Democrats hear from woman snubbed by GOP lawmakers

Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke was given her chance to talk to Congress Thursday, even though lawmakers were on a break and just a few Democratic allies were there to cheer her on.

But what a difference a week makes.

Last Thursday the Republican-controlled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee rejected Democrats’ request that Fluke testify on the Obama administration’s policy requiring that employees of religion-affiliated institutions have access to health insurance that covers birth control.

This week she received almost rock-star treatment as the lone witness at an unofficial Democratic-sponsored hearing. While the rest of the Capitol was mostly empty, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, three other Democrats and dozens of mainly young women supporters crowded into a House office building room to applaud Fluke as she spoke of the importance of reproductive health care to women.

Prominently displayed by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., was a photo of five religious leaders, all men and all appearing at the invitation of the Republican majority, testifying last week with Fluke visible in the background, sitting in the visitors’ section.

Democrats pounced on that image of a hearing discussing contraceptive rights being dominated by men while the one person Democrats had asked to appear on the witness stand, a woman, was turned away. Pelosi, D-Calif., said they had since heard from 300,000 people urging that women’s voices be heard on the issue.

“We almost ought to thank the chairman for the lack of judgment he had,” in denying a seat to Fluke, Pelosi said.

Committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., had said at last week’s hearing that the panel’s focus was on whether the administration policy was a violation of religious freedom. He said at the time that Fluke, invited by Democrats in her capacity as former head of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice, was not qualified to speak on the religious rights question.

“I’m an American woman who uses contraceptives,” Fluke said, when asked Thursday by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., about her qualifications to speak on the issue.

What amazes me is the Republicans and SoCons act like they think this issue is a winner for them. This is the kind of whackdoodle stuff that send voters running to the Democrats.

It’s like, duh. Just when you thought there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties, the Republicans go and prove you’re wrong. – Molly Ivins

Eyewitness reports say Newt won, Satanorum lost, Mitt was present and Paul was Paul.

I really don’t care anymore. The next four years are going to be very unpleasant no matter who wins.

Some Republicans are figuring out that the game has been rigged. Ace of Spades:

I believe the party wants to lose.

I believe the party has decided the problems facing us are so big that they cannot be overcome.

I believe the party has decided, maybe subconsciously, maybe consciously, that we are not up to the task, and the best thing to do is just duck out and Blame the Other Guys. Let them Own Their Problems.

If that’s the plan, let me know. We don’t have to contend very hard at all if our goal is to lose.

Easiest thing in the world, losing. Even easier when you’ve gotten practice at it.

I believe the party does not think it is capable of working positive good in policy. If so, I take it as knowing itself best, and perhaps it’s time for a new party.

Why should the Republican establishment want to win? They get everything they could dream of and the Democrats take the blame.

Obama to propose lowering corporate tax rate to 28 percent

President Obama on Wednesday plans to propose a major overhaul of the nation’s corporate tax code, an election-year gambit that is likely to draw a contrast over a key policy issue with the Republicans vying to replace him.

Obama will propose lowering the nation’s corporate tax rate to 28 percent. At the same time, however, he will seek to increase the amount of revenues raised overall through corporate taxation by eliminating numerous deductions and loopholes that save companies tens of billions of dollars a year on their tax bills, according to a senior administration official.

Today, the U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent is one of the highest in the world, but an abundance of loopholes and deductions means that many companies pay far less than that — or nothing at all. Companies in the United States pay almost half the taxes than companies do in other rich countries, compared to the size of the economy, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In his proposed rewrite, Obama will target oil and gas companies for tax hikes while promising special breaks for manufacturing companies, according to a senior administration official.

You watch – when the smoke clears the rate will come down but most of the loopholes and deductions will stay. Worst of all, the Republicans won’t have to take the blame for it.

Skunks don’t change their stripes. Obama is the number one beneficiary of corporate campaign donations. Pay to play is the Chicago way.

The Lightbringer

The Sludge Report:

SANTORUM’S SATAN WARNING

“Satan has his sights on the United States of America!” Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has declared.

“Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.”

MORE

The former senator from Pennsylvania warned in 2008 how politics and government are falling to Satan.

“This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country – the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age?”

“He attacks all of us and he attacks all of our institutions.”

Santorum made the provocative comments to students at Ave Maria University in Florida.

Like clockwork, a GOP contender rises in the polls past Mitt Romney and and suddenly the hounds of hell try to drag the contender down.

What’s surprising is this is an attack from the left. When is the last time you saw a Republican getting slammed for being too Christian? I can personally vouch that what Santorum was preaching is standard fundamentalist orthodoxy. Some churches spend more time talking about the Devil than they do about God.

What I want to know is whether this means we can take a closer look at what Mitt Romney believes? And can we go back and revisit Reverend Wright now?

Fair is fair.

Via Hot Air:

FHP trooper cleared in use of Taser, which put woman in vegetative state

One day last September, Danielle Maudsley, clad in handcuffs, bolted out the door of a Florida Highway Patrol substation after she had been arrested in a hit-and-run case.

A dashboard video camera in a patrol cruiser in the parking lot captured Trooper Daniel Cole chasing her. Cole was only a few feet behind her when he pulled out his Taser and fired its electric probes into her back.

Maudsley spun, fell backward and smacked her head on the asphalt parking lot. She lay there, bleeding and crying as Cole stood over her. Then she went unconscious.

[...]

“Tell me that’s not excessive force,” Cheryl Maudsley said. “I’m not saying she was an angel, but she didn’t deserve that. He couldn’t reach out and grab her? He was an arm’s length away.”

Cole had arrested Danielle Maudsley after she was suspected of leaving the scene of two traffic crashes. She had a suspended license and blood tests later showed she had cocaine and oxycodone in her system, the report states.

While she sat in the back of his cruiser, Maudsley removed her right hand from the handcuffs, the report said. When Cole opened the door to take her out, she told him, “I took this off.”

Maudsley was placed back in handcuffs and Cole took her into the substation, according to the report. As he worked on paperwork in a conference room, he sensed that Maudsley was moving, turned, and saw her at the main exit. He asked where she was going and got up from his seat before she ran out the door.

She’s now in a persistent vegetative state – effectively dead. The official verdict?

Justified

Byron York turns one smear into another:

Despite a few positive touches, no one will be surprised to learn that “Game Change,” the movie, will present an overwhelmingly negative portrait of Palin. Roach — he also directed the one-sided, pro-Gore “Recount” about the 2000 election — even goes beyond the book to throw in some new material from his own research. Roach also compressed some events and turned descriptions of conversations into dialogue that may or may not have actually happened.

But put that aside. Why did Hollywood focus on only one-half of “Game Change”? The other half would have made a great movie.

It was certainly the most compelling part of the book, with no end of dramatic moments. The Clinton-Obama version of “Game Change” could have focused on the racially charged effort among white Democrats to stop the first black man with a serious chance of winning their party’s presidential nomination.

The alternate “Game Change” could have featured the spectacle of Bill Clinton, the nation’s “first black president,” doing everything he could, risking his own reputation and place in history, to stop an actual black man from winning the office.

The alternate “Game Change” could have featured white Democratic party elders torn over the Clinton-Obama contest, loyal to Mrs. Clinton yet impressed by Obama’s ability to speak “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one” (in the infamous words of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid).

And then there was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. What a great role the fiery preacher from Chicago would have made! “Game Change” — the book — reported that Obama and his top aides knew all along that Wright would be a problem, and yet did nothing about it until Wright’s “Goddamn America” sermon burst into the news.

The alternate “Game Change” could have featured top Clinton aide Harold Ickes’ suggestion that the campaign hire a private investigator to probe Obama’s connections to Wright. “This guy has been sitting in the church for twenty f–king years,” Ickes is quoted in the book as saying. “If you really want to take him down, let’s take him f–king down.” Screenwriter Danny Strong — he also worked on “Recount” — couldn’t have written it better himself.

The movie also could have focused on Hillary Clinton’s anger at Obama’s ability to escape the Wright mess unscathed. “Just imagine, just for fun, if my pastor from Arkansas said the kind of things his pastor said,” Clinton told aides, according to the book. “I’m just saying. Just imagine. This race would be over.”

Neither Sarah Palin nor Hillary Clinton is currently running for elective office. Either or both of them may or may not run again in the future. Sarah Palin is a private citizen. Hillary Clinton is our Secretary of State.

I was aware that “Game Change” was a hit-job on Sarah. I didn’t know until now (although considering the authors it’s really no surprise) that it was also a hit job on Hillary.

The only thing “racially charged” about the 2008 Democratic primary were the charges of racism emanating from the Obama campaign. You could just as easily argue that supporting Obama was an effort to stop the first woman with a serious chance of winning the presidency. Bill Clinton was supporting his wife, not opposing Obama. Those “white party elders” York mentions were not loyal to Hillary, they secretly supported Obama from the beginning.

As for the Wright controversy, regardless of what may have been discussed in private the Hillary campaign avoided the issue and took no part. The alleged statement by Hillary is entirely accurate. Any other Democrat would have been sunk by such a close association with Wright (or Rezko or Ayers.)

The worst part about the race card strategy pursued by the Obama campaign is that it has given the Republicans a new issue to use against Democrats. Long after Obama is gone they will keep talking about it.

This little piggy ad has got to be the most annoying commercial ever. It is the reason I will never buy GEICO insurance. The reason I bring it up is they made a sequel.

What commercials do you hate?

This is an open thread.

Today is the day we honor all those men (and hopefully someday women) who have held the toughest job in the world.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, but they can’t all be winners, now can they?

This is an open thread.

On this day in 1945, the first of 70,000 Marines began landing on the beaches of a small volcanic island in the Pacific named Iwo Jima.

The island was defended by approximately 22,000 Imperial soldiers of Japan. The Japanese could not retreat or hope for reinforcement or rescue. They refused to surrender and were dug in deep.

One month later when the battle was over 6,800 Americans had been killed and 19,000 wounded. Of the Japanese, only 216 were captured and over 21,000 were killed. By comparison, less than 4,500 Americans were killed in the entire Iraq war.

By March 1945 in the European theater of WWII the fighting was winding down in the Western front as Nazi Germany shifted resources to the Eastern front to slow the Soviet advance. Meanwhile the Marines were preparing for the invasion of Okinawa, which was to be the biggest and bloodiest battle of the Pacific theater.

The Japanese leaders knew they were doomed to lose the war. They hoped that their fierce resistance would result in a negotiated end to the war rather than their total defeat. Allied estimates of casualties from the invasion of Japan ran into hundreds of thousands of American deaths and millions of Americans injured.

Ironically, the futile Japanese effort to avoid total defeat resulted in the use of a terrifying new weapon – the atomic bomb.