Filed under: Elena Kagan Apparently, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan isn’t a fan of ” Twilight ” — or fun — because at today’s Senate confirmation hearing, the gun critic shot down a joke question about “Twilight” like she was Annie frickin’ Oakley . The super uncomfortable… Read more
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Elena Kagan — Death Sentence for ‘Twilight’ Joke
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Tagged annie, because-at-today, critic-shot, elena kagan, hollywood-news, joke-question, kagan, oakley, senate, stars, super-uncomfortable, supreme-court, twilight
Unemployment benefits have become one of the key battles as Democrats push to extend stimulus programs and Republicans balk at the growing cost. Tuesday#39;s vote comes after Democrats repeatedly failed to pass a broad stimulus extension in the Senate, which also would have included unemployment benefits. Democrats brought their new version of the bill to the House floor under expedited rules, which required a two-thirds majority to pass. The final tally was 261-155, with 231 Democrats and 30
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Unemployment Extension June 29 2010
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Tagged bennyhollywood, extend-stimulus, floor-under, growing, Hollywood, House, new-version, senate, vote-comes
Anya “Anna” Chapman, a sexy 28-year-old red-headed beauty, was among a ring of 11 Russian spies arrested and charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. http://www.bittenandbound.com/2010/06/29/russian-spy-anna-chapman-facebook-photo… added by: sumrgurl
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Did you know that calling attention to an area where a Supreme Court justice nominee is from, which happens to be a well-known bastion of liberalism, is bigoted ? If you didn’t, you want to take a look at the wisdom of Salon.com’s Joan Walsh. In her June 28 post “It’s not even coded bigotry anymore,” Walsh argued that references to SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan’s Upper West Side of Manhattan roots are bigoted -since the neighborhood has Jewish features, references to it are anti-Semitic and as she puts it, “not even coded.” “That said, Republicans on the Senate Judicial Committee are trying to make the case she’s outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence, by attacking her clerking for (and admiring) legal giant Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court justice, while singling her out as a denizen of ‘Manhattan’s Upper West Side’ – you know, the neighborhood known for Zabar’s and bagels and, well, Jews,” Walsh wrote. Walsh wasn’t clear about what she thinks these Senate Republicans are trying to accomplish. Conventional wisdom suggests Kagan will be easily confirmed, but pointing out the neighborhood she is from, with documented evidence of having an ideological liberal leaning , is going to accomplish what? She also took a stab at ranking Senate Judiciary Committee Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, with her own efforts to be coded – by invoking his middle name, “Beauregard.” (Remember when liberals hemmed and hawed over using President Barack Obama’s middle name, “Hussein,” as if that were a coded effort to suggest he was Muslim ?) Her beef with Sessions was that he voiced his disapproval of judicial activism. “Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions of Alabama, who wasn’t crazy about Sonia Sotomayor, you’ll recall, denounced Kagan having ‘associated herself with well-known activist judges who have used their power to redefine the meaning of our constitution and have the result of advancing that judge’s preferred social policies,’ and he cited Marshall, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund leader who argued Brown vs. Board of Education,” Walsh wrote. Therefore with that evidence, Walsh declared any GOP senator that opposes Kagan a bigot. “So there you have it. Unable to find any personal statements by Kagan they can use to prove she’s beyond the pale, so to speak – no ‘wise Latina’ moments on her transcripts – they deride her for coming from the Upper West Side, and admiring one of the heroes of American justice, who happens to be black,” Walsh wrote. “Stay tuned for more not-so-coded bigotry from the GOP.”
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Salon’s Walsh Jumps the Shark — Calls GOP Senators Bigots for Invoking Manhattan’s Upper West Side
“I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side… Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds” —Senator Robert Byrd — (D-WV) Robert Byrd was indeed a valuable link not only to the Senate's past, but also to the Democratic Party's history as the party of slavery, segregation, and opposition to equal treatment of blacks. Stolberg obviously loved Byrd's cornpone constitutional shtick in favor of filibustering a Republican president's judicial appointees. It's a shame that Stolberg exerted no effort to put Byrd's shtick in the context it merited. Byrd was old enough, for example, to have vowed memorably regarding the integration of the Armed Forces by President Truman that he would never fight “with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.” Even after his resignation from the Klan, Byrd continued to hold it in high esteem, writing to the Klan's Imperial Wizard in 1946: “The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia.” And Byrd was old enough to have participated in filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as to have voted against it after cloture along with 18 other Democrats — in the name of the Constitution, of course. Funny Stolberg didn't invite Byrd to take a walk down memory lane on that subject. It would have been highly illuminating. In Stolberg's Times profile Byrd cited the late Georgia Senator Richard Russell as his mentor and quoted the advice Russell gave him regarding the ways of the Senate. Russell was a wise man in many ways, but he was also one of the signers of the infamous 1956 Southern Manifesto opposing Brown v. Board of Education — in the name of the Constitution, of course. Also signing the Southern Manifesto was the late Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina. Like Byrd, Ervin was resurrected as a heroic cornpone constitutionalist in the eyes of the mainstream media. Ervin was born again during his chairmanship of the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973. As with Senator Byrd, all was forgiven and forgotten when he became useful to the message of the day propounded by the mainstream media. Stolberg's 2005 profile of Byrd in the Times was accompanied by the photo of Byrd (left) with the caption: “Senator Robert C. Byrd, after speaking at a MoveOn.org rally last month in Washington, defending the use of the filibuster to block judicial nominees.” Only a fellow as supremely lacking in self-awareness as Senator Byrd could have missed the inadvertent allusion to the black power salute of the late 1960's in Byrd's gesture depicted in the photograph, or to the “right on” salute of the radical left of the same period… Continued at: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/06/026630.php added by: Dagum
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Tagged blackest, current, georgia, Hollywood, mainstream, north, senate, stars
President Obama will be handed the power to shut down the Internet for at least four months without Congressional oversight if the Senate votes for the infamous Internet ‘kill switch’ bill, which was approved by a key Senate committee yesterday and now moves to the floor. The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which is being pushed hard by Senator Joe Lieberman, would hand absolute power to the federal government to close down networks, and block incoming Internet traffic from certain countries under a declared national emergency. Despite the Center for Democracy and Technology and 23 other privacy and technology organizations sending letters to Lieberman and other backers of the bill expressing concerns that the legislation could be used to stifle free speech, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed in the bill in advance of a vote on the Senate floor. In response to widespread criticism of the bill, language was added that would force the government to seek congressional approval to extend emergency measures beyond 120 days. Still, this would hand Obama the authority to shut down the Internet on a whim without Congressional oversight or approval for a period of no less than four months. The Senators pushing the bill rejected the claim that the bill was a ‘kill switch’ for the Internet, not by denying that Obama would be given the authority to shut down the Internet as part of this legislation, but by arguing that he already had the power to do so. They argued “That the President already had authority under the Communications Act to “cause the closing of any facility or station for wire communication” when there is a “state or threat of war”, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. ears that the legislation is aimed at bringing the Internet under the regulatory power of the U.S. government in an offensive against free speech were heightened further on Sunday, when Lieberman revealed that the plan was to mimic China’s policies of policing the web with censorship and coercion. “Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too,” Lieberman told CNN’s Candy Crowley. While media and public attention is overwhelmingly focused on the BP oil spill, the establishment is quietly preparing the framework that will allow Obama, or indeed any President who follows him, to bring down a technological iron curtain that will give the government a foot in the door on seizing complete control over the Internet. As we have illustrated, fears surrounding cybersecurity have been hyped to mask the real agenda behind the bill, which is to strangle the runaway growth of alternative and independent media outlets which are exposing government atrocities, cover-ups and cronyism like never before. Indeed, China uses similar rhetoric about the need to maintain “security” and combating cyber warfare by regulating the web, when in reality their entire program is focused around silencing anyone who criticizes the state. The real agenda behind government control of the Internet has always been to strangle and suffocate independent media outlets who are now competing with and even displacing establishment press organs, with websites like the Drudge Report now attracting more traffic than many large newspapers combined. As part of this war against independent media, the FTC recently proposing a “Drudge Tax” that would force independent media organizations to pay fees that would be used to fund mainstream newspapers. added by: im1mjrpain
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Tagged celeb news, china, communications, government, internet, legislation, News, Obama, power, president, senate, senator, stars, sydney
Please don’t let it be Big Bob! Please don’t let it be Big Bob! That fervent prayer by Harold of “Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay” as he desperately hopes that sound of the approaching footsteps don’t belong to a sadistic guard named Big Bob comes to mind when reading a New York Times article by Michael Luo . In Luo’s case he is hoping that the Republicans won’t gain significant victories in this November’s elections. He bases his glimmers of hope on what he perceives to be signs of economic progress. It isn’t a very strong peg upon which he hangs these hopes but it is pretty much all he has: The economy is slowly recovering but remains on its sickbed, and most signs still point to a rough cycle for the party. Political analysts expect Republicans to make gains — possibly significant ones — in Congress in November, threatening to retake the House and maybe even the Senate. But digging deeper, beyond the national numbers, reveals at least a few glimmers of hope for Democrats — still fairly distant and faint, but bright enough to get campaign strategists scanning the horizon and weighing the odds. Please don’t let it be Big Bob! Please don’t let it be Big Bob! That is because different parts of the country are recovering at different rates — and, in a bit of electoral good luck for the Democrats, some of the areas that are beginning to edge upward more quickly, like parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, happen to be in important battlegrounds for the House and the Senate. Whew! So that means that Big Bob, uh, I mean electoral disaster won’t be arriving in November? And here Luo sounds a bit too anxious in his ardent desire to find economic upticks to counter the big bad Republicans: A detailed examination of House and Senate seats in play, alongside state and local economic data compiled by Moody’s Analytics for The New York Times, yields some surprising bits of encouragement for Democrats but also adds color to the overall daunting picture confronting the party. At the very least, any such signs of hope are certain to affect the strategies being worked out now in campaigns. As for the unemployment rate, eh, it should have no effect on the election results. Or so Luo hopes so don’t mention the year 1930 midterm elections results to him: While much attention has been paid to the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment rate, political scientists have found little correlation between that measure and midterm elections results. Instead, they have found more broad-based indicators, particularly real personal disposable per capita income, which measures the amount of money a household has after taxes and inflation, to be better gauges. Another hope is that voters have short memories: Historically, political scientists have found that voters’ memories tend to be short. Larry M. Bartels, a political scientist at Princeton, has studied the impact of economic conditions on presidential elections and found that it is the second and third quarters of the election year that matter most. And if the economy is still in the tank come November? Not to worry. Reality doesn’t really count. Only imaginary perceptions: In the end, however, the ultimate deciding factor will be voters’ perceptions — not how well the economy is actually doing, but how well voters believe it is doing. In the end, Michael Luo still doesn’t sound all that confident about keeping the Republicans from big gains in November. Despite his brave front, one can still picture him with eyes squeezed shut as he hears the ominous economic reports approaching and fervently reciting the political equivalent of: Please don’t let it be Big Bob! Please don’t let it be Big Bob!
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NYT Reporter Desperately Searches for Signs of Economic Progress to Prevent Republican Victories
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Tagged 2010 congressional, analytics, celeb news, congress, democrats, economy, election, even-the-senate, House, new-york-times, News, pennsylvania, remains-on-its, senate
Photo via the Blind Eye The chances of comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation passing the Senate continue to slip away as the election cycle draws nearer. ‘Moderate’ Dems fear throwing their support behind a climate bill like Kerry and Lieberman’s, since Republicans have had some success falsely labeling the bill a ‘job-killing energy tax” (never mind that the vast majority of Americans support clean energy legislation). So, a number of alternative options are being considered, such as an ‘energy only’ bill, and a ‘utility only’ cap and trade bill — a bi… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Does the "Utility Only" Cap and Trade Pass Muster?
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Tagged bennyhollywood, coal, Culture, energy, fear-throwing, Hollywood, lawyers-claim, senate, some-success, support, support-clean, vast-majority
After wondering on Friday if President Obama should help push energy legislation through Congress, MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell continued her cheerleading for a new energy agenda on Monday. On her afternoon show “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Mitchell downplayed the cost of last summer’s Cap and Trade bill, and opined that solar energy should be a part of the American energy future. “Ed Markey’s bill–the Markey-Waxman bill–was a year ago, but it is a Cap and Trade bill, as you were pointing out,” Mitchell said to guest Ron Brownstein of Atlantic Media. “It doesn’t really require us to eat our spinach,” she added. Mitchell introduced the segment by referencing the Oval Office address that President Obama will be delivering Tuesday. “How hard will [President Obama] press BP, and just how far will he go in proposing new energy legislation?” Mitchell asked. After introducing Brownstein to the segment, Mitchell pitched the question she had asked of New York Magazine columnist John Heilemann on Friday: is now the time for sweeping energy legislation? “Strong energy–almost certainly the time to pitch it,” Brownstein answered. He added that it is not certain whether a climate dimension will be included in the bill. The two then discussed Brownstein’s recent trip to China and his insights on the country’s energy policy. “China is by leaps-and-bounds going to lap us on solar,” Mitchell asserted, and then added that it “should be an American initiative.” Brownstein was able to maintain that while China may be making advances in the alternative energy realm, the country is still heavily dependent on coal and thus continues to oppose international efforts to stop global warming. Mitchell chimed in once more on China’s alternative energy record, “It’s extraordinary, and we are falling way, way behind.” The transcript of the segment, which aired on June 14 at 1:16 p.m. EDT, is as follows: ANDREA MITCHELL: When President Obama addresses the nation tomorrow night, how hard will he press BP, and just how far will he go in proposing new energy legislation? Joining us is Ron Brownstein, political director for the Atlantic Media, and someone who has studied energy more intensively than most of our other colleagues, so we welcome you as an expert on that as well. Let’s talk about– is this the time to pitch strong energy legislation and what are the chances of getting anything passed this year? RON BROWNSTEIN, Political Director, Atlantic Media: You know, strong energy–almost certainly the time to pitch it. The hard part is going to be–as you were talking about with Congressman Markey, whether there is a climate dimension to that or not. I think from the beginning–right throughout his campaign, the Stimulus bill–the President has been a strong proponent of incentives to develop alternative energy, wind, solar, efficiency. They’ve always been somewhat ambivalent about whether it was politically realistic to couple that with a serious effort to control carbon emissions, which most advocates argue is the key to a long-term transition toward clean energy. But it imposes more immediate costs now than the carrots you can offer to develop things like solar. So I don’t know what we’ll see tomorrow. I assume that there will be something of a pitch there. But are they in the trenches, really telling Harry Reid, look, this has to be a comprehensive bill? It’s always been a little bit back-and-forth from the administration on that. ANDREA MITCHELL: And in fact, Ed Markey’s bill–the Markey-Waxman bill, was a year ago, but it is a Cap-and-Trade bill, as you’re pointing out. It doesn’t really require us to eat our spinach , and– RON BROWNSTEIN: Well, it does have longer-term–I mean, the Waxman-Markey bill was a comprehensive bill that had a variety of incentives for alternatives, for efficiency, but also did have a Cap-and-Trade system which limited the emissions of Carbon Dioxide and the other gasses associated with Global Warming. That hits coal the hardest, harder than it does oil. It would have a big impact over time in moving the U.S. away from a reliance on coal to generate as much of its electricity. It’s impact on oil dependence might be smaller over time, but even that–because so many states rely so heavily on coal. It was always uncertain that you get the sixty votes in the Senate for that, and that’s been the delay. There’s been an entire year, as John Kerry and Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman and others have tried to find any formula that could get you to sixty votes in the Senate, while limiting carbon emissions. They’ve never found it, and now Harry Reid has to make this decision. Is this the moment to try to do it again, or do you do an energy-only bill, or maybe you can’t do anything. ANDREA MITCHELL: As he’s of course facing his own re-election fight. You just got back from looking at the energy situation in China, and as Bill Gates, Jeff Imhopt, last week– RON BROWNSTEIN: Put out the report– ANDREA MITCHELL: The CEO, of course, of our parent company GE put out their report on R & D, and Ed Markey has a lot of RND in this bill that’s been sitting there for a year. You were in the Gobi Desert, where China– RON BROWNSTEIN: Yes I was. You don’t get to say that everyday. ANDREA MITCHELL: You know, what a great date line– China is by leaps and bounds going to lap us on solar, which should be an American initiative. RON BROWNSTEIN: Right. China is a paradox. Because on one hand, they rely heavily on coal, and they’re a threat to any international effort to constrain Global Warming because of that. On the other hand, they have made enormous, specific goals in the area of alternative energy, solar, wind, high-speed rail, others–and they are becoming a serious competitor for those jobs that the President is counting on as a part of his long-term economic strategy. About half of the solar panels in the world are already built in China and Taiwan. ANDREA MITCHELL: It’s extraordinary, and we are falling way, way behind. Thank you, Ron Brownstein, we are going to stay on this.
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MSNBC’s Mitchell Downplays Consequences of Cap-and-Trade
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