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Leave it to the good folks at Fox News to find the humor in trying to survive off food stamps. Stuart Varney brought up the subject after Newark Mayor Cory Booker accepted a challenge to live off food stamps for one week.

STUART VARNEY (HOST): Could you live on $133 per month for food?

TANTAROS: I should try it because do you know how fabulous I’d look? I’d be so skinny. I mean, the camera adds ten pounds, it really does. I’d be looking great.

h/t Think Progress

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After Cory Booker went out and undermined some of the recent attack ads by the Obama campaign during his appearance on Meet the Press this weekend, and President Obama's defense of those attacks, telling reporters that the issue is not a distraction but instead critical to evaluating Mitt Romney's qualifications to be president, Paul Krugman agreed during his appearance on Current TV's The War Room with Jennifer Granholm.

Krugman: Romney ‘really does not understand the economy at all’ :

Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman joins Jennifer Granholm in The War Room to discuss candidate Mitt Romney. Krugman says, in spite of his protestations, Romney’s business career is fair game. “Yes, he made a lot of money. He made a lot of money in ways that were often not good for workers.” Krugman points out that what made Romney an effective businessman may be the opposite of what’s needed from the leader of a country: “What a President needs to do is not what you need to do if you’re trying to make a bunch of money for private equity for investors.”

Krugman also pointed out the need for more stimulus spending right now to get the economy out of this depression we've been in:

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Former Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino says that President Barack Obama's White House has been dismissing advice from their "friends" like Newark Mayor Corey Booker, who called an Obama ad "nauseating," and Campbell Brown, who wrote that that the president was "condescending" toward women.

Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, Booker had said that the Obama campaign should stop criticizing presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for job losses caused by Bain Capital, a firm that he founded. The Newark mayor later released a YouTube video walking back his remarks.

“Cory Booker is a friend of the White House,” Perino told Fox News host Gretchen Carlson on Monday. “In some ways, your friends give you the best advice. They could have taken that yesterday as some friendly advice. A brush-back pitch to let them know that what he is hearing across the country—what Cory Booker is hearing is that this isn’t working."

Carlson pointed out that "there are a lot of Democrats that don't agree with the tactic that this administration is using because all it does is promote class warfare."

Fox News host Clayton Morris asked Perino if it was "going to be a problem for the administration" that former CNN host Campbell Brown, the wife of a Romney adviser, had written a New York Times op-ed accusing the president of "condescending" to women.

"Yesterday, the White House gets these two broadsides and instead of saying, 'That's good advice. Let us take some time to think about that and come back out and have a strong commencement address that President Obama is going to give today.' Instead they basically trashed two of their friends," Perino explained. "It looks like they have nothing else to go on."

(h/t: Mediaite)

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The legend just continues to grow...Seriously though, how cool is this?

Newark Mayor Cory Booker was taken to a hospital tonight for treatment of smoke inhalation he suffered trying to rescue his next-door neighbors from their burning house.

"I just grabbed her and whipped her out of the bed," Booker said in recounting the fire. Booker told The Star-Ledger he also suffered second-degree burns on his hand.

The fire started in a two-story building on Hawthorne Avenue in the Upper Clinton Hill neighborhood, shortly before the mayor arrived home after a television interview with News 12 New Jersey.
...
Booker said when he reached the second floor, he was engulfed in flames and smoke.

"I suddenly had the realization that I can’t find this woman." Booker said. "I look behind me and see the flames and I think "I’m not going to get out of here. Suddenly I was at peace with the fact that I was going to jump out the window."

Then he heard her cries in a back bedroom.

"I just grabbed her and whipped her out of the bed," Booker said. The two made their way downstairs, where they both collapsed, Booker said.

[Booker's security] Detective Rodriguez, who had helped others out of the house said when he saw the mayor go in, he thought his career in protection was over.

"Once he went in, I said, 'Oh my goodness, this is it.' " Rodriguez, 39, said.

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Good for Mayor Booker for standing up against Chris Christie and his proposal to leave the issue of gay marriage up to the voters of New Jersey. He hits the nail on the head. Civil rights should never be allowed to be put to the whims "the most popular sentiments of the day."

Newark Mayor Cory Booker blasts proposed N.J. gay marriage referendum:

In an unprecedented public divergence with Gov. Chris Christie, Newark Mayor Cory Booker said today he is firmly against leaving the question of gay marriage up to a referendum.

"I shudder to think what would have happened if the civil rights gains, heroically established by courageous lawmakers in the 1960s, were instead conveniently left up to popular votes in our 50 states," Booker said in a statement.

With the gay marriage debate advancing in Trenton today, Gov. Christie, who has long said he would veto a gay marriage bill, said "I need to be governed by the will of the people."

But Booker countered that leaders are elected to make difficult decisions, not submit to a public referendum.

"Equal protection under the law – for race, religion, gender or sexual orientation – should not be subject to the most popular sentiments of the day," Booker said. "Marriage equality is not a choice. It is a legal right. I hope our leaders in Trenton will affirm and defend it."

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As I said in the New Rules post, the Overtime segment of Real Time was the best part of the show. It's too bad they spent so much time arguing about religion during the panel segment that most people missed this if they didn't go watch it on line.

I was really happy to hear someone finally call John Avalon out for that "Wingnuts" book of his that CNN has been allowing him to push for the better part of a year or so. Actually, this isn't the first time someone's said this to him. An audience member on his book tour called him out as well and he wasn't too happy about it. He couldn't just blow off Bill Maher the way he did that audience member. For more of Avlon's hackery, you can see past posts here.

As I wrote in my post about one of his appearances on AC360 with David Gergen:

This John Avlon, who continually looks like he's trying to prove the points he made in his "Wingnuts" book rather than talk about the reality of our political situation in this country, is particularly annoying. Given this guy was the Chief Speechwriter and Deputy Policy Director for Rudy Giuliani's 2008 Presidential Campaign, I guess nothing that comes out of his mouth should be too surprising.

Avlon pretends to be an independent but anyone who worked for Mr. Noun-a-Verb-and-9-11 is no impartial political pundit.

h/t Amato for the vid.