If you’ve spent any amount of time watching Fox News, and did not arrive at the network already wedded to its view of the world, you know that “Fair and Balanced” is not actually an aspiration or ethos, but rather an inside joke meant to melt the faces of incredulous liberals. Yes, there is a divide between Fox’s opinion arm and its news-gathering operation, which employs many straight-shooting reporters. But it’s difficult to put much faith in this supposedly impermeable wall when the network itself is cutting four-minute attack ads against Barack Obama on its own news shows. Behold the following, aired in its entirety on Fox & Friends,the network’s morning show:

Four years of half- truths and outrights lies by Fox, in one convenient package. —- Swampland http://swampland.time.com/2012/05/30/fair-and-balanced-stretched-to-its-limit/

The governor, who has enlisted supply-side economist Arthur Laffer as an adviser, had proposed lowering and flattening the state’s individual income tax and eliminating taxes on non-wage, business income. But he also proposed paying for those moves by making permanent a temporary sales tax increase that had boosted it to 6.3% from 5.7%, and eliminating a variety of exemptions and credits, including the exemption on mortgage interest and the earned-income credit for the working poor. The governor had pushed for a compromise, but in the end, the legislature, driven by House tea-party conservatives, approved the tax cuts without the revenue components that Mr. Brownback had proposed. “This is what they came up with,” Mr. Brownback said Tuesday. “I’m happy to sign it, and we’re going to make it work.” Still, he added: “I would have put more ‘pay-fors’ in it.” Potential areas for saving include Medicaid and negotiating lower rates for office space and electricity, Mr. Brownback said.

Tax cuts for business and service cuts to the poor…which will somehow stimulate economic activity. This is a “beatings will continue until morale improves” type strategy, which already failed nationwide…so why not try it in Kansas. — Kansas Governor Signs Tax-Cut Bill – WSJ.com http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304791704577418641784902500.html

Now strategists and donors are going where the money’s going, and growing evidence suggests that this election year — not just on the presidential level, but also for congressional races — will be dominated by superPACs. Right now, more than 80 percent of the money raised by superPACs has gone to pro-GOP groups. And, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, 80 percent of all the money raised by these groups has come from just 100 individuals — the wealthiest people in America. People like Texas billionaire Harold Simmons.

If you ever wondered why it seems all the GOP policies look like they were written by rich assholes…now you know why. — NPR.org » Outside Money Making The Race A Rich Man’s Game http://m.npr.org/story/153784210?url=/2012/05/26/153784210/outside-money-making-the-race-a-billionaires-game≻=ipad&f=1001

Classes in Philadelphia public schools run as big as 33 students. Statewide, the average is 21. The national average is 20 in elementary schools and 19 in high schools, according to the federal Education Department. From seventh grade through graduation, Romney attended the private Cranbrook Schools in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Classes there are small, according to statistics the school provided Friday. In pre-kindergarten, classes have 15 students, taught by two teachers and an assistant teacher. Kindergarten classes have 18 students and two teachers. Grades one to five are limited to 18 students per class, and grades six through eight typically have 15 or 16 students. Classes in ninth through 12th grades are capped at 18 students.

This was after he claimed larger class sizes are good…for public schools. — News – philly.com http://mobile.philly.com/news/?wss=/philly/news&id=154313505&viewAll=y#more

Just before 3:00 a.m. PDT with a short burst of the thrusters, Dragon again began approaching the ISS. Minutes later, with the Dragon 220 meters from the station, astronaut Kuipers sent a command via the UHF communications link and Dragon aborted its approach as expected and returned to the 250 meter hold position. Test one was complete. Kuipers planned to send a command for Dragon to hold at 235 meters, but problems with Dragon’s onboard thermal camera used for the rendezvous with the ISS kept it at the 250 meter point. After a few minutes the test resumed and Kuipers issued Dragon a hold command at 235 meters, but it happened a bit earlier than planned. Over the next half hour or so, the teams in Hawthorne and Houston were busy evaluating the data from the onboard sensors to make sure both the station and Dragon agreed on their relative positions before moving any closer, particularly inside the simply named “Keep Out Sphere” that surrounds the ISS at 200 meters.

I have mixed feelings on this one. Great to see a space program going forward, not so excited about how. I just have a nagging feeling this type of private industry is going to…and this is probably to worst euphemism to use here…but “crash and burn” seems apt. While I don’t doubt that we can do things cheaper and probably faster in a private company, both market forces and natural ones can have massive side effects. We’ll see how this plays out, but until the private industry survives a real test, I’m not sure its going to be viable long term without massive public support (which kinda makes you wonder what will happen to the tech if one of these companies fails and gets bought out by someone we don’t want to know how to make these kinds of rockets). —- ISS Welcomes SpaceX Dragon — First Private Spacecraft at Station | Autopia | Wired.com http://m.wired.com/autopia/2012/05/spacex-docking/

Facebook’s stock should trade for $13.80 – Mark Hulbert – MarketWatch

Since Facebook is most often compared to Google , let’s assume that its price-to-sales ratio in five years will be just as high as Google’s is currently: 5.51-to-1. You could argue that this is an overly generous assumption, of course. But it nevertheless means Facebook’s market cap in five years will be just $63.8 billion — 30% less than where it stands today. Assuming that the total number of its shares stays constant, that works out to a price per share of just $23.26 — in contrast to its recent closing price of $33.03. Ouch. Actually, however, the news is even worse: No one is going to invest in Facebook shares today if its price will be 30% lower in five years. So, in order to entice someone to invest in it today, Facebook needs to offer a handsome return. Assuming that its five-year return is equal to the stock market’s long-term average return of 11% annualized, Facebook shares currently would need to be trading at just $13.80.

And there ya go. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebooks-stock-should-trade-for-1380-2012-05-25

Presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney will be joined by former rival Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump at a campaign event on Tuesday in Las Vegas. The event, which will be held at Trump’s hotel located on the Las Vegas strip, is coupled with a fundraising contest launched by the Romney campaign on Thursday. Supporters who donate to the presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign will be entered in a raffle for a prize package that includes dinner with Romney and Trump.

If you do win the dinner and you have pizza, remember folks of this social strata think it’s polite to use a fork. — Trump And Gingrich To Campaign With Romney In Las Vegas | TPM Livewire http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/trump-gingrich-to-campaign-with-romney-in-las

These laws, often modeled on draft legislation from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a consortium of conservative state legislators, will have the effect of disenfranchising millions of voters, all in order to address a vote fraud “epidemic” that should be filed somewhere between the Loch Ness Monster and the Tooth Fairy in the annals of modern fairy tales. As Weiser notes, none of this is casual or accidental: “If you want to find another period in which this many new laws were passed restricting voting, you have to go back more than a century—to the post-Reconstruction era, when Southern states passed a host of Jim Crow voting laws”

Hrrm…now we see how far “back” they want to take the country. — Ohio Republicans want to disallow ballots with errors caused by poll workers. – Slate Magazine http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/05/ohio_republicans_want_to_disallow_ballots_with_errors_caused_by_poll_workers_.html?dummies

In the video, he identifies himself as Bolton and –according to the narrator – is offered Bolton’s ballot. An unedited, three-and-a-half-hour version of the videotape on Veritas’ own website, though, shows that editors snipped out a key piece of the video: a poll worker asking the 20-something impersonator if he is Michael G. Bolton Junior. The Veritas operative says yes. Michael G. Bolton Jr. , who has the same address as his father, is very much alive. His mother, Winifred Bolton, was the first member of the family to find out that something odd had happened at their polling place, Martin Middle School in Raleigh.

This is the kind of idiocy congressional Republicans took time oh to honor, may I remind you. —- Sting video about N.C. voting called incorrect, ‘infuriating’ – Elections – NewsObserver.com http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/05/24/2085882/sting-video-about-nc-voting-called.html