Has anyone else seen the new ad by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads attacking Elizabeth Warren? I did, this morning, and all I could do was think: thanks, Karl Rove…?

The ad hits Warren about her support for the Occupy movement (and talking about her contribution to the seeds of the movement, the idea that the middle class and the American dream have been under attack, something Warren has been fighting against for decades). The ad labels the movement as socialist/radical/yadda yadda yadda.

Is Karl Rove aware that he’s running the ad in Massachusetts? I’m just wonderin’. Maybe he’s getting senile in his old age. And he is aware, I have to assume, of the polling that shows more Americans support Occupy than not? Or that 2/3rds agree that income inequality needs to be addressed and the system as it is is not fair? The numbers are likely a lot higher in MA, since, as we keep getting reminded (by the “red speck” who’s running for President, if nothing else) that our state is one of the most liberal in the union.

If I were Scott Brown, I’d beg Karl to please…stop helping.

Seriously, if what’s come out of the MA GOP, the Brown campaign, and the Republicans in general thus far is indicative of their future attack strategy…I am not going to say it’s cakewalk because nothing ever is and one’d be a fool to underestimate the underwear model…but geez. Make it a bit competitive at least!

Update: and we have video! I will also make the point that if Scott Brown wants to win a real term next November, he has to tack to the middle and look moderate, and divorce himself from the radical right. It’s his only chance. However, this goes in the opposite direction - and his campaign will be tarred with the same brush, as these sorts of ads go into the general mindset as “from the opposition” - they don’t make such distinctions as “oh that was an independent Karl Rove ad, and I’ll judge Brown accordingly.” That just doesn’t happen.

I’ve been following (mostly online) the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Boston protests since nearly the beginning. They got traction and coverage on blogs and Twitter long before the media was covering it - in fact, before the unprovoked pepper spray incidents that made the news, the only place to read about what was happening was online.

The media complained that they weren’t cohesive enough and there wasn’t news to cover. Well, that has quickly changed and evolved. For starters, there were some very bad decisions from the NYPD - both institutionally, and by some idiot individuals - which put the protests on the map for the media, and solidified the motivation of participants and supporters. What’s more, it seems the organic sort of organizing that has sprung up has - and I have to use the word evolved again - to meet the challenges of running a protest, dealing with the media, finding a set of demands to articulate why they are angry and not going to take it any more. OWS has spokespeople and media tents and a strong online presence - all while being relatively leadersless in the traditional sense.

In some ways, my personal cynicism alert flag is up. (Yeah, I know, I’m too young to be truly cynical…) I spent years organizing with the peace movement against the Iraq war, butting my head up against the sheer stubbornness of the Bush administration and, later, Obama’s. After all, GitMo is still open, the USA PATRIOT Act was reauthorized and is being used to spy on Americans without due process, we’re still in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan though with some troop drawdown, and Obama even unilaterally bombed, for right or wrong, Libya, without the consent of Congress.

The only satisfaction we got out of our fight was that most of the American public got on our side after a while. But it still reelected Bush and let itself be lied to about Kerry’s war record and ability to lead, and we never got a truly different kind of leader to replace him in 2008, either. Obama put Wall St executives in charge of the economy even after it was evident they were full of shit.

But there is something really interesting happening with Occupy[America]. For one thing, it’s just average citizens (not diehard liberals or extremely informed people like me) who are protesting. Photo after photo, interview after interview, this is very evident.

There are so many people in this country who have been foreclosed on, laid off, unable to move forward, that a segment of them, with nothing left to lose, are truly taking the fight to the streets. Since they have nothing left to lose - no middle class lifestyle, no prospects - they have a lot to fight for. I always said the worst part about being an anti-war protester is that most of our citizens, even when sympathetic (and the majority was by the time I left that movement) are busy with their lives, making their livings, feeding their families, going to soccer games, and being generally content that things aren’t that bad for them, personally. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s totally human, and what’s more, a legacy of the last century of American progress. We built the middle class. A country with a middle class able to make ends meet is a relatively politically stable country. It’s a good thing.

Which is why I think there is something different in the air.

Gradually, we’ve seen the erosion of the buying power and the salaries of the middle class. For so many decades before, our children did at least a little better than their parents. Then, since the Reagan era, we started to see the slide. We began to only tread water…then occasionally swallowed some. Then we began drowning, but we as a people were the last to see it happen.

Even in the 2008 economic meltdown, we failed to notice our lungs filling with something other than air.

This generation of young people really are the first who truly believe - nay, who know - they are not destined to do better than their parents. Unlike the spoiled kids of my generation (raised largely in the 80s and coming of age in the 90s), they see the coming tide sweeping over them and pulling them under the water before they even get a chance to begin. They are left behind. And they know that if they do nothing, it will only get worse. They have nothing left to lose.

They join every one of their older siblings, parents, grandparents who have lost a house, a job, a future, despite being of the generations born with more promise. For some of us older ones, we’ve experienced firsthand how it’s gonna be going forward if there are no changes. For the rest of us older ones, we are beginning to understand how fragile our position of comfort is. The OccupyWallSt movement presents this to us in bas-relief - the notion that the middle class is under siege and has been for quite some time.

The thing that is different from now from these previous movements is that the situation that has caused these long term problems is not going to be alleviated by last generation’s leaders. Obama is cut off at the knees to even patch a pathetic temporary band-aid (the jobs bill) on our economic slide by Republican intransigence. And even Obama’s half-measures would probably only prove to elongate the stagnation, not solve the underlying problem. We’re now seeing the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us reach the levels seen right before the 1929 crash. Eventually, this was going to get noticed by someone. By everyone.

Even the Tea Party movement, while misguided to the extreme, is an expression of this loss of power by the average person. Why did they catch fire? Despite being such a minority of even the Republican party? Because poor and middle class Republicans too are suffering in this economic climate, this class warfare on us by the super-wealthy. They just aren’t right on who to blame for this.

Most of America, on the other hand, already knows what and who is to blame. They already overwhelmingly want to see taxes raised back up on the uberwealthy. They know that Wall St needs taking down a peg or three, and that we need to go back to regulating our economic system so that the playing field becomes level again. They just need the energy to look up from their day to day struggles against the tide, to look up, and see that horizon again.

I don’t know where the Occupy movement is going to go. It seems to change and swell bigger by the day, though it could have an upper limit, I suppose. But if this truly is the moment where the American people reach the tipping point, if this is the straw that, finally, after 30 years of straws, breaks the camel’s back, then maybe we can make the changes without the economic crash that I have been foreseeing for years. That crash (which will make 2008 look like cakewalk) could still be coming. But if we organize enough in advance, if we can offer an alternative to the American people now, perhaps we will not lose a decade like they did in the Great Depression. After all, we have history to inform us how best to rebuild the American middle class and spread prosperity around to everyone.

So, occupy on! There may not be an immediate result, but it could offer a long term solution. Hats off to the most powerless among us.

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” - V

Really. Don’t make it so easy for us, Scotty!

Customer at restaurant: You’re asking us about jobs and the economy. I mean, what are you seeing?

Scott Brown: People are hurting, they’re frustrated, they’re scared. They’re just basically getting up day to day and paying the bills…what I’m finding as I’m traveling around is that they need regulatory certainty, tax certainty, and taking that wet blanket off…they need government to just take that wet blanket off and leave them alone.

It goes on from there, the whole thing, Scott Brown droning on with the standard anti-governing memes you would expect.

Putting aside for the moment the fact that Senator Pickup Truck is doing his August recess “tour of the state” with only people who’ll pay or are invited to get in (a self-selecting group of constituents that’ll tell him exactly what he wants to hear), what do you see wrong with this campaign video?

All right, I’ll tell you, if you haven’t spotted it. So normally, you see a candidate speaking to a crowd or a small group and hearing from them. Listening to what they have to say and being sympathetic with [insert issue here]. What’s different about this exchange, is it’s all about Scotty. HE gets asked a question about what HE is seeing and HE gets to drone on about it. Normally in a campaign event it’s the other way around.

Talk about man of the people. Even his language, “what I’m finding…is that they need…” Condescending, self-righteous, and then couple that with his self-selecting campaign events full of funders and no one else, and you just have to shake your head. Is this just the real Scott Brown and these were the best clips they could get of him talking to so-called “constituents”? Or are they just stupid?

I am pretty sure this is the real Scott Brown - top-down, faking the “man-of-the-people” routine, totally out of touch. But I wonder why his campaign is so eager to showcase it.

Just to add to the snark, from one of the links talking about his “invite only” policy:

Even reporters were barred from the actual tour portion of the day, with staff citing “liability concerns.”

Riiight. Liability concerns. Like the candidate himself.

[Via BMG.]

Lizz Winstead, co-creator of the Daily Show, nails it…just nails it. I almost spit my water out on my laptop keyboard.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Classic, forever and ever. Nevermind the rest of the clip I cut this from, talking about Perry’s “big mouthful,” also a total exercise in absurdity.

Seriously, with entertainment like this, who needs comedy any more?

You can’t make this stuff up. Senator Scott Brown wrote an op ed in the Boston Globe, noting that in after the 2001 dot-com crash, Massachusetts got itself out of recession with spending cuts and no tax hikes (bold added):

In 2001 to ’02, the bursting of the technology bubble hit the Massachusetts economy hard. Our unemployment rate was growing faster than any other state in the country, and we faced a fiscal crisis that many experts said was the worst since World War II. The projected deficit for 2003 was nearly $3 billion.

But instead of raising taxes, Democrats and Republicans worked across the aisle: We tightened our belts and balanced the books by cutting spending. It wasn’t easy, but after some tough negotiations and re-setting of priorities, we turned our deficit into a surplus and the economy and jobs started coming back.

Except, “hesterprynne” points out in her post, it isn’t true (bold mine):

A pretty story that neatly coincides with the Senator’s campaign platform. The only problem is that it’s not true. The state did raise taxes on income, capital gains and cigarettes in 2002, increasing revenues by $1 billion.

David, in promoting the diary, also points out that while Scott Brown appears to claim that S&P’s 2005 upgrade of Massachusetts’ credit rating had nothing to do with spending increases (since they didn’t happen according to him) but all because of the cuts, he’s wrong there too. From the op-ed:

In 2005, when S&P upgraded Massachusetts’ credit rating, it cited two key factors: reduced spending and greater budget certainty. Washington needs to do the same thing.

Funny, how that also isn’t true. In fact, that “greater budget certainty” cited had a lot to do with tax hikes (bold mine).

Gov. Mitt Romney lobbied the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s in 2004 to raise his state’s credit rating in part because Massachusetts had raised taxes during an economic downturn two years earlier.

The claim was part of a presentation to the ratings agency obtained by POLITICO under a state freedom of information law from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Administration and Finance.

(That article is interesting too, how Mitty is using this 2005 upgrade in his stump speech, but arguing for just spending cuts, when in reality the tax hikes had a lot to do with it. Oops, Mittsy!)

Anyway, is there any more proof you need that Scott Brown is an empty suit? Let’s hope the Globe isn’t shy about doing a followup, unless, you know, it wants to get the reputation of misleading its readers by allowing false information to go unchallenged by its op-ed writers. Just sayin’.

Whose pockets, Mitty? Whose?

ROMNEY: To balance our budget and not spend more than we take in, we need to make sure that the promises we make in Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare are promises we can keep, and there are various ways of doing that. One is we could raise taxes on people. That’s not the way…

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Corporations!

ROMNEY: Corporations are people, my friend.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: No they’re not!

ROMNEY: Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people.

AUDIENCE (laughter)

ROMNEY: Where do you think it goes?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: In their pockets!

ROMNEY: Whose pockets? People’s pockets. Okay, human beings, my friend.

No one should be defending the “corporations are people” schtick that the Supreme Court’s 100+ year old precedent claims. It, of course, led to the modern conservative court ruling in favor of Citizens United, a very unpopular ruling that has incredibly damaging effects on our democracy.

Of course, if you’re Mitt Romney, you’ve had corporate profits go into your pocket, but for the vast majority of Americans, we don’t get any or much of that slice of the pie, do we? But gutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid? That doesn’t hurt anyone, does it? Way to be out of touch, Mittsy.

I also love the condescending “my friend” he puts at the end of sentences. Who’s he fooling?

Via dkos.

635. Can we safely say now that the Republicans are not serious about jobs, the economy, or anything else pertaining to solving the problems this country faces right now?

‘K, thanks.

If you haven’t already had your “duuuuuh” moment, please watch this. If simple freaking facts can’t sway you, then nothing can, except maybe if god talks to you or something. I’m told he does to Rick Perry.

Longtime readers of the blog know that I have a peculiar dislike of our neighbors to the north. I was born there, so I’m allowed. There has been some progress there, like the passage of same-sex marriage in 2009 (though that’s in danger of repeal next year). But by and large, I wasn’t impressed with their education system…I was angered by the near-loss of all music and art programs in Manchester schools in my last year of high school…and I was furious when the NH legislature yanked funding out from under UNH, my alma mater, mid-year (ie after the budget had been passed and UNH started their fiscal year) which caused no end of chaos for departments, professors, and administrators, and the year after I left, their tight budgeting caused the loss of some of the best teachers in the departments of my major and minor. That was all between the years 1994 and 1999. You know. The boom years of our economy. *rolls eyes*

So the fact that New Hampshire (which I like to call “New Hamster” because the state is about as dumb as one) has managed to one-up the stupidity of its past actions, believe you me, is quite a feat. But it has. By defunding Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (PPNE) (bold mine).

Planned Parenthood has stopped providing birth control pills and other contraception in New Hampshire after the state’s executive council rejected up to $1.8 million in funding for the group” because it also provides privately-funded abortions. After losing its contract — which paid for education, distributing contraception, and the testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections — the centers have “turned away 20 to 30 patients a day who have arrived to refill their birth control prescriptions.
[…]
Some women have told the center that the will likely “stop taking birth control because they cannot afford the higher prices charged by pharmacies” and an estimated 70 percent don’t have insurance to cover the prescriptions.

Did I emphasize enough that the public funding is not for abortions in any way, shape or form? PPNE does privately funded abortions. The public money helps them deliver other services, particularly for the underprivileged.

Let me tell you a little story as to why this makes me even madder than seeing my favorite Brit Lit professor laid off.

I’ve mentioned before that there was a period of time my husband and I were uninsured. Due to the great, fabulous “employer-based” system we have, we were employed by people who don’t give insurance - ie contracting and temp agencies. Yay for the American work environment.

Those same temp jobs (at the time) didn’t pay well (before we started working in MA, where the real jobs are). So we didn’t go to any GPs, desperately afraid of finding preexisting conditions, and not really in the fiscal situation to afford out-of-pocket expenses, anyway.

Except for Planned Parenthood. You see, I qualified for their sliding fee scale. In doing so, I could get heavily discounted birth control and GYN exams. In the case of birth control, it was a godsend.

Ever since those lowly days as a temp administrative assistant in NH, I have felt a profound gratitude to Planned Parenthood, so much so that I still use their services, as a full-paying insured client, so I can at least support them in that way. I have to hike to Boston to do it but it’s worth it to me. I do not know what we would have done without those services, and the fee help, during the first years of our life together. I would have been one of those women who would have lost access to birth control, which could have been devastating.

This is why New Hampshire is one of the stupidest, most backwards, idiotic states in the union. I will never live there again, you couldn’t pay me to educate my kids (if I had any) there, and if you are a woman, they’ll screw with your access to safe, legal birth control.

And just to kick women when they’re down:

“I am opposed to abortion,” said Raymond Wieczorek, a council member who voted against the contract. “I am opposed to providing condoms to someone. If you want to have a party, have a party, but don’t ask me to pay for it.”

Go fuck yourself, Raymond Wieczorek. No really, go and have an unwanted pregnancy because you couldn’t afford birth control, you whiny tiny-minded privileged old white asshole. Go back to the eighteenth century when you were born and get a leech treatment for your warts. The rest of us want progress, not old moldy assholes dragging us back to the Dark Ages.

New Hamster or Florida, both compete for Redneck Stupid State of the Year. By the by, Wieczorek is the former mayor of Manchester. Guess which years he was in charge??

With the public vastly turning on billionaire Koch kisser WI Governor Scott Walker and his disgusting display of anti-American union busting (didn’t we once have freedom of assembly and speech here?), you’d think that MA Sen Scott Brown would be a little more careful how he begs for money from the least popular rich guy in America. But no! ThinkProgress has the exclusive video:

At the public dedication of MIT’s David H. Koch Integrative Cancer Institute last Friday, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) effusively thanked conservative billionaire David Koch for supporting his election in 2010 and made a plea for help in his re-election campaign next year. David Koch directly gave the National Republican Senatorial Committee $30,400 in November 2009, and the Koch Industries PAC threw in $15,000 to NRSC plus $5,000 more directly to Brown right before Brown’s special election. In the following exchange, Brown thanks Koch and his wife Julia (off-camera) for their support, saying “I can certainly use it again”:

Partial transcript:

BROWN: Your support during the election, it meant a, it meant a ton. It made a, it made a difference and I can certainly use it again. Obviously, the uh . . .

KOCH: When are you running, uh, for the next term?

BROWN: ’12.

KOCH: Oh, okay.

BROWN: I’m in the cycle, I’m in the cycle right now. We’re already banging away.

Mark Arsenault at the Globe notes:

In public appearances, the senator says that he’s not interested in politicking right now, that there will be time for it in 2012 — his re-election year.

Yet in the video, Brown tells Koch he’s politicking right now.

Uh, heck of a job, Brownie.