Because those votes in 2012 aren’t going to come cheap.

(Reuters) — Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said on Friday his budget legislation would increase the nation’s borrowing authority until March, 2013 and reiterated that he would not accept a short-term debt limit increase as Republicans are insisting.

Earlier in the day, Reid called on Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to sit down with him to work out a compromise for cutting federal spending and raising the debt limit by the August 2 deadline.

McConnell has thus far thrown his support behind a House of Representatives Republican bill that has been refined and could be voted upon later in the day. Reid has vowed to defeat that bill, which would extend the debt limit for only a few months.

Mega-facepalm.

(NY Mag) — A cross of steel beams that remained among the rubble of the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks, and which became a beacon of hope for Christian rescue workers and mourners, has now become a symbol of controversy after organizers decided to include it in the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at ground zero. An atheist group, the New Jersey-based American Atheists, has filed a lawsuit objecting to the Christian imagery, saying its inclusion “constitutes an unlawful attempt to promote a specific religion on governmental land.”

That made us wonder how prominent atheists — atheist evangelists, you might call them — felt about the lawsuit. Did they agree with it? Is this the kind of thing that atheists should make a fuss over? So we asked a number them to weigh in. Well, only Bill Maher got back to us. Here’s what he said:

The news from Norway reminds us that Christianity is also a religion with a bloody history, and perfectly capable of creating dangerous, violent extremists just as Islam does. Once you buy into the idea of things that are “holy”, you’re closer to buying into the idea of a “holy war.” Anders Breivik was a terrorist calling for a Christian war against Muslims. In this atmosphere, symbols about whose god “rules” are not helpful.

Keep reading…

Add Jesse to the list of lefties who’ve called Republicans “extreme” or “extremists” over the last 48 hours.

(Politico) — Jesse Jackson said Friday that President Obama should have been “tougher” with Republicans and less compromising to keep the debt ceiling negotiations from reaching their current crisis point.

“He has a propensity to be trusting, on the side of reconciliation,” the veteran civil-rights activist told POLITICO. “He kind of underestimates how ideological these guys are and how determined they are to destroy him.”

Jackson criticized the White House for agreeing too readily to take items such as war spending, taxes on the wealthy and corporate profits off the negotiating table, so that the only option left was cutting programs that assist the needy.

As a result, he said, extreme right-wing voices have been able to drive the debate.

The former two-time presidential candidate blamed “the anti-Obama mania, the kamikaze guys who would take themselves down just to take him down,” as well as a fixation on states’ rights that he said was reminiscent of the Civil War era. But he also said poor and working people don’t appear to have a voice in Washington.

Asked about Obama’s reelection prospects, Jackson singled out one GOP candidate, Rep. Michele Bachmann, as giving the president reason for hope: “His biggest asset at this point is the tea party and Bachmann. These people are so very extreme.”

“Let’s cover the moon with yogurt!”

The Democratic party hardest hit.

(Sacramento Bee) — There are fewer undocumented immigrants in California — and the Sacramento region — because many are now finding the American dream south of the border.

“It’s now easier to buy homes on credit, find a job and access higher education in Mexico,” Sacramento’s Mexican consul general, Carlos González Gutiérrez, said Wednesday. “We have become a middle-class country.”

Mexico’s unemployment rate is now 4.9 percent, compared with 9.4 percent joblessness in the United States.

An estimated 300,000 undocumented immigrants have left California since 2008, though the remaining 2.6 million still make up 7 percent of the population and 9 percent of the labor force, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Among metropolitan areas with more than 1 million residents, Sacramento County ranks among the lowest, with an unauthorized population of 4.6 percent of its 1.4 million residents in 2008, according to Laura Hill, a demographer with the PPIC.

The Sacramento region, suffering from 12.3 percent unemployment and the construction bust, may have triggered a large exodus of undocumented immigrants, González Gutiérrez said.

The best-paid jobs for undocumented migrants are in the building industry, “and because of the severe crisis in the construction business here, their first response has been to move into the service industry,” González Gutiérrez said. “But that has its limits. Then, they move to other areas in the U.S. to find better jobs — or back to Mexico.”

Damn you extremist tea party Republicans . . . no, wait?

JULY 29, WASHINGTON — Although Majority Leader Reid earlier today said that “time is short, and too much is at stake to waste even one more minute,” he objected this evening to holding a vote to consider his own debt limit proposal.

Loser.

(NY Daily News) — President Obama brought his debt battle to Twitter and he lost — more than 40,000 Twitter followers.

Obama asked Americans Friday to call, email, and tweet Congressional leaders to “keep the pressure on” lawmakers in hopes of reaching a bipartisan deal to raise the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt limit ahead of an Aug. 2 deadline.

Obama’s campaign staff used the @BarackObama Twitter account to post the Twitter handles of tweeting GOP leaders — state by state, tweet by tweet.

“Tweet at your Republican legislators and urge them to support a bipartisan compromise to the debt crisis,” Obama’s campaign staff wrote on his account before launching the day-long Twitter campaign.

The campaign appears to have served its purpose: Republican Twitter accounts were flooded with pleas for compromise.

Not everyone is a fan of the presidential spam. By Friday evening, the President had lost more than 40,000 Twitter followers — and counting.

Many members of the Twitterati took to the social media platform to voice their annoyance over the barrage of partisan tweets. A search for “@BarackObama unfollow” turned up scores of irritated posts.

“Honestly, @BarackObama, I’m going to have to unfollow you if you don’t stop filing up my Twitter inbox soon,” tweeted Bostonian @melisthreadgill, a self-described “Progressive activist”.

“Can’t believe I had to unfollow @BarackObama for spamming Twitter. Really, really strange behavior,” wrote @Arevill inConnecticut.

“I want to unfollow @BarackObama but his desperation is too entertaining,” tweeted @rdpatrick of Lavonia, Georgia.

While his follower number appears to have taken its biggest dive in recent memory, Obama’s Twitter account still had a whopping 9,362,880 followers at 7:30pm Friday night, down from 9,402,898 Friday morning — and he’s still the third-most followed person on the planet.

Previous: Obama Declares Twitter War on Republicans

But don’t worry, it’s still the evil “extremist” House Republicans who are holding the country hostage.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an unforgiving display of partisanship, the House approved emergency legislation Friday night to avoid an unprecedented government default and the Senate scuttled it less than two hours later.

The final outcome — with the White House and Senate Democrats calling anew for compromise while criticizing Republicans as Tuesday’s deadline drew near — was anything but certain.

“We are almost out of time” for a compromise, warned President Barack Obama as U.S. financial markets trembled at the prospect of economic chaos next week. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average was down for a sixth straight session.

The House vote was 218-210, almost entirely along party lines, on a Republican-drafted bill to provide a quick $900 billion increase in U.S. borrowing authority — essential to allow the government to continue paying all its bills — along with $917 billion in cuts from federal spending.

No comment.

WACO, Texas (AP) — Coolly defiant, Pfc. Naser Abdo shouted “Nidal Hasan Fort Hood 2009!” as he was led out of the courtroom Friday, an apparent homage to the suspect in the worst mass shooting ever on a U.S. military installation. He condemned the attack less than a year ago, but is now accused of trying to repeat it.

Investigators say Abdo, who cited his Muslim beliefs in requesting conscientious objector status last year, was found in a motel room three miles from Fort Hood’s main gate with a handgun, an article titled “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom” and the ingredients for an explosive device, including gunpowder, shrapnel and pressure cookers. An article with that title appears in an al-Qaida magazine.

Abdo went absent without leave from Fort Campbell, Ky., early this month after being charged with possessing child pornography.

Police and the Army say Abdo admitted plotting an attack, but in Fuhais, Jordan, his father insisted the allegations were “all lies from A to Z.”

(more…)

Apologize for what? Defending themselves from radical Islamists who were trying to kill Israeli soldiers?

(JPost) — Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday said that Israel was “willing to consider apologizing” for problems that occurred during last year’s raid of theTurkish flotilla ship the Mavi Marmara in which nine Turks were killed by IDF commandos.

Speaking to reporters in Washington following a meeting with his US counterpart Leon Panetta, Barak said that he would prefer to come to an understanding with Turkey rather than wait for the publication of a UN report on the incident, which he deemed “problematic for Israel.”

“Defense Ministry and IDF legal advisers recommend that we come to an understanding with Turkey in order to protect commanders and soldiers from legal action,” Barak stated.

“We are not apologizing for the blockade and we are not apologizing for using force,” he said. “We are willing to consider apologizing for problems that occurred during the Marmara operation, if indeed their were such problems. . . I don’t like it, but that is the choice that must be made,” Barak added.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed the importance of Israel reaching a path to reconciliation with Turkey during an hour-long meeting with Barak on Thursday, Barak’s office said.

The issue also came up in talks Barak held earlier in the day at the White House with Vice President Joe Biden and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon.

Washington — which believes a strong US-Israel-Turkey is critical for Middle East stability — has brought pressure to bear on both Jerusalem and Ankara to find a formula to end the crisis over the Mavi Marmara, according to diplomatic officials.

When I voted for him I knew he’d be a RINO and I was fine with it (this is Massachusetts after all), but I never thought he would end up being this bad.

(Politico) — Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts told a radio station Friday that he may vote for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s plan to raise the debt ceiling.

“Sen. Brown tells WBUR parties need to work across the aisle to resolve debt-ceiling impasse; he’d vote for Reid’s plan,” the Boston public radio station posted on its Twitter account.

The moderate Republican, who is up for re-election next year, is in the minority of his party, which overwhelmingly opposes the measure. But increasingly, senators from both parties are saying that there is ample room for compromise between Reid’s measure and the one proposed by House Speaker John Boehner.

“Senator Brown will support a bill that contains spending cuts and doesn’t increase taxes and allows us to avoid default,” said Marcie Kinzel, spokeswoman for Brown. “That could be a Republican bill, or a Democrat bill — it doesn’t matter.”

Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe said she couldn’t vote to proceed to the Reid plan, but she said “that’s not meant to say there aren’t issues between the Reid and Boehner plan that couldn’t be worked out.”

22 Republicans voted “No.”
No Democrats voted “Yes.”

Here are the Republicans who voted against the bill:
Amash (MI)
Bachmann (MN)
Broun (GA)
Chaffetz (UT)
Cravaack (MN)
DesJarlais (TN)
Duncan (SC)
Graves (GA)
Gowdy (SC)
Huelskamp (KS)
Johnson (IL)
Jordan (OH)
King (IA)
Latham (IA)
Connie Mack (FL)
McClintock (CA)
Mulvaney (SC)
Ron Paul (TX)
Tim Scott (SC)
Southerland (FL)
Walsh (IL)
Wilson (SC)

(more…)

“We can sit around and wait for the 100 percent plan, but as I said in a short speech I [gave] at a GOP conference a few days ago, this is a 70, 75 percent plan that gets us to continue to move the ball forward down the field, and that’s why I’m supporting it,” he explained.

“This is not the perfect plan as I said. One of the things that I’m not warmed over about is this joint Congressional committee,” West said. “But I know you can’t come up here expecting that you are going to get your way each and every time. I think John Boehner’s plan is far more superior to Harry Reid’s plan and is far more superior then anything to come out of the Senate, which has not passed a budget in 820 days.”

Keep reading…

Via The Blaze

I blame da Joooos.

GAZA, JULY 28 — Last night in the northern part of the Gaza Strip about a dozen masked vandals attacked and damaged a UNRWA (the UN agency for Palestinian refugees) base where preparations were underway to organise summer camps for children from Gaza. This was reported by a UNRWA spokesperson, who said that the vandals had destroyed a display cabinet, a UN flag and other material. No UN security guards for the camp were injured.

Preparations had been completed in the camp for the holding of a competition in which thousands of children will seek to set a world record by sending into the sky thousands of kites at the same time. UNRWA said that the attempt would be held today as planned. It is not the first time that UNRWA facilities in Gaza have been targeted by radical Islamic groups who accuse the UN agency of holding mixed-gender summer camps and of teaching Western cultural values and not Islamic ones.

They are beating the “extremist” talking point to a bloody pulp.

(The Hill) — Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) slammed the conservative wing of the Republican Party as “a small group of absolutists” and “extremists” who are ignoring history “if they ever knew it.”

“You know, the Chinese are looking at us right now and they are just gleeful and incredulous at the way in which one of their great competitors is imploding in itself, and it’s happening because a small group of absolutists, of extremists, who don’t understand the implications even of what they’re doing, are prepared to hold the nation’s entire economy hostage,” Kerry said Friday on MSNBC.

“I mean they’re acting as if they think they’re the only ones that understand that America has a debt problem,” Kerry continued.

Kerry said conservative House Republicans were coming into debt-ceiling negotiations with a large amount of “absolutism.”

Obviously.

(Briefing Room) — House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said lingering bitterness over how Democrats passed the healthcare reform law has made Republicans resistant to compromise on the debt ceiling.

Hoyer, speaking on CNBC, said he thought part of the reason Republicans have refused to compromise with Democrats on the debt-ceiling package was because of how House Democrats pushed through the Obama administration’s healthcare law.

“I think that’s accurate,” Hoyer said Friday. “I don’t think healthcare was handled the way it should’ve been, but let me tell you why: There was an openness to compromise, but the Republicans said, ‘Look, we don’t like your plan, we’re not going to go there at all,’” Hoyer said.

While his guest Keith Ellison eagerly nods in approval.

Via TheDC:

. . .Olbermann’s guest, Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, protested King’s chairmanship, suggesting that he is intentionally targeting the Muslim community — and that is what inspires a “toxic and ugly atmosphere,” particularly the tragedy in Norway last week involving gunman Anders Breivik.

“The fact is, is that demonization of the Muslim community in America and in Europe has led to some very unfortunate outcomes,” Ellison said. “Here’s the thing, Anders Breivik in his manifesto specifically mentioned American anti-Muslim activists as inspiration for his horrible work, which resulted in the loss of life for over 70 Norwegians. So this horrible, toxic rhetoric has very, very real consequences for people, and I hope that, you know, Chairman King begins to understand that he is contributing to a toxic and ugly atmosphere that has real consequences.”

And that evoked a heartfelt response from the “Countdown” host about King — a military veteran and 10-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

“I’ll go further than that,” Olbermann said. “Congressman Peter King is un-American and frankly, forgive the language — he’s an asshole.”

Keep reading…

(click image for video)

And it’s preposterous to say that Carney has more than three functioning brain cells.

“This is a lot of money here. This is a lot of savings. A lot of deep and substantial cuts. There is no upfront revenue in Senator Reid’s proposal. It is just simply preposterous to suggest that it is not, does not represent an effort to come halfway towards the Republicans,” Jay Carney said at his Friday briefing.