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Jon Perr explained how awful this so-called JOBS Act, or "Jumpstart Our Small Business Startups" is that was being pushed by Eric Cantor was last month. Well, now sadly it's passed the House and with wide bipartisan support and it's due for a vote in the Senate this Tuesday.

Eliot Spitzer, filling in for Keith Olbermann on Countdown spoke to The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner about the bill this Monday evening -- Robert Kuttner excoriates the creators and supporters of the JOBS Act, says it will strip investor protections :

Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos, and Eliot Spitzer, former governor of New York, discuss the nefarious intentions of the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act. “The one thing we have going for us is, there are disclosure laws so that if investors have the wit to read the disclosures, they can protect themselves, and that’s what this wretched piece of legislation would gut. Shame on anybody who votes for this,” says Kuttner.

Thankfully as the Politico article linked above noted and as Kuttner pointed out, there is still some hope that this can get stalled or amended in the Senate since there are actually a number of Senators who have the sense to realize that this bill should not pass.

Here's more from Bloomberg News -- Small Biz Jobs Act Is a Bipartisan Bridge Too Far:

A spirit of bipartisanship is sweeping Capitol Hill, with lawmakers poised to approve a package of bills aimed at reducing regulatory burdens on small business.

We wish we could raise a glass. This moment has been too long in coming. But the legislation it has spawned would be dangerous for investors and could harm already fragile financial markets.

At issue is a measure called Jumpstart Our Business Startups, or JOBS Act, which lawmakers in both parties claim would relieve small businesses seeking to raise capital from burdensome regulations, and thereby create jobs. The U.S. House overwhelmingly passed the measure 390-23 last week, and the Senate is expected to consider it this week. The White House has said President Barack Obama will sign the legislation.

We agree that red tape can needlessly tie up small companies. We also agree that securities laws that bar startups from harnessing the power of the Internet to raise funds could use updating. And it makes sense to allow, as the bill does, an initial public offering on-ramp, which would give startups a chance to grow before saddling them with certain costly and time-consuming regulations.

Accounting Scandals

But the JOBS Act goes too far. It would gut many of the investor protections established just a decade ago in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law. A wave of accounting scandals -- think Enron and WorldCom -- had destroyed the nest eggs of millions of Americans and upended investor confidence in Wall Street. The relief would extend beyond small businesses and apply to more than 90 percent of companies that go public.

Lots more there so go read the rest. Here's more from Spitzer at Slate -- Kill the JOBS Act!:

The appalling bill that would repeal essential Wall Street reforms.

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From this Friday evening's Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

Comedian Lewis Black, whose latest special is “In God We Rust,” sounds off on Rush Limbaugh’s role in the GOP’s war on women, Mitt Romney’s pre-existing pet problem and Rick Santorum’s anti-porn position. Black says he could understand if Santorum wanted to tax porn rather than getting rid of it, but concludes: “I don’t know what else he’s doing except wandering around, like, in the desert. It’s like having this weird prophet who’s kind of like in the wrong decade.”

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As Keith Olbermann noted, Mitt Romney did not appear to misspeak when he made this statement to St. Louis local affiliate KSDK's Ann Rubin in Kirkwood, MO today but I guess we'll find out shortly when we see if he walks it back... or not. Romney went above and beyond previous statements where he spoke about eliminating government funding to Planned Parenthood when asked what programs he would cut in order to reduce the debt.

Mitt Romney speaks in Kirkwood about jobs, energy and deficit:

"The test is pretty simple. Is the program so critical, it's worth borrowing money from China to pay for it? And on that basis of course you get rid of Obamacare, that's the easy one. Planned Parenthood, we're going to get rid of that. The subsidy for Amtrack, I'd eliminate that. The National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities," he said.

Apparently Mitt Romney has decided to join his fellow Republicans in doing their best to try to make sure no women vote for any of them in the upcoming election. I wonder how long it's going to take someone to get a chance to ask him just how he'd help to "eliminate" the program all together or if he misspoke.

Update: Here's a reminder of Mitt Romney was doing back in 2004 -- FLASHBACK: Mitt Romney Attended A Planned Parenthood Fundraiser, Now Wants To Defund It:

Of course, Romney’s past support for the right to choose has been well documented, but Romney’s connection to Planned Parenthood has been largely overlooked.

Mitt and Ann Romney attended a Planned Parenthood fundraiser in Cohasset, Massachusetts in 1994, and Ann wrote a $150 check to the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, various news outlets reported. “They were both there, and I remember very well chatting with both of them, and talking about his support for the pro-choice agenda,” Nicki Nichols Gamble, the president of the League told ABC News in 2007.

So we've gone from fundraiser, to defund it, to eliminate it.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Nice pander Mitt, the president doesn't have the power to "get rid" of Planned Parenthood.

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Keith Olbermann knocked hypocrite Rush Limbaugh during his Worst Persons segment Thursday evening for his attacks on Georgetown University Law student Sandra Fluke by pointing out that he may have inadvertently called any of his four wives or his own mother prostitutes if they have ever used birth control.

Olbermann: Did Limbaugh just call his own mother a prostitute?:

Countdown host Keith Olbermann on Thursday said conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh of probably inadvertently called his own mother a prostitute.

“His attacks on Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke have cross some kind of line, particularly when it comes to revealing his own sexual desires and preferences,” he said. “Taking time out from his continual references to men bending over and grabbing their ankles, Limbaugh today repeated his assault on Ms. Fluke who was refused the right to testify at Congressman Issa’s birth control hearing last month because she represented a case in which her insurance plan did not include birth control because it was run by a Catholic institution.” [...]

Olbermann noted that by that definition of a prostitute, “if your wife Catherine has ever used birth control and did not pay for it 100 percent out of her own pocket, or if your previous wife Martha ever used birth control and did not pay for it 100 percent out of her own pocket, or if your second wife Michelle ever used birth control and did not pay for it 100 percent out of her own pocket, or your first wife Roxy ever used birth control and did not pay for it 100 percent out of her own pocket, or if your mother Milly ever used birth control and did not pay for it 100 percent out of her own pocket, by your own definition Mr. Limbaugh, what does that make them?”

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Keith Olbermann takes apart one of Andrew Breitbart's latest smears of the Occupy movement that we all sadly got a dose of the other night when he was screaming at the protesters outside of CPAC; that the movement is full of rapists.

Debunking Breitbart's "Occupy Rape List":

What you have not seen are the facts behind the transparently dishonest "list" with which Breitbart is trying to smear Occupy as rapists. Sadly, it appears his people's efforts consisted of finding stories in which both the word "Occupy" and some report of sexual misconduct.

It doesn't look like anybody bothered to read the links. Nearly every one of the stories shows Occupy participants were the victims and not the alleged perpetrators, or the incidents had nothing to do with Occupy.

You can read the entire list and the details in Keith's post at KOS, but here's the summation:

So. Seventeen stories Breitbart claims are cases of Rape at Occupy. Just reading the stories, googling the names of those identified, following up - this only took me about 70 minutes. The final result:

-- Two stories on the list were duplicates.
-- One story turns out to have been about consensual sex.
-- One case, in Scotland, led the Occupy group to disband for the sake of safety.
-- One case of an arrest for child porn, with Occupy immediately banning the alleged perpetrator.
-- One case of a girl disappearing -- ignoring the fact that she was home and unharmed a month later.
-- Four cases in which police said neither the victim nor the assailant were apparently even associated with Occupy.

That leaves seven others stories, all of which show police identifying Occupy participants as the victims, six of which show police identifying the alleged assailants as not being Occupy participants.

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Sam Seder filling in for Keith Olbermann on Countdown shared some of the highlights from day one of CPAC 2012.

SEDER: The one thing the Republicans do well, even better than fearmongering, is throw extravagant events. In our forth story, today began the thirty ninth annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, a chance for conservatives to come together and trash President Obama. Apparently twenty four hours on Fox News, was not sufficient. […]

But claiming that this is solely an event to trash the President is only half true. It also serves as the official 2012 meeting of the Reagan fan club, with each speaker seeing how many times they can mention the late president. Outside of the standard GOP talking points, this year's conference proved an opportunity for former presidential candidates to give their campaigns' postmortem.

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David Shuster filling in for Keith Olbermann on Countdown this Wednesday evening spoke to comedian and Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead about the dust up with the Susan G. Komen foundation's decision to pull their funding from Planned Parenthood. Lizz has been out there doing terrific work trying to raise money for Planned Parenthood for some time now and she didn't mince any words when it came to her feelings on the recent assault on the group from the right.

WINSTEAD: Well, I think she said it herself when she was running for governor when she said, "I don't support the mission of Planned Parenthood." And the mission of Planned Parenthood is to provide affordable heath care for low-income women. And, if you don't support that mission, I really don't know how you can call yourself pro-life in the least.

And I think it's very suspect that, within the last year, this woman who was running for governor — who got Sarah Palin's endorsement, she was so conservative that she got the endorsement of Palin, — ran for Governor of Georgia the same year this legislation comes to be in Congress. And Susan Komen's new edict is "we can't support any organization that has legislation before Congress that's investigative."

Where are those dots? How do those connect? It does seem like — conservative person needed to put a piece of legislation in place so that Susan Komen could conveniently withhold their funding. It might sound tinfoil-hat-y. But I would like to, at least, know that there is not connection, or, if there is, I'd like to know that too.

Lizz has a new article in The Guardian with more you can read here -- By defunding Planned Parenthood, the Susan G Komen Foundation betrays women.

Full transcript below the fold.

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It appears the Tea Party Patriots Mark Meckler has gotten into a bit of trouble today while traveling in New York. You'd think since Meckler's an attorney, he'd have bothered to look up the state's gun laws before allowing this to happen -- Tea Party Leader Mark Meckler Arrested With Handgun At Airport:

Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots and one of the most prominent spokesmen for the grassroots movement, was arrested at LaGuardia Airport on Thursday after trying to check in a handgun on his flight.

According to the Queens District Attorney’s office, Meckler arrived at the airport with the gun, a Glock 27, and ammunition locked in a safe and presented it to the flight attendant at the Delta counter. He allegedly told authorities that he needed the gun for protection after receiving threats, but did not have a New York State license to carry the weapon. He’s being charged with second degree possession of an illegal weapon, a charge that carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.

“Before leaving home, passengers should acquaint themselves with the weapon laws of the jurisdiction that they are visiting and comply with any and all legal requirements if they choose to travel with a weapon,” Queens DA Richard Brown said in a statement. “Otherwise, they may find themselves being arrested and charged with a felony - as is what occurred in this case.” [...]

A spokesman for the Queens DA, Kevin Ryan, told TPM that the legal issue wasn’t whether Meckler followed airline regulations regarding safe transportation of a handgun, the issue was that he did not have a carry permit for New York state, which has strict requirements for handguns. Read on...

And as our contributor and webmaster Jamie pointed out, these right wingers just love state sovereignty, until it comes to their guns -- The GOP Wants "Gun Rights" To Trump State Sovereignty.

Meckler made Keith Olbermann's Worst Persons list following his arrest for his prior remarks about those law abiding tea partiers who never get arrested, unlike those evil dirty hippies at Occupy Wall Street.

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Countdown's Keith Olbermann filled his viewers in on Bill O'Reilly's, shall we say, less than friendly encounter with Occupy DC protester Branden Lane and O'Reilly's response on Fox this Thursday evening, where he said he was thinking about the John Lennon assassination and thought that Lane was "out of control."

As Keith noted, O'Reilly doesn't mind sicking his minions on unsuspecting victims of his ambush journalism for Fox, but he's not so thrilled when the tables are turned on himself.

Keith followed up with Occupy DC protester from Wisconsin Jobs Now Branden Lane, who explained how he happened to see O'Reilly leaving the same hotel where the Newt Gingrich protests were occurring and why he and his group were spending time in D.C. making their voices heard on being fed up with our politicians continually looking out for the 1 percent and that O'Reilly how O'Reilly and the misinformation he pushes at Fox are a perfect example of what they're fed up with.

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It appears Newt Gingrich isn't done throwing more red meat to his base given the remarks he made on who he would want to appoint as Secretary of State were he to be elected president.

Gingrich: ‘I Will Ask John Bolton To Be Secretary Of State’:

At a forum hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich proclaimed that, if elected president, he would appoint former Bush administration U.N. ambassador John Bolton to be Secretary of State. Gingrich said he would require Bolton to restructure the U.S.’s entire diplomatic structure, and seek a more business-like atmosphere at State. Gingrich made the announcement to raucous applause [...]

The Senate refused to confirm the pugnacious Fox New contributor as U.N. envoy in 2006, forcing a recess appointment. Known for extremely hawkish positions and undiplomatic conduct, Bolton has maintained close ties to the Islamophobic right — but sometimes only when the money was good enough.

Here's more from Raw Story on Keith Olbermann's follow up on the topic with Steve Kornacki above -- Steve Kornacki explains tribalism of Gingrich’s support for Bolton:

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