That Bin Laden Quote Makes Romney Look Even Worse Than You Think

In a new ad, the Obama campaign is asserting that   Mitt Romney wouldn't have gone after Osama bin Laden:

President Obama's campaign is ... argu[ing that] Mitt Romney would not have launched the raid to capture Osama bin Laden last year....

The campaign suggests Romney would not have ordered the raid by pointing to a 2007 interview with The Associated Press in which Romney said: "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

President Obama's campaign is ... argu[ing that] Mitt Romney would not have launched the raid to capture Osama bin Laden last year....

The campaign suggests Romney would not have ordered the raid by pointing to a 2007 interview with The Associated Press in which Romney said: "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

That quote tells us that Romney was endorsing the George W. Bush approach to bin Laden ("I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you"). And that's the problem: Not only does Romney's statement suggest that bin Laden would be alive if Romney were president, it suggests that Romney will meekly go along with GOP orthodoxy at all times.  READ MORE

Bill Maher: Stop Punishing Sex Scandals Over Everything Else

Last night, Bill Maher made a great point: why is it, that among all the dirty and dastardly things that politicians and their minions do, it's not until they've got a sex scandal on their hands that their careers are ruined? Specifically: "Why do we punish sex so much more than everything else?" Not referring to the Secret Service scandal per se, he pointed out a long history of people who have become embroiled in them... and gets in an awesome dig at Newt Gingrich. Watch, via Huffington Post:

Romney Advises Broke, About-to-be-Unemployed College Students: “Just Borrow Money From Your Parents!”

Back in 2008, I used to argue that Sarah Palin didn’t really exist — that she was actually an incredibly elaborate Tina Fey performance art project, an Andy-Kaufman style hoax. Because, seriously — Palin was so staggeringly vapid that it stretched credibility that she could be for real. It almost seemed more likely that she might be an over-the-top parody of a certain kind of blissfully idiotic, all-American wingnut, than that she was an actual person.

I often have similar thoughts about Mitt Romney. A surpassingly perfect villain for our times, he appears to come straight from central casting as the slick, shifty-eyed C.E.O. who’s fixing to downsize your ass — and implement his evil scheme for world domination while he’s at it. The G.O.P could not have run a more astonishing incarnation of the self-parodying cluelessness of the 1 percenters if they tried. For all practical purposes, it’s as if the the top-hat-and-tails-wearing Monopoly guy was their candidate.  READ MORE

The Problem With Citizens United Is Not Corporate Personhood

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)

Tuesday, 17 January 2012 03:25 By James Marc Leas and Rob Hager, Truthout | News Analysis 

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Florida Rep. Ted Deutch introduced a constitutional amendment in December to overturn Citizens United, one of five decisions since 2006 by which a closely divided Supreme Court vastly increased the amount of corrupting corporate money in elections.
In an opinion piece critical of the decision in Citizens United, Senator Sanders wrote:

When the Supreme Court says that for purposes of the First Amendment, corporations are people, that writing checks from the company's bank account is constitutionally-protected speech and that attempts by the federal government and states to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, when that occurs, our democracy is in grave danger.

The joint Sanders-Deutch Resolution proposes an amendment to the constitution "to expressly exclude for-profit corporations from the rights given to natural persons." The first section of the amendment states:
  READ MORE

America Wakes Up to the Reality: Inequality Matters

Occupy Chicago March to Grant Park,
November 5, 2011. (Photo: Michael Kappel)

Wednesday, 18 January 2012 03:44 By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Truthout | Op-Ed 

If you're part of the 1 percent, even getting fired comes with a cushion made of eiderdown. GMI, a research company that gets paid to keep an eye on such things, just issued a study headlined, "Twenty-One U.S. CEOs with Golden Parachutes of More than $100 Million." That's each.

The report's authors, Paul Hodgson and Greg Ruel, write, "These 21 CEOs walked away with almost $4 billion in combined compensation. In total, $1.7 billion in equity profits was realized by these CEOs, primarily on the exercise of time-vesting stock options and restricted stock."

This news came the same day as another report, this one from Indiana University, titled, "At Risk: America's Poor during and after the Great Recession." Its researchers conclude, "The number of people living in poverty is increasing and is expected to increase further, despite the recovery. The proportion of people living in poverty has increased by 27% between the year before the onset of the Great Recession (2006) and 2010 ... Poverty is expected to increase again in 2011 due to the slow pace of the economic recovery, the persistently high rate of unemployment, and the long duration of spells of unemployment."  READ MORE

Prostate Cancer Surgery Bomb: Surgery Does Nothing

Prostate cancer surgery may do nothing to prolong
life, according to a new study.   (AP Photo/M.
Spencer Green)

Specialists await full results of 12-year study

By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff

Posted Apr 28, 2012 1:54 PM CDT 

(Newser) – Cancer experts are nervously awaiting the publication of a new study that may revolutionize the treatment of prostate cancer, the Independent reports. First revealed at a urology conference in February, the 12-year study of 731 men showed that standard prostate cancer surgery did nothing to prolong life. "The only rational response to these results is, when presented with a patient with prostate cancer, to do nothing," says a British specialist. 

In fact, prostate cancer is so slow-growing that in 50% of British cases, men end up dying of something else.   READ MORE

 

Component of Pizza Seasoning Herb Oregano Kills Prostate Cancer Cells

ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2012)

Oregano, the common pizza and pasta seasoning herb, has long been known to possess a variety of beneficial health effects, but a new study by researchers at Long Island University (LIU) indicates that an ingredient of this spice could potentially be used to treat prostate cancer, the second leading cause of cancer death in American men.  READ MORE