This, as it happens, is a piece in Politico:

GOP groups plan record $1 billion blitz

Republican super PACs and other outside groups shaped by a loose network of prominent conservatives – including Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and Tom Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – plan to spend roughly $1 billion on November’s elections for the White House and control of Congress, according to officials familiar with the groups’ internal operations.

Anyone who cares about our democracy should be appalled by this? That’s rich coming from a guy who helped spend $750 million on one campaign in 2008.

C’mon, Axelrod. Rejoin the real world.

Via BuzzFeed:

The Planned Parenthood Action Fund formally endorsed President Barack Obama today, and launched a $1.4 million ad buy against his Republican opponent.

The ad highlights Romney’s pledge to defund the organization and belief that the Supreme Court should overturn Roe vs. Wade. It also features a Romney adviser telling reporters “we’ll get back to you on that,” when asked about whether the former Massachusetts governor supports equal pay legislation.

It will air in West Palm Beach, FL, Des Moines, IA, the suburbs of northern Virginia, and Washington, DC, according to a spokeswoman for the organization.

The spot:

This isn’t business as usual for Planned Parenthood, as ABC’s The Note notes:

PLANNED PARENTHOOD ENDORSES OBAMA. From the Planned Parenthood Action Fund: “Planned Parenthood Action Fund announces its endorsement of President Barack Obama for president and simultaneously launches its first major ad campaign of the 2012 election cycle.  … This marks only the third time that Planned Parenthood Action Fund has endorsed a candidate for president.  This is the first in a series of planned ads for the cycle that will hold Mitt Romney accountable for his out-of-touch and harmful views on women’s health.”

In other words, Mitt Romney: No choice.

Our readership’s on the up and up!

But Scarborough survey finds bad news for Globe

 The Herald’s audience grew at a double-digit clip over the past year while the Globe saw significant declines during the same period, according to the latest Scarborough Report, which tracks how many people actually read each paper.The Scarborough data show Herald daily readership up 15 percent to 494,000 and 19 percent to 442,000 readers on Sundays from March 2011 to this February. Globe daily readership dropped 11 percent during that time, while its Sunday numbers dipped 4 percent.

Interestingly, the Globe has nothing to say – at least so far – on the subject. Lucky for us, the ever-trenchant Dan Kennedy has this for us at Media Nation:

About a month after the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) reported that the Boston Herald’s paid circulation was falling and the Boston Globe’s was rising, the Herald todayoffers the results of a new Scarborough survey that claims exactly the opposite.

OK, not exactly the opposite — the Scarborough report counts total print and Web readership, not papers and digital editions sold. Overall, according to Herald reporter Frank Quaratiello, “The Herald’s print and Web audience rose 6 percent while the Globe’s combined audience dropped 6 percent.”

Dan also helpfully provides the latest ABC numbers, “which show the Globe’s total paid circulation on Sundays is 365,512, whereas the Herald’s is 81,677. On Monday through Friday, it’s 225,482 for the Globe and 103,616 for the Herald.”

Excellent. Now we’re just waiting for the Globe to weigh in.

This is exactly why Brown will win in November.

The hardworking staff has previously written about the effort to make the Japanese government own up to its responsibility for turning Japanese women into sex slaves during World War II.

See For The Next Generation’s website for further details.

As her disease went into remission, she began regularly traveling to Mr. Ebeling’s stables in Moorpark, Calif., an hour northwest of Los Angeles. Friends and acquaintances described the trainer as patient and low-key but capable of driving students hard. Asked if she was ever unhappy with Mr. Ebeling’s instruction, Mrs. Romney said in a deposition in the lawsuit, “I think that is not a fair question because we all get upset at certain times with anybody that is — you know, especially a German.”

Turns out even the Germans are down on “a German.” From Der Spiegel (via Arts Journal):

Study Finds Germans Incapable of Enjoying Life

With low unemployment and solid economic growth, things are going better than ever for Germans. But a new study shows they’re practically incapable of enjoying it. Not only do they find it difficult to cut loose and experience pleasure, but their “joy gene” is broken, researchers say.

Bummer.

In Rarefied Sport, a View of the Romneys’ World

As Ann Romney immersed herself in the elite world of riding over the last dozen years, she relied on Jan Ebeling as a trusted tutor and horse scout. In her, he found a deep-pocketed patron.

A German-born trainer and top-ranked equestrian, Mr. Ebeling was at ease with the wealthy women drawn to the sport of dressage, in which horses costing up to seven figures execute pirouettes and other dancelike moves for riders wearing tails and top hats.

A taskmaster, Mr. Ebeling pushed Mrs. Romney to excel in high-level amateur shows. He escorted her on horse-buying expeditions to Europe. She shares ownership of the Oldenburg mare he dreams of riding in the Olympic Games this summer. Mrs. Romney and her husband, Mitt, even floated a loan — $250,000 to $500,000, according to financial records — to Mr. Ebeling and his wife for the horse farm they run in California, where the Romneys use a Mediterranean-style guesthouse as a getaway.

“He came over here with two empty hands,” Anne Gribbons, technical adviser of the United States dressage team, said of Mr. Ebeling. “He had a lucky break to get to know the Romneys.”

And a lucrative one, as millions of dollars changed hands in this horse-training relationship.

Perhaps the most interesting part of it comes in this quote from Mrs. Romney, when she was deposed in a fraud lawsuit over the sale of one of her horses:

Friends and acquaintances described the trainer as patient and low-key but capable of driving students hard. Asked if she was ever unhappy with Mr. Ebeling’s instruction, Mrs. Romney said in a deposition in the lawsuit, “I think that is not a fair question because we all get upset at certain times with anybody that is — you know, especially a German.”

Especially a German? Really?

The hardworking staff happens to be one-quarter German. And – heads up, Boston Herald  - we can prove it: The old man used to say we had an Irish sense of work and a German sense of humor.

Ha!

Back off, Ann – a German scorned is not to be taken lightly.

MSNBC dweeb Chris Hayes set off a spitstorm when he made these comments (via Drudge) on his weekend cable show (video here):

CHRIS HAYES: Thinking today and observing Memorial Day, that’ll be happening tomorrow.  Just talked with Lt. Col. Steve Burke, who was a casualty officer with the Marines and had to tell people [inaudible].  Um, I, I, ah, [Steve] Beck, sorry, um, I think it’s interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words “heroes.” Um, and, ah, ah, why do I feel so comfortable [sic] about the word “hero”?  I feel comfortable, ah, uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.

Ya think?

The conservative blogosphere certainly does.

The liberal blogosphere not so much.

Regardless, Hayes has issued the entirely predictable apology.

Welcome to Not-So-Brave-News-World.

Globe dispute key in ouster of Times CEO, article says

Conflict over the future of The Boston Globe between top executives and family members who run and control The New York Times Co. was a key factor in last year’s ouster of the company’s chief executive, according to a story in this week’s New York magazine.

Janet L. Robinson, who served for seven years as chief executive of The Times Co., which owns the Globe, left in December with little explanation and a $24 million severance package.

The article describes the decision by Arthur L. Sulzberger Jr., Times chairman, to dismiss Robinson as the culmination of a clash over how The New York Times Co. should deal with its major assets outside the Times, with the Globe and the website About.com, the largest among them.

(More juicy details in the New York piece, some of which appear in the Globe report.)

From Monday’s Boston Herald:

Report: Times Co. group that wants to sell Globe has won

New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson’s desire to keep the Boston Globe as part of the company was one of the key factors in her abrupt ouster last December, according to a New York magazine article published yesterday.

Robinson, a one-time elementary schoolteacher who left the struggling Times Co. with a controversial, out-sized $24 million severance package, went from close confidante of Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to outcast after crossing Michael Golden, a Sulzberger cousin, says the New York magazine article, citing unnamed insider sources.

Disappointingly, not much more dirt in the Herald report.

It’s rare that the Globe criticizes itself better than the Herald does, but there you have it.

The TV spot:

A cursory Google News search reveals that no one is actually examining this group.

The hardworking staff will attempt to remedy that tomorrow.