brooklynmutt:

@ClaraJeffery

kileyrae:

hollybailey:

A bad back doomed any chance Perry stood to break through. It became an open secret that he was using painkillers in sufficient dosages to keep him standing through the two-hour debates. The manager of a rival campaign was at a urinal in an empty bathroom in Hanover, New Hampshire, before the Bloomberg News debate on October 11, when he heard someone come through the door loudly singing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” Wondering who was making all the noise, the campaign manager turned his head and saw, to his surprise, the governor of Texas. Perry came down the row of about twenty urinals and stood companionably close by. Nonplussed, the campaign manager made a hasty exit; as the bathroom door closed, he could hear Perry still merrily singing away: “I-I-I’ve been working on the ra-a-i-i-l-road, all-l-l the live-long day …” Asked about the episode, a top campaign official said, “He whistles. I wouldn’t read anything into it.”

Oof, Rick Perry. (Politico via Gawker)

This explains so much.

Leticia Parra, a mother of five scraping by on income from her husband’s sporadic construction jobs, relied on the Planned Parenthood clinic in San Carlos, an impoverished town in South Texas, for breast cancer screenings, free birth control pills and pap smears for cervical cancer. 

But the clinic closed in October, along with more than a dozen others in the state, after financing for women’s health was slashed by two-thirds by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

The cuts, which left many low-income women with inconvenient or costly options, grew out of the effort to eliminate state support for Planned Parenthood. Although the cuts also forced clinics that were not affiliated with the agency to close — and none of them, even the ones run by Planned Parenthood, performed abortions — supporters of the cutbacks said they were motivated by the fight against abortion.

Now, the same sentiment is likely to lead to a shutdown next week of another significant source of reproductive health care: the Medicaid Women’s Health Program, which serves 130,000 women with grants to many clinics, including those run by Planned Parenthood. Gov. Rick Perry and Republican lawmakers have said they would forgo the $35 million in federal money that finances the women’s health program in order to keep Planned Parenthood from getting any of it.

Read the entire article here.

shortformblog:

newsweek:

We’ve obtained a foot-tall stack of letters from Tea Party-friendly politicians seeking cash from the government. Go, saunter on into the hypocrisy.

The first letter annoys us the most. Eric Cantor trying to get money for a JetBlue route from NYC to Cancun? Lamesauce. Suggestion to Newsweek: Create a Tumblr called PoliticiansAskingForMoney.tumblr.com. It would be awesome.

That’s rich.

Republican presidential candidates are issuing biting and sustained attacks on the federal courts and the role they play in American life, reflecting and stoking skepticism among conservatives about the judiciary.  

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas favors term limits for Supreme Court justices. Representatives Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Ron Paul of Texas say they would forbid the court from deciding cases concerning same-sex marriage. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania want to abolish the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, calling it a “rogue” court that is “consistently radical.”

Read the article here.

“You want to add another candidate?  It’s like the Republican primary is a season of American Idol in reverse, where every week you just add some other idiot.”

Jon Stewart killed it.

liberalsarecool:

The DNC releases a tough video highlighting inappropriate cheering during the Republican presidential debates and notes none of the candidates said anything.

(Source: liberalsarecool)

Some background on the case can be found here.

motherjones:

Texas’ Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice, Don Clemmer, later testified that his office didn’t have the resources to investigate allegations of sexual abuse at a TYC facility in Ward County because at the time the local agent was busy investigating charges of voter fraud by a 68-year-old Hispanic woman.

Your morning must-read: Why did Rick Perry wait six years to clean up the culture of child rape at Texas youth detention and rehabilitation centers?

Rick Perry’s insistence that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” has many people saying he can’t be elected.  As the Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page wrote:

Who’s going to trust a man who calls the program a criminal fraud and, in effect, called Americans a bunch of suckers for believing in it for these many decades?

It very well may be that someone who insists Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, despite all evidence to the contrary, is not electable on a national level.  But it’s worth remembering that last year, a tea partier in Wisconsin ran against Senator Feingold using the exact same line…and won.  

Here’s why I find it impossible to be a Republican: any crowd that instantly cheers the execution of 234 individuals is a crowd I want to flee, not join.

Did the audience at the GOP debate really just start clapping and whistling when the subject of execution came up? Did I miss something?

motherjones:

Who knew?