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Gallup: 82 Percent Of Egyptians Oppose U.S. Economic Aid | Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week signed off on $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt despite the country’s poor human rights record since the revolution more than a year ago. Gallup released a poll today finding that a large majority of Egyptians are skeptical of American assistance. According to the poll, 82 percent said they oppose the United States sending economic aid to Egypt, “up 11 percentage points since December and up 30 points since April 2011 when Gallup first posed the question.”

Alyssa

Get Ready for ‘Game of Thrones’ Return With Me on the Radio and Peter Dinklage in the New York Times

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Mar 29, 2012 at 6:07 pm

Dan Kois, who I had the pleasure of hanging out with at SXSW, has a flat-out fantastic profile of Peter Dinklage in the New York Times Magazine this weekend, just in time for the return of Game of Thrones (I’ll hopefully have a comprehensive review tomorrow as long as my screeners are there when I get home) on Sunday. What makes it so good is not just that Dinklage is a wonderful actor and an interesting person, but that it’s a great explication of what happens when an actor refuses to take roles that compromise his dignity, a conundrum that’s applicable not only to people of short stature. Kois writes:

Dinklage’s sudden stardom offers a pleasurable meritocratic twist to his career, given that the entertainment industry doesn’t typically reward those who turn down roles on principle, much less actors who don’t meet a certain physical ideal. Sure, James Gandolfini struggled before “The Sopranos” made him an unlikely leading man. But James Gandolfini didn’t eat potato chips for dinner every night because he conscientiously objected to playing one of Santa’s elves in Kmart ads…Dinklage stayed in New York and soon was landing stage work and the occasional low-budget film. But he couldn’t book commercial jobs, because he wasn’t interested in the kinds of roles that paid well for dwarves. Specifically, he wouldn’t play elves or leprechauns. Even after Dinklage’s memorable first film role in the 1995 Steve Buscemi indie comedy “Living in Oblivion” — Dinklage played an actor who’s annoyed to be cast in a dream sequence, demanding, “Have you ever had a dream with a dwarf in it?” — he still couldn’t get an agent. “Word got out,” he says. “I started to build up a resentment. And that fueled my desire to live in a cold apartment and be like: ‘I don’t need you! I’m gonna write poetry. Why would I want to be a member of your club if you don’t want me?’”

Standing up to that kind of commercial and financial pressure must be tremendously difficult, and knowing that he did it makes me admire Dinklage even more than I already do. Mark Povinelli, the actor with dwarfism who played Chelsea (Laura Prepon)’s coworker Todd on the otherwise-awful Are You There, Chelsea? joked in a recent episode that Dinklage hogs all the roles for devastatingly handsome men of short stature. But the fact that Todd’s character exists at all, and exists as something other than a joke, is probably attributable in part to Dinklage’s success. It’s hard to think of an actor who’s as clearly opened a previously-closed door in recent years.

On a less serious note, Colin McEnroe was kind enough to have me, Lev Grossman, and a couple other folks on his show this afternoon to talk about the resonance of A Song of Ice and Fire. Audio, including my dorky confessions about writing Star Wars fan fiction, is up now. I imagine y’all are as excited as I am.

Politics

Missouri Republicans Embrace Birtherism, Pass Bill Requiring Proof Of Citizenship

By Adam Peck on Mar 29, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Missouri State Representative Lyle Rowland (R)

Missouri House Republicans today passed a so-called birther bill, which would require all presidential and vice presidential candidates to provide proof of citizenship to the state before they were allowed to appear on the ballot.

HB 1046 was introduced by state Rep. Lyle Rowland (R). He explained why he felt the bill was necessary to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Rowland, a Republican from Cedarcreek, said he sponsored the bill because he doesn’t think there is enough vetting in the current process, which primarily relies on political parties to verify whether candidates meet all requirements.

“This would just provide us with the verifying evidence,” Rowland said.

Rowland and other Republicans deny that the bill is in response to charges that President Obama is not a citizen, but state Democrats are unconvinced, calling the timing questionable. “There is a large amount of people out there who don’t think our president if a U.S. citizen,” said Rep. Jacob Hummel (D).

Under the bill, “verifying evidence” of citizenship includes a copy of a candidate’s birth certificate, which President Obama released months ago. It’s unclear whether a campaign would be able to provide a copy in coffee mug format.

Missouri is one of several states that has flirted with the idea of a birther bill, but would be the first to enact if, if it passes. Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma have all considered their own versions, and in Arizona, a bill made it all the way to Gov. Jan Brewer’s (R) desk before she vetoed it.

Economy

Lobbying Firms Pay Women Leaders $1 Million Less Than Men

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Mar 29, 2012 at 5:50 pm

The women who serve as CEOs for lobbying firms earn $1 million less than men who hold the same job. In fact, the few women who head up major trade groups groups in Washington make 57 cents for every man’s dollar.

ThinkProgress reported earlier this month on the gender pay gap on Wall Street, but a new analysis out from Bloomberg News shows that the women who hold major roles at trade associations in our nation’s capital face pay discrimination that’s just as serious. And, out of the top 30 trade associations, there were only four women’s salaries to analyze:

The average annual compensation of the women who lead four of the capital’s most politically active industry groups lags behind that of male peers by more than $1 million, according to data in tax filings compiled by Bloomberg. The female CEOs took home an average $1.43 million in 2010, compared with $2.48 million paid to the other 26 executives — 57 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

Lobbying does not hold a stellar reputation, and we’ve certainly seen fit to criticize it, and the amount of money that lobbyists are paid, on many occasions. But fair pay is a right, regardless of industry. And those who are purported to be top movers-and-shakers of policy and politics are putting up poor numbers: The gap between male and female CEOs at lobbying shops is even worse than the gap between white males and Latina women in the United States overall.

Climate Progress

Conservative Trust Of Science At All Time Low, Study Confirms Chris Mooney Thesis

By Joe Romm on Mar 29, 2012 at 5:30 pm

Looks like there has been a conservative war on science after all, just as Chris Mooney asserted in his 2005 bestseller.

A major new study sought to “test Mooney’s (2005) claim that conservatives in the United States have become increasingly distrustful of science.” The analysis of 1974 to 2010 data (PDF here) finds that support for science has remained relatively flat among liberals and moderates, while it has steadily declined among self-identified conservatives:

This politicization long precedes Al Gore’s 2006 movie. Extensive polling data simply doesn’t support that widely-held myth Gore polarized the debate (see “Exciting” Public Opinion Study Debunks Claim Al Gore Polarized the Climate Debate and here).  I’ve asked many leading experts on social science and public opinion — including Stanford’s Jon Krosnick, as well as McCright and Dunlap, authors of “The politicization of climate change and polarization in the American public’s views of global warming, 2001–2010.″ They all agree the data don’t support this myth.

Let’s get back to this new study. Since it vindicates Mooney’s analysis, it seems only fair to reprint Mooney’s discussion of it from DeSmogBlog.

Read more

Health

Republicans Protest ‘Judicial Activism’ While Seeking It For Obamacare

By Guest Blogger on Mar 29, 2012 at 5:10 pm

There appears to be little reason for the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act. As Ronald Reagan’s former Solicitor General, Charles Fried, said after the oral arguments, the legal rationale used by opponents of the law was “beneath contempt,” but should the Justices accept it, they would be breaking nearly two hundred years of precedent and writing new meaning into the Constitution.

That would be judicial activism, which, ironically, happens to be a favorite line of attack for Republicans against liberal justices. For example:

REP. STEVE KING (R-IA): If we’re going to respect judge-made law and stop praying in our public schools, that was the beginning of the judicial activism that’s begun to break down this civilization, and this culture.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): Unelected and serving with lifetime tenure, and substituting their view for the views of the people’s…the people and their elected representatives. That’s not the way our democracy is supposed to work.

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): Judges are not policymakers. That’s what we are in the Congress of the United States. Judges are called on to decide the facts and to apply the law.

Watch:

As E.J. Dionne wrote of the Court’s deliberations, “It fell to the court’s liberals — the so-called ‘judicial activists,’ remember? — to remind their conservative brethren that legislative power is supposed to rest in our government’s elected branches.”

- Zachary Bernstein

Economy

House Republican Budget Drives Non-Defense Discretionary Spending To Lowest Level In 50 Years

By Pat Garofalo on Mar 29, 2012 at 4:40 pm

Because it doles out trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the rich and corporations, the budget approved by House Republicans today — authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) — would increase deficits and drive up the national debt. In fact, under the plan, “deficits would never drop below 4.4 percent of GDP, and would rise to more than 5 percent of GDP by 2022.”

Those increases would come despite the gigantic spending cuts that Ryan has in mind, which would eviscerate the social safety net and non-defense discretionary spending (even while the budget increases defense spending). As the Economic Policy Institute noted today, the plan Republicans adopted would drive discretionary spending down to its lowest level in more than 50 years.

EPI pointed out that the non-defense discretionary portion of the budget includes a whole host of things, including, “spending on areas like homeland security, veterans, nuclear weapons, and foreign operations; safety net programs like housing vouchers and nutrition assistance for women and infants; most of the funding for the enforcement of consumer protection, environmental protection, and financial regulation; and practically all of the federal government’s civilian public investments.”

Alyssa

From Amadou Diallo to Trayvon Martin, Bruce Springsteen Revives “American Skin (41 Shots)”

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Mar 29, 2012 at 4:37 pm

New Yorker editor David Remnick, who caught Bruce Springsteen on his most recent tour, notes that the Boss has been playing “American Skin (41 Shots),” the song he premiered in 2000 in response to the killing of Amadou Diallo by the New York City police, in memory of Trayvon Martin. The rendition of the song from the Tampa stop is gorgeous, and tragic—and I think really enhanced beautifully by his backing singers here:

That refrain, “Is it a gun? / Is it a knife? / Is it a wallet? / This is your life” is so particularly chilling given the details of Martin’s death, the mundanity of that ice tea and the candy. And the caution the mother gives her son in the song, her injunction that “You got to understand the rules / Promise me if an officer stops you’ll always be polite / Never ever run away and promise mama you’ll keep your hands in sight” is a particularly sick reminder of how futile that promise is when you’re faced with someone determined to read you as a criminal, to do you harm, to execute their own twisted version of justice.

NEWS FLASH

Webb: I Voted For Big Oil Tax Breaks Because I Dislike Renewable Tax Credits | Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) was one of four Democratic senators who joined Republicans to filibuster legislation that would end $24 billion in tax breaks for the big five oil companies and extend industry-sustaining tax credits for wind power. Webb explained that he voted to increase Big Oil’s record profits on rising gasoline costs because he opposes government investment in clean energy technology. “My vote today was based largely on concerns over extending tax credits for a number of renewable technologies,” Webb said. “Government should avoid picking winners and losers, and should allow the marketplace to work.”

By Brad Johnson on Mar 29, 2012 at 4:30 pm

NEWS FLASH

Poll: 58 Percent of NC Voters Support Amendment One, 34 Percent Are Uninformed | Fifty-eight percent of likely voters in North Carolina said they would vote in favor of the state’s inequality amendment, even as thirty-four percent of those same respondents admit to not knowing what the bill entails, a new survey released by Public Policy Polling shows. The number of voters who said they would vote ‘yes’ dropped to just 41 percent once informed that Amendment One bans both same-sex marriage and civil unions. Just 31 percent of respondents could correctly identify the bill’s aim, while 7 percent thought Amendment One legalizes same-sex marriage. — Fatima Najiy

By Guest Blogger on Mar 29, 2012 at 4:28 pm

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