Republicans Support Todd Akin Again Despite ‘Legitimate Rape’ Comment in Missouri Senate Race – ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=17332911

Up until the deadline, D.C. Republicans stood by their decision not to support Akin. “We meant what we said,” one GOP strategist told ABC News on Monday, predicting a loss for Akin in the state. “At some point you have to do what’s right for the party, and that was doing what’s right for the party.” But now that the possibility of replacing him has gone away, he is being embraced again, some sounding as if there had never been any doubt. “There is no question that for Missourians who believe we need to stop the reckless Washington spending, rein in the role of government in people’s lives, and finally focus on growing jobs in this country, that Todd Akin is a far more preferable candidate than liberal Senator Claire McCaskill,” the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s executive director, Rob Jesmer, said in a prepared statement on Wednesday. Rick Santorum, Jim DeMint endorse Todd Akin “As with every Republican Senate candidate, we hope Todd Akin wins in November and we will continue to monitor this race closely in the days ahead,” Jesmer said. Translation: If Akin appears to be competitive, the NRSC will consider spending in Missouri –something the committee has maintained it would not do.

For hose wondering about what it what take for he Republicans to reject a candidate, keep wondering, as we haven’t hit that level yet.

Business Insider http://www.businessinsider.com/foxnews-and-the-wall-street-journal-misrepresent-climate-science-2012-9

For Fox News, 93 percent of references to climate change were misleading, with the most common form taken being to “broadly dismiss the scientific consensus that climate change is occurring or human-induced.” For the Wall Street Journal, 81 percent of letters, op-eds, columns and editorials made were misleading. Most “attempted to broadly undermine the major conclusions of climate science. Instances of attacks on individual scientists, mocking the science, and cherry-picking data were all equally common. Instance included accusations that scientists were fudging data and claims that they are motivated by financial self-interest.”

It’s no wonder at all why the vast majority of conservatives don’t get this stuff.

Romney agrees: Tax code too easy on those in his bracket | Jay Bookman

Romney paid 14.1 percent of his income in taxes, a figure that could have and would have been as low as 10.4 percent if he wasn’t running for office. In contrast, the average effective tax rate paid by his wealthy father back in the ’60s was 37 percent.

Yet Romney continues to insist that wealthier Americans today can’t be asked to shoulder more of the financial burden, even as changes in the global economy continue to concentrate more and more wealth in their hands.

The release of (some of ) Romney’s returns illustrate one simple fact…the tax burden on the wealthy is incredibly low…and yet many of them claim it is incredibly high.   There’s a big disconnect there, and Romney is the poster-child for it (literally, as he’s running as the candidate for the party that sells inequality like it was freedom.)

The net worth of the richest Americans grew by 13 percent in the past year to $1.7 trillion, Forbes magazine said on Wednesday, and a familiar cast of characters once again populated the top of the magazine’s annual list of the U.S. uber-elite, including Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison and the Koch brothers.

The average net worth of the 400 wealthiest Americans rose to a record $4.2 billion, the magazine said.

Collectively, this group’s net worth is the equivalent of one-eighth of the entire U.S. economy, which stood at $13.56 billion in real terms according to the latest government data. But the 13 percent growth in the wealth of the richest Americans far outpaced that of the economy overall, helping widen the chasm between rich and poor.

via Richest 400 Americans’ net worth jumps 13 percent to $1.7 trillion – Bottom Line.

Oh…so it’s pretty much party time at the top.  And these are the folks that Republicans think are struggling the most, and being crushed…somehow.

And couldn’t possibly afford to pay another 5% out of that extra 13% they got last year.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty to head bank lobbying group – latimes.com 

WASHINGTON — Former Minnestoa Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a onetime Republican presidential candidate who was considered a finalist to be Mitt Romney’s running mate, was named Thursday as the new head of a leading bank lobbying group.

Pawlenty, 51, will be the new chief executive officer of the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington organization that represents 100 of the largest banking and financial services companies in the country.

Wall Street begats Wall Street.

Romney’s 47% Comments Show Gap From Bush-Era Republicans – Businessweek 

In 2001, Bush promoted his tax cut to the public in part because it would prevent some people from paying taxes. “People with the smallest incomes will get the highest percentage of reductions,” Bush said in his first speech to Congress on Feb. 27, 2001. “And millions of additional American families will be removed from the income tax rolls entirely.”

By doubling the child tax credit, creating a 10 percent tax bracket and eliminating capital gains taxes for middle-income earners, Bush did exactly that.

Now the situation purposefully created by Bush has come into focus…and somehow it’s a repudiation of these exact same people. Sickening.

Romney’s Wrong And Right About The ’47 Percent’ : The Two-Way : NPR http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/09/18/161333783/romneys-wrong-and-right-about-the-47-percent?utm_source=NPR&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20120903

To imply that most of those who don’t pay income taxes are getting away with something, however, raises questions. “Put bluntly,” Economix writes, “these are not households shirking their tax liabilities. The pool consists mostly of the poor, of relatively low-income working families and of old people. The tax code is specifically designed to reduce the burden on them.”

The article also notes how the top 10 “dependent victim” states are mostly deep red Republican ones.

Romney Stands by Government-Dependent ‘Victims’ Remark to Donors – SFGate 

“This is the same message that I give to people,” he said during the news conference, which was pulled together so quickly that it wasn’t carried live on cable television and some reporters had to run to it from a nearby hotel. “I hope the person who has the video would put out the full material, but it’s a message which I’m going to carry and continue to carry.”

First up, this assumes the Romney campaign doesn’t do any recording of its own, which is probably silly. Second and far more damning, the guy who refuses to release his tax returns really has no credibility in calling on others to release stuff.

http://i.imgur.com/Ln8WY.jpg

Pretty much nailed it.  Continuing to watch this one develop.   And there’s plenty developing.   Plenty.

Here’s some BBC background on the nature of the conflict.

As a signpost on the road to the so-called Post-PC Era we’ve been hearing about for so many years, this one is pretty hard to argue with: As of this year, personal computers no longer consume the majority of the world’s memory chip supply.

And while it may not come as a terrible surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to personal technology trends during the last few years, there’s nothing like a cold, hard number to make the point crystal clear.

Word of this tipping point came quietly in the form of a press release from the market research firm IHS (the same group formerly known as iSuppli). The moment came during the second quarter of 2012. For the first time in a generation, according to the firm’s reckoning, PCs did not consume the the majority of commodity memory chips, also known as DRAM (pronounced “DEE-ram”).

via It’s Official: The Era of the Personal Computer Is Over. – Arik Hesseldahl – News – AllThingsD.

Twas a fun age.  Now most of the phones on the market have more computing power than the original Apollo Mission…and any PC built last century.  Moore’s Law FTW!

Michael Lewis: Obama’s Way | Vanity Fair