TPM: “The Washington Post’s top editors just wrapped up a meeting with Romney officials to discuss the campaign’s request for a retraction of the paper’s story on Bain Capital’s outsourcing. “We are very confident in our reporting,” Washington Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti told TPM after the meeting, adding that appointments with people concerned about coverage are common.”
And the Washington Post is actually entertaining this ridiculous request?
TPM reports: “Washington Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti confirmed that editors are meeting with Romney officials to discuss the campaign’s request for a retraction of the paper’s story on Bain Capital’s outsourcing. ”The editors really do take complaints seriously,” she told TPM. ‘They’re always willing to listen to people’s concerns. That’s what they’re doing.’”
I have a concern: who owns the Washington Post — and was the owner in Park City, Utah last weekend?
via: mabelalexa
Think Progress: Thousands of federal firefighters are battling massive wildfires in Colorado and Utah. But because most of these firefighters are temporary employees of the Forest Service, they do not receive health benefits under federal regulations. Bill Dougan, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said health insurance is unaffordable for many unless “they have a spouse that might be able to get coverage under an employer. In some places that’s not an option.” The Affordable Care Act, on which the Supreme Court will rule tomorrow, could help them by guaranteeing coverage if they have a pre-existing condition from smoke inhalation and by offering subsidies to help cover insurance premiums. But if the Supreme Court overturns the law, as Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff writes, “the firefighters stay in the same situation they’ve been in all along: Working a dangerous job and unable to afford coverage.”
Related: Uninsured and fighting blazes: Welcome to the life of a federal firefighter
“One does not simply walk into Colorado” via: ihatepeacocks
Via Jason at ihatepeacocks (who lives near this area):
6/27/2012 3:20pm MST:
Pictures are just now starting to come in from the Mountain Shadows Neighborhood in Colorado Springs. This was the first neighbor to catch fire due to the Waldo Canyon Fire spreading across the “Front Range” in Colorado Springs. This Photo was taken by Judd Tyson, a firefighter on the scene and posted on Facebook.
The fire continues to grow moving North and West threatening The United States Air Force Academy, Monument Colorado and Woodland Park Colorado. New evacuations have been announced in Colorado Springs as the fire continues to burn the western half of the city.
More Pictures of the devastation caused by the Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs Colorado. This picture was taken (by an unknown source) in the Parkside area of the Mountain Shadows Neighborhood and posted on KKTV 11’s Facebook page.
From Jason’s main website, you can find links if you’d like to help the people who have been evacuated (mandatory evacuations were ordered for 32,000) — and as you can see from the photos above, many are going to need a lot of help.
Food bank donations – If you’re in the area:
Care & Share is now the sole place to drop off donations.
Here is a link to download a .doc they have posted on their website pertaining to what they need: http://careandshare.org/~/media/853F900F921943D8A0A4C75300934A90.ashx
They are asking for Canned Fruit, Canned Veggies, Beef Jerky, Protein Bars.
In addition, they need personal care items, tooth brushes, toothpaste, combs, soap, shampoo etc…Non-perishable food and water donations can be taken to Care and Share, located on 2605 Preamble Point, from 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday.
Not in the area? Donations are accepted online: http://give.careandshare.org/
Here’s a link to the Colorado Springs Gazette‘s Live Blog, which is blogging information on the fire, evacuations, and assistance as it comes in:
3:40 p.m. MST: Thunderstorms blowing through the area are creating high winds that have stirred up some flames and forced firefighters to retreat. C-130s are also reportedly grounded. So far, any rain/hail coming from the storms doesn’t appear to be helping the situation
…
MOST RECENT COLORADO WILDFIRE UPDATES can be found here »
liberalsarecool: Mitt: the ‘outsourcing pioneer’ with the Cayman and Swiss bank accounts.
Eight wildfires in Colorado:
But look at the West:
And the western United States:
What climate change?
USATODAY: A stubborn and towering wildfire jumped firefighters’ perimeter lines in the hills overlooking Colorado Springs, forcing frantic mandatory evacuation notices for more than 32,000 residents, including the U.S. Air Force Academy, and destroying an unknown number of homes. The blaze doubled in size overnight to more than 24 square miles, fire information officer Rob Dyerberg said Wednesday. He said homes were destroyed but authorities don’t yet know how many.
Statistics via InciWeb:
| TOTAL PERSONNEL | 764 |
|---|---|
| SIZE | 15,517 acres |
| PERCENT CONTAINED | 5% |
publicradiointernational: Wildfire engulfs homes in Colorado Springs. (Photo by Wesley Carr via Twitter)
More than 800 firefighters are battling a fast-moving wildfire that has already chased 32,000 residents from their homes. More.
32,000 evacuated in fast-moving Colorado Springs wildfire – CNN.com
A wind-fueled wildfire of epic proportions breached fire lines Tuesday and entered Colorado Springs, Colorado, bringing to at least 32,000 the number of people evacuated in the area and at the U.S. Air Force Academy, authorities said.
“The fire conditions could not be worse,” said Anne Rys-Sikora, spokeswoman for a multiagency fire response team. “It is like a convection oven out there.”
Residents of the North Mountain Shadows and Peregrine communities in Colorado Springs were ordered to leave their homes, authorities said.
Multiple structures in North Mountain Shadows were being affected by the Waldo Canyon Fire, officials said Tuesday night.
Colorado Springs set a record high of 101 on Tuesday as firefighters contended with brutal conditions, including ash falling on highways and neighborhoods. Officials rushed in crews and aerial equipment in a bid to slow the fire.
The 6,200-acre fire remained only 5% contained. Officials labeled it as exhibiting “extreme fire behavior.”
think-progress: 32,000 flee Colorado Springs as wildfires worsen. Gov. John Hickenlooper said “It was like looking at the worst movie set you could imagine.”
Photo via @scottseibold
The average American worker is underpaid because your company won’t share its profits with you — even if you helped increase the productivity / profits.
via: wisconsinforward
Henry Blodget at Business Insider reports that corporate profits are at an all time high, while wages are now at an all time low:
1) Corporate profit margins just hit an all-time high. Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before. (And some people are still saying that companies are suffering from “too much regulation” and “too many taxes.” Maybe little companies are, but big ones certainly aren’t)
2) Fewer Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades. One reason corporations are so profitable is that they don’t employ as many Americans as they used to.
3) Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low. This is both cause and effect. One reason companies are so profitable is that they’re paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP. And that, in turn, is one reason the economy is so weak: Those “wages” are other companies’ revenue.
Blodget bottomlines it for us in a series of related charts: “Companies need to start sharing more of their revenue with their employees. Wages as a percent of the economy simply have to go up. Yes, this means corporate profit margins will drop. But they can drop a long, long way and still be “above average.” And this is our country we’re talking about. If corporations really are people, it’s time for them to start acting like people–and sharing their wealth.”
Not to mention all the unions that have been busted up by Republicans for the past 30-40 years. What Blodget says makes sense, of course, yet Tea Street, USA has been conditioned to think sharing downward isn’t fair, it’s Socialism (or one of those -isms), and Rush Limbaugh and Jesus wouldn’t approve. Psychologically it has something to do with supposedly “punishing” the successful (the wealthy will say) plus gay marriage and race wars… it’s all way too murky and complex to get into here.
It is safe to say that the only “sharing” that the GOP and the one percent are interested in is bottom-up sharing: legislating more tax cuts to profitable corporations and the wealthiest citizens and paying for those tax cuts (and decreased government revenue) with austerity — by cutting programs and services that the rest of us use. Just look at the Ryan plan or the Romney budget.
You really don’t think that the Koch Brothers, Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson and all the other rich guys who were in Park City, Utah with Mitt last weekend are donating hundreds of millions of dollars to Romney Super PACs, just so they can turn around and ‘share’ profits with their workers, do you? Their political donations are a business investment which they hope to recoup, with interest. They want even more, not less.
questionall: Tom Toles on Mitt Romney
Because, as Jim Galloway at the AJC observes, white voter registration is steadily moving downward: “In May of 2008, African-Americans made up 28 percent of active registered voters in Georgia while whites made up 65 percent and “other” race… In May of 2012, African-Americans made up 29.4 percent of active registered voters, whites made up 60.2 percent, and “other” race made up 10.4 percent. So the downward trend in the white share of voters in Georgia has continued.”
So while GOP lawmakers will try to disenfranchise the voters who they assume wouldn’t vote Republican anyway (i.e. non-whites), the rightwing media are working overtime to whip up enough FEAR and ANGER to get the whites who have voted Republican before into the voting booths again — despite how they feel about Mitt Romney. How? By victimizing whites, by insinuating there’s a race-war, by reminding their audience that everyone thinks they’re the “R” word (racist), and by evoking the usual tribal reaction from their base. McKay Coppins at Buzzfeed outlined some of the main players on the far-right last month in his article, “In Conservative Media, A “Race War” Rages“:
But as Coppins fairly reports: “Indeed, the irony of the race war narrative’s latest flare-up is that it comes at a time when national crime rates have reached historic lows — including reported hate crimes against whites… What’s more, hate crimes against blacks have continued to outstrip those against whites by about four-to-one: In 2010 alone, there were 2,201 reported. Violent crimes across the spectrum reached a four-decade low in 2010.”
Jobs? Health care reform? Tax cuts for the one percent? Austerity for the rest of us? None of that really matters to low-information voters. Reality and facts, once again, are not part of the narrative that’s written and produced by the American conservative media and performed for the American conservative voter’s entertainment. What gets these people to the voting booth is fear and anger: do you want to be attacked by mobs of ‘rib-eating’ ‘urban’ youths? No? Then you’d better vote for Mitt Romney.
image: Buzzfeed
Stephen Colbert on Mitt Romney downplaying improved unemployment statistics under the Obama administration.
image: diegueno
Buzzfeed’s own McKay Coppins is terribly excited that no matter what the Supreme Court decides with Affordable Care, it’s going to be great news for Mitt Romney (a “win/win” as he titled his piece):
“If the law is overturned, Romney will spend the rest of the election casting Obama as an abject failure — an economic lightweight who wasted his time and energy on a misguided policy initiative, only to see it immediately dismantled by the Courts. The president has other accomplishments to run on, of course — the auto bailout, Dodd-Frank, etc. — but this was by far the most high-profile.”
“If the law is upheld, on the other hand, Romney will continue promising from the stump that, if elected, he’ll be the guy to repeal Obamacare. Polls indicate that a solid majority of Americans say they oppose the Affordable Care Act, though individual aspects of the legislation tend to poll better when separated from the polarizing legislation. Romney will take advantage of the unpopularity of “Obamacare,” as a political term, and continue his crusade to get rid of it.”
Maybe you’re wondering, like I did, who is McKay Coppins, this “reporter” who’s eager to call the president an ‘abject failure‘ through Mitt Romney? Here, I think this explains everything (about both Buzzfeed politics and Coppins).
