By Kristen Hamilton, RP Staff, on Tue Sep 13, 2011 at 10:00 AM ET
BREAKING WWG: Can’t wait to see the season finale of Project Runway? Check out this semi-spoiler that spills the beans on the judges, contestants, and mostly everything you’re dying to know! [Fashionista]
Have you always dreamed of sitting front row at Mercedez-Benz Fashion Week? Well, now you can thanks to live-streaming of every show! Check out the calendar: [NY Mag]
As expected, Fashion’s Night Out was a huge success! [Washington Post]
Thanks to Zara e-commerce, I now have an excuse to indulge in their spectacular fashion without any excuses. Excited isn’t even the word! [SHEfinds]
By Grant Smith, RP Staff, on Tue Sep 13, 2011 at 9:15 AM ET The Politics of Sponge Bob
BREAKING NEWS:
Oh Barnacles!! New study suggests that shows like Sponge Bob Square Pants may negatively affect children’s short-term memory.
[AP News]
By RP Staff, on Tue Sep 13, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET Contributing RP Evan Bayh is leading an effort to promote regulatory reform in Washington. Check out coverage of his mission in the Charleston Daily Mail:
Former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh and former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told a friendly audience at the Business Summit that some layers of federal regulation need peeled back and the Obama administration needs to also review all of the regulations currently in the works.
Bayh, Card, U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito and U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin all spoke about the need to reduce government regulations on Friday during the Business Summit at The Greenbrier Resort.
Bayh and Card have teamed up as U.S. Chamber of Commerce spokesmen on the topic.
“In the short term, we need a moratorium on new burdens on business,” Bayh said. “We’re close to tipping back into a downturn. We don’t need more burdens on business.”
Bayh said a proposed law that would require a Congressional vote on any rules or regulations that would cost more than $100 million a year makes sense.
“Look at some of the rules and regulations that are coming down the pike,” he said. “The ozone issue could be a trillion dollars of additional cost. My home state, Indiana, is a 95 percent coal state. Our electric rates are modest, which is one reason we have the largest number of manufacturing jobs of any state. The last thing we need is an increase in the price of production when we’re competing with China, India, and others who don’t have these rules. There are 300 more rules and regulations proposed this year at a potential cost of $65 billion.”
Click here to read the rest of the article.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Mon Sep 12, 2011 at 3:00 PM ET
This week in Peter King’s fantastic Monday Morning QB he touches on the 9/11 anniversary and NFL tributes, possibly re-thinking the new kick-off rule, and the Colts struggles, among other things. Check it out. [Sports Illustrated]
ESPN’s first week of the new QB Rating system has the unlikely Ryan Fitzpatrick of the Buffalo Bills at No. 1 over Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers. [ESPN]
Here is a comprehensive breakdown of the 2011 franchise tags. [Football Outsiders]
The Big Lead brings you the rankings of the top NFL stars in terms of marketability. Some names aren’t surprising, but several definitely are. [The Big Lead]
In college football news, the Oklahoma Sooners became the first team to be ranked No. 1 by the AP 100 times. Pretty cool milestone. [ESPN]
By Sandra Moon, RP Staff, on Mon Sep 12, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET
Rabbi refuses to testify in a tax-evasion case because of an ancient Jewish doctrine called mesira, that prohibits Jews against informing on other Jews to secular authorities. [LA Times]
Comedian Dean Obeidallah, son of Palestinian-Muslim and Italian-Christian parents, comments on how 9-11 affected “shared faith and American identity.” [CNN]
Get your daily dose of amazing information at OMG Facts Official. In this clip, the location of the Door to Hell is revealed. [YouTube]
Clothing store Forever 21 draws controversy over its religiously themed shirts. [Kansas City Star]
By Patrick Derocher, on Mon Sep 12, 2011 at 12:30 PM ET Within the past week, California Governor Jerry Brown has helped craft a highly unusual bipartisan tax plan, seen it fail in the State Senate, and attacked the Republicans who voted against the bill. – A (somewhat unexpected) tip of the hat goes to California, where Democratic governor Jerry Brown and Republican Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher of San Diego have hammered out a rare, especially in the hyper-polarized California political climate, bipartisan tax deal that would eliminate certain loopholes for out-of-state companies while lowering personal tax rates and tax rates for small businesses based in California. The bill was expected to have all the necessary support in the state Assembly, but possibly run into trouble in the Senate… [NY Times]
– … Which it did. Because this is California, the bill failed in the Senate only two days later, receiving no Republican votes and multiple Democratic abstentions. Senate Republicans, including Sam Blakeslee, scoffed at Governor Brown and Assemblyman Fletcher’s plan, referring to it, as the San Luis Obispo Republican did, as “a slapdash collection of ideas that look like they were made for a press release, not serious policy.” Brown, for his part, called it “unbelievable that so many politicians in Sacramento would choose to protect cigarette makers and out-of-state corporations to the detriment of California jobs. [Sacramento Bee]
– Wisconsin Assemblyman Brett Hulsey (D-Madison) recently made the incendiary accusation that the Wisconsin State Assembly, controlled by Republicans since the beginning of the current legislative session, voted on 376 bill amendments by Democrats and voted for precisely one. The sad part? According to a PolitiFact investigation, he is completely correct. The single amendment, to Assembly Bill 94, dealt with administering Milwaukee’s school choice program, and was introduced by Jason Fields, a Milwaukee Democrat who supports such vouchers. [PolitiFact]
– In today’s second unexpected hat tip, another hyper-polarized state, Ohio, has managed to keep its AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor’s, even as other states, including Florida and Illinois, lose theirs, according to State Treasurer Josh Mandel. [Columbus Dispatch]
– Seemingly in a response to recent threats to State Senator Roy McDonald (R-Saratoga), Mayor Michael Bloomberg is hosting a fundraiser for the four Senate Republicans who voted in favor of same-sex marriage in July. The even is being co-hosted by Paul Singer, chairman of the right-wing Manhattan Institute, and Tim Gill, an LGBT activist from Colorado who founded Quark, Inc., a software company whose XPress software is widely used in print media. The event will be hosted in October and cost as much as $16,800, the maximum allowed by state law, to attend. [Albany Time Union]
– Well, all that good will couldn’t last forever (or for this whole post). Redistricting fights have already begun in the Empire State, with Republicans protesting new laws that count prisoners as residents of their last known address, rather than the prison in which they are serving time. Additionally, state-level redistricting is being scrutinized in light of the increase in Asian population in the New York borough of Queens, especially given that there is currently only one Asian-American state legislator, Democratic Assemblywoman Grace Meng of Flushing. [Albany Times Union]
– Finally, proving that you governmental dysfunction and divide need not come from states with deep legislative divides, or from legislators at all, we have South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Haley, an underdog-turned-Tea Party-favorite, dismissively referred to a reporter from Charleston’s Post and Courier, as a “little girl” following a September 5 article that was critical of the Governor’s use of state funds on a purported “jobs” trip to Europe over the summer. In the article, Renee Dudley discussed high-end meals and hotels that Governor Haley and her husband enjoyed while on the trip, questioning whether the primary purpose was state business or personal enjoyment. [Huffington Post]
By Jeff Smith, on Mon Sep 12, 2011 at 12:00 PM ET  If Romney’s problem were the health care law, per se, then I’d attempt to answer this question directly. But I don’t think it is. His problem is that too many Republicans primary voters neither like nor trust him.
The list of his flip-flops is well-known. In his ’94 Senate bid, he said he would be more pro-gay rights than Teddy Kennedy. At various junctures over the course of the next decade, he took mildly progressive positions on immigration, abortion, guns and most prominently, health care.
It is one thing to flip-flop on an issue, and then apologize unequivocally for it. Before his implosion, Edwards did it effectively on Iraq (the “I Was Wrong” Washington Post op-ed), and Pawlenty is following a similar model on climate change.
 It is quite another thing to flip-flop on nearly every major social issue of concern to primary voters, and then a) claim that you have been consistent, and b) have the audacity to attack your primary opponents on said issues, as Romney did throughout ’08 – earning special enmity from his competitors in the process.
The sad thing (for him, not for the country) is that the economic collapse beginning in late ’07 and climaxing in late ’08 had voters thirsting for a capable steward of the economy — exactly his profile had he simply been true to himself and not taken the cultural red meat detour. That has to gnaw at him.
The New New Romney might actually be the Real Romney. But it’s too late now, because he does not have a health care problem. He has a credibility problem. That’s why — even though his argument for health care federalism actually makes some sense – most people will merely see it another episode in a long series of flip-flops and pandering.
(Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from Politico’s Arena)
By Andrei Cherny, on Mon Sep 12, 2011 at 11:00 AM ET
It has become a universally acknowledged truth in coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign, one repeated with increased fervor with each dismal jobs report, that no president has won reelection with an unemployment rate above 7.2 percent. But always there is the caveat: . . . since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.In the aftermath of Thursday night’s presidential address on jobs, that caveat should be more than an afterthought. FDR’s victory three-quarters of a century ago has important parallels to the situation in which President Obama finds himself and provides vital lessons if he is to be similarly successful.
While Roosevelt had been elected in 1932 during a period of economic collapse, four years later the economy was still struggling. Unemployment in 1936 was 16.6 percent. The moment of national unity that marked Roosevelt’s first hundred days had petered out, leaving behind a general dissatisfaction with large-scale, inefficient government bureaucracies and their stratospheric levels of federal spending and debt.
Newspapers had coined the term “boondoggle” to describe the high-end dog shelters, city zoo monkey houses, safety pin studies and other New Deal projects that attempted to stimulate the economy. New entitlement programs such as Social Security had been passed, over strong opposition, but had yet to take effect.
While Obama might confront the propaganda machine of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, Roosevelt faced off against a relatively more powerful William Randolph Hearst and his newspaper empire. In 1936 two-thirds of Americans read newspapers, which were vociferously anti-New Deal. Today, the Tea Party and a network of organizations funded by the Koch family and others focus their attacks on Obama. In 1936, charges of creeping socialism and the savaging of the Constitution were launched by the Liberty League and its affiliated groups, funded by a flood of money from the du Pont family and major corporations.And yet when Election Day arrived, Roosevelt won by a landslide of historic proportions.
The differences between Roosevelt’s era and Obama’s are too numerous to list. Nevertheless, Obama and his advisers have much to learn from Roosevelt’s triumph.
First, Roosevelt constantly underscored the contrast between his plan and his opponents’ fealty to the policies and ideas that, in the decade before his election, had led directly to the Great Depression.
Read the rest of…
Andrei Cherny: FDR’s Lessons for Obama
By RP Staff, on Mon Sep 12, 2011 at 10:00 AM ET
Ever wonder why the young, handsome guy in the next cubicle always seems to get the raises and promotions? Or why the most beautiful women in the company never stay around on your floor long because they’re always “moving up”? Here are three new books that help explain to the less fortunate looking among us just why that is. The Economist
And for the more aural, listen to a further conversation about the subject of beauty and bucks (or Euros, Pesos, Yen—you name it because it’s universal) on the September 7th episode of The Q.
Finally, is there a political or “economical” (in the biological sense) explanation for the human female orgasm? Read on, dear friends. Salon.com
By Stephanie Doctrow, RP Staff, on Mon Sep 12, 2011 at 9:15 AM ET To commemorate the tenth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, New York magazine has created the 9/11 Encyclopedia. This site memorializes September 11 in a creative and respectful way. [NY Magazine]
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