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GOP Platform To Call For Constitutional Ban On Abortion: Report. Romney Does Florida. Mitt Romney ventured into Miami this week and at a campaign stop at Palacios de los Jugos, only a day after introducing his running mate Congressman Paul Ryan.

Romney Does Florida

Romney, without Ryan, did not mention “Cuba”, once. It was a check-the-box visit to a key constituency in a swing state. That the venue was owned by a federally convicted coke smuggler (reported by Miami New Times) serves to remind that when considering Florida politics, Miami is ground zero. It is where the 2000 presidential election was stolen. It is where the housing boom materialized. Romney was introduced by Florida senator Marco Rubio, a political offspring of Castro hatred. CNN's Soledad O'Brien Pins Truth On Romney's Spokeswoman. Soledad O'Brien Rips Sununu's Medicare Claims: 'You Can't Just Repeat It and Make It True, Sir' Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan. PAUL D.

Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan

RYAN is the most articulate and intellectually imposing Republican of the moment, but that doesn’t alter the fact that this earnest congressman from Wisconsin is preaching the same empty conservative sermon. Thirty years of Republican apostasy — a once grand party’s embrace of the welfare state, the warfare state and the Wall Street-coddling bailout state — have crippled the engines of capitalism and buried us in debt. Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to “job creators” (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse.

Mr. Indeed, adjusted for inflation, today’s national security budget is nearly double Eisenhower’s when he left office in 1961 (about $400 billion in today’s dollars) — a level Ike deemed sufficient to contain the very real Soviet nuclear threat in the era just after Sputnik. GRAY STATE on Tyranny, NDAA, Libertarian Filmmaking, and the Occult - with WAC 3/5. Ryan’s Secret Plan to Shift the Tax Burden Onto the Middle Class. A Talk With Noam Chomsky. “Happy families are all alike: every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”– “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy The opening to Tolstoy’s great novel of love and tragedy could be a metaphor for Europe today, where “unhappy families” of Catalans, Scots, Belgiums, Ukrainians, and Italians contemplate divorcing the countries they are currently a part of.

A Talk With Noam Chomsky

Old Man Fight: Cheney vs McCain. » The Lie of the Conservative Batman Mutiny Radio. I’ve waited a week to post this until enough people have had a chance to see the latest Dark Knight movie, but it bears mentioning: MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!

» The Lie of the Conservative Batman Mutiny Radio

The Batman mythos runs so deep in our culture that parallels are all-too-easy to find. Claims now run rampant that the latest brilliant installment of Christopher Nolan‘s Dark Knight trilogy is anti-Occupy or pro-capitalist in sentiment. Pot Legalization Is Coming. Thomas Friedman. (updated below – Update II – Update III) In The New York Times today, Tom Friedman argues that the only thing that could save Syria is if that country is lucky enough to have the U.S. do to it what the U.S. did to Iraq, and in the process, says this: And, for me, the lesson of Iraq is quite simple: You can’t go from Saddam to Switzerland without getting stuck in Hobbes — a war of all against all — unless you have a well-armed external midwife, whom everyone on the ground both fears and trusts to manage the transition.

Thomas Friedman

In Iraq, that was America. Just on the level of basic cogency, this makes absolutely no sense. Friedman says that a country will be “stuck in Hobbes — a war of all against all — unless” it has America there. Lewis Black Takes Apart Dishonest Campaign Ads in Epic Rant. Rotten Ronnie. By MANUEL GARCIA, Jr.

Rotten Ronnie

Paul Craig Roberts is in terminal denial. The Left, Reagan and Cockburn. In Memoriam: Alexander Cockburn, co-editor with Jeffrey St.

The Left, Reagan and Cockburn

Clair of CounterPunch, has died after his silent two-year battle with cancer. Although he didn’t please everyone, his was an important voice. His mother was an English aristocrat and his father was a hell-raising journalist. Understanding the Colorado Shooting: Terrorism, Politics, Mental Illness and the Superhero Complex. Whoppers of 2012, Early Edition. Summary. Scissor Sheldon. Kafkatrapping. Good causes sometimes have bad consequences.

Kafkatrapping

Bohemian Grove: ‘You’re Wasting Your Time’ Herman Cain: An American Presidency - The Constitution - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 06/28. Conservatism. Why the ObamaCare Ruling Stinks. Looking on the bright side, the Supreme Court has ruled that something that President Obama has done is definitively not unconstitutional.

Why the ObamaCare Ruling Stinks

That’s probably the best that can be said of the 5-4 decision by the High Court today in upholding the ironically named Affordable Health Care Act. On the downside for Obama, he goes into the final four months of the election campaign saddled with a decision that says he has raised taxes on some of the nation’s poorest people — for that is what the court said will be happening, 18 months from now, when the health insurance mandate part of the new Act takes effect, and people who have no employer-provided health plan, and no other kind of coverage, fail to buy a policy for themselves and their families. Also taking a hit were Republicans, who universally oppose what they have been deprecatingly calling “Obamacare.” Not an enviable position to be in as a candidate. This is because the Affordable Health Care Act is not affordable. Supreme Court Ruling on Arizona Immigration Policy - The Colbert Report - 2012-26-06. Stephen Colbert on GOP Candidate Richard Mourdock.

Prometheus: the Tea Party in Space. Ron Paul Delegate Revolt Underway. There is an old saying, never count your chickens before they’re hatched.

Ron Paul Delegate Revolt Underway

In Santa Ana, California, a group of 162 delegates is suing to be allowed to vote for the nominee of their choice at the national convention. The legal brief filed Monday claims that state parties have forced the delegates to sign away their rights under both federal laws and the national GOP rules, as well as having broken various election laws. GOP/Dem rhetorical convergence. Sen. Ron Wyden Calls on Congress to Repeal Ban on Industrial Hemp. Slavoj Žižek: 'Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots' Virginia Republicans Declare War On ‘Liberal’ Words. Republicans have declared war on everything from women to health care to unions to voting. But a war on the dictionary? That war seems to have started in Virginia.

Republican state Representative Chris Stolle has a problem with words. To be specific, he has a problem with science words. Martin Bashir Attacks Congress For Their Lack of Work Ethic. Against a Crude Balance: Platform Security and the Hostile Symbiosis Between Liberty and Security. Introduction “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

—Benjamin Franklin They are perhaps the most famous words ever written about the relationship between liberty and security. They have become iconic. Decline Watch: City repeals domestic violence law in budget dispute. Decline Watch: Congress takes action to protect pizza's vegetable status. Don't think it's all fun and games up on Capitol Hill these days. Important steps are being taken to protect our nation's children from being forced to eat vegetables: The final version of a spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year.

Madison Men - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 06/05. Martin Bashir to GOP Leadership: Congratulations On Undermining The Country. The price of tribal betrayal. Indecision 2012 - My Two Bads - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 02/27. Jon Stewart: Can't We Just Admit a Socialist is Someone Who Wants to Spend Government Money on Sh*t You Don't Like? Hard by Canada Border, Fears of Crackdown on Latino Immigration. Hotmail - puhnner. Gov. O'Malley Shows What A Blue Budget Looks Like. RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism. The 2002 political climate. Where are the young pols? - U.S. Senate. Political Climate - An Interactive Timeline (Scaling)

We’re all minorities now. Noam Chomsky On WikiLeaks, Middle East Uprisings And More. What Kind of Society Do Americans Want? On 7 May 2012 a new study came out on healthcare in the United States. Based on research carried out by the Urban Institute, the report is published in the journal Health Affairs. Here are some of its findings: – There is a prevailing “trend toward private insurance policies with larger deductibles and higher co-payments…”– “Employers [are] shifting more [heath care] costs onto workers.”– “Poor and uninsured adults [there are presently 41 million such people in the U.S.] had greater difficulties not just with health care costs, but finding doctors who would see them.” In addition, “too few providers are taking Medicaid” patients.– One consequence of this trend is that “one in five American adults under 65 had an ‘unmet medical need’ because of costs in 2010, compared with one in eight in 2000.”

Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names. Alex Castellanos Denies 'War on Women' by Being a Misogynistic Jerk. Why Nations Fail: Purposeful Inequality. Presidents who kill people are popular. Political Metastasis.