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The House passed a three-week stopgap funding bill, but 54 Republicans voted against it. Boehner is running into increasing difficulties from his Tea Party members who are willing to shut down the government unless they get huge cuts and concessions from the Democrats. The bill did not include riders to defund Planned Parenthood and the health care Act.
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Republican War On Science: Every Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted today to reject Henry Waxman's proposal that Congress affirm that climate warming is undeniable in view of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, rising average sea level, and widespread melting of snow and ice. This is part of the discussion of a Republican bill to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
According to Think Progress: "The 31 Republicans and three Democrats who voted in favor of H.R. 910 have received a grand total of $343,750 from Koch Industries, an average of more than $10,000 each. Freshman Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), Koch’s special man in Congress, tips the scales at $79,500."
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Prosecutors in Italy filed a document today alleging that Premier Silvio Berlusconi paid for sex with an underage (17-year-old) Moroccan girl -- 13 times. Who knew Bill Clinton was a monk?
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Part of the budget proposal by Maine Governor Paul LePage (R) wants teachers and other state employees -- but not the governor's office; share the pain! -- to increase their contributions to the state pension system. This is after giving $203 million in tax cuts for Maine residents in the top 10% income and estate brackets. LePage took office in January. If he serves a complete term, his pension will be $26,600 a year. A Maine teacher would have to work for more than 25 years to receive that much.
Last week, LePage said: "I know some teachers and retirees are struggling, but we need honest and shared solutions to solve our pension problem." A compassionate conservative.
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Bill Hemmer on Fox assures us that the nuclear generating station on the coast at San Onofre, CA, is perfectly safe because it has a 25-foot seawall and is certified for a 7.0 earthquake. Japan's 8.9 earthquake generated a 30-foot tsunami.
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Virgil Peck, a Republican state congressman in Kansas, during a House Appropriations Committee meeting on state spending for controlling feral swine, reacted to a proposal to use hunters in helicopters by suggesting that that would be a way to control illegal immigration.
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Glenn Beck wonders if the earthquake was a message from God.
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Lawrence O'Donnell has three questions about Michele Bachmann.
Question One: How ignorant is Michele Bachmann, and how did she get that way? Remember, this is a graduate of Winona State University and Oral Roberts University's Coburn School of Law. Law school graduate. So do not overlook her academic achievement in trying to explain this. Doesn't make it any easier to explain.
Question Two: Where does Michele Bachmann find her shockingly ignorant staff?
Question Three: Perhaps most important of all, what explains the rank ignorance of the 52% of the voters in Minnesota's 6th Congressional District?
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Meteor Blades at Daily Kos has instructions from a contributor, AlphaGeek, on how to survive a disaster. Here's the link:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/15/953351/-Open-thread-for-night-owls:-Emergency-preparedness-in-five-parts
AlphaGeek has put a lot of effort into this. You'll find links to all five parts:
Part 1: Assess your risks!
Part 2: Plan to survive! (part A)
Part 3: Plan to survive! (part B)
Part 4: Emergency gear and supplies
Part 5: Material preparations continued; Conclusion
Coda (Q&A): Ask Mister Preparedness Guy: all answers 5¢
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Add New Hampshire -- won by both Barack Obama and John Kerry -- to your list of wingnut Republican statehouses. They have proposed a "birther" law that won't take effect until after the 2012 elections -- so of course it isn't aimed at President Obama. The House Speaker and the state Republican party chair are attending a "tenther" rally. (Tenthers seek to interpret a sentence in the 10th Amendment -- "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people" -- in a way radically different from the way it has grown to be interpreted since 1791, greatly weakening control of the federal government in favour of the individual states).
Complete the trifecta, New Hampshire, and go for some "truther" stuff.
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The latest effort to undo Democratic accomplishments is to try to repeal or amend parts of Dodd-Frank, the Wall Street reform bill (weak as it is). Apparently they want to:
1. Repeal executive pay disclosure
2. Exempt private equity firms from having to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission
3. Ease new requirements on end users of derivatives like credit default swaps
4. Repeal legal liability for inaccurate credit ratings by agencies like Moodys or Standard & Poor's
Anything more we can do to help out poor, struggling Wall Street?
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House Republicans are holding an emergency meeting of the Rules Committee on Wednesday to try to block funding to NPR. This nation is facing a crisis! We must block funding to National Public Radio!
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The Japanese nuclear emergency is a complete muddle of conflicting reports and assessments. Let's just hope it doesn't burn a hole down to Nigeria.
California health officials say "there is no danger at this time" from radiation from Japan. Nevertheless, fearful crowds have bought up nearly all of the existing supplies of potassium iodide -- which blocks absorption of harmful radioactive iodine -- from companies such as Anbex Inc. "Those who don't get it are crying. They're terrified," a company official said. Home of the brave. Here's a link to a HuffPo article on the panic:
The U.S. Navy said Monday that 17 helicopter crew members had to be decontaminated after flying search and rescue missions.
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AlterNet reports that in 2010, New York City spent $75 million arresting people for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. There were nearly 1,000 arrests per week. 50,383 people were fingerprinted, photographed, and most spent 24 hours or more in jail. In all cases, marijuana possession was the highest charge or the only charge.
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Activists in Lansing, Michigan, are intending to occupy the Capitol building overnight to protest Governor Rick Snyder's radical budget. In last year's budget, Republicans voted to defund and shut down the state capitol post of the Michigan State Police, so there will only be two uniformed state troopers in the building.
Snyder's budget, among other things, will raise taxes 31% on the middle class and working poor while cutting taxes for corporations 86 -- yes, 86! -- percent.
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ABC/Washington Post poll: Since taking office in January, Republicans have dropped 13 points on handling the economy and 17 points on dealing with the budget deficit.
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Last month, Tennessee state senator Mae Beavers introduced a bill that would require presidential candidates to present a long-form birth certificate to qualify for the ballot in Tennessee. She was recently interviewed on Reality Check, a radio show. Here's what she had to say:
RC: What are the specific requirements in the bill?
SENATOR B: That they have to have the long-form birth certificate.
RC: What is the long-form birth certificate?
SENATOR B: Now, you're asking me to get into a lot of things that I haven't really looked into yet.
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In Wisconsin, protesters went to the home of State Senator Randy Hopper. They were greeted by his estranged wife, who informed them that the good Senator now lives in Madison with his 25-year-old mistress. Living outside his district puts him in violation of state law. (His estranged wife and the family maid have signed Hopper's recall petition.)
Eight Republican senators in Wisconsin are eligible for recall. Two seem safe; one is probably safe; two have very narrow leads and less than 50% support. Three -- including Hopper -- trail in polls against a generic Democrat. (Caveat: It's a Daily Kos poll.) I think they have about three weeks to continue collecting signatures.
Update after the jump.
From Daily Kos (Steve Siniger):
Well...it seems like one of the embattled octet of Republican state senators in Wisconsin has crawled out from under his desk long enough to take to the airwaves.
And (surprise!): he's lying his ass off:
State senator Randy Hopper is up with a remarkably nauseating radio ad in his defense that badly distorts the history of the Wisconsin standoff and contains at least one other distortion designed to smear public employees as greedy swindlers of unsuspecting taxpayers.Hopper's fibbery here is two-fold: first, he condemns state workers for not agreeing to "reasonable" pension adjustments. Of course, they agreed to them a month ago. He then speaks of a "union bus driver" making six figures, conveniently omitting that the compensation was not the driver's base salary, but rather the total compensation after the driver accumulated substantial overtime pay as a result of working an average of over 76 hours a week.
A pair of polls have been released detailing the extent of his political peril, one conducted for Daily Kos by our partners at PPP, which showed Hopper in extreme danger of recall. Our polling had Hopper's job approval underwater at 38/47, with only 33% in his district in opposition to his recall. If the election were held today, Hopper would fall to a generic Democratic foe.
SurveyUSA, polling on behalf of MoveOn, got similar numbers last week, before the revelations about Hopper's infidelity came to light. In that survey, 54% of voters in the district supported a recall, versus just 43% in opposition.
Hopper can't face the public yet, given the heat over his political and personal deeds. So, he is trying to combat the growing push for his ouster over the airwaves. He is also headed to DC to cash in with right-wing Beltway lobbyists.
Expect Hopper, and his cohorts, to have ample resources to spread the airwaves with similar attempts to rewrite history. It is one of many reasons why our side needs to give the recall effort all the tools necessary to send a message, both in Madison and nationwide.
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