Snark in Pictures - Thanksgiving, Pope Francis, Filibusters and Obamacare

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers!

Senator Elizabeth Warren Explains It All ~ Updated

Elizabeth Warren has had a great week!

Harry Reid broke the filibuster deadlock with Mitch McConnell so that Obama's nominees for various posts can finally be confirmed. One of those is Richard Cordray who will direct that Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a brainchild of Warren's . She has tirelessly pushed for this vacancy to be filled and at last it is!








Next, Warren has banded together with Republican Sen. John McCain and Independent Sen. Angus King to come up with a new-improved version of the Glass-Steagall Bill which kept our banks from failing for 50 years after the Great Depression. Here she is on Morning Joe:



And last but not least, here is Senator Warren on CNBC, telling off some of the smarmy talking heads on a network famous as a mouthpiece for big business. When they ask with a cynical sneer "Why Try?" to resurrect Glass-Steagall what they are really expressing is fear that someone like Senator Warren has the guts to stand up to both them and the unfair top-heavy financial system. And she doesn't take any prisoners!

Give 'em Hell, Senator Warren!

UPDATE: MSNBC asked YouTube to remove the CNBC smackdown due to copyright - or was it? Many thought they were going after the viral video because it made the anchors of CNBC appear stupid or at least stubbornly ignorant. Jim Cramer of CNBC also tweeted about it, pointing out that clip is still available on their website, and I have replaced it below.

But the fact remains that Elizabeth Warren isn't going to play pattycake with CNBC when they try to shrug her off or say she will never get anything done. Heck, CNBC pretty much cheered when Warren dropped out of the running for Consumer Protection. They thought they had seen the last of her. Ha! Then they didn't believe she would run for Senate - wrong. And horrors! She certainly wouldn't win against Scott Brown . . . oh wait . . .

There is some weird strain of thought that CNBC got beaten by Senator Warren. I like the senator but she had NO impact. Sorry..

— Jim Cramer (@jimcramer) July 17, 2013

More from Policy Mic

In the video clip removed by CNBC, Warren effectively defends the merits of reviving the Glass-Steagall Act and taking steps to prevent something like the Great Recession of 2008 from happening again. Her main point was that banking regulation does in fact keep the financial system "steady and secure" and was crucial in eradicating the banking boom-and-bust cycle from 1933 to 1980s. She even went as far to professorially correct the anchors' knowledge of banking regulations since the Great Depression. In response to anchor Brian Sullivan's comment that "We should tell the American consumer that no matter what we do, there will be bank boom and bust cycles" Warren said "no, that is just wrong … look at the history."

Even though CNBC claimed to take down the video for copyright infringements, they did not take down other YouTube videos that use CNBC footage. It seems like CNBC got embarrassed because this specific video went viral and showed its anchors being schooled by Warren. And bad news for CNBC, there is a phenomenon called the Streisand effect whereby attempts to hide or remove information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, especially on the internet. Just like Beyoncé and her Super Bowl pictures, CNBC should expect even more people see Warren educate its anchors on banking regulation history.

High Noon for Texas Women

Crews setting up stage, barricades for pro choice rally at Capitol today. 6,000+ expected #txlege pic.twitter.com/FiTQfs6m89

— Adam Bennett (@AdamBennettTV) July 1, 2013

Activists on both sides of #Abortion debate expected at Capitol Monday. #ProChoice rallies at 10am, 12pm. #ProLife at 2pm. #TxLege #HB2 #SB9

— The Horn (@TweetTheHorn) July 1, 2013

I'll see you at the TX Capitol tomorrow to support Wendy Davis and women's rights.

— Natalie Maines (@1NatalieMaines) July 1, 2013

From Raw Story

Thousands of Texans on both sides of the abortion divide will descend on the state capitol in Austin on Monday, at the start of a special legislative session designed to pass a bill that would sharply restrict abortion services in the state.

More than 5,000 people have signed up to a “Stand With Texas Women” rally, to be staged at noon on the steps of the Capitol. The rally is being billed as a continuation of the dramatic scenes last week, when 400 pro-choice advocates staged a loud protest in the state senate chamber following Wendy Davis’s epic 10-hour filibuster that blocked the controversial bill, SB 5.



Anti-abortionists will stage their own rally in support of the new legislative session that the Texas governor, Rick Perry, called shortly after Davis’s filibuster ended. Some 700 pro-life campaigners have signed up to the rally called by Texas Alliance for Life.



. . . In the course of almost 11 hours of filibuster, Davis was required to speak in the chamber without pause, standing and without leaning on anything. Her extraordinary endurance propelled her into the national political limelight, and sent the pair of training shoes she wore rocketing up the sales charts.

Read More at Snark Amendment:
Wendy Davis and Texas Democrats Filibuster SB5 Abortion Bill
Governor Rick Perry Attacks Wendy Davis

Senate Gun Bill Fails to Pass, President Obama Fires Back

(Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images)


From Think Progress

The Senate voted down an amendment offered by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) to expand background checks for gun purchases at gun shows and online, in a vote of 54-46. The measure needed 60 votes to be included in the underlining bill. As Vice President Joe Biden called the finally tally, Tucson survivor Patricia Maisch yelled, “Shame on you!” Outside of chamber she said, “They have no soul.”

See Who Voted For and Against the Bill on ProPublica

Obama: "No Coherent Arguments for this. It came down to politics."


From Slate

When the vote came down—54-46, not enough to replace the gun bill with the Manchin-Toomey compromise—an impromptu family of gun control activists was watching from the gallery. The activists looked glum but not surprised; they'd gone into the room aware that the votes weren't there. But before she left, a survivor of the 2011 Tucson killing spree named Patricia Maisch stood up and broke the rules of the Senate.

"Shame on you!" yelled Maisch.


Typically, when someone yells from the gallery, security hustles to bounce the heckler out of the room. Maisch wasn't elbowed out very quickly. Two years ago, she was one of the people who effectively shut down Jared Loughner's rampage. She saw him coming, she lay on the ground, and when Loughner fumbled his reload and was tackled, Maisch snatched away his extra magazine. And no one really ushered her out of the Hill today as she told reporters why she yelled.

"I could not stay still," she said, standing in a scrum of reporters. "They should be ashamed of themselves ... if it had been a yes vote, I wouldn't have said anything. It was spontaneous—but I was prepared to do that."

She gave her info and story a few times before one of the other activists started to usher her out. One reporter asked her what she thought of Sen. Jeff Flake's no vote on the amendment. "Sen. Flake?" she said. "I'm embarrassed. He's a flaky flake."

Law Links ~ Apocalypse Law

BuzzFeed: Conservative Pundit Dana Loesch Sues Breitbart.com

St. Louis talk radio host Dana Loesch, also a frequent guest on CNN, alleges in the suit filed in federal district court in St. Louis that the site is refusing to publish her work while "sabotag[ing] her attempts to labor in a similar fashion elsewhere through public misstatements and private threats to sue those who would otherwise employ Loesch."
Loesch is seeking her freedom from the company and at least $75,000 in damages.
Breitbart.com is "binding Loesch to what amounts to an indentured servitude in limbo," she charges in the suit, which was first reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The lawsuit also hints at broader woes for the site, whose leaders now include an old friend of Breitbarts, a pair of his young proteges, and filmmaker Steven Bannon, who is best known for a film defending Sarah Palin.

Bloomberg: Judge Tosses Legal Filibuster Challenge

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington ...ruled that the lawsuit, filed by the public interest group Common Cause, members of the House of Representatives and undocumented aliens who would have benefited from passage of the so-called Dream Act, represented an unwarranted intrusion into the Senate’s right operate as it sees fit.
. . . Other plaintiffs include four Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives: John Lewis, of Georgia; Michael Michaud, of Maine; Hank Johnson, of Georgia; and Keith Ellison, of Minnesota; and three Mexican-born U.S. residents who alleged they were denied the benefits of immigration law changes in the House-passed Dream Act because it was blocked by Senate filibuster.
The suit was filed against Vice President Joseph Biden in his capacity as Senate President, and other Senate officers.
The case is Common Cause v. Biden, 12-cv-775, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Washington).

Reuters: Bernie Madoff's Younger Brother Sentenced in Ponzi Scheme

The younger brother of Bernard Madoff will serve 10 years in prison for his role in his brother's Ponzi scheme that stole billions of dollars from investors, a U.S. judge said on Thursday.
Peter Madoff, 67, pleaded guilty in June to criminal charges including conspiracy to commit securities fraud for falsifying the books and records of the investment advisory company founded by his brother.
U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain adopted prosecutors' recommendations and sentenced Madoff to 10 years in prison. She also ordered him to forfeit what she called a "draconian" $143.1 billion, which she said would seal his "financial ruination."

Chicago Tribune: Robert Bork Dies

Robert Bork, a symbol of the U.S. conservative legal movement and a failed nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, died on Wednesday . . . Bork, 85, died in a northern Virginia hospital where he had been treated for an infection.
. . . "To bork" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2002 with the definition, "To defame or vilify (a person) systematically, especially in the mass media, usually with the aim of preventing his or her appointment to public office; to obstruct or thwart (a person) in this way."
. . . After a fierce confirmation fight, the Senate rejected Bork 58-42, the largest margin of defeat for any Supreme Court nominee and a big defeat for Reagan.
Bork remained bitter for years and conservatives regarded him as a martyr to liberal activism and unreason, and used him as a rallying cry in subsequent battles.

CBS: Texas State Troopers Suspended for Body Cavity Search

A Texas State Trooper who was thrust into the spotlight Tuesday after dash camera video showing her giving body cavity searches to two women became public has been suspended.
Trooper Kelly Helleson was suspended Wednesday, the day after the two women she searched as part of a traffic stop earlier this year sued her and another trooper for what they called a violation of their privacy.
. . . The two women 38-year-old Angel Dobbs and her niece, 24-year-old Ashley Dobbs, were pulled over in Irving on their way to Oklahoma by a male trooper after the trooper noticed the women tossing cigarette butts out the window of their car. That trooper, David Farrell, claimed to smell marijuana coming from the vehicle and requested the search by a female trooper.
Farrell remains on active duty.

Off-Kilter Republicans in a State of Decline

The past week has been dotted with Republican fail the likes of which we have rarely seen in the modern era, and it shows just how off-kilter they are. Of course, as my witty husband says, were they ever 'on kilter'? Well, maybe not in terms of a philosophy we can all understand, but at least they were able to stay on the same page and agree on the same mass delusions. Right now, not so much. In fact, the re-election of Barack Obama seems to have thrown them into complete disarray that seems to echo a death knell for the national party. It's sort of like watching a rabid skunk foaming at the mouth and jumping around snapping at invisible enemies in the air. You can be pretty darn sure the rabies will get them in the end.

For instance, take Rick Santelli, please. The CNBC guy threw another tantrum on the air last Friday, calling for a "Waaaahmbulance" over Obama and tax reform. Do these guys not realize that we all know they are crying for themselves and their own bank accounts, not for the other 99% of Americans? Cry me a river. He really does seem to be foaming at the mouth, though, doesn't he?


New York Mag reported that Karl Rove and Dick Morris are now in Disgrace at Fox News for their ridiculous and over-zealous predictions that Mitt Romney would win the presidency in the landslide:

According to multiple Fox sources, Ailes has issued a new directive to his staff: He wants the faces associated with the election off the air — for now. For Karl Rove and Dick Morris — a pair of pundits perhaps most closely aligned with Fox’s anti-Obama campaign — Ailes’s orders mean new rules. Ailes’s deputy, Fox News programming chief Bill Shine, has sent out orders mandating that producers must get permission before booking Rove or Morris.


. . . Multiple sources say that Ailes was angry at Rove’s election-night tantrum when he disputed the network’s call for Obama. While the moment made for riveting television — it was Ailes’s decision to have Kelly confront the statisticians on air — in the end, it provided another data point for Fox’s critics. A spokesperson for Ailes denied any rift between Ailes and Rove, and said the two plan to meet this week.

Rove may have lost Ailes for the present, but he is still probably laughing all the way to the bank with his Super-Pac money. Dick Morris is in a different place, tangled up with Glenn Beck and his scary conspiracy theory, Agenda 21. As you may recall, a guy in Georgia named Chip Rogers organized an embarrassing seminar on how Obama was practicing "Mind Control" on us all (thanks to the evil U.N.) and soon the black helicopters will come to take our guns (if we have any) and herd us into the concentration camps.


Dick Morris was featured in a video shown at the conference which in turn was filmed by progressive watchdog group Better Georgia. Now the be-clowned and delusional Chip Rogers has resigned from the GA Legislature and Dick Morris has no cover for any of this. With any luck, he will just fade into the woodwork, never to be seen again.

Another "Dick" had to resign this week: Former House member Dick Armey, who broke his association with tea party group Freedomworks over a badly negotiated book deal - at least that's what he says. Cushioning the blow is the fact that he is running away with an $8 million golden parachute - for doing what, I wonder?
Time Magazine has more here.

Then in a move that surprised many on the Right and the Left, Senator Jim DeMint R-SC left the Senate to become the new head of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. While most think he did it for the money, other pundits assume DeMint was tired of having to vote with the more moderate members of his party (the few that are still there), and wanted to be among a group of like-minded wingnuts. That's probably a mistake for the Party, as Ezra Klein pointed out in a Washington Post piece called The Death of the Think Tanks.

Incredibly, the pundit who has often been most-described as "rabid" in the past - Ann Coulter - seems to have found a truth antidote and is now the voice of reason. She went on Fox News and schooled Sean Hannity on the new reality, telling him that Democrats are "going to win" the tax battle with the House, and it's "not winning" to raise taxes on everyone just to save the top 2%, a message he did NOT want to hear! Transcript Here


And finally, we reached the height, the apex, the crowning glory of Republican Off-Kilterness yesterday when Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, pretending to introduce legislation on the Debt Ceiling in an effort to show up Harry Reid, was forced to filibuster his own bill when "Honey Badger" Reid called his bluff.

*DERP* With leaders like McConnell, Boehner, Jim Demint, and the Fox Fools, it can only get worse before it gets better!

">

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