Daily Kos

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Crazy Town) has a new favorite candidate for the House, and he sure seems like an interesting fellow:

Allen Quist, a 67-year-old soybean farmer and onetime anti-sodomy crusader who believes that humans and dinosaurs may have coexisted in Southeast Asia as late as the 11th century. [...]

During his time as a state representative, Quist slammed a gay counseling clinic at Mankato State University by comparing it to the Ku Klux Klan (both would be breeding grounds for evil—AIDS, in this case) and went undercover at an adult bookstore and a gay bathhouse in an effort to prove to a local newspaper reporter that they had become a "haven for anal intercourse."

He "went undercover," eh? Is that what they're calling it now? Too bad Sen. Larry "Wide Stance" Craig didn't think of that one.

Quist doesn't just hate gays, though. He's not very fond of women either:

In one memorable interview, Quist told a British reporter he believed women were "genetically predisposed" to be subservient to men, pointing to, among other things, the behavior of wild animals.

It's easy to see why Michele Bachmann would consider Quist her intellectual soulmate:

"But the Lord says, 'Be submissive wives; you are to be submissive to your husbands.'"

Quist and Bachmann also share a particular fetus fetish:

Quist was a staunch pro-lifer who once argued that abortion should be classified as a first-degree homicide.

Quist, like Bachmann, has also devoted years to fighting against public education, including this contribution to an online curriculum supplemental:

One section asks this leading question: "Did dinosaurs and people live at the same time, and why do so many recently discovered ancient art works accurately picture dinosaurs?" The answer is a resounding "yes." "The only reasonable explanation for the stegosaurus carved in stone on the wall of the Cambodian temple is that the artist had either seen a stegosaur or had seen other art works of a stegosaur," Quist writes. "Either way, people and stegosaurs were living at the same time."

What's most striking about Quist, and his work with Bachmann, is that when they first found each other in the '90s and joined forces to "take down Minnesota's state curriculum standards, which they considered a gateway to a totalitarian society built on moral relativism," their brand of conservatism was considered, you know, extreme. When Quist launched a challenge to then-Gov. Arne Carlson (a Republican), even Republicans thought Quist was a nutjob:

"At one point," the St. Petersburg Times reported in 1994, "a Senate leader suggested he had an unhealthy preoccupation with sex, having devoted 30 hours to it in a single session." [...]

Mike Triggs, a former Carlson aide, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, "Mr. and Mrs. Gopher are going to think [the Quists] are damn weird." He dismissed Quist supporters as "zombies." The governor himself played up his opponent's under-the-covers ops. "Instead of prowling through dirty bookstores, why didn't he go out and change state spending policy?" the governor asked the Associated Press.

But that was then, and now that the nutjobs have taken over the Republican Party, this once-radical Republican is now just another standard Republican on a mission to spread the gospel of stupid.

The U.S. Department of Interior has released its latest assessment of oil and gas leases on federal land. Two-thirds of the off-shore leased acreage and half the on-shore acreage in the 48 contiguous states is idle. The companies holding those leases are not actively exploring or otherwise developing them.

According to the report, more than 70 percent of the tens of millions of offshore acres currently under lease are inactive, neither producing nor currently subject to approved or pending exploration or development plans. Out of nearly 36 million acres leased offshore, only about 10 million acres are active—leaving nearly 72 percent of the offshore leased area idle.

In the lower 48 states, an additional 20.8 million acres, or 56 percent of onshore leased acres, remain idle.

In the long run, we need to wean the nation—and the rest of the world—off these fossil fuels insofar as they are burned for transportation, pumping massive gobs of CO₂ into the atmosphere and altering our climate in detrimental ways we can both foresee as well as only guess at.

There are some places, deep-water off-shore places, Arctic wilderness places, for instance, where oil and gas production should be more limited than it is now or prohibited outright. Some techniques, like hydraulic fracking, and some resources, like oil shale, should not be part of the mix now. But in the transition to non-fossil fuels, some exploration and production are going to continue for a considerable while. And if they are going to continue on public land, then, in the words of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, leases should be developed "in a timely and responsible manner and with a fair return to taxpayers."

The industry says the Obama administration is presenting an unfair picture of the situation. American Petroleum Institute Pres. Jack N. Gerard said the administration is trying to distract voters from what the industry considers bad policies standing in the way of more drilling:

“It’s absurd to contend the industry pays the government billions of dollars every year in bonus bids and rents to leave land idle,” he maintained. [The industry] develops leases as expeditiously as it can—often in the face of inordinate delays the administration’s own policies create. The administration is being willfully misleading when it identifies leases as idle when companies are seeking permits, doing exploratory drilling, or fighting lawsuits.”

Uh-huh. The administration has opened up tens of millions of acres of land for oil and gas leasing. It held a lease auction last year and it's holding another one this year. Drilling is now at its highest level since the Reagan administration. The industry was upset because the White House held back on leasing while BP was spewing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It's upset that it has to pay more to lease each acre. It's upset that some modest new restrictions have been placed on drilling. And no doubt it's upset about the shutting down of its cozy arrangement of partying and sleeping with employees of a now-extinct division of the Department of Interior charged with governing leases.

Currently, the industry has three Colorado Republican congressmen in its pocket pushing three outrageous pieces of legislation designed to cut the public out of the leasing review process:

H.R. 4383 creates a $5,000 fee for individuals who wish to participate in the decision-making process for oil and gas development on publicly owned lands. That includes families living near drilling sites who could be forced to live with the effects of drilling on their air and drinking water.

H.R. 4382 outlaws the right of public, local governments, and stakeholders to review lease sales, preventing new information from affecting leasing decisions. It also prevents the BLM from revising leasing plans.

H.R. 4381 gives oil companies first crack at all federal lands, rather than creating a level playing field between renewable energy and fossil fuels. It puts drilling über alles – making it the primary use of public lands above scientific, scenic, historical, ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water resource, and archeological values.

If these bills manage somehow to clear Congress, President Obama should ink up that too-little used veto stamp and deep-six them with as much ceremony that is given to bills that get signed.

The fact of the matter is the oil-and-gas industry isn't being held back by onerous red tape on developing land it's leased. It's not using 7,000 already-approved drilling permits for federal and Indian lands. 7,000. Already got the lease. Already got the final permit to go ahead. So what's the problem again?

If Big Oil were producing energy from its own bullshit, we'd already be free of fossil fuel.

Everyone knows that opening a meeting with a joke is a great icebreaker. And at the annual meeting of Safeway Inc.'s shareholders, Senior Vice President and General Counsel Robert Gordon opened with a real knee-slapper:

You know, this is the season when companies and other institutions are interested in enhancing their reputation and their image for the general public, and one of the institutions that's doing this is the Secret Service, particularly after the calamity in Colombia. And among the instructions given to the Secret Service agents was to try to agree with the president more and support his decisions. And that led to this exchange that took place last week, when the president flew into the White House lawn and an agent greeted him at the helicopter.

The president was carrying two pigs under his arms and the Secret Service agents said, "Nice pigs, sir."

And the president said, "These are not ordinary pigs, these are genuine Arkansas razorback hogs. I got one for former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and one for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton."

And the Secret Service agent said, "Excellent trade, sir."

(Laughter)

Isn't that funny? Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton are worth less than pigs! Ha!

If you can't see the humor in that joke, you obviously are a humorless feminist who refuses to see the inherent comedy in unfavorably comparing two of the most powerful women in the world to pigs. It's just a joke, after all. Lighten up. A senior executive of a major corporation would never engage in actual sexism, especially at a meeting that he knew would be recorded and posted to the internet. So obviously it was just some harmless, lighthearted fun. Right? And not one single person in that room who laughed at this "joke" would find humor in real sexism. After all, it's 2012. Women can vote and run for office and own property and everything! And just look at the huge advancements women have made in the boardroom. Why, even a whopping, record-breaking 3.6 percent of Fortune 500 companies are run by women. (Even though they make only 69 percent of what male CEOs make.) And only 10 percent of those Fortune 500 companies (of which Safeway is number 63) have all-male boards of directors. Even Safeway has one. Just one. Progress!

And besides, Safeway has a strict Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, which Steve Burd, Safeway's chairman, president and CEO, proudly claims is a hallmark of its "well-deserved reputation for honesty, integrity and fair dealing."

Because nothing says "integrity" like making jokes about powerful women who are worth less than pigs. Ha ha ha!

Of course, what's extraordinary about this "joke" is that it's not extraordinary. It's a blatantly sexist, disrespectful joke that a high-level executive at a major Fortune 500 corporation felt perfectly comfortable telling at a meeting that he knew was being recorded and webcast out to the world. Because it's just a joke. Who could possibly take offense? Certainly this kind of run-of-the-mill sexism garners laughs in boardrooms and executive offices all over America. This is just the way it works.

And that's the problem. It's this kind of casual sexism that contributes to a corporate culture in which women are still not especially welcome. Yes, things have changed and improved, but women are still woefully underrepresented—and underpaid—and it's not hard to see why, when corporate America is still so obviously a boys' club where women are merely the butt of a joke to warm up a crowd.

Until the highest echelons of corporate America no longer feel perfectly comfortable cracking "jokes" like this, women—even the 3.6 percent who now run Fortune 500 companies (at a reduced rate)—still have a long road ahead before we can achieve full equality.

Send an email to Safeway to let them know what you think of the general counsel's "joke."

Politico's Dylan Byers weighed in Wednesday morning with a theory about why the Sunday talk shows haven't booked Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein. It's all because "none of these shows want to appear partisan."

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

And, puhleez.

Prompted by Greg Sargent's commentary, I noted Tuesday that Mann and Ornstein's hotly discussed op-ed saying Republican extremism is behind government dysfunctionalism ought to be the topic of at least one of the Sunday talk shows. Their format is tailor-made for the kind of in-depth dissection that such a thesis deserves. And yet, the two men have not been invited on any of the shows to explain themselves.

Byers called CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC to ask why not and got what he called a "nearly unanimous" response: They don't comment on their booking practices. "Nearly unanimous" would suggest that one out of the four did explain why the two men hadn't been booked. But we aren't told what that one said. Instead:

Worth noting, too, that all of these shows have a pretty significant backlog of potential guests, and only an hour each week. But there's a fair chance the thesis is being overlooked because none of these shows want to appear partisan.

Apparently, Byers sleeps in on Sundays. I don't blame him. But as I documented by not sleeping in over a 16-month period, and others also have demonstrated here and here and here and here and here, the Sunday talk shows are relentlessly partisan. A partisanship that favors Republicans when Republicans are in power and out of power.

Perhaps, if they didn't dial up John McCain every Friday to see if he's available to discuss whatever they decide needs discussing, some headway could be made on that "backlog of potential guests."

Public Policy Polling (PDF). 4/26-29. Usual Democratic primary voters. MoE 5.4%

As chair of the Senate finance committee, Sen. Max Baucus led the charge against even cursory exploration of a single-payer system (which could've been used, at worst, as a bargaining chip toward making the public option the default compromise), then hosted the so-called Gang of Six "negotiations" with Sens. Olympia Snowe, Chuck Grassley and arch-conservative Mike Enzi. For Baucus' troubles, those Republicans would later brag about how they used those pretend negotiations to delay consideration of any law through the end of 2009.

"If I hadn't been involved in this process as long as I have and to the depth as I have, you would already have national health care," [Sen. Mike Enzi] said. "It's not where I get them to compromise, it's what I get them to leave out."

In other words, if it wasn't for Baucus enabling Enzi and his friends, we could've avoided the long, protracted battle over the health care law that allowed conservatives to rally around the tea party and demonize the law, all the while demoralizing liberals into electoral-crushing apathy.

It's no secret that Baucus and Gov. Brian Schweitzer hate each other, and it's partly due to health care. Schweitzer has been aggressively pushing a single-payer health care system in Montana, while Baucus finds Schweitzer to be foolish and unrealistic in pushing for it.

If Schweitzer ran for Senate, it wouldn't be close. In fact, expect Baucus to retire in that eventuality. However, Schweitzer has been coy about his political future. One factor potentially at play—he'll be far less likely to pull the trigger on a 2014 Senate bid if he has designs on a 2016 White House bid. Don't discount the latter.

House Speaker John Boehner's debt ceiling hostage-taking threats include the requirement that any increase to the debt limit has be matched "dollar-for-dollar" by other cuts and "reforms."

Tough stance he's taking there, and a selective one, too, since the House-approved Paul Ryan budget would actually increase the deficit by $5 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Boehner's debt ceiling demand doesn't extend to that $5 trillion increase, and he's unbothered by the inconsistency.

CNN’s Erin Burnett, interviewing Boehner Tuesday after his speech, confronted him about the contradiction.
“Yeah, the big bad House Republican budget that would just gut everything under the sun, according to my friends across the aisle, would still require a $5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling over the next 10 years,” Boehner said. “Why? Because of the great big demographic bubble—baby boomers like me, that are going to retire and continue to retire for the next 20-25 years. It’s a big challenge.”

In fact, the Ryan budget includes large tax cuts that would bring about a $4.6 trillion reduction in federal revenues, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Do the Republicans care about the deficit? Of course not. They care about keeping tax cuts for rich people, exploding the defense budget, and undoing every good thing government does for the American people. It's not about the deficit. It's never been about the deficit.

Hello, human diary. It is I again, Mitt Romney, your better.

We are in Florida today. Never have I seen a state in which the trees were so obviously of the wrong height. As president, one of my first actions would be to order the removal of every tree in this state. Whether it be trees, hair, or workforces, nothing irritates me as much as things that are of the wrong dimension.

Today we instituted a new campaign policy in which reporter units are no longer permitted to ask questions or, for that matter, approach me closely. Eric F. is for some reason of the opinion that this will limit the number of gaffes within the campaign. It will also allow me more time to bond with the local commoners, which I believe I am getting more practiced at. I now think of it as algorithmically similar to water-skiing. If I am doing well, it is because of my skill. If I am not doing well, it is because the water is the wrong height. (I also have inquiries out as to which local food Florida might be most known for, so that I may praise it and assert my satisfaction with it.)

We have now received the endorsement of my old debate opponent, Herman Cain. We have been doing fairly well recently in gathering the endorsements of washed-up or discredited Republican units. I have instructed the campaign to also seek out endorsements from competent Republicans, but they have informed me that this will be problematic for various reasons.

James O'Keefe's criminal sloppiness in his "journalistic" efforts to prove that voter fraud is real is becoming legion. His antics in North Carolina aren't helping his case. Fact checkers have already found out that a voter he said wasn't a citizen actually is a citizen, and more than qualified to vote.

And now we find out that a tactic that bit him in the ass in New Hampshire—attempting to obtain a ballot in the name of a dead person who turned out not to be dead at all—got him again in North Carolina.

Here's what O'Keefe proclaims on the latest Project Veritas video from North Carolina:

O'KEEFE: We found ballots being offered out in the name of the dead. One man, Michael Bolton, had died April 23, but apparently the Board of Elections didn't get the memo, and his ballot was offered to us on May 8.

Here's what the raw footage O'Keefe's minions took shows:

In the ensuing video clip, an O'Keefe operative at a polling place tells a poll worker, "The name is Michael G. Bolton." There is then a jump cut, and in the next clip the poll worker is telling the operative to sign or make an mark in the pollbook to affirm his identity. The operative then says he would feel more comfortable if he could show his photo ID, and leaves.

Something very important happens during that jump cut. As the raw video reveals, the poll worker says, "You must be a junior? ... Michael G. Bolton, Jr.?" to which O'Keefe's operative responds: "That would be correct."

Yes, as multiple obituaries for Bolton note, he was survived by, among others, his son Michael Gordon Bolton, Jr. Public records searches using the Nexis database confirm that Bolton Jr. was registered to vote at the same address given to the poll worker by the O'Keefe operative.

Gee, who'd have guessed O'Keefe would have heavily edited his video to further a big lie? His researchers had to have read the obituary they used to know that he was dead (that's how they get their list of dead voters to try to get ballots for) and have seen, oh yeah, his son has the same name. But they don't really care about nailing down the details like that, because they can always just edit away anything that's inconvenient for them.

But you'd think at this point he'd have been burned enough to either do his homework better, or leave out the stuff that it's so easy to catch him lying about. Of course, if he were actually committed to telling the truth, I guess there wouldn't be anything to put in any of his videos. Because, outside of his stunts, voter fraud doesn't really happen.

My God, Mitt Romney is delusional. I mean, he really is. It's almost getting to the point where Sarah Palin ain't got nothing on him. Check out the latest, via the Washington Post's Philip Rucker:

“The most recent attacks are really off target and I think they know,” Romney said. “They said, ‘Oh, gosh, Governor Romney at Bain Capital closed down a steel factory.’ But their problem, of course, is that the steel factory closed down two years after I left Bain Capital. I was no longer there, so that’s hardly something which is on my watch.”

Then Romney tried to lay blame for auto job losses on Obama.

“We were able to help create over 100,000 jobs,” Romney said of his tenure at Bain, the venture capital and corporate buyout firm he founded. “On the president’s watch, about 100,000 jobs were lost in the auto industry and auto dealers and auto manufacturers, so he’s hardly one to point a finger.”

Romney was talking with a conservative blogger, which explains why he was willing to talk about Bain—he's unwilling to touch the subject with anyone who isn't firmly in his camp. And it's a good thing (for him) that he was talking to an ally, because if he made that comment to any decent reporter (yeah, I know, fat chance), he'd have gotten himself in trouble.

First of all, on Romney's claim that he had left Bain by the time GST Steel went bankrupt, he had "full, sole ownership" of Bain when GST Steel went under. Yes, he was running the Olympics at the time, but Bain was still his company—and it was (and is) where he got his paycheck from. More importantly, he was the CEO of Bain when the company was bought in 1993 and he was CEO of Bain when it was loaded up with debt. Romney was there for all the decisions that led to the bankruptcy.

Second, his claim of creating 100,000 jobs is totally absurd (which explains why he only uses it in front of friendly audiences). Neither Romney nor Bain have ever opened their books to verify anything about the claims made by Romney, but given that he claimed to have created 10,000 jobs in 1994, any sort of defense of the 100,000 number would carry past 1999 ... even though he says he can't be held accountable for anything that happened after 1999. But again, Romney has never explained that number, so there's no way for anyone to assess it's veracity.

Third, Mitt Romney is lying when he says President Obama destroyed 100,000 jobs in the auto industry. In fact, the auto industry as a whole has gained nearly 75,000 jobs since January 2009 and is up by nearly 140,000 jobs since June 2009. Contrast that exploding growth with 255,000 jobs that were lost in the industry in the year before Obama took office—and consider the fact that the industry would have disappeared had Obama not taken action, destroying hundreds of thousands more jobs.

The bottom line is that those numbers show why Mitt Romney tried to claim credit for saving the auto industry last week even though he said he wanted it to go bankrupt. President Obama saved the auto industry and he a took a big political risk in doing so. Unlike Mitt Romney, President Obama had nothing at stake financially. He was just trying to do the right thing.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, put thousands of workers' jobs on the line by loading their companies up with debt and paying himself with borrowed money. Many of those companies survived, but when they failed, it was the workers (and sometimes taxpayers) who paid the price—not Mitt Romney. He still made money. Heads he won, tails they lost. Either way, he came out ahead. Mitt Romney calls that free enterprise, but I think most Americans would call it playing by a different set of rules.

Today, except for a couple of hypocrites worried about reelection, Senate Republicans joined their House brethren and voted to end Medicare as we know it. The only really interesting vote was on Rep. Paul Ryan's budget, the one that the House passed and that Mitt Romney has endorsed. It failed 58-41.

Five Republicans (Scott Brown [MA], Susan Collins [ME], Dean Heller [NV], Rand Paul [KY] and Olympia Snowe [ME]) rejected that bill. For his part, Heller (in a tight reelection race with Rep. Shelley Berkley) said:

“Today’s votes were not a serious effort to pass a budget. After this charade, our nation is no closer to economic prosperity or addressing our massive national debt. I have voted on Republican budgets in the past.  It’s no secret where I stand, but every measure brought up for a vote today was meant to fail.  It is past time Members of Congress hold themselves accountable and do the job they were elected to do, not hold meaningless votes designed for nothing more than campaign press releases. The biggest problem is both sides of the aisle are at fault. [...]"

As with Brown, Heller's no vote likely had a lot more to do with reelection than with principle. Neither of them wants anything to do with ending Medicare as we know it, and giving their Democratic opponents this ammunition.

Which makes you wonder why 41 Republicans were so anxious to embrace it. Embrace it they did, much to Democrats' delight. The Ryan budget will be no more popular this year than it was last year. Which makes this not a totally useless day in the Senate. Just a mostly useless one.

Reposted from Comics by Tom Tomorrow

Click to enlarge.

Follow @DailyKosComics to know the instant a new comic pops up!

The House passed the Republican version of the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization by a vote of 222 to 205, with six Democrats voting yes and 22 Republicans voting no, after an Orwellian afternoon debating the bill, with members from both parties extolling the importance of cracking down on violence against women even as they disagreed bitterly on the bill in question. The Orwellian flavor stemmed from the fact that the Republican bill excludes or weakens protections for LGBT, immigrant and Native American victims of violence—a Republican manager's amendment purported to address some Democratic concerns, but that did not adequately do so. House Republicans argued that passing this bill is very important and should be done in a bipartisan fashion, even as they refused to consider the Senate's actually bipartisan Violence Against Women Act—coauthored by a Republican and passed with 15 Republican votes.

Republicans repeatedly emphasized the bipartisan support for VAWA without acknowledging that their bill does not enjoy bipartisan support and that they have rejected a truly bipartisan bill. They also repeatedly insisted that their bill protects and supports victims, ignoring the opposition of a wide swath of domestic violence organizations, law enforcement groups and faith-based groups.

Democrats first opposed a rule prohibiting amendments, then offered a motion to recommit in an attempt to keep confidentiality protections from being gutted, with Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin detailing how as the victim of a violent rape in the 1970s, she felt put on trial as a single mother who must have invited her rape. Republicans, while rejecting bipartisanship and claiming that immigrant women use fraudulent allegations of abuse to get citizenship, wailed extensively about Democrats allegedly playing politics.

This vote sets up what David Waldman describes as "a potential procedural nightmare in the Senate." Additionally, President Obama has indicated he would veto this bill.