Excerpts from the Harper's Index for June:
• Percentage of U.S. college graduates who are women: 51.1
• Of Fortune 500 CEOs who are: 4.2
• Amount North Dakota’s attorney general requested the state to budget for legal challenges to its new abortion laws: $400,000
• Percentage of state-owned land in the West Bank allocated by the Israeli government for Palestinians: 0.7
• For Israeli settlers: 51
• Percentage change since Obama took office in the number of veterans waiting more than a year for federal benefits: +2,231
• Percentage of known human genes that are patented: 100
• Portion of those caught in possession of drugs by the U.S. Border Patrol who are U.S. citizens: 3/4
|
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2008—McCain's Campaign Led by Tainted Lobbyists:
John McCain talks straight, but he acts crooked. Mr. Reform strays from the straight path by following crooked lobbyists for their money, money that comes from corporations and brutal foreign governments.
McCain's been embarrassed several times the last few weeks by lobbyists connected to his campaign. Last week he was forced to fire two lobbyists who had worked for the brutal military junta in Burma/Myanmar, the oppressive goons who are killing people through their refusal to let aid workers in to the country and help the millions of Burmese affected by the cyclone.
This morning we learned about a lobbyist working for McCain who also worked for the governments of Serbia and Qatar.
McCain also had to dismiss one of his top operatives in Virginia, Craig Shirley. Shirley's has long been involved in shady dealings on behalf of the GOP, including hyping the orchestrated "rescue" of US soldier Jessica Lynch from a hospital in Iraq, and the scurrilous Willie Horton ad used against Michael Dukakis in 1988.
Shirley was simultaneously an official with McCain's campaign and involved in an independent campaign against Democrats. The McCain campaign is spinning his dismissal as a matter of principle, when in fact Shirley was breaking the law by being on both sides of what should be a divide, the candidate campaign, and an independent operation that is legally prohibited from coordinating its activities with the campaign.
|
Tweet of the Day:
"Right now climate advocates bring not even a knife, but a feather, to the political gunfight." @SenWhitehouse #climate #deniers
— @climatebrad via TweetDeck
On today's
Kagro in the Morning show, during
Greg Dworkin's roundup, we wondered if the big casualty of the week was Benghazi. IRS talk included entries from FiveThirtyEight, an old
LA Times article on IRS targeting of a liberal church, the Nixon tapes on political use of the IRS, Rick Perlstein's "Washington Misses the Point on the Tea Party and the IRS,"
Mark Sumner's "The IRS 'scandal'—all smoke, no fire," and David Cay Johnston's "The other IRS scandal."
Armando chimed in from the road on these stories. Finally, the ridiculous "wish we'd had some AR-15s up in Boston" talking point, and a short catch-up on new filibuster reform talk.
High Impact Posts. Top Comments.