And then there was 1968. The year just about everything came unhinged. The Vietnam War escalated and got very personal. The protests escalated accordingly - people who weren't against the war were violently opposed to it now. President Johnson declined re-election, leaving the field open for former Attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy to run. The Civil Rights Movement was becoming increasingly violent, culminating in the assassination of Martin Luther King. France went on strike and took it to the streets, shutting the entire country down. Robert F. Kennedy would be assassinated. Chaos would erupt at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Nixon would emerge as President and that era would soon start.

And beyond all that Apollo 8 made the very first orbit of the moon. A rehearsal for the landing to take place in 1969. Even from outer space, the view of earth from the landscape of the moon gave one the impression Earth was just not a happy place to be.

But we were stuck there.

Those highlights and a ton of other news from that year, all via the BBC and their Radio 1 Year-end retrospect for December 31, 1968 which looked at the year from a world wide standpoint.

And some people say 2012 will make 1968 look like a picnic.

One wonders - at least you have some frame of reference to consider.

More bad news for the Michele Bachmann campaign -- Kent Sorenson, Bachmann’s Iowa chair, defects to Paul :

Talk about fairweather friends. Iowa state Sen. Kent Sorenson (R), who was Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann’s state campaign chairman, endorsed Texas Rep. Ron Paul Wednesday night.

At a rally in Des Moines, Sorenson told the crowd, “We’re going to take Ron Paul all the way to the White House.”

He did not tell Bachmann of his decision until he was en route to the Paul rally, billed as an event for veterans.

“This is hard,” he said of his decision to leave Bachmann, explaining that he felt obligated to defend Paul against the Republican establishment. He elaborated in a statement, saying he felt Paul was the most conservative candidate who had a realistic shot at defeating former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Sorenson added that Paul campaigned for him during his state Senate race last year.

“I thought it was my duty to come to his aid, just like he came to my aid during my Senate race, which was a very nasty race,” he said.

The state lawmaker attended a Bachmann event just four hours earlier and declined to speak to the crowd, citing dental work. He was one of her earliest supporters in the state.

Paul’s campaign touted the endorsement in a press release, saying that Sorenson’s resignation from Bachmann’s team was effective immediately.

Rachel Weiner has more at The Washington Post's blog with Sorenson's full statement to the press.

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann revealed on Thursday that the AR-15 assault rifle was her favorite gun.

During a WHO-AM radio interview, Bachmann told host Jan Mickelson that she had planned to go pheasant hunting with Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on Friday.

"I'm a pretty good shot," the candidate admitted. "I learned how to hunt here in Iowa from my dad. I went through gun safety when I was 12."

"My favorite gun is an AR-15 because you can be so accurate with it," she explained. "And I scored the best in my class of any of the men too."

"The AR-15, that's a combat weapon?" Mickelson asked.

"I love it," Bachmann declared. "It's a great gun."

"It can be made automatic, but it's a semi-automatic .222," Mickelson said.

"I like being accurate and that is a great gun," Bachmann insisted.

"Accurate and apparently lots of firepower and many, many shots," Mickelson noted. "How big is your magazine?"

"You really want to know?" Bachmann asked with a nervous laugh, adding that all of her equipment was legal.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says that everyone but gay men and lesbians can stay out of poverty by just getting married.

At a campaign event in Muscatine, Iowa Thursday, a questioner asked Santorum how his anti-poverty plan would help the gays who can't legally marry in 45 states.

"If you graduate from high school, you get married before you have children, and of course you work -- that's sort of a given, you have to work -- you do those three things, there's a 2 percent chance you'll be in poverty," the candidate said, referring to a 2009 Brookings Institution study.

"It's important to value the institution of marriage. Because the institution of marriage is where men and women bond together for the purposes of having and raising children, and giving children their birthright, which is a mom and a dad," Santorum explained. "And so what we need to have is have a society that promotes that because that has an intrinsic value that is better than every other relationship."

"I love it when the left says, 'Quit trying to impose your morality on us!' What's that? That's their morality and they are now imposing it on us," the Pennsylvania conservative said of declining marriage rates. "They want to drive faith and faith and moral conclusions that come from faith out of the public square and out of the public law and replace it with their values. Don't give me this idea -- I hear this: 'Oh, you're a moralist. You're trying to impose your values.' Everybody's trying to impose their values. That's what America's about."

"You're trying to impose your values," the candidate said, pointing to the young man that asked the question. "You have every right to do so. Come into the public square. Make your case as to why same sex marriage should be the law of the land. I have no problem with that at all, but accept the fact that other people that disagree with you don't hate people that disagree with them. They just happen to believe that marriage is a good that should be preserved."

But a recent study (PDF) by Economic Policy Institute indicated that Santorum may have things backwards.

"Continually high poverty rates among blacks and Latinos are the result of high unemployment and incarceration rates and declining shares of good jobs in the American economy," report author Algernon Austin wrote. "The decline in marriage among these groups is a collateral consequence of these negative economic conditions."

A 2009 Williams Institute report found that same sex couples were significantly impacted by marriage discrimination because they could not jointly file federal tax returns, transfer property, receive Social Security survival benefits and other factors.

I confess to a short happy dance when I heard Senator Ben Nelson was retiring. Like everyone else, I'm sick and tired of his obstruction, his Blue Doggy-ness, and the way he plays his hand at the end like a smug cheater. But Lawrence O'Donnell pointed this out: He still voted with Democrats 82% of the time. The good news about his retirement is that we won't have Ben Nelson to tear our hair out over anymore. The bad news is that his seat will likely flip to a Republican, and an ultra-conservative Republican at that. Nebraska, like Kansas, is chock-full of tea party types who will gladly have a candidate at hand to carry out their wishes.

As unbelievable as it sounds with the current craziness in Congress, Republicans could end up in the majority in the Senate, with Mitch McConnell taking over as Senate Majority Leader. They only need to win 4 seats and hold on to the ones they already have in order to do it.

Nate Silver predicts a 5-seat pickup for Republicans is possible, but he also has a caveat:

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Why is Mitt Romney alone among the Republican presidential candidates in refusing to release his tax returns? And why is the former Massachusetts Governor also the only major GOP contender not calling for the complete elimination of the capital gains tax? As it turns out, the answer - horrible political optics - is the same to both questions. Because Romney's continuing millions in annual income from Bain Capital are taxed at the 15 percent capital gains rate, Mitt already pays a much lower share to Uncle Sam than most middle class families. And if he called for changing the capital gains rate to zero, Mitt Romney would have to explain to voters why the $250 million man should pay virtually no tax bill at all.

Despite his famous demand in the 1994 Senate race that Ted Kennedy release his tax returns to show he has "nothing to hide," Romney last week reiterated his own paperwork would not be forthcoming. "We don't have any current plans to release tax returns, but never say never," Romney said, adding:

"I can tell you we follow the tax laws, and if there's an opportunity to save taxes, we like anybody else in this country will follow that opportunity."

Truer words were never spoken.

In October, Citizens for Tax Justice estimated that the Romneys paid only 14 percent of their income in taxes. (It's no wonder Mitt opposes the "Buffett Rule.") As Time reported:

Just how much Romney pays in taxes is, for the moment, a private matter. But his income is public knowledge. In August, Romney disclosed that in 2010 he and his wife made between $1.1 million and $2.8 million in royalties, salary, speaking fees and interest, most of which was likely taxed at a marginal rate of 35%, after accounting for deductions. The Romneys made an additional $5.5 million to $37.3 million from dividends and capital gains, which is generally taxed at a much lower rate of 15%.

Two weeks ago, the New York Times shed light on that "$5.5 million to $37.3 million from dividends and capital gains" that represents most of Romney's income. Though Mitt left Bain Capital in 1999, 13 years later his windfall continues uninterrupted:

In what would be the final deal of his private equity career, he negotiated a retirement agreement with his former partners that has paid him a share of Bain's profits ever since, bringing the Romney family millions of dollars in income each year and bolstering the fortune that has helped finance Mr. Romney's political aspirations...

In the process, Bain continued to buy and restructure companies, potentially leaving Mr. Romney exposed to further criticism that he has grown wealthier over the last decade partly as a result of layoffs. Moreover, much of his income from the arrangement has probably qualified for a lower tax rate than ordinary income under a tax provision favorable to hedge fund and private equity managers, which has become a point of contention in the battle over economic inequality.

And that creates what Steve Benen aptly called "Romney's 'carried interest' problem."

In case anyone needs a refresher, there's a tax loophole on "carried interest" -- sometimes called "the carry" -- that taxes private equity and venture capital income at a lower, 15% rate, as compared to 35% on ordinary income. Hedge-fund managers and the Wall Street have fought tooth and nail to protect this loophole -- even after the Obama White House tried to eliminate it -- and so far, they've been successful.

Which is why Mitt Romney has thus far refused to join his fellow GOP White House hopefuls in proposing the elimination of the 15 percent capital gains tax. Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Herman Cain all called for zeroing out the capital gains levy, which is one reason why their tax plans represent such a huge windfall for the wealthy. (Their support for a flat-tax is another.) The Washington Post explained why for the rich that would be "better than any Christmas gift":

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The latest stories from the front lines of the labor fight across the country...

8 states have raised their minimum wage for the beginning of 2012.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg opposes a living wage for New Yorkers.

Washington Mutual made a hostile workplace for employee who refused to push predatory loans on vulnerable customers.

The Lewis & Clark pipeline will bring running water to 300,000 people and create lots of new jobs.

Wal-Mart's Rob Walton was named Scrooge of the Year by Jobs With Justice.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act requires mining firms to reveal their safety records.

A U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the new union election rule for aviation and rale workers.

Careening towards the end of 1998 the world was, as it seemingly always is, unsettled.

The news for this December 29th in 1998 was about, among other things, an unfolding hostage drama in Yemen, with breaking news while on the air. 16 UK and American tourists were kidnapped by an extremist group, with some held as human shields while police were engaging in a gun battle with the terrorists and reports of deaths coming in.

In Cambodia, two senior members of the Pol Pot regime defected from the Khmer Rouge, hoping for reconciliation and offering feeble apologies for the extermination of some 1 million Cambodian citizens. While Malaysia was going through its own version of gut-wrenching with the on-going sex scandal involving former Deputy Minister Anwar Ibrahim. Northern Ireland was once again front-and-center with anticipated clashes between Catholics and Protestants during the upcoming holiday. South Africa issued a world-wide appeal for blood in the wake of a rash of highway deaths, to the tune of some 600 since the beginning in December and a lack of much needed blood for the country's ER's.

The Russian Central Bank was wondering what became of an estimated $1billion in missing cash and Child Prostitution was on the rise in the UK.

The message for this day would appear to be; don't leave your house and don't consider Yemen as that "must-see tourist destination".

And so it went, this day in history, as viewed by the BBC World Service and their all-encompassing Newshour program for December 29, 1998.

The 99 Percent Choir forecloses on Bank of America's Seattle Headquarters whilst caroling about naughty bankers and their outrageous holiday bonuses.

The expressions on the faces of the security personnel as they realize what is happening is just priceless! Beautifully done, Occupy Seattle!

[ Photo via Flickr]

Newt Gingrich personally urged members of Congress to vote for a controversial Medicare expansion bill in 2003, confirm two GOP congressmen who were in the room.

Gingrich, who is running for president, has said he never lobbied members of Congress after he resigned as House speaker in 1998. But U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake and former congressman Butch Otter - now his state's governor - told The Des Moines Register this week that Gingrich met with on-the-fence Republicans to persuade them to vote for the prescription drug bill.

Flake and Otter, who have both endorsed Mitt Romney for president, said about 30 Republican House members were holding out against the bill in the fall of 2003 because they were concerned that the proposal would expand the federal deficit when Gingrich held a private meeting of Republican House members.

“He told us, ‘If you can’t pass this bill, you don’t deserve to govern as Republicans,’ ” said Flake, who represents an Arizona district. “…If that’s not lobbying, I don’t know what is.”

Otter said: “I can’t define lobbying, but as a Supreme Court justice once said about pornography, I know it when I see it. I felt we were being lobbied.”

Yes, it was the Republicans driving the clown car the last time that Congress screwed with Medicare. In case you don't recall, Medicare Part D was passed in 2003, and went into effect in 2006 leaving thousands of seniors without medication, and introduced us to the "doughnut hole." Trips to the pharmacy became a "nightmare" for seniors with new co-pays for previously free medications, mountains of time-consuming, mind-numbing paperwork to fill out even with staff especially trained to help navigate the mess.

Seniors enrolled in Medicare Part D plans pay 58 percent more for the most commonly prescribed drugs than Americans who buy their medications through health plans administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a 2007 report.

Under the 2003 Medicare prescription-drug law, the government is barred from harnessing the buying power of 22.5 million Americans - the number of people now receiving some kind of drug benefits under Medicare - to get a better deal on prescription medications.

For example, the cholesterol-lowering drug Zocor, the cost of a year's supply of 20 milligram tablets would be $1,485.96 under the cheapest Medicare Part D plan, compared to $127.44 under the VA.

$1,485.96...that's a lot of doughnut holes.