Tuesday Reads: Horses and Bayonets

Posted: October 23, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 64 Comments

President Obama temporarily wipes the smirk off Mitt Romney’s face.

Good Morning!!

The reviews are in: President Obama clearly won the third presidential debate. Now we’ll see if that is reflected in the polls. I’m going to give you a few quick links with reactions to the debate. I’m writing this at 11:30 Monday, so I know there will be lots more in the morning.

Washington Post: Obama keeps Romney on his heels in last debate

President Obama seemed to use the authority of his office to put Republican challenger Mitt Romney on his heels in their final presidential debate Monday night, telling Romney he didn’t understand foreign-policy problems as well as he does.

That idea underlay some of the night’s harshest lines from Obama. He scoffed at Romney’s assertion that Russia remained the country’s chief geopolitical foe: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”

And, when Romney asserted that the United States had fewer naval ships than decades ago, Obama retorted that his opponent didn’t understand the modern navy. There were fewer ships, he said, but also fewer “horses and bayonets.”

“We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on ‘em,” Obama said. ” “The question is not a game of battleship, where we’re counting ships.”

Romney: “Hey, no fair! You sank my battleship!”

Chris Cillizza names the winners and losers in the debate. According to Cillizza, Barack Obama and Bob Shieffer were winners. Mitt Romney was a loser.

The New York Times: Obama and Romney Bristle from Start

Talking Points Memo: In Foreign Policy Debate, Obama Uses Romney’s Past Positions Against Him

Throughout Monday night’s presidential debate on foreign policy, President Obama used past positions that Mitt Romney has taken over the course of the campaign to depict him as the wrong candidate to run U.S. foreign policy.

Obama used the tactic both to defend his own initiatives — particularly his Libya policy — and to characterize Romney as an untrained foreign policy hand who has been wobbly and inconsistent.

“I know you haven’t been in a position to execute foreign policy,” Obama said, in summarizing his theme of attack, “but every time you have offered an opinion, you have been wrong.”

Specifics at the link.

The Daily Beast reviewed Michelle Obama’s and Ann Romney’s dresses.

Perhaps it’s a symbol of the Recession: Michelle Obama didn’t wear a brand new designer dress. She didn’t wear a blinding pink suit either. No, at the fourth Presidential debate in Florida on Monday night, she recycled a dress.

Michelle Obama appeared in the crowd in the same black and grey Thom Browne dress that she had worn on the second night of the Democratic National Convention in early September. It was an interesting choice for debate night — a night when the candidates’ wives traditionally have chosen to stand out from the crowd in bright designs….

Ann Romney, on the other hand, wore a silk green top and cream and green silk skirt to the debate on Monday. Typically, it was not as fashion-forward as Obama’s choice, but it was adventurous for her, and it demonstrated the ease and facility with which she is now styled on the trail; a creative assembly of different items to acheive a polished look. But it was also throwback: a bell skirt and helmet of blonde hair defiantly recalled the look of a 1950s housewife. She has finally grown more confident with her style: she’s been told she has to dress like a First Lady, and maybe, just maybe, does she finally look the part.

In other news,

Efraim Halevy, a former Mossad chief discussed Iran and Mitt Romney with Laura Rozen at AL Monitor. He’s not a fan of the Mittster. Here’s a quote:

Obama has placed emphasis on negotiations. In this current election for the US presidency, his hands are tied. He cannot proceed, because he cannot appear soft on Israel’s security.

Negotiating with Iran is perceived as a sign of beginning to forsake Israel. That is where I think the basic difference is between Romney and Obama. What Romney is doing is mortally destroying any chance of a resolution without war. Therefore when [he recently] said, he doesn’t think there should be a war with Iran, this does not ring true. It is not consistent with other things he has said. […]

Obama does think there is still room for negotiations. It’s a very courageous thing to say in this atmosphere.

In the end, this is what I think: Making foreign policy on Iran a serious issue in the US elections — what Romney has done, in itself — is a heavy blow to the ultimate interests of the United States and Israel.

It is not as if, if he wins the election, and gets into the White House, he can back up. The Iranians are listening attentively to what he says. When he says, he would arm the opposition in Iran. They understand.

From the Boston Phoenix, a really creepy story about Romney’s sense of entitlement: Gold Star Mother: Romney Skipped Funeral, Left “Bullying” Messages.

Remember when Ann Romney claimed on The View that Mitt had attended every funeral of a soldier from Massachusetts who lost his or her life in Iraq or Afghanistan? Not according ot one grieving mother, Stephany Kern. She says that Romney, like other politicians called and left messages for her, but she was too broken up to respond. Kerry and Kennedy contacted other family members to find out when would be a good time to try again. But Romney called repeatedly, leaving insensitive messages indicating that he was insulted by the lack of a return call.

“I can’t believe you haven’t returned my call,” Romney said on one of the voice mail messages, according to Stephany Kern, speaking at her Westerly, Rhode Island home this past Saturday. “Here I am making a second call; I haven’t heard from you.” ….

Kern’s son, Marine Lance Corporal Nickolas Schiavoni, was killed by an IED explosion in Iraq on November 15, 2005. He was born and lived his entire life in the Haverhill, Massachusetts, area, and his funeral took place in Haverhill on November 26. His grandfather, David Swartz — Kern’s father — was a well-known attorney, prosecutor, and city councilor in that city.

Romney didn’t go to Schiavoni’s wake or funeral.

Mrs. Kern says that many officials, including Romney and Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, left messages for her the day after her son died. She felt unable to speak to anyone in those initial days. “I didn’t listen to any of the calls,” she says.

Only Romney, she says, complained in a second message that she had not called back.

“He was completely unable to understand that a mom was not going to return his phone call, and that it wasn’t a priority for me,” she says. “I wasn’t being disrespectful. I was being a mom who was greeting the casket of her son coming home from war.”

And Romney called a third time, even more annoyed:

Steve Kern, who has been married to Stephany Kern since prior to Schiavoni enlisting in 2002, says that he heard Romney’s second and third messages.

He recalls Romney saying in one: “I’m a busy man.” He describes Romney’s tone as “disrespectful,” “antagonistic,” and “absolutely inappropriate to use on a Gold Star mother.”

Some weeks later, Kern says, someone from Romney’s office called her to say that Romney intended to visit Sciavoni’s gravesite. Kern asked that he not do so if he intended to have his photograph taken there; she does not know whether Romney visited or not.

The Kerns didn’t save the answering machine tapes, but that sure sounds like Mitt Romney.

This is interesting. Although the media constantly reports that the military supports Romney, Open Secrets reports that in terms of donations: Armed Forces Show Overwhelming Support for Obama

Update, Oct. 21: Fundraising numbers for the month of September show Obama continuing to dominate when it comes to contributions from the military. The new data, which came in after the story below was published Oct. 15, show he raised $142,197, just a shade less than he collected in August, his strongest month with this set of donors. Romney brought in $111,015 for his best month ever with military donors, but that was still 22 percent less than Obama received.

The new numbers bring Obama’s total from military donors to $678,611, and Romney’s to $398,450.

The Italian judiciary system might be even worse than ours. Check this out: Italian experts convicted of manslaughter over deadly 2009 quake

Defying assertions that earthquakes cannot be predicted, an Italian court convicted seven scientists and experts of manslaughter Monday for failing to adequately warn residents before a temblor struck central Italy in 2009 and killed more than 300 people.

The court in L’Aquila also sentenced the defendants to six years each in prison. All are members of the national Great Risks Commission, and several are prominent scientists or geological and disaster experts.
Scientists had decried the trial as ridiculous, contending that science has no reliable way of predicting earthquakes. So news of the verdict shook the tightknit community of earthquake experts worldwide.

“It’s a sad day for science,” said seismologist Susan Hough, of the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s unsettling.” That fellow seismic experts in Italy were singled out in the case “hits you in the gut,” Hough added.

The war on science is international, apparently.

That’s all I’ve got for today. What are you reading and blogging about today?

Monday Reads

Posted: October 22, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , | 64 Comments

Good Morning!

We’ve been watching the polls here off and on with a lot of questions as well as interest. One of the things that’s very apparent is the Gender Gap.  Nate Silver finds that its near historic highs.  It’s an interesting read with some great wonky graphs.

The large gender gap comes despite the fact that men and women’s economic roles are becoming more equal — according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women represented 47 percent of the labor force as of September — and that women suffered at least as much as men in the recent economic downturn.

The unemployment rate among women was 7.5 percent as of September — up from 7.0 percent when Mr. Obama took office in January 2009.

The unemployment rate among men is higher — 8.0 percent as of September — but it has declined rather than increased since Mr. Obama took office. It had been 8.6 percent in January 2009, and peaked at as high as 11.2 percent later that year.

This suggests the gender gap instead has more to do with partisan ideology than with pocketbook voting; apart from their views on abortion, women also take more liberal stances than men on social issues ranging from same-sex marriage to gun control.

It seems that the Republican party is good at attracting white men these days. Nothing surprising there.  Just this weekend Republicans managed to insult women several times. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) appeared on Dancin Dave’s Disco Show to explain that women seeking pay equity were being taken in by trial lawyers in search of big money.

RUBIO: But just because they call a piece of legislation an equal pay bill doesn’t make it so. In fact, much of this legislation is in many respects nothing but an effort to help trial lawyers collect their fees and file lawsuits, which may have nothing to do whatsoever to increasing pay equity in the workplace.

Nasty Republican Tihadist troll Todd Akin used a dog metaphor to describe Senator Claire McCaskill.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin said Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill has fetched expansive government policies “like a dog” during her tenure in Washington.

Akin made the comparison during a fundraising event in Springfield, where he featured support from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, one of the few national Republicans still backing Akin after much of the party establishment distanced themselves from his candidacy following the controversy earlier in the race surrounding his comments about “legitimate rape.”

“She goes to Washington, D.C., it’s a little bit like one of those dogs, ‘fetch,’” he said. “She goes to Washington, D.C., and get all of these taxes and red tape and bureaucracy and executive orders and agencies and brings all of this stuff and dumps it on us in Missouri.”

So my grave site of the week news hasn’t so much to do with the find itself  but the finder. A house cat in Rome discovered a 2,000 year old grave catacomb.  The intrepid little adventurer find a very interesting burial site.

Curti and a friend were following the cat at 10pm on Tuesday when it scampered towards a low tufa rock cliff close to his home near Via di Pietralata in a residential area of the city. “The cat managed to get into a grotto and we followed the sound of its miaowing,” he said.

Inside the small opening in the cliff the two men found themselves surrounded by niches dug into the rock similar to those used by the Romans to hold funeral urns, while what appeared to be human bones littered the floor.

Archaeologists called to the scene said the tomb probably dated from between the 1st century BC and the 2nd century AD. Given that niches were used to store ashes in urns, the bones had probably tumbled into the tomb from a separate burial space higher up inside the cliff.

Heavy rains at the start of the week had probably caused rocks concealing the entrance to the tomb to crumble, they added.

There’s more evidence that the ones committing the voter registration fraud are Republicans.  When is some one going to arrest Reince Preibus and the folks he hired to steal elections?

But there is more to the story, as evidence emerges to document that it ties into a still-expanding nationwide GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal that  the BRAD BLOG first began reporting in late September , after we’d learned that the Republican Party of Florida had turned in more than 100 allegedly fraudulent and otherwise suspect voter registration forms in Palm Beach County. The story has continued to widen ever since, to a dozen Florida counties and several other states, now including Virginia, and even to the upper-echelons of the Republican Party itself.

If you haven’t been following this story, the man behind most of this fraud across the country is well known for committing registration fraud but as told by Preibus to hide himself well in the corporate structure so he could be awarded all these contracts to register voters.  You may remember that 4 year ago they led a witch hunt against ACORN.  Well, it appears they are much more guilty of registration fraud than ACORN.

Strategic Allied is owned by Nathan Sproul, an Arizona political consultant for Republicans whose companies have faced charges in past elections of submitting forged forms and of dumping Democratic registrations. None of the charges were proved, and Sproul continues to do get-out-the-vote work for conservative causes this election.

“We can’t speculate what happened in Virginia,” said David Leibowitz, a spokesman for Sproul, adding that the firm was fired on Sept. 28. “Anything that happened after that did not happen on Strategic Allied’s watch.”

After Sproul was dumped, the registration operation that he assembled continued working under the supervision of party officials, Spicer said. He said the workers will continue to do get-out-the-vote work until the election.

Rachel Maddow has been following this story.

What’s more, before the RNC tries to blame Sproul’s firm alone for hiring Small, let’s note that the accused describes himself as a “grassroots field director for the Republican National Committee,” though the RNC’s Spicer denies this. It’s not yet clear which of the two is telling the truth.

Also keep in mind, the L.A. Timesreported that Sproul “created Strategic Allied Consulting at the request of the Republican National Committee because of the bad publicity stemming from the past allegations.” I’ve seen some reports that this is a “new” Republican firm working with the state and national parties on grassroots activities, but it would appear Strategic Allied Consulting is new in name only.

Tonight is the final presidential debate of 2012 on foreign policy. We’ll be live blogging the debate as usual.   Here’s some potential questions for each of the candidates.  Here’s my favorite questions to put to POTUS.

  •  Drone strikes you’ve ordered against targets in Pakistan have killed, by some estimates, several hundred innocent civilians, including many children. Is this a moral strategy to defeat terrorists?
  •  You intervened to stop civilian massacres in Libya, where no U.S. national security interest was at stake. In Syria, far more people have been killed by their government, and U.S. interests are clearly at stake. America’s Muslim allies, including Turkey, are asking the U.S. to do more to bring an end to Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Why have you stayed on the sidelines?

Here’s my favorites for Chicken Mittens who managed to insult our two best allies–Japan and the UK–within a few short weeks.

  • You did not serve in the military. Did you encourage any of your five sons to serve in the military?
  • How do you plan to keep Pakistan from imploding?
  • You said recently, “America must have confidence in our cause, clarity in our purpose, and resolve in our might.” What is America’s purpose?
  • You and your running mate have no foreign policy experience. Name the three people you would listen to most on matters of foreign policy and national security if you become president.

All of Romney’s economic advisors are former Bush advisors and all of Romney’s foreign policy advisors are Bush NeoCons.  How the hell is he going to be any different?  Well, my guess is he’ll be worse.

One thing I’ve meant to cover here and haven’t yet is the so-called “Fiscal Cliff” which is basically the term for the expiration of all the Bush tax cuts along with the Obama payroll tax moratoriums that have provided stimulus recently along with some spending cuts because there’s be no ability to get a budget agreement recently.  Here’s a Q&A to get the conversation started. I’ll focus on this more after the election because it will likely give a re-elected Obama some leverage over Republicans and if-elected Romney a panic attack.

Almost everyone who pays taxes would see a hit to take-home pay in the first paycheck of January. The lowest income tax rate would rise to 15 percent from 10 percent. The highest rate would rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. The 25 percent, 28 percent, and 33 percent rates would rise to 28 percent, 31 percent and 36 percent respectively. Most capital gains taxes would rise to 20 percent from 15 percent. The tax rate on dividends, now set at 15 percent, would jump to ordinary income tax rates, and since most dividend taxes are paid by the wealthy, that would mean a new dividend tax rate of 39.6 percent. The exemption on taxation of inherited estates would drop to $1 million from $5 million. The tax rate above that exemption would jump to 55 percent from 35 percent.

Even many of the working poor who do not earn enough to face such taxes would take a hit when a temporary, two-percentage-point cut to the payroll tax that funds Social Security and Medicare expires on Jan. 1. In all, taxes would rise by as much as $6 trillion over 10 years, $347 billion in 2013 alone, if the Bush-era tax cuts expire along with the payroll tax cut, and Congress fails to deal with the expanding alternative minimum tax, according to the Congressional Budget Office and Decision Economics Inc., a private economic forecaster.

On the spending side, most defense programs would be sliced by 9.4 percent. Most nondefense programs outside the big entitlements — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — would be cut by 8.2 percent. Medicare would be trimmed by 2 percent. Social Security, veterans benefits, military personnel, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program would be exempt.

So, that’s my offerings today!  What’s on your reading and blogging list?

Saturday Morning Reads

Posted: October 20, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, misogyny, Mitt Romney, morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, War on Women | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 52 Comments

Good Morning!!

Let’s see what’s going on out there in the world today. It looks like the Salt Lake Tribune endorsement of President Obama for a second term has shocked right-wing world a bit, because it’s the top story this morning at right leaning Memeorandum.

The endorsement is especially noteworthy for its assessment of Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. The editors begin by saying that Romney’s run for president had been “warmly welcomed” in Utah, especially because of “Romney’s singular role in rescuing Utah’s organization of the 2002 Olympics from a cesspool of scandal, and his oversight of the most successful Winter Games on record.” But now, the editors say, they barely recognize what their “favorite adopted son” has become:

Sadly, it is not the only Romney, as his campaign for the White House has made abundantly clear, first in his servile courtship of the tea party in order to win the nomination, and now as the party’s shape-shifting nominee. From his embrace of the party’s radical right wing, to subsequent portrayals of himself as a moderate champion of the middle class, Romney has raised the most frequently asked question of the campaign: “Who is this guy, really, and what in the world does he truly believe?”

The evidence suggests no clear answer, or at least one that would survive Romney’s next speech or sound bite. Politicians routinely tailor their words to suit an audience. Romney, though, is shameless, lavishing vastly diverse audiences with words, any words, they would trade their votes to hear.

More troubling, Romney has repeatedly refused to share specifics of his radical plan to simultaneously reduce the debt, get rid of Obamacare (or, as he now says, only part of it), make a voucher program of Medicare, slash taxes and spending, and thereby create millions of new jobs. To claim, as Romney does, that he would offset his tax and spending cuts (except for billions more for the military) by doing away with tax deductions and exemptions is utterly meaningless without identifying which and how many would get the ax. Absent those specifics, his promise of a balanced budget simply does not pencil out.

If this portrait of a Romney willing to say anything to get elected seems harsh, we need only revisit his branding of 47 percent of Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, yet feel victimized and entitled to government assistance. His job, he told a group of wealthy donors, “is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

More than half of the editorial is devoted to explaining why Romney doesn’t deserve to win the election, and although the editors praise Obama’s first term achievements–the auto industry bailout, health care reform, and foreign policy successes–it is clear that the editorial board would have preferred to endorse the Mitt Romney they once admired.

The Tampa Bay Times endorsement of Obama is also near the top of Memeorandum this morning. Theirs contains much more full-throated praise of the president’s first term achievements, but they also condemn Mitt Romney’s vague and negative agenda.

The economic stimulus package, which Mitt Romney and his Republican allies deride as a failure, had its flaws but stopped the collapse. It preserved or created up to 3 million jobs, and it invested in smart projects such as expanding U.S. 19 in Pinellas County and connecting the Port of Tampa with Interstate 4 in Hillsborough County. The auto company bailout, which Romney opposed, preserved jobs and rejuvenated the industry. The Dodd-Frank financial regulations, which Romney would repeal, protect consumers and force banks to act more responsibly. Undoing those reforms would be a mistake and invite the abuses that contributed to the economic crisis.

The Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature legislative achievement, offers sweeping health care reform that presidents from both political parties unsuccessfully pursued for decades. More than 30 million uninsured Americans will get health coverage. Millions of young adults can stay on their parents’ insurance policies, and insurers no longer can refuse to cover children with pre-existing conditions. In 2014, insurers also will have to accept adults with pre-existing conditions, and most people will be required to have health insurance or pay a penalty. This is a historic step toward universal health care and a fairer sharing of costs, and it should be improved upon rather than repealed as Romney promises. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the guts of the law, and it is time to work as hard on containing health care costs as on providing access to care.

Although he came to the job with limited foreign policy experience, Obama has been reasonably sure-footed. His appointment of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state reflected the Democrat’s self-confidence to invite a former rival and wife of a former president to join his administration. Obama followed through on his promise to withdraw troops from Iraq, which Romney called a mistake. The president’s temporary troop surge in Afghanistan stabilized the country and checked the Taliban’s momentum. Yet the president recognizes Americans have no appetite for a never-ending war for diminishing returns. He pledges to pull combat forces out of Afghanistan in 2014, while Romney remains fuzzy about his intentions.

There’s an interesting drama playing out in Indiana between far right Senate candidate Richard Mourdock and the man he defeated, long-time Republican Senator Richard Lugar.

The Boston Globe reported last week that Lugar was angered when Mourdock sent out a campaign mailer claiming that Lugar was supporting Mourdock.

Lugar spokesman Andy Fisher said Wednesday the piece was ‘‘clearly unauthorized’’ and comes from a group that spent $100,000 against Lugar in the primary. Conservative lawyer Jim Bopp’s super PAC sent the mailer to Hoosier voters this week.

Mourdock has continued to try and win Lugar’s mantle in the general election — claiming in Monday’s debate that he had been endorsed by the senator — but Lugar has kept him at arms-length throughout the campaign. Mourdock said Wednesday he’s not responsible for messages sent by outside group’s like Bopp’s.

From the South Bend Tribune:

Retiring U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar reiterated Wednesday that he will not campaign for Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock after a mailer from a longtime conservative opponent claimed Lugar’s “torch has been passed” to the tea-party hero who beat him in the primary.

The mailer comes as both Mourdock and Democrat Joe Donnelly fight desperately for the “Lugar Republicans,” or moderate voters, who appear likely to swing Indiana’s tight Senate battle.
Lugar spokesman Andy Fisher said Wednesday the piece was “clearly unauthorized” and said Lugar’s refusal to campaign for Mourdock has not changed.

“During the primary, Mourdock and his supporters perpetuated misleading statements about Sen. Lugar. Unfortunately, that has continued with this mailer funded by a committee that spent over $100,000 to defeat Sen. Lugar. It was clearly unauthorized and done without consultation with us,” Fisher said in a statement.

WISH TV in Indianapolis notes that Lugar is campaigning for another Republican.

Senator Richard Lugar won’t campaign for Richard Mourdock, yet he is campaigning for another Republican, Attorney General Greg Zoeller.

Lugar is staying out of the Senate race but he’s clearly not quitting politics. It helps make the point that his refusal to campaign for Mourdock is personal and intentional.

Just last Thursday, Dick Lugar hosted a fundraiser at the Conrad Hotel for Greg Zoeller. Zoeller has distributed photos of it on his website and his Facebook page, showing Lugar delivering remarks, posing for pictures and working the crowd.

24-Hour News 8 caught up with Zoeller by phone in Washington, DC.

“I’ve supported him over the years,” said Zoeller, “so I was glad to have his help and would accept it again.”

For Lugar, it’s the return of a favor. Zoeller appeared in one of his ads before the May primary. But it comes at a time when others are trying to convince voters that Lugar and Mourdock hold similar views without the benefit of a Lugar campaign appearance.

“Richard Mourdock is so much closer to Richard Lugar than the other gentleman,” said South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham at a Mourdock event Wednesday.

The Washington Post headline calls this “sour grapes.” Really? Lugar is an old-style moderate Republican who worked with Democrats in the Senate. Donnelly might be a moderate Republican if he lived in a more liberal state. Anyway, I hope this helps Donnelly. Mourdock would be a disaster for Indiana and for the country.

Here are a few more suggested reads, link dump style.

The New York Times: Romney as a Manager: Unhurried and Socratic.

Jonathan Bernstein at Salon: Fox News cost Mitt the debate

Laura Gottesdiener, Alternet: Ann: Mormon missions are just like military service!

Amanda Marcotte on the ugly right wing response to Katherine Fentons’s equal pay question at the second presidential debate: You Don’t React Like This to a Simple Question Without Being an Outrageous Misogynist

David Ignatius at the Washington Post: CIA documents supported Susan Rice’s description of Benghazi attacks

That ought to be enough to get you started. Now what are you reading and blogging about today?

Friday Reads

Posted: October 19, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 elections, Feminists, fetus fetishists, morning reads, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | 99 Comments


Good Morning!

Every time I see anything having to do with Mitt Romney, it feels like we’ve time tripped back to some awful period in the past where women don’t have access to the pill unless they live in certain states and are married, where black people are no where to be seen on TV and they can’t vote without facing extreme tests and poll taxes, and where GLBT have been shoved back in the closet.

We’re getting voter suppression by the GOP that’s horrifying.  I expect to see people being hosed in the streets again for trying to eat in public places.  This election just has been really bringing out the worst in a lot of people and by that I basically mean white Republican people.  Here’s a story from Virginia that’s shocking. A 31 year old white male of GOP persuasion was caught throwing away voter registrations for democrats.

The Rockingham County Sheriff’s office has arrested a Pennsylvania man and charged him with attempting to throw away filled out voter registration forms.

Colin Small, 31 year old male from Phoenixville, PA has been charged with 8 felonies and 5 misdemeanors in connection with the controversy. He is employed by Pinpoint, a company that was hired by the Republican Party of Virginia to help with voter registration.

UPDATE:  The Republican Party of Virginia Chairman Pat Mullins released the following statement in reaction to the arrest of Small:

“We were alarmed by allegations recently made regarding an individual in Harrisonburg. The actions taken by this individual are a direct contradiction of both his training and explicit instructions given to him. The Republican Party of Virginia will not tolerate any action by any person that could threaten the integrity of our electoral process.

The individual in question was fired immediately after we learned of his alleged actions. We are grateful to the local sheriff’s office and Registrar for acting so quickly to protect our democratic process and will fully cooperate with any requests made by them.  However, since there is currently an investigation underway, we will refrain from any further comments until they have concluded their inquiry. “

Not surprisingly, democratic bloggers are on fire with this news tonight. The initial scuttle came from Ben Tribbet at Not Larry Sabato, who with help discovered Small’s LinkedIn pagewhich says he is a current employee of the Republican National Committee.

Arizona has been handing out voter cards to Hispanic voters with the wrong date on it.  

Arizona’s Maricopa county listed the wrong date in the Spanish version of voter registration cards, a development likely to further complicate tense relations between local authorities and Latino residents.

The county’s elections office says it mailed out nearly 2 million new voter registration cards. Only about 50 of the cards — handed out over-the-counter at its offices — had the error, it said.

Instead of November 6, the Spanish translation said the election would take place on November 8.

“The program has been updated so it reflects the correct dates in both English and Spanish,” the county said in a statement.

A local rights group said the damage has already been done.

“It’s a mistake that should not have happened,” Petra Falcon, the executive director of Promise Arizona in Action, told CNN affiliate KNXV-TV. “To know that there’s information out there that’s wrong, it’s going to take a lot of work to make sure that people know the correct date.”

Promise Arizona describes itself as “a nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding civic participation in Arizona, particularly among Latinos and youth.”

County officials and local Hispanics have long had an adversarial relationship, particularly over the subject of illegal immigration.

Those disputes have landed in court.

Here’s a film the Romney Campaign is probably following closely.  It’s a 1950s documentary training film on how to deal with those troubling women in the work place.

“I can remember the good old days, when there were all men in my department, and we didn’t have these problems!” a male manager complains to his boss. “You didn’t have the production output you’ve got now either!” the boss counters. Through this anecdote, the McGraw-Hill instructional film below sets out to teach male managers how to “cope” with female employees.

Long before anyone was slinging binders full of women, men were forced to accept female coworkers out of sheer need. Women joining the workforce during World War II seems to have spawned a cottage industry in educational material about gender and work. Don’t miss this 1944 gem, Supervising Women Workers, or this manual of management tips.

“Look Brad, you’ve got a new bearings inspector who happens to be a woman. You need someone, and there isn’t a man available. It seems to me that whether the gal ads up to trouble or not is pretty much up to you,” the boss explains at the end of the film. Brad is in for an attitude adjustment. He arches an eyebrow but says nothing.

Go look at the film and see if you don’t see a few Romney men wandering around.

The one thing you won’t find is any Romney men wandering around the military.  They have their own special form of “service”.  Here’s Queen Ann talking about the princes and their public service (i.e. harassing people to become mormon) on the view.

The wife of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Thursday said that her husband and sons had not joined the U.S. military but had found “different ways of serving” by going onreligious missions in France, England, Australia and Chile as part of their obligation to the Mormon church.

During an interview on ABC’s The View, co-host Whoopi Goldberg asked Ann Romney how she would explain to the families of fallen soldiers why her husband and sons had not served their country.

“When I read about your husband, what I had read — and maybe you can correct this — is that the reason he didn’t serve in Vietnam was because it was against the religion,” Goldberg said.

“That’s not correct,” Ann Romney insisted. “He was serving his mission, and my five sons have also served missions. None served in the military, but I do have one son that feels that he’s giving back to his country in a significant way where he is now a doctor and he is taking care of veterans.”

“So, you know, we find different ways of serving,” she added. “And my husband and my five boys did serve missions, did not serve in the military.”

The candidate’s wife explained that Mormon missions were like military service in that “you’re going outside of yourself, you’re working and you’re helping others. And it changes you. And are we so grateful in this country for those people — men and women — that are volunteering, they’re sacrificing their life for us, and we cannot forget that or we have to acknowledge that always.”

Yup, irritating people with religious spiels is akin to fighting wars abroad.  At least it is the weird world of the Romneys.  Joe Walsh inhabits that world too.

Republican Rep. Joe Walsh, running against Democratic challenger Tammy Duckworth in Illinois, told reporters Thursday night that there should be no abortion exception for the “life of the mother” because “with modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” in which a woman would actually die, according to a radio station. Walsh, of course, is flat wrong.

“There is no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing,” Walsh continued. The comments were first reported by the Illinois radio station WGN.

“There is no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing, with advances in science and technology,” Walsh said, according to the video above. CREDO superPAC, which is opposing Walsh, tipped HuffPost to the comments.

You should hear Dr. Daughter go off on this.  She delivers babies every day and is seeing an increasing number of high risk pregnancies due to obesity and mothers than come in that are already diabetic and have blood pressure issues from obesity.  Of course, most of the women are also on medicare or are unable to get medicare because of their status so their babies tend to be born compromised.  But hey, Joe says no one dies any more because science won’t let them.

Yes, there’s some weird Stepford wife reality going on there in Republican land.

It’s really hard to know these guys come up with this crap, isn’t it?

I still can’t believe that Dr. Jill Stein and her running mate were subject to arrest and detention for basically showing up at the debates the other night.  Amy Goodman has interviewed the two. Nothing like shutting out alternatives to the two party political duopoly.

I interviewed Stein the day after the debate, after their imprisonment (which ended, not surprisingly, not long after the debate ended). She told me: “We are on the ballot for 85 percent of voters. Americans deserve to know what their choices are. The police said they were only doing job. I said, ‘This is about everyone’s jobs, whether we can afford health care, whether students will be indentured.’ There are critical issues left out of the debate. Ninety million voters are predicted to stay home and vote with their feet that neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney represent them. That’s twice as many voters than expected for either of them.”

Even if Stein and Honkala hadn’t been hauled off a public street and handcuffed to those chairs for eight hours, Stein’s exclusion from the debate was certain. The debates are very closely controlled by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), which excludes third-party candidates, among other things. George Farah is the founder and executive director of Open Debates, and author of “No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates.” Farah told me on the morning of the Hofstra debate about how the CPD gained control over the debates from the nonpartisan League of Women Voters: “We have a private corporation that was created by the Republican and Democratic parties called the Commission on Presidential Debates. It seized control of the presidential debates precisely because the League was independent, precisely because this women’s organization had the guts to stand up to the candidates that the major parties had nominated.”

Okay, so I’ve had it with all things Republican this election.  What about you?  And, what’s on your reading and blogging list this today?

Thursday Reads: Romney Campaign Tactics and Debate Reactions

Posted: October 18, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, abortion rights, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, morning reads, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 103 Comments

Good Morning!

Before I get started, don’t forget that Ann Romney is scheduled to be on The View today at 11AM Eastern.

Now to the news.  I think I have some interesting links for you today. I’m going to focus mostly on some aggressive Romney campaign tactics and on reactions to the second presidential debate.

I’m sure you’ve probably heard about the stories that have been coming out about corporate CEOs trying to intimidate their employees into voting for Mitt Romney, see here, here, here, and here.

Late yesterday afternoon, Mike Elk of In These Times revealed that Romney himself has suggested that business owners instruct their employees–and their families–how they should vote. I hope you’ll read the whole article, but I’m going to post the audio of a conference call that Romney held, sponsored by the National Federation of Independent Business. The whole call is quite interesting, but the relevant part is at the end, around the 26:00 point.

Here the transcription, from Mike Elk’s article (emphasis added):

I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope, I hope you pass those along to your employees.

Nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision and of course doing that with your family and your kids as well.

I particularly think that our young kids–and when I say young, I mean college-age and high-school age–they need to understand that America runs on a strong and vibrant business [sic] … and that we need more business growing and thriving in this country. They need to understand that what the president is doing by borrowing a trillion dollars more each year than what we spend is running up a credit card that they’re going to have to pay off and that their future is very much in jeopardy by virtue of the policies that the president is putting in place. So I need you to get out there and campaign.

Elk writes that this actually is legal now, thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. He also asks whether Romney is behind the recent rash of reports of CEOs putting pressure on their employees to vote for the Republican ticket.

The call raises the question of whether the Romney campaign is complicit in the corporate attempts to influence employees’ votes that have been recently making headlines….

Beyond Romney’s statements on the call, it’s unclear whether his election operation is actively coordinating workplace campaigning by businesses. Romney press secretary Andrea Saul did not respond to In These Times’ request for comment.

However, the conference call raises troubling questions about what appears to be a growing wave of workplace political pressure unleashed by Citizens United.

At Mother Jones, Adam Weinstein has another story about aggressive Romney campaign tactics. Weinstein obtained some e-mails between the Romney campaign and the Virginia Military Institute, where Romney recently gave a foreign policy speech. The military is required to be nonpartisan and stay out of politics, but Romney pressured the school to allow him to use his speech as what would have in essence been a campaign event.

When Mitt Romney addressed a crowd of cadets at Virginia Military Institute on October 8, he was supposed to give a major foreign policy speech that steered clear of partisan politics. That’s because VMI personnel observe the US military’s tradition of political neutrality when in uniform. But internal emails obtained by Mother Jones show that Romney’s campaign pushed to burnish his commander-in-chief credentials by maximizing military optics around the event. Members of Romney’s staff sought to use the VMI logo in their campaign materials, requested that uniformed cadets be let out of class early to attend Romney’s speech, and asked VMI “to select a few cadet veterans and give them a place of honor” standing behind Romney during his address.

As the campaign pushed for these requests, VMI officials pushed back, concerned that they were for partisan purposes. Each request was denied by the state-run institution, whose students serve in the US military’s Reserve Officers Training Corps, so that VMI would not be seen as endorsing Romney’s candidacy. The Romney campaign also pressured VMI to play host to “15 to 20” retired admirals and generals at the school who traveled there to endorse Romney; VMI eventually relented to that request.

Please do read the whole article at the link.

Remember Mark Leder? He’s the private equity billionaire who hosted the private fund-raiser at which Mitt Romney made his infamous “47 percent” remarks. Leder is giving another fund-raiser for Romney in Florida on Saturday night, according to Ryan Grim and Laura Goldman at HuffPo.

Leder has been telling potential donors that given the uproar following his last fundraiser, he feels an obligation to make the situation right by raising more money for Romney, according to people who have discussed the matter with Leder. One donor, asked if Leder had been noting that he’d been “taking heat” for the last fundraiser, said, “That was the basic pitch, except the word ‘heat’ was replaced by another four-letter word that begins with s.”

Saturday night’s event, unlike his now-famous May fundraiser, will not be held at Leder’s home. It will be in Palm Beach, Fla., and will include other hosts in addition to Leder.

Leder is a leveraged-buyout specialist, much like Romney. He owns Sun Capital Partners, which is based in Boca Raton, Fla. — the site of the upcoming presidential debate, which will be held on Monday. Leder is the co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers and has been characterized in the press as a “party animal.”

I imagine all of the guests and staff will have to surrender their cell phones before the event. Will there be body searches too?

Contraception came up in the debate on Tuesday night, and Mitt Romney seems to be feeling a bit defensive about it. Abortion rights weren’t addressed, but Romney must be feeling defensive because he released a new ad yesterday.

Apparently Mitt thinks this ad proves he’s “moderate” on abortion. He wants to ban all abortions except in cases where women have been raped, are victims of incest, or whose lives are in danger if they carry the child to term. That seems pretty extreme to me, since abortion is legal, at least for now.

But Romney has also said he supports states passing personhood amendments, he has clearly stated that he will appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade, and he has repeatedly promised to cut all funding for Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood released a statement in response to the ad (h/t Jezebel)

“This is an ad designed to deceive women. The Romney team knows that Mitt Romney’s real agenda for women’s health is deeply unpopular – ending safe and legal abortion, ending Planned Parenthood’s preventive care that millions of people rely on, and repealing the Affordable Care Act and the coverage of birth control with no co-pay. Romney can run from his own agenda, but he can’t hide – women will hold him accountable at the polls on election day.”

I don’t understand how these exceptions that Romney and Ryan keep talking about could work anyway. Would a pregnant girl or women have to prove that she was raped or sexually victimized by a relative? How would that work? Would there have to be a confession by the perpetrator? There certainly wouldn’t be time for the crime to be prosecuted in a court of law in time for an abortion to take place. What about the claim of danger to the mother’s life? Will doctors have to prove the claim to government inspectors? I just don’t think any of this would be realistic. I think we have to assume that these “exceptions” are just more bait and switch from the flim flam ticket.

Romney and his campaign advisers might want to take a look at the results of a new Gallup poll of women in swing states. The poll asks “What do you consider the most important issue for women in this election?” Here are the results:

For men, the top four issues on the list were jobs, the economy, the Federal deficit/balanced budget, and health care. For women, abortion was number one, and the deficit didn’t even make the list! Generally speaking, women had quite different interests than men.

On contraception, Romney surrogate and former Lt. Gov. Kerry Healy told Andrea Mitchell yesterday that contraception is just a “peripheral issue” for women.

Mitchell pressed Healy on the financial considerations for women whose employers refuse to cover contraception on religious grounds. “That is a pocketbook issue,” Mitchell said. “It’s dollars and cents.”
“The problem here is that we are talking about these peripheral issues,” Healy said. ”We need to really be talking about employment, jobs. That’s what women care about.”

Laura Bassett has more on the interview at HuffPo. Bassett notes that during the debate Tuesday Romney tried to gloss over his past statements on the issue of employers making contraception coverage available to employees by during the debate on Tuesday by claiming that

“I just know that I don’t think bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not, and I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they have contraceptive care or not,” Romney said during Tuesday night’s debate. “Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives and the president’s statement on my policy is completely and totally wrong.”

Romney’s answer subtly changes the subject from insurance coverage of contraception to the more general issue of access to contraception, and it strategically leaves enough wiggle room for his campaign to say that his position has not changed.

Healy followed suit with Andrea Mitchell.

Romney did “not in any way” change his position, Healey said. “Governor Romney is both a strong supporter of religious freedom and also believes in access to contraception for American women.”

Pressed on the details of the Blunt amendment, which would have allowed employers to refuse to cover birth control on moral grounds and which Romney previously said he would support, Healey changed the subject. “The question of whether or not we should force someone to give up their religious freedom to provide insurance coverage in some hypothetical situation is not really the point to most women out there,” she said. “There are 5.5 million unemployed women in the country.”

What’s lost in both Romney’s and Healey’s answers on the contraception issue is the point that President Barack Obama made Tuesday night, which is that for many women, having birth control fully paid for by their insurance plans is an economic issue.

Yesterday afternoon the MSNBC show “The Cycle” had a body language expert, Chris Ulrich on to talk about the interactions between Obama and Romney during the debate. It was fascinating. I can’t embed the video, but I hope you’ll watch it at the link. You won’t regret it.

In a similar vein, if you didn’t see Chris Matthews’ interview with James Lipton of Inside the Actor’s Studio last night, be sure to watch that too. Lipton analyzed the behavior of the two debate participants, and said that he thought he had finally figured out who Mitt Romney is. He’s the boss who tells dumb jokes and expects you to laugh at them–or else. Lipton said that the choice for voters is between a president (Obama) and a boss. Do we want a boss running the country? Lipton said that some people might like that, but he seemed to find it frightening.

I’ll end with the most recent confrontation between ugly, nasty troll John Sununu and Soledad O’Brien, which took place yesterday morning on CNN.

Now what are you reading and blogging about today?

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