Romney to Tea Baggers: Third Party Run in ’12 Would ‘Divide and Fail’

Politico:

In an interview with Newsmax, a popular right-wing source for tea baggers, 2012 GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney told them get in line. Otherwise, “Divide and fail is the result …That would hand over the country to [President] Barack Obama and [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi and [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid, and that would be very sad indeed.”

He also threw a bone to Ron Paul, but it was wrapped around the inference that Romney is a party insider and Paul is not. “[We] welcome his participation in our party … [We’re] a big tent party.

The New Jim Crow: More Blacks in Correctional System Now Than Were Enslaved in 1850

Tom Dispatch:

From Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste — a larger percentage of blacks can’t vote today under felon disenfranchisement than the year the 15th Amendment passed; more black children were raised in two-parent homes during slavery than today.

And:

If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste — not class, caste — permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.

Packard Heir: As CEO, U.S. Senate Candidate Carly Fiorina Almost Destroyed HP

Politico:

Arianna Packard, the granddaughter of HP co-founder David Packard, wrote the letter to the three Republican senators who recently endorsed Fiorina – James Inhofe and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma as well as Jon Kyl of Arizona – over former Rep. Tom Campbell and state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore.

Packard, who supports DeVore, the tea bagger in the California U.S. senate race, said of front-runner Fiorina’s tenure at HP, “The stock price dropped by 50 percent only to rally 10 percent on the announcement of her firing. She fired 28,000 people before she herself was fired, departing with the $21 million golden parachute that is financing her campaign.”

Ken Starr Attacks Cheneys over McCarthy-ite Witch Hunt on DOJ Lawyers

Spencer Ackerman:

[No] less a Democratic persecutor than Ken Starr went on ‘Countdown’ last night to admonish the Cheneys for slandering Justice Department lawyers who defended Guantanamo detainees. “It’s very important for lawyers to be willing to take on unpopular causes,” Starr said.“This is in the finest traditions of our country. I hope schoolchildren still learn about the example of John Adams, because we certainly teach it in law school — John Adams taking on [as clients] the British Redcoats who were charged with the Boston Massacre.”

The Lies of ‘Conservatism’ and the ‘Center’ are Immoral

Mark Karlin at BuzzFlash:

The modern “conservative” movement is nothing more than a massively funded and highly effective communications strategy to shift America into an oligarchy that functions for the super wealthy through tax cuts and for corporations through the elimination of safety regulations for the public good and the privatization of government.

That’s not conservatism; that’s highway robbery. It’s a crime.

All this came about through the organized strategy and financing of wealthy financiers and corporations to build a network of think tanks, media-owned outlets, reporters toting the oligarchy line on the “benefits” of unrestrained “free trade,” public relations initiatives, and front organizations to move America from an evolutionary society relying on the strength of innovation and a dynamic educated middle class to a relatively static society in which those at the top are in a members-only club growing obese with wealth while kicking others down from the ladder to the top and demanding tithes from them.

Verbatim

I’m naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel, not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me because I wasn’t going to vote for the president’s budget. Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?

— Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), quoted by Roll Call, about an encounter with the White House chief of staff in the House gym.

Conservative Polling Firm Admits Consumer Confidence is Way Up

In what must have been painful to report, conservative polling firm Rasmussen announced today that consumer confidence is the highest it’s been since Sept., 2008.

The index is up two points from yesterday, up eight points from a week ago and up ten points from it’s (sic) reading last month. Consumer confidence is up 29 points from its level measured this time last year.

Nationally, 32% of adults say the U.S. economy is getting better these days, but 42% say it’s getting worse. A year ago, just 12% felt the economy was improving, and 72% thought the economy was getting worse.

Investor confidence is up as well.

Among investors, 40% say the U.S. economy is getting better these days, while 40% think it’s getting worse. Those figures are down significantly when just 8% of investors felt conditions in the country were getting better and 75% thought they were worsening.

Rasmussen is comparing confidence levels to Sept., 2008 because, as you will recall, that was when it dawned on Sen. John McCain that the economy was in the toilet, and he announced he was suspending his presidential campaign to horn in on negotiations by the Bush administration to bail out Wall St. McCain asked for a delay in debating Obama, canceled his appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, and instead appeared on CBS News with Katie Couric.