As of today, exactly half of the members of the US Senate support marriage rights for same-sex couples. Senator Tom Carper, Democrat of Delaware, and Senator Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois, both announced their support of marriage equality. Delaware Sen. Tom Carper on Tuesday became the latest Senate Democrat to publicly endorse marriage rights for [...]

Fatster’s news roundup from the June 3, 2012, including weekend stories about, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Mark Kirk, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, state budgets, Paul Krugman, Federal Reserve, corporate profits, Politifact, John Paul Stevens, Hillary Clinton, MERS, George Zimmerman, and much more.

One of the more revealing elements of the Greek bailout discussions is not that the IMF and European finance ministers want another round of austerity from Greece before providing funding, and not even that banks are being urged to take haircuts or engage in restructuring to accommodate the Greeks. It’s that other element – privatization of state assets – that is the tell here. This is the real extraction from the Greeks, the real shock doctrine scheme at work here. Greece essentially must sell the family silver – their ports, their state-run water supply systems, their utility company, their telephone company – to get out of the mess created largely by the financial crisis and the Great Recession.

Remember when Republicans like Mark Kirk were working to hamstring Obama on a bigger stimulus package by essentially telling the Chinese leadership not to loan the US any more money now that Obama was president because his budget numbers couldn’t be trusted?

Let me save you the trouble of turning on C-SPAN2 and missing the Blue Plate special at the Olympia Diner. The motion will fail on a party-line vote. Even Senate Republicans who previously expressed a willingness to end oil subsidies will stick with Mitch McConnell and Team R on this one.

Republicans look terrified to actually go through with the shutdown given the focus on women’s health and choice. The question then becomes: who’s forcing the issue?

If the DISCLOSE Act passes in the lame duck session, I’m a spotted egret.

Random midterm musings.

Republicans and their outside allies seem to be spending money on two things this election. One is zillions and zillions of TV ads. The other is the usual voter suppression machine, designed to intimidate minorities and the poor.

National Democrats want to make this election about the past, but elections are almost always a referendum on the present, that is unless the candidates on hand have gone out of their way to make themselves truly unacceptable. This election is a vivid reminder that who the candidates are still matters, at least when they are as clearly flawed as some of the Republicans running this year.