Let’s Hear It For The Girls, All Month Long

Posted: March 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, birth control, Civil Rights, collective bargaining, Economy, Feminists, income inequality, War on Women, Women's Rights, worker rights | Tags: | 10 Comments

Though GOP madness is in full swing, March is the month to celebrate women—their lives, strengths and accomplishments.  True to its nature, the month has roared in but with a twist, acting as a party crasher, snapping at all female guests of honor.

We’ve seen reproductive rights assaulted, the 100-year contraception battle reignited and shock-jock Rush Limbaugh bully and slander a female student from Georgetown University.  Rick Santorum has turned the Republican effort into a Comstock-era discussion of acceptable moral/sexual behavior and a county in the Great State of South Carolina is suggesting a purity pledge for Republican membership.  Even the workplace is under assault with candidates suggesting the elimination of minimum wage and repealing Child Labor laws.

What’s next?  The village pillory?

Who invited the Crazies?

My suggestion?   Show them the door, kick their arses to the street.  We didn’t invite reactionary fools to the party.   This woman would not have tolerated their company for a single nanosecond:

Margaret Sanger

Nor these women

Women's Suffrage Parade

Nor these:

Bread and Roses Protest

The last photo, the Bread and Roses protest, was a workers’ strike protesting deplorable work conditions, non-living wages and inconceivably long days in New England’s textile mills.  One of these strikes occurred in Lawrence, Massachusetts, fueled by earlier actions in NYC’s garment district.  Thursday, March 8th is the official recognition date of a 100-year old struggle, under the aegis of the IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] but primarily led by immigrant women, young and old, who successfully striked for humane working conditions, decent wages and openly opposed child labor and workplace exploitation.

It did not come easy.  But come it did.

One of the descriptions I read of these early battles was nothing short of shake-your-head inspiring:

According to [Consiglia] Teutonica, this time a 22-year-old Syrian immigrant named Annie Kiami stepped in front of the crowd. Calling the soldiers “Cossacks,” Kiami wrapped an American flag around her body and dared them to shoot holes in Old Glory.

Once thought of as docile and subservient, the Bread and Roses women quickly gained the notorious title among mill owners of radicals of the worst sort.

“One policeman can handle 10 men,” Lawrence’s district attorney lamented, “while it takes 10 policemen to handle one woman.”

In the words of one horrified boss, the women activists were full of “lots of cunning and also lots of bad temper. They’re everywhere, and it’s getting worse all the time.”

Lots of cunning and bad temper!  I like that.

Flip forward some 50+ years and the Bread and Roses contingent in Boston fought for reproductive rights and abortion, child care, equal employment laws against discrimination in the workplace and recognition of and legal remedies to fight and reduce violence against women.  In 1971, the Bread and Roses group occupied a building owned by Harvard University for 10 days, during which they offered free classes and childcare.  After they were removed from their encampment, several sympathetic donors offered $5000 with which the group opened The Women’s Center in Cambridge.

The Women’s Center is in operation today, offering a multitude of services to battered women, victims of rape and child abuse and providing counsel, support and health information to moderate to low-income women.  Their mission statement reads as follows:

To provide women with the resources and support they need to emerge from

conditions of domestic violence, sexual abuse, poverty, discrimination, social isolation and degradation.

To challenge and change the attitudes, actions, and institutions that subjugate women.

They’re still going strong.

A myriad of Bread and Roses communities have grown and spread across the country, many charitable outreaches to low income families, providing meals and support to the unemployed, the sick and disadvantaged.  In each case, the Bread and Roses emblematic power rests in the idea of social justice, community outreach and support.  With each and every group, each program, the legacy returns to those women and children of 1912, the day they said–Enough is enough—and then put their bodies, their very lives on the line, demanding to be treated with dignity, to be seen and counted as human beings.

As for the name, Bread and Roses?   The phrase reportedly came from a banner—Give Us Bread But Give Us Roses–carried during the early days of the textile strikes. James Oppenheim, a poet, novelist and editor, attended one of those protests and was so moved by the imagery that he wrote the following poem to honor the women.

As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,

A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,

Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,

For the people hear us singing: “Bread and roses! Bread and roses!”

As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,

For they are women’s children, and we mother them again.

Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;

Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead

Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.

Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.

Yes, it is bread we fight for — but we fight for roses, too!

As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.

The rising of the women means the rising of the race.

No more the drudge and idler — ten that toil where one reposes,

But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

Oppenheim was inspired by the women and their courage.  The women were inspired by the words.

It’s a fine legacy, one among many in which women had a leading role in changing the course of American history.  The citizens of Lawrence will be commemorating the women and their efforts with a Centennial festival.  The major programs are slated to kickoff tomorrow Thursday, March 8 and run through May 1.

There’s no better time to give these women their due because income inequality, rising poverty and homelessness has returned to the Nation, a vicious cycle tearing at families and communities alike. The Lawrence strike has an uncanny parallel to the Occupy protests.  At the turn of the 20th century, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few was unrivaled.  Until today.  What Bread and Roses reminds us is the power of solidarity, fighting the good fight.  With cunning and bad temper if necessary.  Or as James Oppenheim wrote a century ago:

The rising of women means the rising of the race.

Bread and roses!  Bread and roses!

Happy 100th!

Live Blog: Super Tuesday Results

Posted: March 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 primaries, Republican politics, the GOP, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , | 109 Comments

Super Tuesday states and delegate counts

Hi Sky Dancers! Are you ready to rumble? No? Well then stick around for our live blog of the Super Tuesday primaries. The delegates of ten states that are voting today will all be distributed proportionally. There are no winner-take-all states. The polls close at (all times EST):

7:00PM in Vermont, Georgia, and Virginia
7:30PM in Ohio
8:00PM in Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Oklahoma
9:00PM in North Dakota
10:00PM in Idaho
12:00AM in Alaska.

There is quite a bit of disagreement about how many delegates each of the candidates has accumulated, so I’m going with Politico’s estimates:

Romney 180
Santorum 90
Gingrich 29
Paul 23
Huntsman 2

According to Nate Silver’s Guide to Super Tuesday, the outcome tonight

could reasonably range from one in which Mitt Romney seems to have the nomination all but wrapped up to a situation that casts his nomination in doubt.

Mr. Romney is likely to remain the favorite to win the nomination almost no matter what happens. He is also very likely to finish with the largest number of delegates from the evening. He comes into the night with perhaps the most favorable momentum he has had at any point in the nomination process; some of his disastrous outcomes were pushed aside by his wins in the past week in Michigan, Arizona and Washington.

Still, the line between a resplendent night for Mr. Romney and a suspect one is relatively slim, both in terms of the delegate count and the narrative it will generate. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have a lot on the line as well, possibly including their continued survival in the race.

Josh Putnam, a political science professor, says it’s already over before the votes are counted.

Santorum can’t get to 1144 …and neither can Gingrich.

FHQ has been saying since our Very Rough Estimate of the delegate counts a couple of weeks ago that Romney is the only candidate who has a chance to get there. But, of course, I have not yet shown my work. No, it isn’t mathematically impossible, but it would take either Gingrich or Santorum over-performing their established level of support in the contests already in the history books to such an extent that it is all but mathematically impossible. Santorum, for instance, has averaged 24.2% of the vote in all the contests. Since (and including) his February 7 sweep, he is averaging 34.7% of the vote. That is an improvement, but it is not nearly enough to get the former Pennsylvania senator within range of the 1144 delegates necessary to win the Republican nomination.

You can read the rest at Putnam’s blog.

At the WaPo, Chris Cilizza has a guide to the five storylines to watch tonight. You can read the whole thing at the link, but here’s his take on whether Romney can end it tonight:

From a delegate point of view, Romney is nowhere near clinching the nomination. (Check out our video explaining all of the delegate math.)

But, there is a path toward him closing out the nomination — for all intents and purposes — tonight. How? Romney needs to be able to claim a sort of national victory, winning somewhere in every region of the country.

The Northeast is locked up as Romney will cruise in his home-ish state of Massachusetts and Vermont. He’s likely to get a win (if not two) out of the Plains/West with the North Dakota and Idaho caucuses. Ohio is Romney’s chance in the Midwest/ Rust Belt.

That leaves the South. Gingrich is going to win Georgia. Santorum looks strong in Oklahoma and it’s somewhat debateable whether that counts as the South anyway. Tennessee is clearly Romney’s best chance to win in the South even though polling suggests that Santorum has a narrow edge….

If Romney wins — for the sake of argument — Ohio, Tennessee, North Dakota, Idaho, Vermont and Massachusetts — he can make a compelling case to the Republican establishment, which has been loathe to get off the sidelines thus far in the race, that he is the only national candidate left in the field.

Brent Budowsky claims that the Republican “establishment” (whoever they are) will “lay down the law” to the right wingers tomorrow.

When the rooster crows on Super Wednesday, the insider establishment that runs the GOP will lay down the law to Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and all true conservatives: It is time to unite behind the candidate of the establishment that runs the party, which does not include Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Rick Perry, Herman Cain or true conservatives of any kind.

The voting on Super Tuesday will determine whether this insider GOP establishment will have enough brute clout to force opponents of Mitt Romney out of the race beginning in earnest on Super Wednesday, or whether the the process must continue. The pressure to withdraw will be excruciating. The private inducements to drop out will be enormous. The threats against candidates refusing to drop out will be secret, but savage.

I’m not sure how Budowsky, a Democrat, knows this, but it sounds reasonable. Here’s a bit more:

In the GOP, the insider, banking, Wall Street and K Street establishment is the boss. Period.

True conservatives have been humiliated in this primary season because they began without a credible conservative presidential candidate and will likely end being force-fed Mitt Romney, whom most of them privately consider a phony (which he is) who will betray them if elected (which he will).

So have it! Let us know what you’re hearing in your neck of the woods or on whatever media outlet or big blog you are following. Personally, I’m still rooting for Romney to lose somehow, but I’m not all that hopeful it will happen.

Whatever Happened to the Department of Justice?

Posted: March 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Central Intelligence Agency, Civil Liberties, Injustice system, Middle East, Patriot Act, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , | 13 Comments

Maybe we should change the name of the DOJ to the Department of Expedience. The War on Terrorism continues to be a War on the American and our Constitutional idea of justice. Eric Holder’s speech yesterday at Northwestern’s School of Law puzzles many of us that had hoped a change from the Bush/Cheney regime would mean a return to civil liberties.  Assassination of US citizens–implying no trial, no jury of peers, and no due process–by classifying them as terrorists is an end run around our Constitution that must not stand.   Eric Holder’s thin justification of the Obama policy of assassination sounds a lot like triangulation.

Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces. This is simply not accurate. “Due process” and “judicial process” are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.

Glenn Greenwald explains it like this.

When Obama officials (like Bush officials before them) refer to someone “who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces,” what they mean is this: someone the President has accused and then decreed in secret to be a Terrorist without ever proving it with evidence.

This process still seems to be a murky one as pointed out at Empty Wheel. This is beyond unacceptable.

As of a month ago–four months after Awlaki was killed–the Senate Intelligence Committee had not been provided with the legal framework for Awlaki’s kill. This, in spite of the fact that SSCI member Ron Wyden had been requesting that framework for over five months before Awlaki was killed.

I said when Wyden made that clear that it showed there had not been adequate oversight of the killing. By his words–if not his deeds–Holder effectively made the same argument.

The speech appears to be an elaborate justification of a policy that could basically spin on the whims of a president and his/her cronies. This is especially appalling given the FBI “stings” that have been aimed at catching terrorists that seem more aptly labelled as pushing some depressed, emotionally damaged people into becoming aspirational terrorists and then enabling them to do something dangerous. I can only assume that the CIA is probably just as bad if not worse.

The Holder speech was weak as a public explanation.  It’s basis in law appears weaker.

Still, the speech contained no footnotes or specific legal citations, and it fell far short of the level of detail contained in the Office of Legal Counsel memo — or in an account of its contents published in October by The New York Times based on descriptions by people who had read it.

The administration has declined to confirm that the memo exists, and late last year, The Times filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act asking a judge to order the Justice Department to make it public. In February, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a broader lawsuit, seeking both the memo and the evidence against Mr. Awlaki.

Last month, Justice Department court filings against Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man who attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009, provided a detailed account — based on his interrogations — of Mr. Awlaki’s alleged involvement.

Mr. Holder, by contrast, did not acknowledge the killing of Mr. Awlaki or provide new details about him, although he did mention him in passing as “a U.S. citizen and a leader” of Al Qaeda’s Yemen branch when discussing Mr. Abdulmutallab.

Holder even objects to the word “assassinations”. 

Holder also noted that in using lethal force, the United States must make sure that it is acting within the laws of war by ensuring that any target is participating in hostilities and that collateral damage is not excessive. And he noted that law-of-war principles “do not forbid the use of stealth or technologically advanced weapons” — an apparent reference to drones.

More broadly, Holder argued that the targeting of specific senior belligerents in wartime in not unusual, and noted the 1943 U.S. tracking and shooting down of the plane carrying Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

He said that “because the United States is in an armed conflict, we are authorized to take action against enemy belligerents under international law . . . and our legal authority is not limited to the battlefields of Afghanistan.”

Holder said he rejected any attempt to label such operations “assassinations.”

“They are not, and the use of that loaded term is misplaced,” he said. “Assassinations are unlawful killings. Here, for the reasons I have given, the U.S. government’s use of lethal force in self-defense against a leader of al-Qaeda or an associated force who presents an imminent threat of violent attack would not be unlawful — and therefore would not violate the executive order banning assassination or criminal statutes.”

Holder said “it is preferable to capture suspected terrorists where feasible — among other reasons, so that we can gather valuable intelligence from them — but we must also recognize that there are instances where our government has the clear authority — and, I would argue, the responsibility — to defend the United States through the appropriate and lawful use of lethal force.”

I am not a constitutional lawyer.  I do not even play one on TV so I can’t speak to the finer points of the due process clause.  I just know this does not pass my “smell test”.   I have read statements by lawyers.  Here’s a sampling from MOJO and Adam Sewer.

Both supporters and opponents of the administration’s targeted killing policy offered praise for the decision to give the speech. They diverged, however, when it came to the legal substance. “It’s essential that if we’re going to be doing these things, our top national security and legal officials explain why it’s legal under international and constitutional law,” said Benjamin Wittes, a legal scholar with the Brookings Institution, who said he thought the speech fulfilled that obligation. “I think [the administration] is right as a matter of law.”

In a statement, Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s national security project, called the authority described in the speech “chilling.” She urged the administration to release the Justice Department legal memo justifying the targeted killing program—a document that the ACLU and the New York Times are currently suing the US government to acquire. “Anyone willing to trust President Obama with the power to secretly declare an American citizen an enemy of the state and order his extrajudicial killing should ask whether they would be willing to trust the next president with that dangerous power.”

Here’s a point-by-point list of things that I think is worth reading from Lawfare.  This is a small portion of that article.  I really suggest you go read all of the points to get an understanding of the policy and its process.

That is, the speech asserts that Due Process permits targeting of a citizen at least when the target is:

(i) located abroad rather than in the United States,

(ii) has a senior operational role

(iii) with al Qaeda or an al Qaeda-associated force,

(iv) is involved in plotting focused on the death of Americans in particular,

(v) that threat is “imminent” in the sense that this is the last clear window of opportunity to strike,

(vi) there is no feasible option for capture without undue risk, and

(vii) the strike will comply with the IHL principles of necessity, distinction, proportionality, and humanity

All of this takes away from the many questions surrounding the first recipient of the assassination treatment. Marcy at Empty Wheel reminds of the thin ice upon which Holder skates.

Perhaps it’s because of all the dubious reasons the Administration continues to keep its case against Anwar al-Awlaki secret, but Eric Holder gave the impression of not knowing precisely what evidence the government had shown against Awlaki.

Or, deliberately misrepresenting it.

Holder mentioned Awlaki just once–purportedly to summarize Abdulmutallab’s case against Awlaki they released last month.

For example, in October, we secured a conviction against Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab for his role in the attempted bombing of an airplane traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.  He was sentenced last month to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  While in custody, he provided significant intelligence during debriefing sessions with the FBI.  He described in detail how he became inspired to carry out an act of jihad, and how he traveled to Yemen and made contact with Anwar al-Aulaqi, a U.S. citizen and a leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.  Abdulmutallab also detailed the training he received, as well as Aulaqi’s specific instructions to wait until the airplane was over the United States before detonating his bomb. [my emphasis]

Note, this misrepresents what Abdulmutallab said, at least as shown by the summary released last month (setting aside the reasons DOJ chose not to test those claims at trial). What the summary did say was that Awlaki gave Abdulmutallab specific instructions to ignite his bomb while over the US. It did not say Awlaki was “a leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.” That’s DOJ’s elaboration, a frankly dishonest one, given the construction (and one that was probably at least significantly challenged by the intelligence Jubeir al-Fayfi delivered ten months after Abdulmutallab gave his testimony).

This is obviously a complex situation that needs full time attention by a lot of folks with a lot more than I can provide here.  It’s something, however, we all need to follow.

Republican Presidential Candidates Beating Drums of War Against Iran

Posted: March 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, 2012 primaries, Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, Iran, Republican politics, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , | 12 Comments

Mitt Romney speaking by teleconference at AIPAC

This morning I woke up at 6AM, which is pretty early for me these days. I tuned my satellite radio to MSNBC. A little later I got sleepy again and dozed off with the radio on. I woke up to the frightening sound of Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum addressing AIPAC.

I admit that I don’t really understand the politics of the U.S.-Israel relationship very well, and and usually don’t follow it very closely. I was frankly stunned by the bloodthirstiness of the speeches from these two candidates. Newt Gingrich also addressed the conference, but I thankfully I didn’t hear his speech.

I don’t want to start any emotional arguments with this post. I just want to highlight what the Republican candidates have said about war with Iran, because I think both the content tone of their speeches is beyond irresponsible. I’m just going to highlight some of their statements and leave it to you to interpret them.

Mitt Romney

Romney fired his opening shot with an op-ed in the Washington Post, which I also linked in the morning reads. In the essay, Romney claims that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, despite all the recent evidence to the contrary. Romney:

Beginning Nov. 4, 1979 , dozens of U.S. diplomats were held hostage by Iranian Islamic revolutionaries for 444 days while America’s feckless president, Jimmy Carter, fretted in the White House. Running for the presidency against Carter the next year, Ronald Reagan made it crystal clear that the Iranians would pay a very stiff price for continuing their criminal behavior. On Jan. 20, 1981, in the hour that Reagan was sworn into office, Iran released the hostages. The Iranians well understood that Reagan was serious about turning words into action in a way that Jimmy Carter never was.

America and the world face a strikingly similar situation today; only even more is at stake. The same Islamic fanatics who took our diplomats hostage are racing to build a nuclear bomb. Barack Obama, America’s most feckless president since Carter, has declared such an outcome unacceptable, but his rhetoric has not been matched by an effective policy. While Obama frets in the White House, the Iranians are making rapid progress toward obtaining the most destructive weapons in the history of the world.

Romney has no factual basis for these statements. As Ben Armbruster writes at Think Progress:

The International Atomic Energy Agency, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have all recently said that while they believe Iran may be moving toward a nuclear weapons capability, the regime has not made a decision to build a bomb. President Obama said just today that “ultimately the Iranians’ regime has to make a decision to move in that direction, a decision that they have not made thus far.”

In his speech to AIPAC this morning Romney said of Iran:

“I’ve also studied the writings and speeches of the jihadists,” Romney told the crowd. “They argue for a one-state solution. One all-dominating, radical Islamists state, that is. Their objective is not freedom, it’s not prosperity, it’s not a Palestinian state, it is the destruction is Israel that they seek. … I recognize in the Ayatollahs of Iran the zealot refrain of dominion.”

….

“Yet, the current administration has promoted a policy of engagement with Iran,” he continued. “The president not only dawdled in opposing sanctions, he’s opposed them. Hope is not a foreign policy. The only thing respected by thugs and tyrants is our resolve, backed by our power and our readiness to use it.”

Raw Story also reports that Romney recently said the following to an 11-year-old Georgia boy:

“If Barack Obama gets re-elected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the world will change if that’s the case,” he said.

During a CNN debate last month, the candidate went one step further, stating that nuclear weapons would definitely be used if Obama wins in November.

“We must not allow Iran to use a nuclear weapon. If they do, the world changes and someday nuclear weaponry will be used. If I’m president, that will not happen. If we re-elect Barack Obama it will,” he insisted.

I’ve heard Romney make that claim before, and I find it shocking. It’s the most irresponsible claim I’ve heard made since LBJ’s 1964 daisy ad about Barry Goldwater, which was never used by the Johnson campaign.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Romney said of the Obama administration:

“The current administration has distanced itself from Israel and visibly warmed to the Palestinian cause. It has emboldened the Palestinians,” Mr. Romney told a convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “As president, I will treat our allies and friends like friends and allies.”

In recent days, Mr. Romney said, administration statements have emphasized the need for Israel to exercise caution when considering military action against Iran rather than the unacceptability of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

“I do not believe that we should be issuing public warnings that create distance between the United States and Israel,” Mr. Romney said. “Israel does not need public lectures about how to weigh decisions of war and peace. It needs our support.”

Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum appeared in person at AIPAC and gave a bombastic 10-minute speech in which he viciously attacked President Obama. Here are some highlights:

“As I’ve sat and watched this play out on the world stage, I have seen a president who has been reticent,” the former Pennsylvania senator said.

“He says he has Israel’s back; from everything I’ve seen from the conduct of this administration, he has turned his back on the people of Israel,” he added to applause.

….I wanted to come off the campaign trail to come here because one of the reasons I decided to run for president is because of the grave concern I have about the security of our country and the leadership of our country in the face of a[n] existential threat to not just the state of Israel,” Santorum said. “But an existential threat to freedom loving people throughout the world, which is what Iran is.”

In November, Santorum called for a “premptive strike” on Iran. Today he suggested:

“These are essentially irrational actors. We need to put that ultimatum in place, and we need to be prepared, if that ultimatum is not met to engage Prime Minister [Benjamin]Netanyahu and the people of Israel in an effort to make sure that if they do not tear down those facilities, we will tear down them.”

Like Romney, Santorum claimed that administration reports about about Iran’s nuclear capabilities are lies.

“The fact that we have the chairman of the joint chiefs saying we’re not sure yet that Iran is really going to pursue or has made the decision to develop a nuclear weapon just shows again the disconnect that they know we have, that the insincerity of our leaders in telling the truth to the American public about what is actually going on in the American public today,”

Newt Gingrich

CBS News reports that Gingrich said he would “replace” the current Iranian regime.

“[I will] undermine and replace the Iranian dictatorship by every available method short of war,” Gingrich said via satellite to the pro-Israel lobby.

In addition to pledging regime change in Iran, he said he would do everything in his power to bolster the Israeli’s ability to counter and halt a nuclear Iran, which includes providing “all available intelligence to the Israeli government.”

Gingrich also threatened war with Iran and tossed aside any possibility of using diplomacy, claiming that Iran is already developing nuclear weapons.

“We will not keep talking while the Iranians keep building,” Gingrich said, hitting President Obama for continuing to back a diplomatic path to a nuclear-free Iran.

Gingrich made his comments as the international community continues its attempts to diminish the Iranian’s ability to obtain a nuclear weapon. The five members of the United Nations Security Council announced Tuesday that it will enter into discussions with Tehran over its nuclear program, and Iran said nuclear inspectors will be allowed to enter its secret military compound where nuclear work is expected.

…Gingrich dismissed diplomatic talks and said Iran has reached a crucial point in its weapons program.

“The red line is now because the Iranians are now deepening their commitment to nuclear weapons,” Gingrich said.

As I said, I don’t want to start an argument about the Israel-Palestine situation. I just wanted to highlight the warmongering speeches of the Republican candidates. Please keep your comments civil.

Super Tuesday Reads

Posted: March 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, 2012 primaries, birth control, Foreign Affairs, Israel, Mitt Romney, morning reads, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , | 59 Comments

Good Morning!!

Today is the day Willard Mitt Romney has been working toward since 1994 when he first ran for the Senate against Ted Kennedy. Think of the hundreds of millions of dollars he has poured into his dream of winning the presidency, only to end up on Super Tuesday 2012 with a 28% favorability rating according to the latest NBC-WSJ poll (h/t Dakinikat). Nevertheless, Romney could be the inevitable candidate after tonight–at least the Republican “establishment,” such as it is, hopes he will be.

As you can see in the image above, there are 437 delegates at stake today in the ten Super Tuesday states–that’s more than a third of the total delegates needed to win the Republican nomination.

My home state of Massachusetts holds its primary today, but I’ll be voting on the Democratic side for Elizabeth Warren for Senate. I’m actually getting a little worried about her now that Scott Brown has been leading in the polls for a couple of weeks now.

It looks like Romney will win easily here anyway. In fact, according the Washington Post, “Mass. Republicans hope a big Romney primary win Tuesday could put state into play in November”

Polls show Romney with a commanding lead among GOP primary voters here. His Republican challengers — Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich — have put little money or effort into the state.

But those same polls show Romney trailing President Barack Obama by double digits in a state that has traditionally shunned Republican presidential candidates.

Massachusetts Republicans are hoping that Romney will be able to buck that trend by reeling in voters in the state he governed for four years.

“He’ll put Massachusetts in play,” said state Republican Party Chairman Bob Maginn.

I sure hope not! Romney isn’t popular here, and he wasn’t popular as governor. But if the state ends up being competitive, I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet and vote for Obama.

Nate Silver was posting Super Tuesday updates all day yesterday, and his predictions are laid out in a sidebar at his blog. He is forecasting wins for Romney in Massachusetts, Ohio, and Virginia. He expects Santorum to win Wisconsin, Tennesee, Oklahoma, and Gingrich to win his home state of Georgia.

As for the caucus states of North Dakota, Vermont, Idaho, and Alaska, which account for 87 delegates Silver’s colleague Micah Cohen says anything could happen.  Personally, I think Romney should take Vermont, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Paul or Santorum take North Dakota.

Over at Real Clear Politics you can see a table showing all of the latest Super Tuesday polls.  Of course we’ll be live blogging the results tonight here at Sky Dancing, so please join us!

Soooo …. Here are a few headlines to get the big day started.

Howard Fineman says the Republican Party has become America’s First Religious Party

Whatever happens on Super Tuesday, the Republican primary season already has made history. The contest has confirmed the establishment of America’s first overtly religious major political party.

The signs are numerous, but it’s still easy to miss the big picture: that the GOP now is best understood as the American Faith Party (AFP) and its members as conservative Judeo-Christian-Mormon Republicans. The basement of St. Peter’s is just one clubhouse.

“There has never been anything like it in our history,” said Princeton historian Sean Wilentz. “‘God’s Own Party’ now really is just that.”

Fineman says most people don’t seem too thrilled by this idea. Duh!

The new GOP does not seem to be sitting well with the American people as a whole, or even with many traditional Republicans. Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine is only the latest non-AFP-type Republican to decide to leave politics and/or the party. In the new ruling class, “revival tent” proponents are driving out the old “big tent” advocates. And a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 40 percent of American adults think less of the party after watching its transformation this electoral season.

Will this spell the end of the GOP?

I happened to watch Hardball last night and to my horror, I saw Willard Mitt Romney in Tennessee reciting the words to an old song I recall from my childhood (but would have preferred to leave there), “Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier.”  It came from a Disney movie of the same name. Charlie Pierce hated it too.

Romney is the personification of the word “dork.”

It turns out Ann Romney may have the same problem as her husband. She can’t help making remarks about being rich. Yesterday she appeared on Fox News and claimed, “I don’t even consider myself wealthy.”

Yeah, that’s “an interesting thing.” I wish she’d send me some of the $21 million the Romneys took in last year. Ann Romney is beginning to remind me of Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom.

Just one more Romney link: Sam Stein found a debate from 2008 in which Romney said he likes health care insurance mandates. Romney’s spokesman said it’s not a flip flop. You be the judge. Frankly, I don’t see how Romney can recall which side of an issue he’s on from one minute to the next.

There’s an embarrassing story from Rick Santorum’s history at Huffpo by Jason Cherkis.

For a brief moment Monday afternoon, GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum jettisoned his conservative, culture-warrior talking points to make a down-to-earth connection with Ohio voters. He confessed that as a teenager, he used to cross the Ohio border to buy beer because the state’s legal drinking age was 18. “I used to enjoy going to Ohio,” he said.

That’s funny. We used to do that in Indiana too. Ohio’s drinking age for 3.2 beer was 16 in those days. It was pretty weak stuff but you could still get a buzz from it if you drank enough.

"Rooster" with his frat brothers

Before he lived in the fraternity house, Santorum lived in a dorm in the center of Penn State’s University Park campus. During his junior year, he roomed with John Koury. “We literally rolled kegs down the dormitory floor,” Koury recalled.

Their room became a party room. “On Fridays, when everyone got back from class, we’d go get a quarter-keg from the distributor,” Koury told HuffPost. “There’d be 20 or 30 of us in the room. We’d drink it and go down to the dining hall.”

Everybody called him “Rooster.” And Rooster liked to chug.

Moving on…. Yesterday must have been the day for wives to defend their husbands. Ann Romney gave an interview to Fox, and Karen Santorum defended her husband’s attitudes toward women for Tuesday’s CBS This Morning.

“They try to corner him and make it look like he doesn’t know anything else” other than conservative social values, Santorum told CBS News political correspondent Jan Crawford in an interview for “CBS This Morning.” “As a wife, mother, an educated woman, it frustrates me that they try to do that.”

She said it’s “unfortunate” that the media tries to “corner” her husband on issues like contraception.

Maybe if he didn’t keep ranting about it all the time, they’d stop asking him about it.

“My husband is brilliant, he knows so much about — you know, like I said — national security, jobs, the economy,” she told Crawford. “You know, every aspect of this race, any issue out there, he’s brilliant.”

Yeah, right. If her husband is “brilliant,” he sure does a good job of hiding it. She also complained about many people’s reaction to the couple’s decision to take their dead 20-month fetus home to show their children.

“We brought Gabriel home from the hospital to have a funeral mass and to bury him. And so they twist it and make it sound like it was some crazy thing,” she said. “We brought him home from the hospital to introduce him to our kids and place him, it was for the funeral mass and the burial. And what is so sad to me Jan is that no one can tell me how to grieve, and I’m not going to tell anyone else how to grieve. It’s not right.”

Well she might not tell anyone how to grieve, but she and her husband seem to wants to tell the rest of us we can’t use birth control or have access to abortion and that women should home school their children instead of working for a living. The Santorums both have martyr complexes. IMO, they should quit whining, live their lives they way they want to, and leave the rest of us alone.

Good old Ron Paul made a bit of news yesterday when he said victims of the recent tornadoes shouldn’t get any federal help.

As Midwestern states face the aftermath of last week’s severe tornado outbreak, Ron Paul said victims of the storms should not look to the federal government for help.

The Texas Republican has often criticized the Federal Emergency Management Agency, because, as he says, “they just get in the way.” He made this same argument Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley regarding the recent tornado-spawned devastation in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio and several other states.

“To say that any accident that happens in the country, send in FEMA, send in the money, the government has all this money, it’s totally out of control and it’s not efficient,” he said.

Paul argued that the money FEMA spends for disaster relief is stolen from the states and tax payers and is ultimately wasteful.

What a nasty, mean old man! He’s building up some really bad karma.

I know I should have dug up some news about Newt Gingrich too, but I couldn’t find much. He’ll have a nice night in Georgia tonight I guess, and then probably will fade into the sunset.

Other than the primaries, the big story in the news is the conflict between Obama and Netanyahu over attacking Iran, which I find so depressing that I don’t even want to think about it. You can read about it at the link. And here’s a bonus. Mitt Romney has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post called “How I would check Iran’s nuclear ambition.”

So that’s it for me. What are you reading and blogging about today? And don’t forget to join us this evening as we discuss the results of the Super Tuesday contests!

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