Monday Reads

Posted: October 8, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , , , | 13 Comments


Good Morning!

Nate Silver continues to be the best source of poll analysis during this endless presidential campaign season.  The Romney path to electoral victory is still pretty nonexistent even if he did give them the old razzle dazzle in Denver last week. I guess the Romney Lie Fest got less of a bump than the usual challenger victory in the first debate.

A 3-point gain for Mr. Romney would be consistent with what candidates received following some of the stronger debate performances in the past. It would also make the national race very close. The FiveThirtyEight “now-cast” had Mr. Obama ahead by an average of about 4.5 percentage points between the conventions and the debate. (This is higher than the average result from the national tracking polls alone, which have been a pinch less favorable to Mr. Obama on balance than the broader consensus of surveys.) A 3-point gain for Mr. Romney would imply that Mr. Obama’s advantage is now only 1 or 2 points, putting Mr. Romney well within striking distance depending on how well the rest of the campaign goes for him and how accurate the polls turn out to be.

However, the fact that Mr. Romney did not make further gains in the polls on Sunday can be read as mildly disappointing for him. The way tracking polls work is to replace the oldest day of interviews with fresh interviews conducted the previous day. In the Sunday release of the polls, this meant that interviews from Saturday were replacing a day of interviewing from before the debate. The fact that the Saturday interviews that entered the polls were roughly as strong for Mr. Obama as the predebate day of interviews that they displaced is an encouraging sign for Mr. Obama — at least as compared with most of the polling news that he has received since the debate.

There’s an interesting article on voter fraud in Washington Monthly.  Interestingly enough, the focus is on mail-in ballots which weren’t a focus in any of the voter restriction laws that were passed this year primarily because they frequently favor republicans. There’s actual research now that shows that voter ID laws are likely to increase fraud.

What do forged absentee ballots and vote-buying have in common? They occur more often than in-person impersonation (which is virtually non-existent) and are unaffected by voter ID laws. What’s more, states like Florida and Texas, which recently enacted legislation making it harder to vote in most respects (laws currently being challenged by the courts and the DOJ) feature no-excuse absentee voting, making it easier to commit fraud that way. As Liptak explains, that’s probably no coincidence: “Republicans are in fact more likely than Democrats to vote absentee. In the 2008 general election in Florida, 47 percent of absentee voters were Republicans and 36 percent were Democrats.” (Liptak adds: “Voters in nursing homes can be subjected to subtle pressure, outright intimidation or fraud.”)

The moral of Liptak and Fahrenthold’s stories is this: people just aren’t willing to commit a felony to vote in someone’s place—the only kind of fraud ID laws target. Rather, politicians themselves usually commit the fraud, by forging absentee ballots or paying people to vote for them. In addition, when states enact restrictive voter ID laws, it only encourages them to vote by mail, where errors and corruption is more rife.

I haven’t had any references to good graphs recently so I thought I’d link you to this Chart Book that shows you how serious the Great Recession actually was from CBPP.  It also shows how much worse the economy would have been without stimulus.  Can you image how much better we could be by now if the Republicans hadn’t gotten in and blocked more efforts to improve the economy?

The Recovery Act was designed to boost the demand for goods and services above what it otherwise would be in order to preserve jobs in the recession and create them in the recovery. The Congressional Budget Office finds that GDP has been higher each year since 2009 than it would have been without the Recovery Act (with the largest impact in 2010 when GDP was between 0.7 and 4.1 percent higher than it otherwise would have been). The economy is still benefiting from the Recovery Act in 2012, although as expected that effect is diminishing as the economy grows; CBO estimates that GDP in the third quarter of 2012 will be between 0.1 and 0.7 percent larger than it would have been without the Recovery Act.

Again, congress appeared absolutely unconcerned about this devastating economic event.  WAPO indicates there’s a good reason.  Most of them actually got richer or were immune from its impact.

The wealthiest one-third of lawmakers were largely immune from the Great Recession, taking the fewest financial hits and watching their investments quickly recover and rise to new heights. But more than 20 percent of the members of the curren tCongress — 121 lawmakers — appeared to be worse off in 2010 than they had been six years earlier, and 24 saw their reported wealth slide into negative territory.

Those findings emerge from an ongoing examination of congressional finances by The Washington Post, which analyzed thousands of financial disclosure forms and public records for all members of Congress.

Most members weathered the financial crisis better than the average American, who saw median household net worth drop 39 percent from 2007 to 2010. The median estimated wealth of members of the current Congress rose 5 percent during the same period, according to their reported assets and liabilities. The wealthiest one-third of Congress gained 14 percent.

In one last piece of news, Chavez has won re-election in Venezuela.

Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez won re-election in on Sunday, quashing the opposition’s best bet at unseating him in 14 years and cementing himself as a dominant figure in modern Latin American history.

The 58-year-old Chavez took 54.42 percent of the vote, with 90 percent of the ballots counted, to 44.97 percent for young opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, official results showed.

Chavez’s victory would extend his rule of the OPEC member state to two decades, though he is recovering from cancer and the possibility of a recurrence hangs over his political future.

Jubilant supporters poured onto the streets of Caracas to celebrate the victory of a man who has near-Messianic status among Venezuela’s poor, and there was relief too among leftist allies around the region – from Cubato Bolivia – who rely on his oil-financed generosity.

“I’m celebrating with a big heart,” said Mary Reina, a 62-year-old Chavez supporter who lives in the hillside slum where the president cast his vote. “Chavez is the hope of the people and of Latin America.”

So, it looks like US conservatives have one more bogey man still standing.  Meanwhile, Citizens United has opened up a whole new dimension in corporate donations to candidates.  Is this really legal?

A million-dollar donation by a foreign-owned corporation to a Republican super-PAC has raised legal concerns and opened up the controversial Citizens United Supreme Court decision to new criticism.
Restore Our Future, the super-PAC supporting Republican Mitt Romney’s run for president, received a $1 million donation in mid-August from reinsurance company OdysseyRe of Connecticut, a “wholly-owned subsidiary” of Canadian insurance and investment management giant Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited.

Fairfax Financial’s founder is Indian-born V. Prem Watsa. Watsa serves as CEO and chairman and owns or controls 45 percent of the company’s shares. He is also the chairman of the board of OdysseyRe, the American subsidiary.

The law says that any foreign national is prohibited from “directly or indirectly” contributing money to influence US elections. That means no campaign donations, no donations to super-PACs, and no funding of political advertisements.

But campaign finance law is not as clear for US subsidiaries of foreign companies as it is for individuals.

Most of the regulations on political spending by subsidiaries of foreign companies were written before corporations were legally allowed to fund political advertisements or donate to super-PACs. And Republican members of the Federal Election Commission have thwarted the implementation of new rules regarding the practice.

With that, I will turn it over to you.   What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Many Apologies to Iowa From Louisiana but really, keep Jindal, we don’t want him

Posted: October 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: New Orleans | Tags: , , , | 10 Comments

I would like to apologize to any Iowans out there for the omnipresence of our ambitious and irritating Governor Bobby Jindal.  I feel the need to do this because he’s going to be with you more than us for the next few years.  We can’t do anything more for him and you can.  So, he’s your problem now.  We’re just glad to be rid of him frankly.  Sorry it had to happen to you, but really, we appreciate it.

He’s such a problem that the Des Moines Register has told him to leave Iowa alone.  Actually, they told him that he got on the wrong bus.

A thistle to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for having the temerity to come here to lecture Iowans about their judges. Jindal was on the recent bus tour across the state campaigning to unseat Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins. This is the governor of a state whose courts have consistently been ranked No. 49 out of the 50 states in the respected state courts survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Iowa consistently ranks in the top five or 10 states overall in the survey of business lawyers. In Marshalltown, Jindal got a laugh with the remark that “Some of these judges, they actually make the replacement refs in the NFL look like geniuses.” That may be the case in his state: In the 2008 survey, Louisiana’s judges were rated the worst among the 50 states in the area of competence. Maybe Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad should head down to Louisiana and take a bus tour to persuade the good people of that state to reform their system of electing judges.

According to another Lousiana Blogger whose been watching the Jindal Migration and search for the next BIG office, he’s been up to all kinds of things in Iowa.  Well, at least he can’t voucherize their educational system into a free for all funding of whacky christofascist cult camps. Bob Mann has been keeping up with Travels with Bobby.

Jindal, as you may recall, recently neglected his gubernatorial duties to spend a day trekking across Iowa, crusading against gay marriage and meddling in a state Supreme Court race.

That prompted a retired hotel clerk from Marion, Iowa, Dave Gregory, to send a letter to the editor of the Baton Rouge Advocate:

Your governor, Bobby Jindal, has traveled from town to town across Iowa crusading against gay marriage. Many suspect he’s already campaigning for the 2016 Iowa Presidential Caucuses.

We Iowans were recently subjected to an endless parade of Republican candidates during the 2012 Presidential Caucuses. We really don’t need Gov. Jindal’s wisdom and advice for the next four years.

Please call back your governor and find something for him to do. Aren’t there any homosexuals to persecute in Louisiana?

Yes, Bobby the guy well known for speaking faster than the speed of light–a well known snake oil salesman attribute–and for participating in the kidnapping and assault of a young women in the guise of “spiritual warefare” is now doing a full frontal assault on Iowa.   The aforementioned letter to the editor got a response down here in the Baton Rouge Advocate.  Namely, we don’t want him back.  He ran unopposed because the Democratic Party in Louisiana basically became nonexistent after Katrina.  No one voted in that election and he won by basically being anointed by the few wankers that voted.

In response to Dan Gregory of Marion, Iowa, (Oct. 1) who asked that we take our governor back home so he would stop crusading against gay marriage in Iowa: Bobby Jindal doesn’t have to get personally involved in persecuting homosexuals in Louisiana.

He has the Louisiana Family Forum and Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council to take care of that for him, so he won’t get his hands dirty at home. 
Sorry, Iowa, but we don’t want him either.

David Neubig

construction

Baton Rouge

Bobby only does things that Bobby thinks will get him the next highest office. Right now, he’s basically doing anything the Teavangelicals want and Louisiana is suffering and hating him for it.  Every one hates Jindal’s voucher program and his personal popularity is way way off.

And now a Southern Media and Opinion Research Poll finds Jindal sinking like a stone. It’s no surprise, but 89% of those surveyed don’t like Jindal’s slash and burn of the public Charity Hospitals. More startlingly, Jindal’s prized voucher program is opposed by 54% of Louisianians:

The poll shows Gov. Bobby Jindal with a 51 percent approval rating. That compares with 61 percent last spring and 64 percent a year ago…

Reductions for the LSU-operated charity hospital system are particularly unpopular. Eighty-nine percent said they were concerned by the cuts. Seventy-nine percent said the charity system would not be able to provide the same quality of health care, and 80 percent said Louisiana residents would lose access to health care as a result.

Among the poll’s other findings:

  • On the issue of school vouchers, 54 percent were opposed.
  • Salaries for state executives and political appointees were a hot button issue with 86 percent saying annual salaries of $175,000 and above are excessive or not justified.
  • 47 percent favor eliminating tax exemptions to increase state revenue compared to 35 percent opposed, which tracks with widespread opposition to deeper budget cuts.
  • 69 percent said the Legislature should be more independent from the governor

Bad news all around. #Vouchergate isn’t going well for Team Jindal. Nor are his high-priced public employee hires.

And it looks like the tax credit monster is about to bite Jindal back…

Jindal isn’t worried, however. He’s spent the last week campaigning for judges in Iowa, in some fields of dreams.

Jindal knows he can’t run for governor and really doesn’t care from here on out what he does to Louisiana.  He’s just building up his ‘conservative’ Republican credentials by railroading the state.

Let’s not forget he’s defunded the state’s library and left us with this voucher program that’s probably going to bring down a lot of public school systems in the state.

Louisiana is embarking on the nation’s boldest experiment in privatizing public education, with the state preparing to shift tens of millions in tax dollars out of the public schools to pay private industry, businesses owners and church pastors to educate children.

Starting this fall, thousands of poor and middle-class kids will get vouchers covering the full cost of tuition at more than 120 private schools across Louisiana, including small, Bible-based church schools.

The following year, students of any income will be eligible for mini-vouchers that they can use to pay a range of private-sector vendors for classes and apprenticeships not offered in traditional public schools. The money can go to industry trade groups, businesses, online schools and tutors, among others.

Every time a student receives a voucher of either type, his local public school will lose a chunk of state funding.

“We are changing the way we deliver education,” said Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican who muscled the plan through the legislature this spring over fierce objections from Democrats and teachers unions. “We are letting parents decide what’s best for their children, not government.”

The concept of opening public schools to competition from the private sector has been widely promoted in recent years by well-funded education reform groups.

Of the plans so far put forward, Louisiana’s plan is by far the broadest. This month, eligible families, including those with incomes nearing $60,000 a year, are submitting applications for vouchers to state-approved private schools.

That list includes some of the most prestigious schools in the state, which offer a rich menu of advanced placement courses, college-style seminars and lush grounds. The top schools, however, have just a handful of slots open. The Dunham School in Baton Rouge, for instance, has said it will accept just four voucher students, all kindergartners. As elsewhere, they will be picked in a lottery.

Far more openings are available at smaller, less prestigious religious schools, including some that are just a few years old and others that have struggled to attract tuition-paying students.

The school willing to accept the most voucher students — 314 — is New Living Word in Ruston, which has a top-ranked basketball team but no library. Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.

And of course, who could forget this Jindal “education” initiative?

Jindal has an elite résumé. He was a biology major at my school, Brown University, and a Rhodes scholar. He knows the science, or at least he ought to. But in his rise to prominence in Louisiana, he made a bargain with the religious right and compromised science and science education for the children of his state. In fact, Jindal’s actions at one point persuaded leading scientific organizations, including theSociety for Integrative and Comparative Biology, to cross New Orleans off their list of future meeting sites (PDF).

What did Jindal do to produce a hornet’s nest of “mad scientists,” as Times-Picayune writer James Gill described them? He signed into law, in Gill’s words, the “Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), which is named for what it is designed to destroy.” The act allows “supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials” to be brought into classrooms to support the “open and objective discussion” of certain “scientific theories,” including, of course, evolution. As educators who have heard such coded language before quickly realized, the act was intended to promote creationism as science. In April, Kevin Carman, dean of the College of Science at Louisiana State University, testified before the Louisiana Senate’s Education Committee that two top scientists had rejected offers to come to LSU because of the LSEA, and the school may lose more scientists in the future.

And now Jindal is poised to spend millions of dollars of state money to support the teaching of creationism in private schools.

The state of Louisiana has had a problem with evolution for a long, long time. In 1981, it passed a “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act,” which required the teaching of creation science alongside “evolution-science” in public schools. The Supreme Court struck it down in 1987 (in Edwards v. Aguillard), finding that creationism is inherently religious, and that the law’s “preeminent religious purpose” placed it in violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Case closed? Not really.

When Jindal stepped into Republican politics in Louisiana, he had a choice to make. He could defend mainstream science, which sees evolution as the powerful, strongly supported, and widely tested theory that it is today. Or he could have joined the doubters and deniers that populate the electorate in his party. Campaigning for the governorship in 2007, Jindal touted his Christian faith, shied away from specific statements about evolution, and emphasized his commitment to local control of education. Louisianans didn’t have to wait long to find out what this meant for science.

Jindal signed the LSEA into law in 2008, endorsing the thinly veiled attempt to allow creationism into the science classrooms of his state. The backers of the law made it clear that material on intelligent design would be high on the list of supplemental materials that local boards and teachers could present to their students.

Please Iowa!  Do us a favor!  Just keep him there for the rest of his term so he can’t damage us any more!   I was kind of hoping Mitt would take him off our hands but it seem not even Mitt is THAT stupid.  So, we are so sorry Iowa.    Just look at our alligator tears!!!

Sunday Shows: The “L” Word

Posted: October 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, open thread, The DNC, the GOP, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , | 33 Comments

No, I don’t mean “liberal.” The “L” word for this week is “lies.” Democrats were out on the Sunday shows this morning calling out Mitt Romney for lying in last Wednesday’s presidential debate. Talk about a “game changer.” It used to be that politicians were uncomfortable coming right out and calling their opponents liars, but with the number and scale of Romney’s lies in the 2012 campaign, that calculus has changed. Two Obama surrogates actually used the word “lie” and two Obama advisers called Romney “dishonest.” It appears to have a been a coordinated attack.

On Face the Nation, David Axelrod called Romney “dishonest.”

“Governor Romney showed up to deliver a performance, and he delivered a very good performance,” Axelrod said. “It was completely unrooted in fact; it was completely unrooted in the position he’s taken before, and he spent 90 minutes trying to undo two years of campaigning.”

Doubling down on his assertion, Axelrod said, “I think he was dishonest…absolutely.”

Axelrod criticized Romney for saying during the debates that he “never proposed” $5 trillion worth of tax cuts, which an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found would occur if Romney implemented his plan to reduce tax rates by 20 percent. “That was dishonest,” Axelrod said….

“It’s impossible….He cannot name one loophole that he would close. If you took away all the loopholes for upper-income Americans, every single one of them, he would still be trillions of dollars short.” In order to pay for the tax cuts and remain revenue neutral, Axelrod said, “He has to sock it to the middle class or explode the deficit.”

Axelrod even compared Romney to Sinclair Lewis’s fictional character Elmer Gantry.

Suggesting that Mr. Obama had expected, and prepared for, a more substantive debate, Mr. Axelrod said, “I think he went thinking that this was going to be a discussion about the country’s future, and he was confronted by this kind of Gantry-esque performance on the other side, just serially rewriting history.”

The program’s moderator, Bob Schieffer, stopped Mr. Axelrod for clarification.

Yes, Mr. Axelrod said, he was referring to Elmer Gantry, the title character in a book – banned in Boston when published in 1927 – and later a movie about a charismatic, fast-talking, but deeply dishonest street preacher.

Axelrod also noted that President Obama “was ‘taken aback at the brazenness’ of the Republican nominee’s answers.”

Robert Gibbs also used the word “dishonest” to describe Romney on This Week.

“The underpinnings and foundation of that performance were fundamentally dishonest,” said Gibbs, an Obama campaign senior adviser. “Look, the only thing he outlined that he would cut in the budget is Big Bird. He’s taken the battle straight to Sesame Street and let Wall Street run hog wild.”

The Obama campaign has attacked Mitt Romney for tax plan, which is to lower tax rates, but also close certain loopholes, which would produce revenue for the government. Romney has not specified exactly which ones he would close.

“And let’s be clear, if you’re willing to say anything to get elected president, if you are willing to make up your positions and walk away from them, I think the American people have to understand, how can they trust you if you are elected president,” Gibbs said.

On Fox News Sunday, top Obama surrogate Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley said of Romney’s tax plan, “The fact of the matter is in this debate we saw Big Bird meet the big lie.” In addition, he told Chris Wallace:

“Mitt Romney tells us to trust him, his plan is hiding behind door No. 3 with Carol Merrill and his undisclosed tax returns,” O’Malley said, referring to “Let’s Make a Deal,” the game show that was popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Merrill was the model that assisted host Monty Hall.

Another Obama campaign surrogate, Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia said on CNN’s State of the Union that

Mitt Romney had offered “lie after lie” during last week’s debate.

“He is the Etch-A-Sketch guy, [he] has transformed himself and, quite frankly, we always have to wonder which Mitt is going to show up.”

Nutter said that Romney

had undergone an “11th hour conversion” before his debate appearance. “So, if you just lay out lie after lie after lie about your own plan, as well as what the president has been talking about, of course you can look good,” he said.

I’m very glad that Democrats are getting so tough on Romney. But on Meet the Press, even Romney surrogate Newt Gingrich agreed that Romney was lying about his tax plan.

When asked if Romney was being dishonest in the presidential debate, Gingrich said it was “clear” Romney ran away from the tax plan he has long promised on Wednesday night.

GINGRICH: I think you got to look carefully at how Romney structured, what he said is, something that frankly true supply siders don’t necessarily love but it’s good politics, he said, “I will close enough deductions that wealthy Americans will not get a net tax cut.” Now, that’s a pretty clear description.

Senior Obama Campaign Adviser Robert GIBBS: Let me just say this. Standing on the stage with you in Arizona, this is what Mitt Romney said.” Number one, I said today we’re going to cut taxes on everyone across the country, by 20%, including the top 1%.” Mr. Speaker, you mentioned that your opponent, Mitt Romney, had a problem with being dishonest in the primary. My question is, was he dishonest when he said that?

GINGRICH: I think it’s clear he changed.

GIBBS: So we don’t disagree that he changed.

The most stinging rebuke this morning came from Paul Krugman’s indictment of the media coverage of Romney’s debate performance on This Week.

On ABC’s “This Week” roundtable Sunday, Paul Krugman said Mitt Romney is exploiting a press that is ineffective at holding politicians accountable for lies.

“The press just doesn’t know how to handle flat-out untruths,” he said.

“I don’t know whether to blame [the debate moderator Jim] Lehrer or the president, but it was kind of amazing because Romney was not only saying things that are not true, he was saying things that his own campaign had previously said weren’t true,” said the economist and New York Times columnist.

Citing Romney’s claims on taxes and preexisting conditions, Krugman said the Republican nominee showed “contempt for us by thinking the news media will not cover on me as long as they say forcefully I won.”

Please use this as an open thread. What are you hearing?

Sally Quinn: Only Believers Can Be American Citizens

Posted: October 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Media, Mitt Romney, nature, Surreality, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , | 38 Comments

Sally Quinn is insane

Why does the Washington Post keep publishing the bizarre rantings of an insane person like Sally Quinn? Does Ben Bradlee still have that much influence, or is it Bob Woodward’s attachment to Bradlee that ensures that Quinn can keep vomiting forth her hate-filled screeds in, of all things, the “On Faith” column?

Forgive me if you’ve already heard enough about Quinn’s reaction to Wednesday’s presidential debate. Somehow I missed her latest nonsensical frothings until this afternoon. If only I’d continued on, happily unaware! But instead, I clicked on a link and soon learned that, according to Quinn, Mitt Romney won the first debate because he mentioned god. I also found out that Quinn believes that atheists can’t be American citizens!

When Mitt Romney mentioned the “Creator” in the debate Wednesday, he owned it. “We’re all children of the same God,” he said.

That’s about 85 percent of the country he was talking to. That should have been President Obama’s constituency but he let Romney have it as he let Romney have the debate.

Is that so. Is she really claiming that 85 percent of voters are suddenly going to vote for Mitt Romney now because he mentioned god?

Moving on:

Citing the Declaration of Independence, Romney said: “Second, is that line that says we are endowed by our Creator with our rights, I believe we must maintain our commitment to religious tolerance and freedom in this country. That statement also says that we are endowed by our creator with the right to pursue happiness as we choose. I interpret that as, one, making sure that those people who are less fortunate and can’t care for themselves are cared by — by one another.”

Like most of what Sally Quinn writes, and much of what Mitt Romney says, that makes absolutely no sense, but I’ll have more to say about that in a minute.

Quinn continues (emphasis added):

This is a religious country. Part of claiming your citizenship is claiming a belief in God, even if you are not Christian…. We’ve got the Creator in our Declaration of Independence. We’ve got “In God We Trust” on our coins. We’ve got “one nation under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance. And we say prayers in the Senate and the House of Representatives to God.

An atheist could never get elected dog catcher, much less president….Up until now, the idea of being American and believing in God were synonymous.

I have news for Quinn. This is not a “religious country.” This is a country in which people can worship as they please, but they can’t interfere with other people doing something completely different. Our government, however, is secular and there can be no religious test for American citizenship or for public office.

Quinn wraps up her idiotic piece by announcing that if President Obama wants to win the next debate, he’ll have to “wear God, as much as it offends him to do so.”

WTF?! How do you “wear god?” Is she suggesting that Obama should wear a crucifix around his neck at the next debate? And what does she mean by claiming that Obama is offended by “wearing god?” I’m completely at a loss here.

Frankly, I think Sally Quinn needs to be evaluated by a competent psychiatrist immediately. Furthermore, as long as she continues writing for it, the Washington Post cannot ever again be considered a serious newspaper.

But I want to return to Romney’s quote on the the Declaration of Independence:

“Second, is that line that says we are endowed by our Creator with our rights, I believe we must maintain our commitment to religious tolerance and freedom in this country. That statement also says that we are endowed by our creator with the right to pursue happiness as we choose. I interpret that as, one, making sure that those people who are less fortunate and can’t care for themselves are cared by — by one another.”

That is not at all what Thomas Jefferson wrote. The Declaration of Independence says that we are all “created equal” and have innate rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” There’s nothing in there about the pursuit of happiness “as we choose,” or about who is supposed to take care of “less fortunate” people. Here’s the relevant quote:

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Romney seems to be trying to reinterpret Jefferson’s words–perhaps based on Paul Ryan’s twisted version of Ayn Randism–to mean that “less fortunate” people should help each other, while fortunate ones like Romney help themselves in any way they like. Come to think of it, that’s probably exactly what he does believe. But it’s not what Thomas Jefferson wrote.

It’s abundantly clear that Jefferson was writing about the role of government in making sure that citizens are granted the rights that come from “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” and that when a government no longer protects those rights, the citizens have a right to form a new government. If Mitt Romney doesn’t understand that, then he has no business running for public office, much less serving as President of the United States.

Although I regret reading Sally Quinn’s confused and innane thoughts on the presidential debate, I’m grateful to her for pointing out Mitt Romney’s complete ignorance of the document that laid the foundation for American independence and for the rights that are enumerated in the U.S. Constitution. I hate to think how he would interpret the Bill of Rights.

Oh, and I am a full-fledged citizen even though I don’t accept Sally Quinn’s or Mitt Romney’s twisted religious beliefs, and I have every intention of voting on November 6.

Caturday Reads: A cure to PAD*

Posted: October 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Food, GLBT Rights, Hillary Clinton: Her Campaign for All of Us, Human Rights, Mental Health, morning reads, Political Affective Disorder, Politics as Usual, unemployment, Women's Rights | 61 Comments

Friday Night Ohana: my kittos, Lily and Rue, last night having “facetime” that defies the space-time continuum… the dog on my Macbook Air is my angeldog on the other side, Callie. The kittos are resting on my foot (under the covers).

Morning, news junkies… it’s been awhile, so welcome back to Caturday!

Please Note: *PAD=Political Affective Disorder.

So, I’d like to start by getting some election season political ranting out of the way as a housekeeping matter. I hope y’all don’t hate me after this, but here goes:

  1. Can we just take it as a given that Republican pols are generally very skeery people with skeery politics and lying faces (Exhibits A-Z: Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan)? Obviously. Especially to a more liberal (and correctly so, in my liberal opinion) crowd such as Sky Dancing. But, I am kind of tired of this being used as a reason itself to vote for Oprecious, as if he is not guilty of being kinda “skeery moderate Repub” himself on more than a few issues, frankly. Just me personally, ok? I understand this is a stinky lesser of evils game and everybody just tries to make the best decision they can where their voting and advocacy is concerned in an election year. So I’m not judging or pointing any fingers here, but I am asking if maybe we could try to elevate the conversation that is going on *elsewhere* in the blogosphere and offline. I think there are plenty valid reasons to vote *for* Obama (as opposed to *only* against Rom/Ry)–I’m voting FOR O too (and against R/R for that matter), albeit, begrudgingly, and I’ll be glad to devoting a post or three to making that case in the days ahead. But, I’m not going to chalk it up to Dems being saviors, while the GOP is satanic. I mean, they are kinda satanic 😉 but, it’s not a compelling argument (to little ol’ me anyway)! Because while upwards of 99% of Republican pols scare the bejeebers out of me, upwards of 90% of pols that claim to be Democrats scare me as well. They’re almost all owned by the Oligarchy/Wall Street/War Party. Even Bill and Hillary, much as I love ’em, are working within that system, not outside of it. To improve the system, of course, but nonetheless they are part of it.
  2. I think it is really remarkable that the first time I’ve ever heard so-called Mr. Economy Romney say anything remotely (note: I am not saying fully, just remotely…) intelligible on the economy was yesterday when he pointed out that the job numbers don’t include people who have stopped looking for work. Well, gee, golly, were you just born yesterday, Mr. Romney? Of course, Mittens only said this because all his usual trickle down lies wouldn’t have served his case and telling the semi-truth (see The Note’s Zunaira Zaki and her Fact-Checking Mitt Romney Job Claims) here was actually beneficial to him. And, worse it was compounded by his general inability to make sense on the economy and his wingnut surrogates and their bizarro world conspiracies. The truth is, both the ostensible “left” and “right” made me tune out yesterday with their reaction to the unemployment stats. Neither side cares about unemployed people, period. It’s all tribal and it’s all my guy rulez, your guy droolz.
  3. It reminds me of Hillary saying, “And, some people think elections are a game, they think it’s like who’s up or who’s down…it’s about our country, it’s about our kids futures…and it’s really about all of us together.”
  4. Here’s your Lazy Persons, Sununu: Almost 2,400 Millionaires Pocketed Unemployment Benefits (h/t Delphyne)

Alrighty, now that I’ve gotten those doozies out of the way. Are you still with me? I hope so… ’cause I’ve got a few links and discussion for you that I hope bring some relief for you during this political season of suck.

First up… Paticheri: Ethno,Graphic.Food. Go read it. It’s AWESOME. I’ve linked you to the post I’m currently savoring (“A Taste of Salt: Marakkanam, Bar Nuts, and Roasted Tomatoes”) and that I left comments on. It is an incredible trip that will take you around the world on a grain of NaCl!

This next one is a gem of a youtube that I am very very narcissistically proud of myself for digging up this week (go me and my googling abilities!)…

“This Little Light of Mine” was my absolute favorite song in choir as a kid (back when I used to sing…shhhhh! 😉

I love this song even more as an adult and being able to appreciate all the history of human resilience behind it. And, of course it’s a youtube of the wonderful Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Lizz Wright, and Toshi Reagon singing from Harlem… what is not to love?

Another DIVINE youtube (which I snagged from the delectable Owl Report on facebook last week) of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, France 1960. BEHOLD the wonder:

Next up, a reminder to check out PBS Independent Lens’ “Half the Sky” while its up (till October 9th) if you haven’t already… Part 1… Part 2:

A couple more links…

Happy News about an Unhappy (Degaying…) Practice…via Joyce Arnold’s Queer Talk over at Taylor Marsh’s: New California Law Bans ‘Conversion’ Therapy. Please check it out! Hopefully this is the start of a trend, and eventually kids will be talking about these conversion ‘therapies’ in school the way they now talk about Jim Crow.

I’d like to end with a really wonderful blog by my friend, Marie–a young woman who is so gorgeously candid in her recovery! This is a personal request to check it out and help spread the word to any young (or really, any-aged!) people you know suffering from eating disorders and/or addiction.

Alright, the comments are yours to soapbox all over, Sky Dancers. Make it worth it — and, have a lovely autumn weekend!

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