Big step towards a more just America:

From the SF Chronicle:

(02-07) 10:13 PST SAN FRANCISCO – A federal appeals court declared California’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional today, saying a state can’t revoke gay rights solely because a majority of its voters disapprove of homosexuality.

In a 2-1 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said Proposition 8′s limitations on access to marriage took rights away from a vulnerable minority without benefiting parents, children or the marital institution.

“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples,” said Judge Stephen Reinhardt in the majority opinion.

“The Constitution simply does not allow for laws of this sort.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/07/BA1H1N3T1H.DTL#ixzz1lixc0urr

From BalloonJuice.com citing Fox News:

The Newt Gingrich campaign is gearing up to challenge the results of the Florida Republican presidential primary based on the Republican National Committee’s own rules which state that no contest can be winner-take-all prior to April 1, 2012. (See RNC memo.)

It was assumed that Mitt Romney, who won Tuesday’s contest, would gain all 50 of the state’s delegates. But the Gingrich campaign plans to challenge Florida’s allocation and demand the delegates be divvied up proportionally. (See Gingrich memo.)

Fox News has learned exclusively that on Thursday, a Florida Gingrich campaign official will begin the process of trying to have the RNC rules enforced so that the Sunshine State delegates are distributed based on the percentage of the vote each candidate got.

From Karoli at crooksandliars.com:

On Sunday morning, Lidiane woke up in a Florida hospital with broken bones and internal injuries after the van they were traveling in was involved in Sunday’s horrendous highway pileup on I-75 near Gainesville, Florida. Her father, mother, sister, uncle, aunt and cousin were killed. She is the sole survivor in her immediate family.

Lidiane’s parents came to the United States from Brazil 12 years ago, bringing five-year old Letiticia and three-year old Lidiane with them. They had legal visas which have since expired.

Lidiane is now an orphan. She has no health insurance. She has no legal status to remain in this country. And she has no family beyond those remaining members of her father’s church. She is the sole survivor.

If we had a DREAM Act in place, Lidiane could petition for citizenship here since she entered the country legally. But we don’t, and because of Republicans’ insane need to pander to bigots and racists, we’re unlikely to see it without a completely different Congress.

I’m writing about Lidiane because she puts a very human face on what they’re doing when they block the DREAM Act. I wonder if any of these crazy Republican candidates could gaze into her frightened, hurting eyes, and tell her she has to go back to a country she doesn’t even know. I think they could, and that should concern us all.

From Alex Seitz-Wald at ThinkProgress.org:

But his comment is especially tone deaf considering that Romney has proposed weakening many of these safety net programs. Under Romney’s proposed reductions in federal spending, it’s likely that Medicaid would be cut by $153 billion by 2016, the food stamp program would have to throw 10 million low-income people off the rolls, and a key program supporting poor children’s health would face cumulative cuts of $946 billion through 2021. As ThinkProgress’ Igor Volsky has said that Romney is living in a “dream world” when he claims his Medicaid cuts won’t hurt the poor.

And Romney’s tax plan suggests his focus is really on the wealthy, as it includes massive giveaways to upper-income earners and investors, while doing almost nothing for middle- and low-income Americans.

From the inimitable Andrew Sullivan:

8.44 pm. Everything this man says is a lie. He’s doubling down on the big lies I tried to counter in that Newsweek piece. The president Romney is describing does not exist. Obama is demonizing and denigrating every sector of the economy? That is a pure lie. As is the repeated lie that Obama is an appeaser. Has Romney understood what has happened to the Iranian economy these past few months? Does he think Osama bin Laden thinks he was appeased?

Let me just say right now: this speech is the most dishonest, manipulative, disgusting series of lies I’ve heard in a very long time. And its core premise: that the president hates this country, whereas Romney believes in it. As I said: disgusting. I’m with Newt on this. The man will say anything to gain power.

From Stephen Lacey posting on ThinkProgress.org:

In a speech at the Middle East and North Africa energy conference in London yesterday, Al-Naimi — who once called renewable energy a “nightmare” — hailed energy efficiency and solar as important investments, global warming “real” and “pressing,” and explained that drilling for oil “does not create many jobs.”

“We know that pumping oil out of the ground does not create many jobs. It does not foster an entrepreneurial spirit, nor does it sharpen critical faculties.”

In the U.S., which is definitely not the Saudi Arabia of oil (that would be Saudi Arabia), there is a major industry campaign underway to convince Americans that drilling for fossil fuels will create over a million jobs in the country. However, assuming we drill virtually everywhere possible in America, credible analysis puts the real figure at a small fraction of that claim.

Even the Saudis, who pump out 12% of the world’s oil, understand that simply drilling for more oil isn’t a long-term economic strategy.

Then Al-Naimi goes on to say:

“Greenhouse gas emissions and global warming are among humanity’s most pressing concerns. Societal expectations on climate change are real, and our industry is expected to take a leadership role.”

Agreeing wholeheartedly with Tina Dupuy at Alternet.org:

Here’s the key point: Occupy is not an armed conflict – it’s a PR war. Nonviolent struggle is a PR war. Gandhi had embedded journalists on his Salt March. He wasn’t a saint. That was a consciously cultivated media image. He used the press and its power to gain sympathy for his cause. What he didn’t do is say he was nonviolent “unless the cops are d*cks,” a sentiment voiced at Occupy. Nonviolent struggle has nothing to do with how the cops react. In actual nonviolent movements they welcome police overreaction because it helps the cause they’re fighting for.

At some General Assemblies this issue is referred to as “diversity of tactics.” It means basically if you’re not okay with property damage, but if someone else is, you’re not going to stand in the way. To a liberal ear it sounds like affirmative action or tolerance. It sounds like diversity of opinion – it’s not. It’s 3,000 people peacefully marching and two *ssholes breaking windows; which becomes 3,000 people breaking some windows in news reports.

From Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish:

From Josh Israel at ThinkProgress.org:

The term “blind trust” indicates that an investor has designated someone else to handle their investments and that the investor does not know what those investments are. In his 2006 Massachusetts state disclosure, Romney wrote that “under the terms of the blind trust, the Governor may have no knowledge of the specific holdings or management of the trust” except for very broad categories like “publicly traded stocks.”) Romney had called the use of such trusts a “ruse” in his 1994 senate campaign.

Last August, Romney filed his legally-required public financial disclosure report. As required, his signature appears on the form certifying that the infromation is “true, complete, and correct” to the best of his knowledge. From at least the time he completed that form, it ceased to be a “blind trust” as he knew what was in it.

But Romney’s comment suggests that the trust was “blind” for ten full years before that. It was not.

Whatever it takes seems to be his MO.

From Greg Sargent at WaPo:

Another day, another barrage of casual dissembling from Romney: How do you explain Mitt Romney’s penchant for casually uttering statements that can be completely debunked as quickly as he makes them?

By all accounts, Romney won last night’s debate, and his grip on the nomination appears to be tightening. The question is at what cost to his credibility. At last night’s debate, for instance, Romney claimed that Obama “went before the United Nations” and “said nothing about thousands of rockets being rained in on Israel from the Gaza Strip.”

This is flat out false. Obama talked about the rockets hitting Israel in two speeches before the U.N.: One in 2009, and the other in 2011.

All you have to do is click on the links, and search for the word “rocket.”

Oh wait, I get it now. Romney claimed Obama said nothing about the “thousands” of rockets being rained on Israel. And it’s true: Obama didn’t use the word “thousands.” My bad!

More deceptions here, here, and here.

Atrios, on a weekly basis for as long as I’ve been reading, has argued that the far better way to stimulate demand and therefore aid our economy is to take these huge sums of money and give them directly to the people, rather than to the “banksters”, and I could not agree more.  Stimulate demand… that’s it.  That’s the yin to supply’s yang.  I was lead to this link at the UK’s Guardian from Atrios’ EschatonBlog.com:

I can hear the snorts of derision from the watering holes of Davos (where money also comes in helicopters). Such cash is too good for ordinary consumers. It should be spent on “easing” bankers. Dropping it would cause traffic accidents. The wrong people might pick it up and use it for drink and drugs. The authorities could not control its spending. The idea’s original proponent, the political economist Milton Friedman, was being mischievous.

No he was not. He suggested that money could also be buried in parks, though digging it up would indeed be messy. It could be handed out to anyone presenting an identity document at a post office, like ration books. It could be given in the form of restaurant or clothing vouchers, to top up a pension or benefit payment. It could go to car and other consumer durable dealers for scrappage schemes, such as rescued the American car industry in 2009.

Helicopter money is precisely what the government has for three years been dropping into bank vaults, to the tune of some £850bn in cash, loans and guarantees. Ministers pleaded with bankers to lend it on to firms in the high street, but the banks preferred to keep it for themselves, to cover their gambling debts and bonuses. Dropping the stuff from helicopters is more effective since it does what it says on the tin: it instantly unleashes demand. It is an emergency blood transfusion straight into the veins of the economy, through high-street tills, job recruitment, restocking, warehouses and order books. It does not pass through the constricted arteries of bank managers.

And we, who are in the middle between the old and the young, will be relying upon these young people to take care of US when WE are old?  Not good.

From Atrios’ EschatonBlog.com:

It’s sort of amusing reading various articles about, for example, generational divides in the housing market, otherwise known as “young people don’t think they’ll ever be able to buy a house.” There’s too much of a desire to attribute to preferences instead of income, prices, and access to credit. I’m not saying preferences for such things can’t change, but right now what’s happening, both in the US and much of Europe, is that younger people are getting screwed. The game has changed for them. They’re facing crap job prospects, crap income, no possibility for defined benefits pensions, and perpetual threats to completely gut retirement systems

From CrooksandLiars.com:

And will enable many more if a constitutional amendment invalidating it doesn’t come along.

From Jonathan Chait at NY Magazine:

In 2000, the Bush network froze challenger John McCain out of party fund-raising networks. Now, the GOP is trying to do this again on behalf of Romney:

If Gingrich does win, veteran GOP strategists tell CNN to expect pressure on Senate Minority Leaders Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner and other Republican leaders to call key GOP donors and ask them not to contribute to Gingrich’s campaign.

Ten years ago, this sort of edict would have suffocated Gingrich. But under the present system, Gingrich can simply have a single extremely wealthy supporter, Sheldon Adelson, write a series of $5 million checks. “Winning Our Future” is Gingrich’s “independent” PAC, and it’s an entire shadow campaign, complete with a ground operation in addition to advertising. Adelson’s money isn’t enough for Gingrich to attain parity with Romney – he’s probably being outspent at least two to one – but it is keeping him alive.

This opening paragraph is quite an attention-grabber, and the rest is well worth reading too.  From Hunter at Daily Kos:

This won’t be a particularly insightful post, mainly because I’m just tired of these people and wish they would go away, or secede, or whatever it is they need to do to separate themselves from the rest of modern society and live out their lily-white no-immigrant no-Muslims no-athiests no-gay-people no-liberals no-moderates no-funny-dressers Talibanesque fantasies about how a country should be run (tip: land in Somalia is very, very cheap these days). No such luck, however.

This little bit of info is going to come up in this election year, as it SHOULD!

From PublicCampaign.org:

Amidst a growing federal deficit and widespread economic insecurity for most Americans, some of the largest corporations in the country have avoided paying their fair share in taxes while spending millions to lobby Congress and influence elections. This report builds on a recent report on corporate tax dodging by Citizens for Tax Justice by examining lobbying expenditure data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics. We also look at publicly available data on job creation, federal campaign contributions, and executive compensation, to understand how these corporations have been spending their cash.

Key Findings

• The thirty big corporations analyzed in this report paid more to lobby federal policymakers than they paid in federal income taxes for the three years between 2008 and 2010, despite being profitable.

• Despite making combined profits totally $164 billion in that three-year period, the 30 companies combined received tax rebates totaling nearly $11 billion.

• Altogether, these companies spent nearly half a billion dollars ($476 million) over three years to lobby Congress—that’s about $400,000 each day, including weekends.

• In the three-year period beginning in 2009 through most of 2011, these large firms spent over $22 million altogether on federal campaigns.

• These corporations have also spent lavishly on compensation for their top executives ($706 million altogether in 2010).

From The New York Times:

Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas, a small fraction of the over 400,000 American workers at General Motors in the 1950s, or the hundreds of thousands at General Electric in the 1980s. Many more people work for Apple’s contractors: an additional 700,000 people engineer, build and assemble iPads, iPhones and Apple’s other products. But almost none of them work in the United States. Instead, they work for foreign companies in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, at factories that almost all electronics designers rely upon to build their wares.

From Greg Sargent on Romney and whether capitalism is on trial:

Romney is half right when he says his critics are putting capitalism on trial. This election is putting his brand of capitalism on trial.

Not my favorite speech by the president.  Too often seemed like the host of the dinner party informing guests of what’s on the menu; not enough acknowledgment of the suffering of millions of Americans; asking the nation to “get each other’s back” like soldiers going into battle could have resonated with more solemnity and even fierceness, but it didn’t feel delivered well enough to inspire those emotions for me.

The more important good news of the day is here:

From Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish:

From Kos at DailyKos.com: