigations unit, the Management and Standards Committee.
…
In his witness statement to the Leveson inquiry earlier this month, the Sun’s editor, Dominic Mohan, said: “To the best of my knowledge, the Sun has never knowingly paid or made payments in kind to police … for information.”

More sacrifices.

Obama Finally Figuring Out How To Deal With Republicans?

Nice to see the President landing a few hard blows on right-wingers for a change:

Republicans said it was unconstitutional. An overreach of executive power. A blatant slap at the Senate.

But when it comes to waging war over a handful of obscure recess appointments, the Senate GOP is struggling with how to respond.

They fear a knock-down, drag-out fight is exactly what the White House wants — and that President Barack Obama would use such a battle to ratchet up his campaign against a dysfunctional and gridlocked Congress. The internal debate highlights the party’s challenges, with public opinion soured on Congress and Republicans still lacking a presidential nominee to rally behind.

Ahead of a closed-door party retreat Wednesday at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, Senate Republicans suggested that they might let their business allies fight the battle over recess appointments for the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The 47-member conference didn’t reach a resolution Wednesday.

Translation: We got our asses kicked on the last shutdown battle, and we’re not eager to do that again right before we have to run for re-election.

Friday Cat Blogging