No matter what day or week it is, there are always ample reminders of just how insincere the majority of our national discourse actually is.

The State Department approved a visa for Mariela Castro Espin (yes, of that Castro family) to visit the U.S. to speak at the Latin American Studies Association, and that was all it took to send certain Republicans into a not-at-all-disingenuous tizzy:

''The State Department needs to wake up from its delusional love fest with the dictators in Havana,'' said right-wing House Foreign Affairs chair Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). Republican Members of Congress released web videos and organized conference calls denouncing the visa as ''outrageous.''

Even presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney got in on the action, releasing a statement accusing the Obama administration of ''a slap in the face to all those brave individuals in Cuba who are enduring relentless persecution.''

Ros-Lehtinen and Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), David Rivera (R-FL) and Albio Sires (D-NJ) wrote a strongly-worded letter to the State Department saying:

The administration's appalling decision to allow regime agents into the U.S. directly contradicts Congressional intent and longstanding U.S. foreign policy.

If it's ''longstanding U.S. foreign policy'' to deny Mariela Castro a visa to enter the U.S., someone forgot to tell President George W. Bush. The Bush administration granted Castro not one but three visas to enter the U.S. in 2001 and 2002.

The Bush administration does something? Oh, it's fine. The Obama administration does the same damn thing? Now it's a delusional love fest with dictators. Of course. Whether it's a small, stupid thing (this) or a huge, big-deal thing (health care reform), the easiest way to make sure not one goddamn bit of thought is required to simply decide that all things with one party's name behind them are right, and all the things with the other party's name behind them are wrong. Even-and this is the fine trick of it-if they are in fact the exact same things.

I thought for quite a while on this one, trying to come up with something pithy to say. I didn't succeed. There's not a lot that can be added. It demonstrates once again that lying about things is a major component of so-called political thought; that's hardly new. It demonstrates that from Mitt Romney to Reince Priebus to insert-name-here, nobody in politics really pays attention to what they believe long enough to keep the same opinion twice; again, not new. On the other hand, there was a 10-year difference involved here, which might almost count as impressively consistent, when it comes to the impossibly long list of things that were Just Fine under Bush but no longer Just Fine the moment that other guy won the White House.

Of course, the point of this latest exercise by the outraged members involved is not for anyone to give a flying damn about Mariela Castro Espin. It merely serves as a vehicle for suggesting a "delusional love fest with the dictators in Havana," which apparently is something certain Republicans imagine happening in the state department the moment their backs are turned-or at least, that's what they're hoping their constituents believe? Why? Are these constituents truly dumb as dirt? Is there truly that large a contingent of people out there who need the notion of some imminent, government-sanctioned existential crisis being out there, somewhere, in order to get them through each day? If we were merely discussing normal political issues, like whether or not we should cut food assistance to poor people, or whether Wall Street regulations were sufficient, insufficient, or outright burdensome, would all of these people just be so terribly bored that they would stop participating in politics at all, thus dooming people like Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to (shudder) a life of pandering to much duller, more sensible people? We can only imagine what horrors lie down that path.

So here we go again. Another phony outrage; another attempt to demonstrate that a minor, low-level government action is really a secret conspiracy to something-something-something. Another reason for Mitt Romney to give a few generic comments about something he never heard of before, and will never give a damn about again. Another party-on-party skirmish based on nothing, signifying nothing, accomplishing considerably less than nothing. If a few members of Congress are very, very successful, maybe angry but otherwise dimwitted people will throw a few bucks their way, in order to stop this newest existential menace. Personally, I wish they would give that money to me instead. I could stop that existential menace for a tenth of the cost.

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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2004:

President Bush took a spill during a Saturday afternoon bike ride on his ranch, suffering bruises and cuts that were visible later on his face just two days before he was to deliver a major prime-time speech on his Iraq policy.

The president was nearing the end of a 17-mile ride on his mountain bike, accompanied by a Secret Service agent, a military aide and his personal physician, Richard Tubb, who treated him at the scene, said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

"It's been raining a lot and the topsoil is loose," Duffy said. "You know this president. He likes to go all-out. Suffice it to say he wasn't whistling show tunes." [...]

So rain on the 13th and (barely) 14th was blamed for a Bush fall on the 22nd. As everything else, it wasn't Bush's fault. Nothing is Bush's fault.

Ever.

Liars.

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High Impact Posts. Top Comments.

New polls conducted in the "swing states" for the 2012 race for the White House seem to be traveling on different vectors, as the GOP seems to be edging into a stronger position in Florida but retreating from their previous position a bit in Pennsylvania.

All this happening amid a backdrop of national polls once again not quite syncing with the state ones.

To the numbers:

PRESIDENTIAL GENERAL ELECTION TRIAL HEATS:

NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Obama tied with Romney (46-46)

NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Obama d. Romney (46-45)

ARIZONA (PPP): Romney d. Obama (50-43)

FLORIDA (Quinnipiac): Romney d. Obama (47-41)

PENNSYLVANIA (Rasmussen): Obama d. Romney (47-41)

VERMONT (Castleton State College/WCAX): Obama d. Romney (59-28)

WISCONSIN (St. Norbert College/Wisconsin Public Radio): Obama d. Romney (49-43)

DOWNBALLOT POLLING:

NM-SEN-D (Manzano Strategies): Martin Heinrich 57, Hector Balderas 29

NM-01-D (GBA Strategies for Griego): Eric Griego 35, Michelle Lujan Grisham 30, Martin Chavez 28

NM-01--D (Manzano Strategies): Michelle Lujan Grisham 35, Eric Griego 34, Martin Chavez 22

PA-SEN (PPP): Sen. Bob Casey (D) 49, Tom Smith (R) 33

WI-GOV (St. Norbert College/Wisconsin Public Radio): Gov. Scott Walker (R) 50, Tom Barrett (D) 45

A few thoughts, as always, await you just past the jump ...

Only two months after a national furor erupted over the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, Wisconsin Republicans are featuring a menacing-looking figure in a hoodie in a new piece of direct mail.

You can see an image of the mailer above, and click on it for a large view.

The mailer, which was paid for by the Republican State Leadership Committee, targets former state Sen. John Lehman, who is the Democratic nominee in the recall election in the decisive 21st state senate district (SD-21).

Daily Kos polling shows SD-21 to be the most competitive of the four upcoming state state recalls, with Lehman trailing Republican incumbent Van Wannggaard by a narrow 48-46 margin. Since the Wisconsin state senate is currently a 16-16 split between Democrats and Republicans, the outcome of this election will decide which party controls the chamber.

Please, help fight back against this disgusting attack by chipping in $3 to John Lehman on the Daily Kos Wisconsin recall fund.

I guess this helps explain Rep. Steve King, sadly. Meteor Blades touched on one aspect of the Iowa Republicans' official party platform: birtherism and investigating the non-existent ACORN. But it's so, so much crazier than just that.

For a start, they want to abolish the federal Departments of Agriculture, Education, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Energy, Interior, Labor, and Commerce. Also, TSA, FDA, ATF, EPA, National Endowment for the Arts, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Then Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all phased out, but Social Security becomes a voluntary program, immediately. And of course the U.S. has to leave the United Nations, because it's nothing but a big conspiracy for one world government, particularly when it comes to agriculture and Agenda 21, the UN's global sustainable development campaign.

We demand that the term ''sustainable development'' be defined, vetted, and controlled by county and state agricultural agencies whose private property it impacts rather than the UN, other international or Agenda 21 agencies, or any federal organization.

That goes for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, too. That's all a conspiracy to take control of families away from parents, so it must not be ratified. This gem is in the education section of the platform, where we find that Iowa Republicans do not like "government schools": "We demand that education be returned to a purely free market system." Even the state Department of Education has be diminished.

Law? Pshaw.

We disagree with Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Bolton as ''settled law.'' Under the Tenth amendment, these Supreme Court decisions have no authority over the states

In fact, the 10th amendment, according to Iowa Republicans, means that Iowa can nullify any goddamned federal law it wants to, and ignore any Supreme Court ruling: "We support constitutional state sovereignty including nullification of federal oversteps." (Their copy of the Constitution apparently is missing a clause or two, like the Supremacy one.)

They're all for pink slime, though. "We support the continued production of lean, fine-textured beef." So they're okay with ammonia-adulterated beef, but are suspicious of that whole GMO business: "We support labeling GMO (genetically modified) crops and food products made from GMO crops as such."

That's just a smattering of the 403 policy statements or ''planks'' in the proposed platform, and barely scratches the surface of the document, written after, as Ed Kilgore points out, Ron Paul supporters took over much of the party apparatus. Ed makes a good point about how national Republicans should have to answer for the crazy that is blooming within their party. "Walking those planks," he says, "would do them a world of good in coming to grips with what's happened to their party."

The 2010 elections supposedly swept the tea party into great power in Congress, with great vats of ink spilled on the populist fervor they represented and on claims that these weren't basically standard conservative Republicans. But in fact, the 2010 freshman class has been something of a dud in that regard, from their official tea party affiliations to their less-than-populist approach to financial legislation-and taking money from the big banks.

A Think Progress analysis finds that, despite the anti-bailout campaigns many of the tea party frosh ran in 2010:

Eleven of the 15 have become co-sponsors of H.R. 3461, a top priority for the ABA. According to Americans for Financial Reform, the legislation would ''tilt the playing field further in the direction of excessive deference to industry interests and tie the hands of regulators attempting to protect the public interest.'' [...]

And of the 15, all but McKinley and Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) voted for the GOP's 2013 budget proposal, which included the repeal of a key component of the financial sector regulation.

Meanwhile, they've collected a combined $602,627 in PAC contributions from banks enrolled in TARP and the American Bankers Association. It's not just banking-when it comes to the business as usual of working for legislation that benefits campaign donors, the tea party freshmen have been right on board to help donors on several issues.

Despite the class of 2010's big tea party reputation, Republicans elected to the House that year were actually less likely than other Republicans to join the Tea Party Caucus; moreover, according to a Politico analysis, in 100 key votes in 2011, the class of 2010 Tea Party Caucus members voted against the Republican party's position just 1.25 percentage points more frequently than did their non-tea party freshmen colleagues.

All of which just goes to show what we've long known about tea partiers in general: They're just conservative Republicans, rebranded.

All the whacko states are doing it, defunding Planned Parenthood. Now add Pennsylvania to the list.

Pennsylvania State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler) will introduce legislation on Wednesday that would defund Planned Parenthood, adding his state to a list of four others that have pending bills to strip public funds from the family planning provider.

Metcalfe's bill, the Whole Woman's Health Funding Priority Act, would put health care providers that offer abortion services at the bottom of the priority list for state funding. The anti-abortion activist group Susan B. Anthony List and the Alliance Defense Fund co-wrote the bill, which closely resembles the one Arizona lawmakers used to defund Planned Parenthood earlier this year.

The Susan B. Anthony List appears to be picking up where ALEC left off, becoming a right-wing, social issues legislation mill. Metcalfe's bill is like the effort in Ohio that would put Planned Parenthood at the end of the list of health care providers to receive funding, rather than cutting it off entirely. That's what Texas did, losing Medicaid funding and ending up in federal court over it. Arizona followed Texas in an outright ban. Kansas, Michigan, Oklahoma are also considering defunding bills now, giving us a preview of what could happen with Mitt Romney in the White House, warns one advocate.

"What's happening in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kansas is a preview of what would happen in all 50 states if Mitt Romney is elected," said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "Planned Parenthood won't let politics interfere with the health care that one in five women in America relies on at some point in her life. Planned Parenthood doors are open, and they'll be open tomorrow."

In just this handful of states, as many as 350,000 people could be cut off entirely from health care, Planned Parenthood estimates. That's because in the rural and medically underserved areas of these states, Planned Parenthood is the sole provider for women's health services. Which of course doesn't matter to Republicans. Take Romney's word for it: "Planned Parenthood, we're going to get rid of that."

Hello, human diary. It is I, Mitt Romney.

Today I gave a speech at the Latino Coalition annual economic summit. This was good, because it had the word "economic" in it; it also had the word "Latino" in it, however, which was the trickier part. I have found connecting to ethnic units to be quite difficult, during this campaign. For some reason they seem to be suspicious of my intentions.

Immigration seems to be a sensitive topic in this community. I have tried in the past to thread that needle with what I thought was a perfectly sensible proposal, which is that we simply make life in America so miserable for immigrants that they self-deport. The benefits of this policy would be numerous; in addition to reducing government costs by outsourcing immigrant deportation to the immigrants themselves, it turns out that most of my other polices would have the side effect of making non-wealthy members of the country quite miserable already, which means very little additional work would have to be done. This self-deportation policy was, alas, not well received by the ethnic unit community. I still do not fully understand why, but Eric F. has stated that I am not to speak of it again.

It is at times like these that I wish I still had access to the undocumented workers that used to work for me, so that I may discuss my ideas on the subject with them, and perhaps receive suggestions on how better to make the lives of undocumented workers less bearable in general. Alas, I was forced to downsize them because I was running for office, for Pete's sake. (Note to self: Pete still owes me for that one. Discuss it with him.)

Regardless, my speech today to the ethnic units was satisfactory. I successfully addressed the immigration issue by removing all mentions of it from my speech, thus solving the problem. Not mentioning things is proving to be among my greatest campaign assets, and Eric F. believes we should strive to do more of it.

Let's look at the latest national polling (excluding the daily trackers, which don't provide gender breakdowns), plus a couple of recent state polls:

Compare it to two weeks ago, and it's clear that the gap hasn't gone anywhere. Obama maintains significant leads among women in pretty much every one of those polls.

What makes some gender gaps less pronounced is the percent of men Obama gets-the better he does among men, the smaller the gap.

That's not exactly good news for Team Red, which needs to run up big margins against men to have any chance of victory. Because they sure as heck ain't gonna pick up the ladies.

A lot of politicians have "gone birther" over the last few years, usually when they didn't think their remarks would reach a wider audience than the roomful of nutty conservative voters they were currently pandering to, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a subsequent walkback that's as trainwreckish as this one. Previously, it was Congressman Mike Coffman's turn at the throttle of the ol' birther locomotive, resulting in this rather strange comment:

"I don't know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don't know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he's not an American. He's just not an American."

It turns out that saying the the president of the United States is "in his heart" not an American must still have some downside attached to it after all, because Coffman has been backpedaling ever since (note: for the purposes of this metaphor, the birther locomotive is powered by bicycle pedals. If you've ever met a birther, you probably already have this image firmly in your mind). Specifically, he released a statement saying, "I misspoke and I apologize."

And that, in turn, led to one of the most ridiculous street interviews ever given by a sitting congresscritter. Wow:

KYLE CLARK: Thank you for your time. I apologize for showing up unannounced. I've been trying to call your staff. They won't return my phone calls. Let me ask you, after your comments about the President, do you feel voters are owed a better explanation than just, I misspoke?

REP. COFFMAN: I think that... Umm... I stand by my statement that I misspoke and I apologize.

KYLE CLARK: OK. And who were you apologizing to?

REP. COFFMAN: You know, I stand by my statement that I misspoke and I apologize.

KYLE CLARK: I apologize, we talk to you all the time, you're a very forthcoming guy. Who's telling you not to talk and to handle it like this?

REP. COFFMAN: I stand by my statement, that I wrote, that you have, and I misspoke and I apologize.

KYLE CLARK: Was it that you thought it would go over well in Elbert County where folks are very conservative and you'd never say something like that in the suburbs?

REP. COFFMAN: I stand by my statement that I misspoke and I apologize.

KYLE CLARK: Is there anything I can ask you that you'll answer differently?

REP. COFFMAN: You know, I stand by my statement that I misspoke and I apologize.

KYLE CLARK: Thank you, congressman.

REP. COFFMAN: Thank you.

Coffman may be in a bit of a pickle here. If he confesses to not being effing loony after all, the base will have his head. If he doubles down on the crazy, he will risk becoming a prominent laughingstock in a Congress where you have to be really, really over the top gain a distinction like that. (You practically need to be throwing pies at people just to rise above the background noise of crazy set by people like Allen West and Louie Gohmert on any given day; Coffman's previous comments, however, did the trick.)

But it's a shame, because while Coffman is now taking the news interview equivalent of pleading the Fifth, there's still no explanation on how a sitting congressman can divine that the president of the United States is not American "in his heart." And I really wanted to hear that one.

Rep. Trent Franks, a Republican from Arizona, seems to think he is much better attuned to the needs of District of Columbia residents and their elected (but non-voting) representative, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D). When Franks introduced a bill that would ban abortions in D.C. after 20 weeks of gestation, he wouldn't let Norton speak at a hearing in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, which he chairs.

Since Franks appears to be so interested in D.C. affairs, some 50 residents of the district showed up Wednesday in a clever bit of protesting at his office to give him the skinny on what he can do for them since he apparently has spare time from his duties speaking for the people of Arizona's 2nd District.

Organized by DC Vote, which seeks full representation for D.C. in Congress, and Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, the protesters each spent a few minutes seeking help from "Mayor" Franks in getting potholes repaired, rat infestations exterminated, parking tickets fixed, Washington mass transit fully funded and other matters of local concern dealt with.

Franks didn't talk with a single one of them.

"I have to say I'm very disappointed today," [said one 56-year-old protester]. "I really wanted to meet my representative, Mr. Franks. He's supposed to be representing us and I did take some time to come in here today, so I hope he takes these concerns into account."

Franks said last week that D.C. representation has nothing to do with his bill, H.R. 3803, the District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would prohibit abortions after 20 weeks regardless of the circumstances. Ilir Zherka of D.C. Vote disagreed:

''If [Franks] continues to act like a D.C. Council member or mayor of the District, then we're going to treat him that way. [...] Clearly this isn't easy to talk about and it's important for me but it's really important for all of the women that don't know that they have to make this decision. [...] I have a house here. I vote here. I voted in a special election in my ward the other day. So I take that very seriously and the notion that somebody would come in from the outside and try to impose law that doesn't reflect what the rest of D.C. residents [think], I think that's a huge issue.''

Huge, indeed. But then the fact that D.C. residents get no say in this matter makes no never mind to Franks and like-minded politicians. They are, after all, working prodigiously on a broad front to keep women and their doctors from having a say about a medical procedure that should be a decision made solely by them. Why would they care whether D.C. voters get a say on lesser matters?

How much taxpayer money did President George W. Bush request to fund an advertising campaign to tout the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act (MMA), the big giveaway to drug makers and insurance companies? At least $154.3 million. How was that money spent?

[A]n investigation by the Government Accountability Office and HHS's own inspector General concluded that the federally funded campaign was ''misleading'' and ''may also have illegally used public money to make what in effect were fake news reports about the law that did amount to propaganda.'' (emphasis mine)

Why does this matter now? Because the Obama administration has signed a $20 millon contract with a public relations firm to create materials informing and educating people about how to stay healthy and how the Affordable Care Act can help. As Think Progress's Igor Volsky writes, the dimwit Right is having a major hissy fit about it.

- SARAH PALIN: ''This is one of the stupidest things I've heard coming out of the Obama administration. Not only is this, of course, pending in court, and I think it will be deemed unconstitutional, but this is a propaganda piece, which I think violates many of the procurement laws and other laws applicable to government contracts. This is propaganda. It's just promoting 'ObamaCare.''' [Fox News, 5/22/2012]

- SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ): ''Outrageous waste of taxpayer $ to promote #Obamacare - 'HHS signs $20M PR contract to promote healthcare law' [Twitter, 5/22/2012]

- SEN. ROY BLUNT (R-MO): ''It's unacceptable that Pres Obama intends to waste $20M on the taxpayer's dime to sell U.S. on unpopular #ObamaCare'' [Twitter, 5/22/2012]

- SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): ''$20M for marketing #ObamaCare? This is a wasteful & inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars.'' [Twitter, 5/22/2012] (emphasis in original)

For the record: fake news reports = propaganda; a "multimedia ad campaign" = advertising. That's a distinction Palin would be too dumb to understand and McCain too duplicitous to acknowledge. Nonetheless, let's just reiterate the facts. What Bush did was probably illegal use of taxpayer money. The GAO said so. What Obama is doing is simple advertising.

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There's a lot of chatter today about the new Gallup poll showing that the number of Americans who identify as pro-choice is down to an almost all-time low of 41 percent.

You will no doubt hear the anti-woman extremists cite this as evidence that they're winning the war on women's reproductive rights and have persuaded the majority of Americans to oppose abortion.

But the number of Americans who identify as pro-choice isn't the number that matters. This is:

Only 20 percent of Americans think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. Which means the overwhelming majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or some circumstances. Even among the 51 percent who consider abortion "morally wrong," many of those same people still don't think abortion should be completely outlawed.

Those numbers should be identical. Someone who identifies as "pro-life" supposedly thinks abortion is immoral and should be illegal in all circumstances. But that's not the case, because even those supposedly "pro-life" Americans don't really want to see themselves-or their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers-lose their reproductive rights. Regardless of their rhetoric, at the end of the day, they don't really want to go back to the days of back alley coat hanger abortions. They may be outside women's health clinics, terrorizing doctors and patients, screaming about murder and the unborn and the sanctity of life, but even those most virulent extremists seek safe, legal abortions for themselves and their families, and they're awful glad that clinic is there for them in their time of need.

That doesn't make them "pro-life." That makes them hypocrites.

Republicans have long used the "tax-and-spend" trope as a cudgel against Democrats. That's happening again this election season. But, as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney pointed out to reporters riding Air Force One Wednesday, asserting that President Obama has been on a spending spree is a GOP talking point utterly in conflict with the facts.

Carney had just read the Rex Nutting analysis in the Marketwatch section of the Wall Street Journal that we highlighted here Tuesday. Condensed, that analysis says the "spending binge" Obama supposedly has been on since he came into office never happened.

Donovan Black of Politico wrote that Nutting's piece spurred Carney to offer a bit of advice for his captive audience:

''That is a fact not often noted in the press,'' Carney said, ''and certainly never mentioned by the Republicans.'' [...]

''I simply make the point-as an editor might say-to 'check it out,''' he said.

''Do not buy into the B.S. that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration. I think doing so is a sign of sloth and laziness.''

Critics on the left have argued that the Obama administration has not spent enough because more government stimulus is needed to remedy the impacts of the Great Recession. Paul Krugman and other economists came to this conclusion before the stimulus was passed 39 months ago. Christine Romer, former chairperson of the Council on Economic Advisers, also wanted more stimulus, but her ideas in this regard never made it to the president's desk. The counter-argument was that while more would probably be better, politically more was impossible because an unwilling Congress stood in the way.

Suppose for a moment that Congress had not been in the way. Suppose that the stimulus package had been double what it was, rounded off at $1.6 trillion. That's pretty much what I and others argued should have been pushed. Reckless spending? On the contrary, it would have meant a temporary boost in additional overall spending of just 5 percent. It should be noted that military spending has risen just under 8 percent since 2009. For comparison, during George Bush's two terms overall military spending rose 68 percent. Against that, a doubled stimulus package, especially one focused on investments in clean energy and restored infrastructure, seems more than reasonable. And still nothing like a "spending spree."

Whether or not one believes Obama should have spent more to boost the economy, it's clear that he has not presided over four years of reckless expansion of the federal budget. As Carney points out, the media should not be reinforcing the Republicans' bullshit claims that he has.

So Mitt Romney made another embarrassing gaffe today: He pledged that in a Romney administration, unemployment would fall to six percent by the end of 2016.

Why is that a gaffe?

Well, to start with-as NBC's Mike O'Brien points out-Mitt Romney earlier this month said that he wouldn't celebrate anything less than four percent unemployment. So in the span of less than a month, Mitt Romney has already moved his unemployment rate target up by two full points-a 50 percent increase.

Second, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office already projects that under current policy the unemployment rate will fall to six percent by the end of 2016. In other words, Mitt Romney's pledge is no better than current projections.

Finally, President Obama's economic team has already projected a six percent unemployment rate in 2016. So Mitt Romney isn't promising to do any better than the president's own projections.

But it's even worse than that for Romney. The White House projections were developed in the late summer of 2011 using very conservative growth assumptions. For example, they projected a fourth quarter 2012 unemployment rate of 8.8 percent, but it's already down to 8.1 percent. As a result, in February the White House said that they expected unemployment would be even lower than they had originally projected ... which means Mitt Romney is pledging higher unemployment rate than President Obama. And if that's not a gaffe, I don't know what is.

Time to close out the second round! The bracket is here.  

The quarterfinals will begin next Monday, with the GOP debate audience booing the gay soldier facing off against the thousands of women Herman Cain didn't molest, Rick Santorum's no sex for pleasure battling Rick Perry's drunken speech, a Mitt Romney (Etch-a-Sketch) versus Mitt Romney (he doesn't care about the poor) contest, and Mitt Romney's "corporations are people, my friends!" challenge against whoever wins today.

1. RICK SANTORUM TELLS PUERTO RICANS TO SPEAK AMERICAN

What kind of moron goes to Puerto Rico and tells the voters there to speak English if they want to be American?

While Santorum said it was not the role of the president to advocate for Puerto Rico's statehood, he said, ''To me, it doesn't make any sense to be in America and not want to be a state and have full rights as a United States citizen.''

"Like any other state, there has to be compliance with this and any other federal law," Santorum said. "And that is that English has to be the principal language. There are other states with more than one language such as Hawaii but to be a state of the United States, English has to be the principal language."

Any such federal law is nativist fantasy, of course, while Puerto Ricans are already United States citizens. So, instead of spending valuable time stateside ahead of a critical primary in Illinois, Santorum spent several precious days in Puerto Rico insulting voters en route to a 83-8 shellacking.

2. GOP AUDIENCE CHEERS "LET HIM DIE!"

BLITZER: A healthy 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, you know what? I'm not going to spend $200 or $300 a month for health insurance because I'm healthy, I don't need it. But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it.

Who's going to pay if he goes into a coma, for example?  Who pays for that?

PAUL: Well, in a society that you accept welfarism and socialism, he expects the government to take care of him.

BLITZER: Well, what do you want?

PAUL: But what he should do is whatever he wants to do, and assume responsibility for himself. My advice to him would have a major medical
policy, but not be forced -

BLITZER: But he doesn't have that. He doesn't have it, and he needs intensive care for six months. Who pays?

PAUL: That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to prepare and take care of everybody -
(APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?

CROWD: Yes! Yeah! (LAUGHTER)

It's funny when people die.

Michael Gerson, laying down some CW, yo:

I've previously argued that the Obama administration, motivated by instinctual liberalism, stumbled into this conflict [over birth control] with Catholic leaders. It is possible, however, Obama is making the political calculation that appealing to younger, non-religious voters is worth the alienation of traditional Catholics. Yet even if this strategy makes sense nationally, it might not be wise in, say, Pennsylvania or Ohio, where the votes of white Catholics could matter greatly.

What evidence does Gerson have for this? Nothing based on reality, that's for sure:
Yup, that's the polling trendlines in Pennsylvania, where President Barack Obama has been increasing his lead since the whole controversy exploded earlier this year. While closer, Ohio has followed a similar path, with Obama's lead increasing since the controversy first emerged.

I know conservatives dearly hope that Catholics ignore all the ways Republicans make a mockery of their faith (supporting unjust wars and the death penalty, cutting programs for the poor and opposing comprehensive immigration reform), and some of them have! Or maybe they have. Who knows? But regardless, whatever minute amount of support Obama may lose from Catholics (who support access to birth control overwhelmingly, remember!), he'll more than make up among newly energized women.

In Pennsylvania, women made up 54 percent of the vote, and opted for Obama 59-41, an 18-point margin. In PPP's latest Keystone State poll, they choose Obama by a 20-point 56-36 margin.

Meanwhile, the media, the GOP and Mitt Romney are all convinced that the economy will ultimately doom Obama. It's the reason why Republicans have spent the last three years doing everything to tamp down any recovery. Yet is that really a magic bullet?

No state has a crappier economy than Nevada.

The Silver State ... has the dubious distinction of leading the nation in unemployment, foreclosure filings and share of homes worth less than the mortgages on them.

If voters were inclined to blame Obama for the nation's economic woes, Nevada would be strong Romney territory. Heck, as a bonus, it's one of the most heavily Mormon states in the union! Yet, once again, reality:
The state isn't in play, with even a recent Rasmussen poll showing Obama safely over 50 percent. If Nevada can't be in play, then Republicans are going to have to depend on far more than the (improving) economy to make their case to voters.

• Today's comic by Jen Sorensen is The Nine Zeros Club:
  
  
• I'm reminded of Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992 Republican convention ... when he finished speaking, I called my brother to say "Bill Clinton just won." So by all means, give him a slot:
  

  Donald Trump is beginning to campaign for a big speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in Tampa this year, asking his Twitter followers to "imagine him speaking at the RNC Convention" today.

• Sarah Palin goes rogue ... this time from her teabagging fan base:
  

  Sarah Palin endorsed Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch Tuesday night, throwing her support behind the six-term incumbent who is facing a primary race against former state Sen. Dan Liljenquist, who is supported by tea party groups.

• And speaking of Palin, Katie Couric wants her to know that she has an "open invitation" to appear on Couric's upcoming new talk show, but:
  

  Make no mistake, though: Couric stands behind her revealing Palin interview in 2008. Couric earned some of her best reviews, but Palin fans were furious.

  "I have no regrets about that interview," Couric said. "I don't need a do-over. I'm very proud I was doing my job, and when someone is running for the second highest office in the land, I think it's important to ask pointed, challenging questions, as I do for all candidates."

  You remember ... probing, hard-hitting questions like "What newspapers do you read?"
• You heard about Pastor Worley, the so-called man of God who advocated rounding up gays and lesbians behind an electric fence and starving them to death ... well, it turns out that a lot of his flock share his Christian values.
• Yikes and then some:
  

  A Maryland-based emergency service dispatcher was placed on administrative leave with pay after he fell asleep while on duty and began snoring during an emergency call.

  A women who phoned 911 after her husband suddenly stopped breathing was transferred to the dispatcher, but her repeated cries of "hello" could not rouse him. A second dispatcher came online and guided the woman through opening an airway for her suffocating spouse, all while the first dispatcher remained on the call, snoring away. [...]

  The husband was eventually taken to the hospital, and was not adversely affected "as a result of the call."

• Well, this is mighty neighborly:
  

  Residents in Reidsville, North Carolina have begun receiving fliers inviting them to a May 26 Ku Klux Klan cross burning intended for ''white people only.''

• Berkeley's Police Chief seems confused on the appropriate use of law enforcement:
  

  Late on the afternoon of January 11, an estimated ten Berkeley police officers, several of them from the department's Drugs Task Force, knocked on front doors in a residential block in north Oakland. They were not looking for drugs. They were hunting for the missing iPhone of Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan's teenage son. [...]

  Chief Meehan is currently at the center of an independent investigation into his decision to send an officer to the home of a reporter in the early hours of March 9 with a request to correct a story.

  And if you care, they didn't find the phone.

Support for marriage equality continues rising in polls, with a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finding 53 percent of people support it and 39 percent oppose, "a dramatic turnaround from just six years ago, when just 36 percent thought it should be legal." Perhaps most startlingly, 59 percent of African Americans polled said they supported marriage equality, a rise of 18 points over polls taken prior to President Obama's statement of support for marriage equality; the Post, however, cautions that the margin of error is high due to a relatively small number of black people polled.

Marriage equality typically does better in polling than in actual voting, and 53 percent of a national sample supporting equality certainly reflects much higher support in some places (polls have found 59 percent approval in California and 60 percent in Massachusetts) and much lower support in others. So the days of anti-gay ballot measures passing may not be quite over-but we're clearly on the right path, and November may bring a reversal of Maine's 2010 vote against marriage equality.

Mitt Romney, one year ago as he launched his presidential campaign:

I am running for president because I have spent my life in the private sector.

Mitt Romney, today:

Mark Halperin: So when the President says he wants to focus a lot of the election and debate on your career at Bain Capital, do you welcome that?

Mitt Romney: Well of course, I'd like to also focus on his record. What is it that he's done as the President of the United States over the last four years? And the American people are interested in, not so much in the history of where I was at Bain Capital, or that I have understanding of the private sector, but instead, has the President made things better for the American people?

Earlier, in a speech at the Chamber of Commerce, Romney also refused to touch Bain, other than to characterize the Obama campaign's criticism of his Bain record as a "war on job creators." Of course, that's baloney: Romney launched his campaign by saying his core qualification for the presidency was his stewardship of Bain. It's perfectly fair for the Obama campaign to point out that Romney's Bain experience has not prepared him for the presidency and does not reflect the priorities most Americans want to see in the White House.

And while you'd think that Mitt Romney would be able to defend himself if he really believed what he said when he launched the campaign, so far, he hasn't. Instead of rebutting the Obama campaign, Mitt's only response has been to punt.

I know you'll be shocked to learn that there's gambling going on at this particular establishment, but:

Per an email to a Romney campaign official from Jack Gerard, President and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute: ''Scott Jones just called my phone looking for Andrea because he has an issue brief for the Gov. on Ampad. Since Andrea is headed to the airport she asked that I pass onto you. Scott is in our database but did not yet make a donation. I wanted to pass along in case this is helpful. If not no worries he is not a donor that needs attention. Thanks, Jack''

My emphasis.

Presumably the fact that Gerard has access to Mitt Romney's donor database means that he's a bundler for Romney, although the campaign hasn't disclosed who its bundlers are (unlike the Obama campaign). And I wouldn't be shocked if the net result of this email leak was to serve as a not-so-subtle reminder to Romney supporters that if they want to be listened to, they'd better pony up some cash.

This isn't really news (unless you're a clergyman in the Catholic Church or your name is Rick Santorum), but yet another poll, this time from Gallup, shows that pretty much everyone in America-including Catholics who are supposedly losing all their religious freedomz because of birth control-thinks birth control is totally a-okay.

This is just the latest in a series of polls showing that:

• most Americans have a favorable view of birth control;
• most Americans think all workers should have access to birth control, regardless of their employers' religious beliefs;
• most Americans, including Catholics, think employers should be required to provide health insurance that covers birth control;
• and most Americans support a federal requirement that private health insurers cover the full cost of birth control.

In other words, pretty much all Americans freakin' love birth control. They want everyone to have access to birth control. And they want insurers to pay for it. And they don't give a rat's ass what employers think of birth control-including Catholics, whose very faith is supposedly under attack.

That's bad news for Republicans, who thought that attacking the president for his birth control mandate would actually win them any support. And it's especially bad news for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who this week coordinated a massive lawsuit by more than 40 Catholic-affiliated institutions, like the University of Notre Dame, to try to stop the administration from implementing the new mandate.

This, of course, follows on the heels of months of whining and crying by the bishops about how the president is waging war on the Catholic Church and religion and the First Amendment and God himself. If women have affordable access to birth control, the bishops claim, the entire Catholic Church will be so driven to distraction that it will no longer be able to "live out the imperatives of our faith to serve, teach, heal, feed, and care for others." And if that sounds like the bishops have tried to take health care hostage by threatening to suspend all of its good, Jesus-y works, that's because that's exactly what the bishops have tried to do. Enforce our belief that women should not use birth control, since we can't make them listen to us, or we'll stop feeding the poor, healing the sick and caring for others.

But this poll shows what all the others before it have shown: no one cares what the bishops say about birth control. Everyone likes it, everyone wants it, and no one other than the same crooked organization that covers up for pedophiles has a problem with it.

Mitt Romney is at it again, deceptively editing President Obama's words in another attack video. This time, he combines a cropped quote with a poorly phrased Washington Post headline to claim President Obama said the entire 2012 campaign would be about Bain Capital instead of the economy. The video opens with a the headline text:

Obama on Bain: 'This is what this campaign is going to be about'

It quickly transitions to a clip of President Obama delivering the quote cited in the headline. From there, it then shifts into rebuttal mode, with text declaring "No Mr. President it's about this..." followed by anti-Obama testimonials from unemployed Americans.

The problem, as you can see in the montage that I put together at the top of this post, is that President Obama never said the campaign would be just about Bain. Here's his full quote:

This is not a distraction.  This is what this campaign is going to be about-is what is a strategy for us to move this country forward in a way where everybody can succeed?

The bold part is the part that Romney cropped out. And when you read the full quote,  it's clear that President Obama didn't say what Romneyland wants you to believe he said. The president made it clear that he believes the campaign is going to be about moving America's economy forward. Yes, Romney's Bain experience is part of that debate-but it's not the whole thing.

There's no doubt that Romneyland is aware that their video distorts what President Obama actually said. They will of course defend it by citing the Washington Post headline, but unlike the Washington Post, they did not offer any context beyond the headline. And even if The Post hadn't offered context, isn't there an old saying about two wrongs not making a right?

Unfortunately, the fact that Romney's campaign deceptively edited a video of President Obama is nothing new. They've done it before and will do it again.

Perhaps the most notable thing here is that Romney's campaign is once again making it clear they do not want to talk about his record as CEO of Bain. But while that might be understandable, let's not forget that when he launched his campaign nearly one year ago, Mitt Romney himself said his business experience is the reason he decided to run for president:

I am running for president because I have spent my life in the private sector.

Based on those words, you'd think Romney would be the one arguing that this campaign should be about his experience at Bain Capital. Instead, he's falsely accusing President Obama of making that claim-and then condemning him for it.

A bunch of Senate Republicans, with Orrin Hatch (UT) as their ringleader, sent a sternly worded letter [pdf] to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to let him know of their deep concern about the nation's "fiscal health." The job creators, they imply, are not doing their job creating thing because they are so worried that their tax rates might go up next year. Also, too, they're bitching about the agreement they made last year in the Budget Control Act (BCA) that could result in defense cuts at the end of the year.

To which Reid replied, in essence, lump it.

For the past few years, I have been disappointed to see Republicans Colleagues abandon common-sense approaches to the fiscal challenges facing our nation apparently out of fear of retribution from Tea Party extremists. The American people want a balanced approach to fiscal policy that combines smart spending cuts with revenue measures that ask millionaires and big corporations to pay their fair share. Yet a strict adherence to Tea Party ideology among Republicans in both the House and the Senate has so far put that balanced, common-sense solution out of reach.

Once Republicans are willing to abandon their commitment to more tax breaks for multi-millionaires and special interests and their plans to end Medicare, I am confident that we can reach an agreement. Unfortunately, it appears that Republicans' blind adherence to Tea Party extremism is making it impossible to reach this sort of balanced agreement before the election.

Democrats do have a trump card in this upcoming battle-two, actually, if they'll play them. The automatic cuts that could happen as a result of the BCA, if another agreement isn't reached, are far less destructive to programs Democrats generally support. Social Security and Medicaid are protected from any cuts, and the cuts to Medicare are limited to provider payments meaning beneficiaries won't see direct cuts. Letting the sequester-the automatic cuts included in the BCA-happen could be better than anything Republicans would agree to, all things austerity considered.

The other advantage Democrats have in the fight is that they don't have to act at all for the tax cuts for the wealthy expire. It's the old "do nothing" approach that would reduce the deficit by more than $7 trillion in the next decade. The downside for Democrats is that doing nothing would also allow middle-class taxes to rise, but the fact remains that Democrats don't have to act.

(Click for larger size)

Leading Off:

• NM-01: Bernalillo County Commissioner Michelle Lujan Grisham came out with an internal poll of the three-way Democratic primary (courtesy Greenberg Quinlan Rosner) on Tuesday, prompting her rivals to follow suit. Lujan Grisham's survey has her tied with state Sen. Eric Griego at 35 apiece, while former Albuquerque mayor Marty Chavez is back in third with 23%. A trendline included in the memo aims to show that Grisham is "surging": At the end of February, her own polling had Chavez at 37, Griego at 28, and herself at 24.

Griego responded with his own internal from GBA Strategies that puts him up 35-30 over Lujan Grisham, with Chavez again in last place at 28. To make his own claim to momentum, Griego also included an earlier poll result from late February/early March which was almost identical to Lujan Grisham's: Chavez 37, Griego 30, and Lujan Grisham 24. So both agree that Chavez once had a lead, that he's since slipped to the bottom of the pile, and that both Griego and Lujan Grisham have seen their numbers increase. The only dispute-and it's a crucial one-is over how much they've each gone up.

Meanwhile, Chavez's own numbers are a lot sketchier. He apparently isn't revealing the name of his pollster, but according to the New Mexico telegram, his survey was "an automated poll of over 1900 respondents" taken this past weekend. What's more, Chavez's usual pollster is Lake Research, and this certainly doesn't sound like a Lake poll. I wouldn't be surprised if Chavez learned his opponents had been in the field and decided that he needed to hustle out a new poll of his own showing him in not-as-dire straits. But his own numbers aren't very good anyway: Chavez 26, Lujan Grisham 25, and Griego 24.

What's heartening about the two more reputable polls (from Griego and Lujan Grisham) is that left-leaning voters apparently are not splitting the vote in such a way as to benefit the conservaDem Chavez. Let's just hope this holds until primary day on June 5.

Here's an AP story Mitt Romney's campaign would rather not see:

The core of his presidential candidacy under attack, Mitt Romney has yet to shape a playbook to defend a quarter-century in the business world that created great riches for himself and great hardship, at times, for some American workers.

Romney and his aides have struggled to respond consistently to intensifying criticism about his tenure at Bain Capital and how it would be reflected in his presidency. The lack of a cohesive message stems, in part, from Romney's fundamental belief that any debate that puts the economy front and center is a win for Republicans.

It's hard to imagine Mitt Romney actually believes that he can sit back and coast to victory as long as the economy stays front and center, but based on his lackadaisical response to the Bain assault, it might actually be true. As Alexander Burns notes, he's been AWOL from the campaign trail since Friday and isn't scheduled to make an appearance until noon on Wednesday when he addresses the Chamber of Commerce. (Edit: He'll be speaking at the Chamber of Commerce, but will be addressing the Latino Coalition, a business group affiliated with the chamber.)

Perhaps Romney will use his speech at the Chamber of Commerce to rebut the Bain broadside, but so far he's allowed the 24x7 assault on the central premise of his candidacy to pass without even appearing in the flesh and blood to make a statement in his own defense. He's outsourced everything to surrogates and their response has been all over the map. As his campaign puts out paper saying it's wrong to talk about Bain because it is an attack on free enterprise, the RNC touts Bain as a political winner because it was profitable. As Romneyland gleefully points their fingers at off-message Democrats, they are comparing what Romney did at Bain favorably to President Obama saving the auto industry. As one surrogate says attacking Bain is fair game, a senior strategist says the Obama campaign is engaging in "performance art gibberish."

But even with Romney in hiding, with his campaign and Republicans on a million different pages, and with Democrats pounding on Bain, the one thing everybody seems to be able to agree with is that if you're looking for somebody to run a private equity firm, Mitt Romney is a good guy to talk to.

The problem for Romney is that one of the reasons he was so good at making money that he dreamed up schemes like extracting profit from struggling companies by loading them up with debt and then taking millions in management fees while creditors got pennies (or less) on the dollar when they collapsed. It takes brains to come up with something like that ... but those aren't the kind of brains you want in the White House.

And while Romney can convincingly make the case that he's a good guy to talk with if you want tax advice (he pays less than 15 percent tax on income over $20 million), he definitely isn't the kind of guy you want devising a fair and equitable tax policy for the nation.

Given the obvious liabilities with his experience at Bain, you'd think Mitt Romney would be more eager to talk about his record as governor of Massachusetts ... but when he was governor, Massachusetts ranked 47th in the nation in job creation. Jobs grew nearly four times faster outside the state than they did inside the state. That's not a track record you want to see in a president. He could justifiably boast about being the father to Obamacare and bringing near-universal coverage to Massachusetts, but he's completely disowned his signature achievement.

So with Mitt Romney you have a guy who is unable to talk about his experience at Bain and is unwilling to talk about his experience as governor ... which raises the question: Just how in the world does he think he'll be able to close the deal and win the presidency? (At this point, it would be rubbing salt in the wound for me to bring up the laughable notion that his Olympic experience qualifies him for the presidency ... or to mock him for bringing a carbon copy of Bush's economic policies to the table.)

Given all of Romney's problems, the more you think about it, the more you can understand why he feels tempted to just sit back and do nothing. Keeping his mouth shut might be his best hope of winning.

Recapping yesterday's action:

OK, before I begin, I just want to make clear that I'm not responsible for the Congressional schedule. Nor do I make it up out of thin air.

Now, I don't think any of you think I am responsible for it. Nor do I think any of you think I'm making it up each day. But I just want to be absolutely clear about things before I tell you what happened yesterday, and what's anticipated today.

As you know, the House is not in session this week.

The Senate, however was... there.

OK, I'm procrastinating. Look, the Senate was supposed to do one thing and one thing only yesterday (not counting eating lunch). They were supposed to execute their agreement to adopt the motion to proceed to the FDA bill at 2:15. But they didn't do it. First, they delayed it until 4:00. Then they delayed it again, until 11 a.m. today. I don't know why, exactly, although it probably had something to do with amendments. But the bottom line is that they had a unanimous consent agreement in place, and then kept unanimously agreeing to unanimously agree to the motion to proceed at some later time.

So that was it. They had lunch, they agreed to agree a few times that they should get back together and agree later. And the one thing that actually moved the ball on a piece of legislation was that they started the Rule XIV process for bringing two bills directly to the floor without sending them through committee: 1) S.3220, the Paycheck Fairness Act, and; 2) S.3221, the Rewarding Achievement and Incentivizing Successful Employees Act. That'll make those two bills eligible for floor consideration by today, though it's not by itself any guarantee that they'll actually get that floor consideration, whether today or ever.

Looking ahead to today:

Deep breath.

Today, the Senate will... do what it was supposed to do yesterday. Or, perhaps I should back off of that a little bit. The Senate is supposed to do today what it was supposed to do yesterday. That is, they're slated to agree to the motion to proceed to the FDA bill at 11 a.m. today. But first, they'll spend an hour or so "debating" it some more. Naturally!

And after they agree to the motion to proceed? Well, uh... they'll proceed. For another hour. And then what?

Well, nobody knows, exactly. They'll definitely continue consideration of the bill, which means they'll be "debating" some more, though at least at that point they'll finally be officially debating the bill itself, rather than pretending to debate the question of whether or not to start debating the bill. But how long they'll debate is anyone's guess.

The real debate will be going on off the floor, where the party leaders will be trying to reach an agreement on how many and which amendments will be offered. If they can reach a deal, great. If not, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) might just end up having to file for cloture on the bill, and throwing it to the 60-vote test. Or, he may decide to switch gears once the Paycheck Fairness bill becomes eligible for floor consideration, leaving the FDA bill for later. This report indicates that Reid is planning to file cloture on the Paycheck Fairness Act on Thursday. But filing on Thursday would mean no vote would be possible (absent a unanimous consent agreement) until at least Saturday, and the chance of the Senate sticking around for Saturday votes prior to a recess seems pretty slim, especially since even a successful cloture vote can still mean another 30 hours before there's a vote on the actual bill on which cloture was invoked. Besides, filing cloture on the bill assumes they're going to get past the motion to proceed before Thursday, which also seems unlikely, unless there's an agreement I don't know about. So I have my doubts about whether that's right.

In any case, whether it's Thursday or Saturday or next month when they actually have a vote on final passage, it's not today. And this is Today in Congress. I just felt like I owed you a little something more than telling you that they didn't do anything yesterday, but that they were totally gonna get it done today.

Lastly, thank you all for your kind comments yesterday. Amazingly, if I didn't know why I did this yesterday, it can hardly be any less confusing for me today, seeing how they're making a second attempt at what it was that drove me up the wall yesterday. But it seems your kind words of appreciation convinced me to come back.

Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE&hellip

I have questions

Specifically, questions for conservative North Carolina Pastor Charles Worley, who has come up with a rather creative way of putting America back on the straight and narrow path:

"Build a great big large fence, 150 or 100 miles long. Put all the lesbians in there. Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. Have that fence electrified so they can't get out. Feed 'em, and&hellipand you know what? In a few years they'll die out. You know why? They can't reproduce."

My questions:

1. Would construction of the fence be put out for bids, or would you award a no-bid contract to Halliburton?

2. Who would pay for the fence and the power needed to electrify it? Taxpayers? The private sector? A public-private partnership?

3. Would you inform the fence builders that they're constructing a death camp for roughly 7-8 percent of the American population, or would you keep it a secret? Would their benefits include dental?

4. Would you procure the land you'll need for the camp through eminent domain or some other means?

5. What kind of permits will you need to get before you start building, and are you prepared to bribe the proper authorities, if necessary, to get them approved?

6. Would you buy or rent the necessary aircraft? (Suggestion: catapulting the food into the camps might be cheaper.)

7. What kind of food would you drop on the lesbians, queers and homosexuals? Would they be in large crates or loosely packed in nets? Would you make special arrangements for customized meals to accommodate, say, vegetarians and/or those with food allergies?

8. Would you also drop water on the lesbians, queers and homosexuals, or would the food contain enough moisture to keep them minimally hydrated?

9. How would you prevent the lesbians, queers and homosexuals from digging tunnels under the fence and escaping? Would you prefer hiring mercenaries from Blackwater to stand watch from guard towers, or would a moat filled with alligators be more effective?

10. How would you deal with the media when they start publishing stories about your death camps? Build another fence for them?

11. Would you also build a special enclosed electrified fence for the parents of the lesbians, queers and homosexuals as a cautionary measure, since they're the ones who produced them in the first place (and they may try to make more)?

12. Now that I think of it, shouldn't you play it safe and fence off all potential breeders, since it's impossible to know which ones will pop out another lesbian, queer or homosexual?

I'd also like to ask you, Pastor Worley, if you were born a fully-formed genocidal maniac or if you had to work at it. But that would be insensitive of me.

Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

_{Visual source: Newseum}

CSM:

The core of his presidential candidacy under attack, Mitt Romney has yet to shape a playbook to defend a quarter-century in the business world that created great riches for him and great hardship, at times, for some American workers.

Molly Ball/NJ:

Who Won the War Over Cory Booker?

Democrats and Republicans both believe they got the upper hand in the kerfuffle over Cory Booker's criticism of attacks on Bain Capital.

Peter Morici/Fox:

The president's surrogates may have backpedaled on their criticism of private equity, however, Mr. Obama brilliantly drew the contrast between his public career and Mr. Romney's private pursuit of profit-that's where he wants voters' attention.

George E. Condon Jr./NJ:

And he certainly was not backing down from an attack the White House sees as critical to his electoral fate. In fact, the president left no doubt that Romney will not get away, as he did in the primaries, with casting his years at Bain Capital as time spent creating jobs. And, as a bonus, the answer provided voters with the clearest explanation yet from the incumbent of what he thinks a president is supposed to do.

Twice in his response, the president insisted that questioning Romney's days at Bain is "not a distraction," adding emphatically, "This is what the campaign is going to be about." He was scornful of Romney's contention that somehow Bain is out of bounds. Noting that Romney is promising to "fix" the economy, he said, "And if the main basis for him suggesting he could do a better job is his track record as the head of a private equity firm, then both the upsides and the downsides are worth examining."

Matthew Cooper/NJ:

Of course, Obama is right, too. If Romney's going to run on his Bain credentials, then his Bain record is fair game and not a distraction. The record of businessmen in the White House is decidedly mixed, of course. Mining executive Herbert Hoover and agribusinessman Jimmy Carter did well in the private sector ... well, you get the point. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were, by some estimates, richer than Romney, although how you compare Monticello to the mansion in Belmont, Mass. is beyond me. Still, it's worth asking about Bain and a business background in general and Obama is within his right to ask it. Ironically, the Cory Booker confession is a distraction from that real issue.

Finally, I can't help but think somewhere in a parallel universe Sen. Marco Rubio is going on Fox to clarify his remarks.

Are we talking about Bain? Yes, we are.

Dana Milbank:

But the Republicans were more inclined to blame the Dodd-Frank law itself - tiptoeing past the awkward fact that it hasn't been in force. Corker predicted that ''the American people are going to wake up'' and realize ''this big Dodd-Frank bill really doesn't address real-time issues.'' Nebraska Republican Mike Johanns added his concern that ''regulations become more and more onerous.''

And Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey judged that ''we've gone down the wrong road'' with Dodd-Frank. The better course, he said, is a less intrusive plan that would ''let the people in the marketplace make the decisions they will make.''

Sounds nice. But that's what gave us 2008.

Hmmm. Who's won that argument?

Maureen Dowd:

Father Doesn't Know Best

Aren't the contraception-crazed bishops the real pills here?

Polygamy, cloning humans and having an affair took the most morally offensive spots on the list. ''Gay or lesbian relations'' tied ''having a baby outside of marriage,'' with 54 percent approving. That's in the middle of the list, above a 38 percent score for abortion and below a 59 percent score for ''sex between an unmarried man and woman.''

The poll appeared on the same day as headlines about Catholic Church leaders fighting President Obama's attempt to get insurance coverage for contraception for women who work or go to college at Catholic institutions. The church insists it's an argument about religious freedom, not birth control. But, really, it's about birth control, and women's lower caste in the church. It's about conservative bishops targeting Democratic candidates who support contraception and abortion rights as a matter of public policy. And it's about a church that is obsessed with sex in ways it shouldn't be, and not obsessed with sex in ways it should be.

Ross Douthat follows the NY Times conservative path, appearing to lay out the logic of an inclusive Obama policy on contraception and then concluding the opposite in the last paragraph. It's a technique David Brooks has perfected. In any case, Douthat badly needs to read Maureen Dowd (in his own paper).

At Threat Level, David Kravets reports:

Did you hear the one about the New York state lawmakers who forgot about the First Amendment in the name of combating cyberbullying and ''baseless political attacks''?

Proposed legislation in both chambers would require New York-based websites, such as blogs and newspapers, to ''remove any comments posted on his or her website by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post.''

No votes on the measures have been taken. But unless the First Amendment is repealed, they stand no chance of surviving any constitutional scrutiny even if they were approved.

Republican Assemblyman Jim Conte said the legislation would cut down on ''mean-spirited and baseless political attacks'' and ''turns the spotlight on cyberbullies by forcing them to reveal their identity.''

Had the internet been around in the late 1700s, perhaps the anonymously written Federalist Papers would have to be taken down unless Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay revealed themselves.

''This statute would essentially destroy the ability to speak anonymously online on sites in New York,'' said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney with the Center for Democracy and Technology. He added that the legislation provides a ''heckler's veto to anybody who disagrees with or doesn't like what an anonymous poster said.''

---

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2011:

Last week, the rhetoric of Cornel West created a small firestorm in some progressive circles, particularly among the more ardent supporters of President Obama. West is to the left of the left on the American political spectrum, and from an ideological standpoint it is no surprise that he would have plenty of problems with the Obama presidency. But West's rhetoric became personal, questioning the president's values on the basis of aspects of the president's background and upbringing. And West having leveled such criticism, some of the president's more ardent supporters responded in kind, attacking West personally, and even by making personal attacks on those who agree with some of West's criticism of the president.

It did not make for a productive dialogue, and while it degenerated as it progressed, it began with West's own words. West has valid and important things to say about the president's approach to policy and politics, but by personalizing it he guaranteed that many wouldn't hear what in that criticism was valid and important. West is not a psychiatrist or psychologist, and he has no great insights into the childhood and upbringing of a man with whom he has no intimate relationship, so his criticism in this case was highly inflammatory and completely lacking in intellectual credibility. Which was unfortunate, because it shut down any legitimate conversation before any such conversation could even begin.

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If you had been waiting on pins and needles for the state of play in the pivotal Vermont gubernatorial election, or wondering which Democrat had the edge in the (legitimately) competitive open seat in NM-01, today was your day.

Amid other presidential polling (including three new national polls in addition to the daily trackers), the downballot races get a deserved glance today, as well.

On to the numbers:

PRESIDENTIAL GENERAL ELECTION TRIAL HEATS:

NATIONAL (ABC/Washington Post): Obama d. Romney (49-46)

NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Obama tied with Romney (46-46)

NATIONAL (NBC/WSJ): Obama d. Romney (47-43)

NATIONAL (PPP for Daily Kos/SEIU): Obama d. Romney (47-46)

NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Obama d. Romney (46-44)

NORTH CAROLINA (SurveyUSA): Romney d. Obama (45-44)

PENNSYLVANIA (PPP): Obama d. Romney (50-42)

DOWNBALLOT POLLING:

AZ-SEN (PPP): Jeff Flake (R) 48, Richard Carmona (D) 35; Wil Cardon (R) 40, Carmona 37

AZ-SEN--R (PPP): Jeff Flake 42, Wil Cardon 20

HI-SEN--D (Public Strategy Group for Case): Ed Case 46, Mazie Hirono 45

MA-SEN (Hartstad Research for the DSCC): Elizabeth Warren (D) 46, Sen. Scott Brown (R) 46

NJ-09--D (Garin-Hart-Yang for Pascrell): Steve Rothman 44, Bill Pascrell 43

NM-01--D (GQR for Lujan-Grisham): Eric Griego 35, Michelle Lujan-Grisham 35, Marty Chavez 23

NC-GOV (SurveyUSA): Pat McCrory (R) 44, Walter Dalton (D) 39, Barbara Howe (Lib) 7

VT-GOV (Castleton State College for WCAX-TV): Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) 60, Randy Brock (R) 27

WI-GOV (GQR for We Are Wisconsin): Gov. Scott Walker (R) 50, Tom Barrett (D) 47

A few thoughts, as always, await you just past the jump...

Men are increasingly moving into jobs traditionally dominated by women, the New York Times' Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff report, with a third of job growth among men coming in occupations that are 70 percent female, and the trend appearing in men of all races and ages, as, during the recession, the "growth rate slowed for male-dominated and mixed jobs, but ticked up slightly for those dominated by women." That growth meant women's jobs were more available, and some number of men were willing to make the switch-despite the fact that, when the Times divided women's jobs into pay categories:

We divided ''women's'' jobs into low- and middle-wage jobs, as a stand-in for training. (We defined middle-wage jobs as those that pay $30,000 to $60,000 a year. There are no high-paying occupations among those that are dominated by women.)

That's a startling statement, isn't it? "There are no high-paying occupations among those that are dominated by women." After however many waves of feminism and women going to college, entering the workforce, all the advances of recent decades, and there is still not one female-dominated occupation that ranks as high-paying.

Then add in that these occupations are nonetheless becoming more popular among men. Why? Individual men will have their own reasons, but broad economic trends explain a lot:

[F]inancial security usually requires a steady full-time job with benefits, something that has become harder to find, particularly for men and for those without a college degree.

It's a pretty clear statement of how broken the American middle-class jobs economy is: The erosion of growth and stability among traditionally male-dominated professions suddenly makes the relative stability of even comparatively low-paying female-dominated professions seem appealing to men.

Well, that took slightly longer than I thought it would:

Not to be outdone by the Arizona secretary of state's recent flirtation with birtherism, Sheriff Joe Arpaio escalated his probe into President Obama's birth certificate this week by dispatching a deputy from his ''threats unit'' to Hawaii.

Both the Arizona Republic and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported deputy Brian Mackiewcz traveled with Arpaio's volunteer posse member Michael Zullo on Monday to try to get an official confirmation that Hawaii has the president's birth certificate on file.

The "threats unit" in question is Arpaio's Threats Management Unit. In theory, they investigate threats to judges and other government officials, but under Sheriff Joe they seem to also be in the business of "investigating threats to Sheriff Joe's career," which is only surprising if you were still under the impression that Arpaio had a non-crooked bone left in his body. So in this case, the "threat" is that people are laughing at Arpaio and his outsourcing of a "birther" investigation to the small set of loons and crackpots that have the most to gain, financially, from propping those fantasies up. So off goes a deputy sheriff to Hawaii, to ask the folks there if they're super-duper really certain that the birth certificate they have repeatedly confirmed having is, once again, really there.

But wait, you say: Why is Arpaio spending taxpayer money to send a deputy to Hawaii, when he previously said he wouldn't do that? Oh, that would be because Sheriff Joe does not have a non-crooked bone in his body. I think I may have mentioned that. And given that the other person on this Hawaii junket is Michael Zullo, who's currently selling an e-book on the vast, damning pile of whatever he and Jerome Corsi found and put under the Sheriff Dumbass letterhead, you would think that maybe some of the proceeds of that book could go to bringing along a guy with a badge (I don't know that they've earned actual plane fare money, but I'm just saying) instead of having the people of his county pick up the tab, but nope. Not bloody likely.

Oh, Sheriff Joe. How can we miss you when you won't go away? Stay tuned for the results of this latest twist in the investigation, which will either be "Hawaii didn't let us see the birth certificate, so they're mean and that proves Obama is from Kenya," or perhaps "Hawaii did let us see the birth certificate, but, um, pixels and stuff," or more likely still "Hawaii let us see the birth certificate, but then Michael Zullo tore it out of their hands and ate it, so now it's not there anymore. Isn't that suspicious?"

My money's on number three. Oh, and that Sheriff Joe drags his little "investigation" out for the entirety of the election season. Not because he's pissed at the feds for suing his department, and not because he's a famously narcissistic dumbass with a god complex, but for the people.

Janesville, Wisconsin, teachers who signed-or simply may have signed-petitions to recall Gov. Scott Walker are being targeted by an anonymous group. The group, fronted for by Citizens for Responsible Government, a conservative Milwaukee organization, filed freedom of information requests and obtained the names, job titles, and salaries of every teacher in Janesville, then produced a flier listing the names and salaries of the 321 highest-paid teachers. The flier urges recipients to look for the teachers' names on a list of recall petition signers and:

At the bottom of the flier is a "Parents' Rights Protection Form" urging parents to send it to Superintendent Karen Schulte and request that "my child be assigned to a classroom taught by a non-radical teacher during the 2012-2013 school year." [...]

Schulte said if she receives any of the requests, "they're going in the trash."

If everyone who signed a petition to recall Walker is a radical, Wisconsin has a lot more radicals than most of us would have guessed. As for the anonymous people putting out the flier:

"They want to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation," [Citizens for Responsible Government spokesman Orville] Seymer said. "However, this is all public information."

If anyone knows a thing or two about retaliation, I guess it would be the anonymous cowards printing the salaries of public school teachers on fliers exhorting people to research those teachers' political actions and demand to have children pulled from classrooms accordingly. A similar flier distributed in March described public schools as having "dumbed-down curriculum," "Marxist/globalist agenda," "sexualization of children" and "union bullying and vindictive targeting of students," and urged parents to move their kids to private schools.

I've lost count of how many of these studies have been done at this point, but I guess it's time to add another one to the pile. Watching Fox News makes you less informed about events than not watching any news at all.

According to a new study by Farleigh Dickinson University, Fox viewers are the least knowledgeable audience of any outlet, and they know even less about politics and current events than people who watch no news at all.

Respondents to the survey were able to answer correctly an average of 1.8 of 4 questions about international news and 1.6 out of 5 questions about domestic affairs. ''Based on these results, people who don't watch any news at all are expected to answer correctly on average 1.22 of the questions about domestic politics, just by guessing or relying on existing basic knowledge,'' said Dan Cassino, the poll's analyst.

''The study concludes that media sources have a significant impact on the number of questions that people were able to answer correctly,'' wrote Cassino and his colleagues. ''The largest effect is that of Fox News: all else being equal, someone who watched only Fox News would be expected to answer just 1.04 domestic questions correctly-a figure which is significantly worse than if they had reported watching no media at all. On the other hand, if they listened only to NPR, they would be expected to answer 1.51 questions correctly.''

Now, let's just reflect on this. Let's say you decided to make a little fort out of your couch cushions, crawl inside, and just stay there. No television, no newspapers, no contact with the outside world whatsoever. Let's say you only ventured out to hunt your own food in the backyard, so that your meals consisted mainly of crabgrass and possums. Let's say that, for companionship, you made a little stick figure out of paper clips, named him, oh, I don't know, let's say "Skippy," and devoted yourself to long, meandering conversations with him about nothing in particular. Then you got mad at him and broke his little paper clip leg, panicked and buried him in the yard.

You'd still know more about the world than if you watched goddamn Fox News.

On Monday, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes was giving one of his patented "I iz so smart, Fox iz so great" college lectures. This one was filled with gems like "one thing that qualifies me to run a journalism organization is the fact that I don't have a journalism degree" and that reporters for the New York Times were "a bunch of lying scum." Oh, and that everybody in the media is just outrageously liberal, everywhere, all the time.

You would think that having studies show that your "news network" actively causes viewers to know less about the news than when they started would put a bit of a damper on your ol' public displays of self-aggrandizement. Then again, if you're the head of Fox News, you probably just say those studies are figments of the imagination, or were commissioned by dirty rotten hippies, and get on with your day. Or maybe you just have Steve Doocy say that stuff, because you can't be bothered and because Steve Doocy will freaking say anything you put in front of him.

So given that public shaming is right out-I'm sure Roger would be first to tell you that the purpose of the news is not to inform people, after all-what's left? Maybe a truth in advertising law, so that if your viewers score abominably in tests of basic world events, you're no longer allowed to call yourself "news" anymore? Federal marshals come to paint over the "News" part of all your signs? (Say what you will, but I believe passing laws with hilarious consequences is just not something we do enough of-at least, not intentionally. Unintentionally, we do it all the time.)

At the least, I might politely assert here that if your "news" programs result in people not knowing the news, or believing false things about the news, it's not "news" anymore. It's propaganda. You can puff out your chest and talk about your patriotism and great business sense all you want, but the rest of us don't have to actually respect you for it. You're still just a huckster in a nice suit.

As part of the controversial federal-state settlement over foreclosure abuse by the nation's five largest banks, half the $5 billion in penalties was carved out for cash distributions to the states. The idea was for the states to use that $2.5 billion to fund various consumer-related programs regarding bad foreclosures. But there was no requirement that states spend the money that way. And so far, many of them aren't, according to a state-by-state survey by the Pulitzer-winning investigative website ProPublica.

In fact, $974 million of that $2.5 billion has up to now gone to plug holes in revenue-short state budgets. Only $527 million has gone to programs related to the housing crisis. With a billion dollars left to be allocated, many states are in the final stages of deciding where their share of the money will go. If the trend so far holds up, 65 percent of it could wind up in the states' general funds.

There's a regularly updated state-by-state interactive map showing how the money is being distributed.

What stands out is that even states slammed by the foreclosure crisis are diverting much or all of their money to the general fund. In California, among the hardest hit states, the governor has proposed using all the money to plug his state's huge budget gap. And Arizona, also among the worst hit, has diverted about half of its funds to general use. Four other states where a high rate of homeowners faced foreclosure during the crisis are spending little if any of their settlement funds on homeowner services: Georgia, South Carolina, Wisconsin, and Maine. [...]

As you can see from our breakdown, 15 states have so far allocated over half their amounts to consumer-focused efforts. But the uses range widely. In Ohio, $75 million has been set aside to destroy some 100,000 abandoned homes. In Minnesota, the state is setting up a fund to compensate victims of the banks' foreclosure abuses.

Some examples:

• Georgia is spending its $99 million share to attract new businesses.

• Virginia put its $66.5 million share into the state's general fund without restrictions. A Democratic attempt to send the money to foreclosure and homeownership programs failed.

• Texas sent its $135 million to the state's general fund. $10 million of that is earmarked for basic services to low-income Texans. Distribution of the rest will be decided in January.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who led the coalition of attorneys general who negotiated the deal, argued that only a very small portion of the settlement was being diverted and it will ''overwhelmingly'' benefit homeowners. The centerpiece of the settlement is a requirement that the banks earn $20 billion in ''credits'' by helping homeowners in various ways-from reducing principal on underwater homes to bulldozing empty ones. Because the system awards only partial credit for certain actions, Miller said the settlement would bring more than $20 billion in benefits to consumers-he estimated $35 billion. Critics contend those sorts of numbers far overstate the benefits to consumers, because the banks can claim credit for some activities that were already routine.

Such a deal.

 

New study shows Congress more bad now than before. Possibly because dumber?

Congress now speaks at almost a full grade level lower than it did just seven years ago, with the most conservative members of Congress speaking on average at the lowest grade level, according to a new Sunlight Foundation analysis of the Congressional Record using Capitol Words.

Both parties has more dumb. But bigger dumb is to Republicans:

For Republicans as a whole, the decline was from an 11.6 grade level to a 10.3 grade level in 2011 (up slightly to 10.4 in 2012 so far). For Democrats, it was a decline from 11.4 to 10.6 in 2011 (also up slightly to 10.8 in 2012 so far.)

And as get more conservative, get way more of the dumb:

Turning to Figure 2, we can immediately notice that grade level of Congressional Record speeches declines among Republicans as the voting record becomes more conservative. Among Republicans, the drop from the most moderate to most conservative is, on average, almost three whole grade levels, from 13th to 10th grade. [...] The data indicate that part of the decline has to do with new junior members speaking at a lower grade level than more senior members, and some of it has to do with individual senior members simplifying their speech over time.

Is because new members dumb, or old members dumb? Both, says study guy, but new members pretty goddamn dumb. Pretty amazing goddamn dumb, if ask me. Dumb like paint.

Good news is democracy grades on curve: Can be dumb like Hulk, still get elected if has money. Bad news is laws more dumb too, because smart not come with office! Only angry smash!

So, who dumbest? Ha ha ha. They figure out. All five most dumb guys new members, including even smart guy who is dumb!

Table 2. Bottom 20 speakers by grade level (all speeches since 1996)

Member	Career Grade Level	Party	Chamber	State	Years in seat
Mulvaney, John	7.95	R	House	SC	1
Woodall, Rob	8.02	R	House	GA	1
Paul, Rand	8.04	R	Senate	KY	1
Duffy, Sean	8.09	R	House	WI	1
Griffin, Tim	8.13	R	House	AR	1

Oh, that bad. Critics point out, just because no talk good no mean dumb. Maybe just like small words, so no choke! Sure buddy. But me already know whole Congress is dumb, so this just add fuel to fire. (Fire bad.)

But also point out: Trends for Social Security and such say "if trends go on, bad things in few decades." By same, if trends in dumb go on, in few decades Congress eat paste. Call it Paste Party, and will say is patriotic. Paste Party got what plants crave?

Awwwwww. This is so cute!

After repeatedly being accused of participating in a legislative "war on women," Republican women in the House of Representatives announced Monday that they're forming a new caucus dedicated to raising their profile as female lawmakers and presenting a "unified voice" on issues that affect women.

You can tell that the Women's Policy Committee is going to be great for women because it's got "women" right in the title! And isn't it so super awesome how there's going to be a caucus in Congress-for the first time ever-presenting a "unified voice" on issues that affect women? It's, like, historical! You know, if you don't count the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues, which has been around since 1977 and considers bipartisanship (that means you too, lady Republicans) "the key to the Caucus' strength and success."

So why would the lady Republicans need their own caucus? Because that other caucus-the one that's been around for more than three decades-doesn't focus on the real issues that real women really care about. For example:

''When I am back home visiting with women in my district, the number one concern I hear is that the uncertainty in Washington about regulation, litigation and taxation is hindering their ability to innovate and create jobs,'' said [Rep. Marsha] Blackburn in a statement.

Isn't that the truth? Ladies, how many times have you been up late at night, balancing the household budget, when you thought to yourself, "Gosh, I can't even concentrate on how to pay the rent when there's so much uncertainty in Washington"? How many times have you been so distracted watching Junior's soccer game because all you can think is, "Dammit, I wish this school's soccer field was subject to less regulation! It could really use a damn oil well over there"?

Well, worry no more, because the lady Republicans are totally going to focus on that kind of stuff, instead of the silly special interest caterpillar claptrap that the other caucus has focused on for more than three decades. Such as:

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act

The Child Support Enforcement Act

The Retirement Equity Act

The Civil Rights Restoration Act

The Women's Business Ownership Act

The Breast and Cervical Cancer Mortality Prevention Act

The Mammography Quality Standards Act

The Family and Medical Leave Act

The Violence Against Women Act

The Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology Development Act

Reauthorization of the Mammography Quality Standards Act

See? Not a single women's issue on that list! That's why the lady Republicans are clearly filling a void:

''The Women's Policy Committee was formed with the idea of better educating Members on the issues that impact women on a daily basis, whether they be mothers, daughters, or small business owners."

Mothers, daughters or small business owners. You can tell from its list of accomplishments that the other caucus doesn't even think about mothers (The Pregnancy Discrimination Act) or daughters (The Child Support Enforcement Act) or  small business owners (The Women's Business Ownership Act). That's why we obviously need the lady Republicans and their new Women's Policy Committee to offer a real "unified voice on issues that affect women." Such as:

 

And in case you were thinking maybe their new video (above) might list some of the specific policies the lady Republicans are totally going to focus on-once they find the time in their busy schedule of blocking renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, trying to defund Planned Parenthood, and opposing the Paycheck Fairness Act because it's so not fair to the menfolk to make them pay ladies equal wages-sorry to disappoint. The lady Republicans don't mention a single policy in their video, unless "giving families the freedom to succeed" is a policy. But at least they do say "women" a lot, and everyone knows that as long as you say "women" a lot, the policies you support or oppose don't really matter.

Hello, human diary. Mitt Romney, here to again put things in you.

Today was a good day. I have been fundraising on Wall Street, which is always a satisfactory experience. Tomorrow I will be giving a speech to the Chamber of Commerce. Being among my peer units is much more relaxing than the usual required campaign banter. There is no complimenting of local foodstuffs involved, or requirement that I feign interest in sporting events frequented by commoners. No, here we simply discuss money. How to get more of it; how to pay less taxes on it; how to circumvent irritating regulations on taking it from others; how much of it should be given to me, personally. Normal, upstanding things.

Attacks on my Bain Capital record continue. We were frankly unprepared for our opponent units to bring it up during this election, but apparently purchasing American companies, extracting all available profits from them and then shutting them down can, to some people, be turned into a negative thing. My insistence that opponents not bring any of this up continues to be ignored, necessitating alternative approaches. After discussing the matter, my advisers have settled on a proposed plan of action, which is to ignore the whole thing. (We may see if the Super PAC can mount a new campaign to call the president anti-American for some reason, just to change the subject.)

While I believe my attempts at bonding with the common folk are progressing reasonably well of late, there continues to be discussion among my advisers of how to institute policies that would better target my attentions on only those units that would most benefit from my campaign wisdom. The success of these Wall Street efforts suggest that perhaps instituting a minimum yearly income requirement for questioners could be beneficial; for example, allowing contact only with humans who have achieved $500,000 in profits per year for the last three years? Eric F. is not impressed, saying the commoner vote continues to be needed, and thus speaking to them continues to be necessary. He seems to be under the impression that during the actual general election, each individual will be granted only one vote regardless of their income level. This seems absurd.

Has this nation gone that far down the path of communism already? There are no laws saying that both wealthy Americans and common Americans are entitled to exactly one automobile per person, and yet the wealthy are limited to only one vote per person, regardless of income level? I have directed Eric F. to give a presentation on his findings to the rest of the staff, but I can only hope he is mistaken.

I am currently working on ideas for my Chamber of Commerce speech tomorrow. I note that the Chamber has recently engaged in a new effort to rescind laws against bribery of foreign officials, as the constant investigations and fines have been causing no small amount of irritation to many Chamber members. No doubt this can be worked into my standard anti-Obama stump materials. The people at Wal-Mart (it appears to be some sort of family company devoted to the Chinese import business) seem especially put out about it, which is fortuitous for me, as I understand family members there literally swim in large pools filled with their own money. With luck, a suitably pro-bribery stance on my part could pry forth quite a bit of cash.

The standard view is that President Obama has been spending taxpayers' money wildly, like no other president before him. Rex Nutting has put the kibosh on that. In fact, growth in federal spending is the lowest it's been since half a decade before Obama was born:

As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: ''I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.''

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an ''inferno'' of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children's future. Even Democrats seem to think it's true.

But it didn't happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

A key aspect of budgeting often ignored for political conveniency is the fact that the federal fiscal year begins Oct. 1. So by the time Obama stepped into the Oval Office, the budget for fiscal 2009 was already nearly one-third spent and expenditures for the rest of the year locked in. He added about $140 billion to the spending in 2009 through the stimulus plan.
For the four budget years Obama has had a direct hand in shaping, federal spending is on track to go from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion. On an annual basis, that's 0.4 percent. When those dollars are inflation-adjusted, federal spending will actually have fallen during Obama's first four budgets at an average rate of 1.4 percent. That, Nutting says, is the first real decline since Richard Nixon pulled hundreds of thousands of the U.S. troops out of Vietnam 40 years ago.

What's also true, of course, is that revenue hasn't kept up with spending. This is partly due to tax cuts pushed through by George Bush, two wars rushed into by George Bush and a record-busting recession that began on George Bush's watch. The impact of the last includes millions of Americans out of work or working fewer hours, thereby reducing income tax revenues and putting immense pressure on expenditures for food stamps and unemployment insurance benefits.

In per capita terms, Nutting writes, real spending will fall from $11,450 per person in 2009 to $10,900 in 2013 (as gauged with 2009 dollars). That's a 5 percent drop.

It can be argued, and obviously has been from the president's left, that he should have sought more spending to quickly reduce unemployment and take advantage of low borrowing rates to improve America's crumbling infrastructure. That he should have gone on a short-term spending binge as an investment in the future. But those who say he actually did do so are not eager for anyone to look at the data and pop their propaganda balloon.

Arkansas and Kentucky are both holding primaries today. Here's a look at the key races in both states. Feel free to post your predictions in comments!

• AR-01 (D): Three Democrats are vying to take on GOP freshman Rick Crawford: state Rep. Clark Hall, prosecutor Scott Ellington and former econ prof Gary Latanich. Hall has raised the most money by far and was endorsed by the Blue Dogs, but Ellington has some name recognition thanks to brokering a plea agreement in the controversial and high-profile West Memphis 3 murder case. Latanich is the most liberal candidate in the race and is likely the third wheel, but if he pulls enough votes, he could send Ellington and Hall into a runoff. There hasn't been any public polling.

• AR-04 (D): There's also a field of three Democrats here who are trying to keep this very red seat in Team Blue's hands after Rep. Mike Ross's unexpected retirement announcement: state Sen. Gene Jeffress, attorney Q. Byrum Hurst and 2010 Senate candidate D.C. Morrison. Jeffress, until recently, has run a mostly invisible campaign (or as commenter GradyDem put it, "an 1870s campaign"), while Hurst jumped out to lead the pack in fundraising. He's also the only candidate to air TV ads. A recent Talk Business poll suggested that Jeffress and Hurst were likely to head to a runoff.

• AR-04 (R): Republicans are pretty much down to a two-way race between Iraq vet Tom Cotton and former Miss Arkansas Beth Anne Rankin, who was the GOP nominee last cycle. Cotton's demolished Rankin in fundraising, pulling in an impressive million bucks to her $400K. He also seems to be the establishment favorite here (the NRCC has put him on their "Young Guns" list). Talk Business also polled this contest and found Cotton pulling away with a 51-33 lead after previously finding the race tied. If those results are accurate, Cotton could avoid a runoff.

• KY-04 (R): When Republican Rep. Geoff Davis announced his retirement last December, it was a virtual certainty that local GOP officeholders would emerge with great speed from to vie for the right to represent this safely Republican seat. Seven Republicans did indeed file with the Secretary of State, but the race is widely considered to be a three-way contest between Lewis County Judge-Executive Thomas Massie, Boone County Judge-Executive Gary Moore and state Rep. Alecia Webb-Edgington.

Moore would seem to have an advantage in terms of his power base (Boone County is about eight times bigger than Lewis), but Massie, a tea party-backed Paulist disciple, is riding an endorsement from Sen. Rand Paul-as well as a flood of outside spending. (Amusingly, most of that spending is coming from a single source: a 21 year-old college Republican from Texas whose banker grandfather left him with an apparently enormous inheritance.) The local GOP establishment, whose first choice appears to be Webb-Edgington (both Davis and ex-Sen. Jim Bunning have endorsed her), appear utterly incensed at the prospect of losing another primary to a Paulist (as they did in KY-Sen last cycle), so I guess that's reason enough to hope that Massie wins. (James L)

We knew this was coming. After all, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has been threatening that if the bishops don't get their way-and prayer, "the ultimate source of our strength," fails them-they'll take their whining to court. And that's exactly what they've done. Via Politico:

More than 40 Catholic institutions on Monday filed lawsuits challenging the Obama administration's policy that requires employers to provide insurance coverage of contraceptives, a coordinated strategy backed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The groups, including the Archdiocese of Washington, the University of Notre Dame and other Catholic schools and charities, filed 12 lawsuits in courts throughout the country. They join about 12 lawsuits already filed against the policy. [...]

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has been a vocal opponent of the Obama administration's policy, is not a party to the suits but said it is backing them.

The lawsuit, filed Monday by the University of Notre Dame, repeats several of the false allegations made repeatedly by the bishops and Republicans, such as:

Under current federal law described below (the "U.S. Government Mandate"), Notre Dame must provide, or facilitate the provision of, abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraceptive services to its employees in violation of the centuries' old teachings of the Catholic Church.

That's something the Church and its various affiliated organizations have continued to claim, even though it's blatantly false. The new mandate does not require the Church, Notre Dame, or any of the other Catholic hospitals or universities to do ... well, anything. It requires the insurance companies who provide insurance to the employees and students of those institutions to "provide, or facilitate the provision of" such basic preventive health care as contraception.

(Continue reading below the fold)

There were a couple of minutes back when Barack Obama released his long-form birth certificate that I actually thought the birther brigade would finally shut up. They had gotten everything they asked for. Against the counsel of some of his advisers, the president had done what no other president in history had done, no other presidential candidate in history had ever done. He had proved with verified documentation that he was actually, truly, really, really, really born in the United States, the offspring of an American citizen and thus eligible to serve in the office for which other American citizens in their millions had chosen him.

That should have been the end of the story. The president proved what anybody with half a brain and absent a racist political agenda already knew to be true. He was just as American as the rest of us. The amateur and professional purveyors of the Kenyan birth conspiracy tale and all its permutations ought right then and there to have dropped to their knees and apologized to everyone within earshot.

But. No.

(Continue reading below the fold)

Seriously, how could you guys vote down "oops"? That may have been the single most upsetting moment of this entire competition. "Oops" was finalist material! Heck, I was rooting for it to go all the way! How often do you get to see a frontrunner campaign self-destruct in 30 seconds, live on television?

Sob. I'm heartbroken. But I'll try to pull myself together and carry on. The bracket is here. Today's winner goes up against Santorum's rant against having sex for pleasure. Does Rick Perry survive this last chance to make the quarterfinals, or will we feature a Santorum-Santorum faceoff?

1. JFK MAKES RICK SANTORUM PUKE

His full comments:

To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case?

That makes me throw up and it should make every American who is seen from the president, someone who is now trying to tell people of faith that you will do what the government says, we are going to impose our values on you, not that you can't come to the public square and argue against it, but now we're going to turn around and say we're going to impose our values from the government on people of faith, which of course is the next logical step when people of faith, at least according to John Kennedy, have no role in the public square.

Catholic voters-the conservative Republican ones!-puked right back.

2. RICK PERRY SPEECHIFIES WHILE DRUNK. OR HIGH. (Or both?)

If you don't have three and a half minutes to watch this, then watch the first and last 15 seconds.

One of the great polling mysteries of the 2012 is the fact that President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are deadlocked in national polling, but the state-level polling shows a much more comfortable Obama lead.

Case in point is Pennsylvania-a state more critical for Romney's chances than Obama's. Yet polling hasn't shown much of a contest. PPP has the latest numbers:

PPP's newest Pennsylvania poll finds things have changed very little in the state over the course of the last ten weeks. Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney 50-42, basically the same as his 49-42 advantage there in early March.

Two weeks ago, Quinnipiac University had Obama leading 47-39 in the state. Several other university polling operations gave Obama big leads earlier in the year. Meanwhile, Rasmussen has been strangely AWOL in the state.

Looking at the big picture, the current state of the race (using TPM's polling composites):

North Carolina has flipped because of a recent Rasmussen polls showing Romney leading 51-43 (something no one else has seen). There hasn't been any new polling in New Hampshire, so it looks like an old Romney-friendly poll must've rolled off the average. And Wisconsin tightened because of our recent PPP poll showing Obama with just a 1-point edge. The catch? The sample was of likely recall election voters, and we are seeing a real intensity gap in Wisconsin for the recall.

Add it all up, and our map is still a comfortable 294-235 Obama victory (with Colorado's nine electoral votes unassigned). And if you look at the polling margins, Obama's leads are far more comfortable than Romney's in the states he leads.

Now consider states like Tennessee, where Romney's lead is less than impressive, and those tied nationwide numbers look particularly out-of-whack. (And yes, that includes our very own.)

• Today's comic is Batemanimation: Mitt on Bain Capital (actual audio) by Scott Bateman:
  
• Bears for a Bearable Tomorrow is now a Super Pac. Seriously.
• How do you resist a headline like this?
  

  Half-naked woman in hot pink duct tape attacks, injures 3 cops

• How much would you pay for a vial of Ronald Reagan's blood?
  

  An on-line auction site is hoping to find out by selling a vial that it claims was used to draw President Ronald Reagan's blood while he was recovering from the gunshot wound that nearly killed him in 1981. To top it off, the auction site says, ''dried blood residue'' is clearly visible inside the vial. [...]

  PFC says the vial is being sold on behalf of the son of a deceased woman who worked at a laboratory in Columbia that tested Reagan's blood, which had been drawn while he was treated at George Washington University Hospital.

  But here's the best part. It's not gross-it's Reaganomics!
  

  The lab worker was permitted to keep the vial and its accompanying paperwork by a supervisor at Bio-Science Laboratories, the son wrote in a statement posted on the auction site. The mother kept the vial until her death in 2010. The unidentified man said he contacted the ''Ronald Reagan National Library'' - he meant the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library - in Simi Valley, Calif., and was told that the National Archives would accept the vial but not pay for it. ''Reagan when he was my Commander in Chief when I was in the ARMY from '87-'91 and that I was a real fan of Reaganomics and felt that Pres. Reagan himself would rather see me sell it rather than donating it,'' the man wrote on the PFC website.

• Whatever the Gordon Gekko wannabe gets for a vial of Reagan's blood, it probably won't be as much as the going rate of Babe Ruth's first season jersey:
  

  The jersey was bought Sunday for $4.4 million, nearly quadruple the previous high for a piece of Ruth memorabilia: the bat he used to hit the first home run at Yankee Stadium on April 18, 1923.

  That went for only $1.265 million.

  ''To see this jersey bring in $4.4 million is shocking,'' said Leila Dunbar, an appraiser and former Sotheby's executive whose specialties include sports memorabilia. ''The record for a Ruth jersey before was $1.025 million. For some reason, there's been a dramatic rise in the value of jerseys the past year.''

• If Mitt Romney even thinks of asking Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels to be his running mate, he'd better think twice because Daniels issued some fightin' words:
  

  "If I thought that call was coming, I would disconnect the phone."

• Fiscal conservatism:
  

  When he entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination in May 2011, Newt Gingrich was the prosperous head of a small empire commonly known as Newt Inc, which included both for-profit consultancies and nonprofit foundations.

  Altogether, these entwined ventures pulled in more than $110 million over the past decade. Now the vestiges of this empire are mired in debt, as is Gingrich's campaign fund.

  A bankruptcy proceeding under way in Atlanta will determine whether the one company still owned by Callista Gingrich, Gingrich Productions, will lose an expected payout that now constitutes the bulk of the Gingriches' net worth.

• Roger Ailes, ladies and gentlemen:
  

  Jon Stewart is a comedian. He wouldn't do well without Fox. And he basically has admitted to me, in a bar, that he's a socialist.

• Family values:
  So now Bristol Palin is going to have a "reality" show glorifying her unwed motherhood as she moves 3k miles away from kid's father.
  — @aravosis via Twitter for Mac

For months now, Mitt Romney has been saying that anytime someone questions his record as CEO of Bain Capital, they are guilty of attacking the free enterprise system itself ... but now one of his campaign's top surrogates is saying that exploring Romney's Bain record is "fair game."

"I think the Bain record as a whole is fair game, and what you have to do is do an honest evaluation," said Sununu, an adviser to the GOP presidential candidate, on a conference call hosted by the Romney campaign.

"The Bain record is about 80 percent, they were able to save jobs at companies, and 20 percent, when they invested in companies that were in such bad shape, they weren't able to save those jobs," Sununu said. "That's a good batting average in the private sector business, private equity business."

Sununu's standard might seem like "common sense," but it's actually nonsense. For starters, the 80 percent figure doesn't mean that in 80 percent of cases, Bain investments led to job growth. AP's Steve Peoples explains:

A Bain spokesman also said "revenues grew in 80 percent of the more than 350 companies in which we have invested," which does not necessarily mean that the companies' bottom lines or job numbers improved.

But even if the real percentage of investments that led to jobs growth actually were 80 percent, it wouldn't change the underlying issue: that the premise of Mitt Romney's candidacy is flawed.

In Mitt Romney's own words, his Bain record is his core qualification. "I am running for president because I have spent my life in the private sector," he said last year, launching his campaign. As we can see now, Romney made a huge error defining his campaign in those terms. Sure, he gets credited with having been a successful private equity businessman, but the nation isn't looking for a private equity CEO to be commander-in-chief. Never before in American history have we elected a corporate titan to the presidency and there's no reason to think we are going to do it now.

As President Obama said yesterday, that's not a knock on CEOs-it's just that CEOs have different objectives than the president, and different skills to achieve those objectives. As much as I like Warren Buffett and liked Steve Jobs, I wouldn't want either of them in the Oval Office, and I sure as hell wouldn't want President Obama running Apple or Berkshire Hathaway.

And one thing we know about Mitt Romney is that he's no Steve Jobs and he's no Warren Buffett.

Mitt Romney hasn't released a full-on budget proposal, because, well, he's running for president, for Pete's sake. Putting specifics on paper could make him unpopular.

That would really be true if all of his statements about spending priorities were put together in one document, as a new analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows. Romney says he would cap federal spending, lower taxes, boost defense spending, and have a balanced budget, all of which would require devastating, massive cuts in domestic programs.

For the most part, Governor Romney has not outlined cuts in specific programs. But if policymakers exempted Social Security from the cuts, as Romney has suggested, and cut Medicare, Medicaid, and all other entitlement and discretionary programs by the same percentage - to meet Romney's spending cap, defense spending target, and balanced budget requirement - then non-defense programs other than Social Security would have to be cut 29 percent in 2016 and 59 percent in 2022 (see Figure 1). Without the balanced budget requirement, the cuts would be smaller but still massive, reaching 40 percent in 2022.

The cuts that would be required under the Romney budget proposals in programs such as veterans' disability compensation, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for poor elderly and disabled individuals, SNAP (formerly food stamps), and child nutrition programs would move millions of households below the poverty line or drive them deeper into poverty. The cuts in Medicare and Medicaid would make health insurance unaffordable (or unavailable) to tens of millions of people.

The cuts to non-defense discretionary programs (education, law enforcement, veterans' health, health research) would come on top of the cuts already put in place by the Budget Control Act. Throw in the tax cuts Romney has talked about, which Urban Institute-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates would cost about $4.9 trillion over 10 years, and you've got a major fiscal disaster for the country in the making.

That's a budget proposal so severely conservative, it's more drastic that the Paul Ryan budget. Ryan's proposing just a measly $5 trillion in cuts over the next decade; Romney would require between $7 and 10 trillion, making Ryan look like a piker. It's also even more unsustainable for the nation than Ryan's plan. There would be essentially nothing left standing but the Pentagon, looking out for the next war. Meanwhile, the casualites of past ones-disabled vets-would be shit out of luck.

No wonder Romney won't put this all down on paper.