April, 2012 archive

PoliticalProf quotes Bill from Portland Maine:

The Supreme Court says corporations are people. The Supreme Court also says that people can be strip-searched for any reason whatsoever. Therefore, corporations can now be strip-searched for any reason whatsoever. Let’s start with . . . how ‘bout Koch Industries.

Robert Greenwald has already started the examination:

As April 15 approaches, don’t you want to duck your taxes with the skill of a Wall Street bankster?

Call Tax Masters.

Next year, though, why not do what Mitt Romney does and send your money on vacation to the Cayman Islands? Yes, your humble peasant money can go rub shoulders with 30 million of Romney’s dollars in a chi-chi tropical haven for money that belongs to people who believe, like the late Leona Helmsley, that “Only the little people pay taxes.”

From Contradict Me: Why writers need editors.

Shaun Mullen describes how Mitt the Flip is perfect of the opposites’ game with President Obama. A nugget:

Although he stands a better chance of beating Barack Obama than his Republican clown car compatriots, Mitt Romney is in a key respect the perfect challenger for the president because he represents all that is wrong — and then some — about the distribution of wealth in America at a time when that has belatedly become a pungent societal issue.

Romney, who is worth $250 million give or take a few million, has been squirrely about being a card-carrying member of the 1 percent of the 1 percent from the outset of the 2012 campaign . . . .

Read the rest.

The legal concept of “standing” refers to whether someone has enough of a stake in a situation to file a tort.

At Philly dot com, Elmer Smith looks at a different standing: who has standing to “stand his ground”:

But there is a race angle in this story (the Trayvon Martin case–ed.). I can’t help wondering which way the wheels of justice would be turning if Martin had fired first. Where do you think he would be now if they had wrestled over the gun and Zimmerman had been killed in the struggle?

Would the most permissive self-defense law in America have been wide enough to cover an unarmed 17-year-old black kid in a hoodie who was walking through a predominantly white neighborhood at night?

Think on that, then try to convince yourself that race had no part in this killing or in the police reaction to it.

Dick Polman describes the Republican Establishment’s (such as it is) emerging strategy to make Little Ricky Santorum go away and stop bothering them:

But these shots across Santorum’s bow are symptomatic of a much broader message, which goes something like this:

“Yo, Santorum. The party is sick and tired of all this infighting. If you keep wasting Romney’s time and money, if you keep pulling him to the right, if you compel him to spend big money on Pennsylvania primary ads in April, and if you drag him down to Texas in May, in the end he’s going to have a tougher time beating Obama. So stop being a brat. If you want to have any future in this party, if you want to nurture any realistic dreams about getting nominated in 2016 or beyond, and, in fact, if you want to avoid losing your home-state primary and not be humiliated by Pennsylvania voters for the second time in six years, then knock it off. Pull the plug already.”

Click to read the rest.

Thom discusses Paul Ryan’s visions of a Randian paradise based on selfishness. Watch the first two minutes; it will tell you all you need to know about the contemporary Republican Party and its Libertarian fellow travelers.

Click to follow the proceedings of the Republican National Committee as it lays out its 2012 strategy.

Know what to expect in the campaign season.