Live Blog: The CNN Tea Party Republican Debate

Posted: September 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, just because, Republican presidential politics | Tags: , | 114 Comments



Jeeze, could things get any worse? Republican presidential candidates, the Tea Party, and Wolf Blitzer as moderator. If you can stand it, please tune in or live stream the debate and join us to document the atrocities.

Rick Perry has been trying to walk back his claims that Social Security is a “ponzi scheme” and a “failure.” Mitt Romney will probably be on the offensive about that. As the The Caucus blog points out,

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, warned during a debate last week that the Republican Party should nominate someone “who isn’t committed to abolishing Social Security, but who is committed to saving Social Security.”

And Mr. Romney has hardly let up since. In a biting e-mail last week titled “Rick Perry: Reckless, Wrong on Social Security,” Mr. Romney’s campaign alleged that Mr. Perry “believes Social Security should not exist.”

Over the weekend, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota joined in, chiding Mr. Perry — without naming him directly — for using rhetoric about Social Security that scares seniors.

“That’s wrong for any candidate to make senior citizens believe that they should be nervous about something they have come to count on,” Mrs. Bachmann said in a radio interview in Iowa.

Of course both Romney and Bachmann have said unkind things about Social Security in the past, so they might have to answer for that.

At the Guardian, Richard Adams says that tonight is Michele Bachmann’s last chance to shine, after she was pretty much ignored at the Reagan Library debate last week.

With the Republican presidential contest rapidly devolving into a two-way race between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, Monday night’s GOP debate in Tampa may represent Michele Bachmann’s last chance to keep up with the front-runners.

The latest opinion polls in the Republican presidential nomination contest make bitter reading for Bachmann and her supporters: since the entry of Perry, the Texas governor, her support has melted away like a popsicle on a barbeque.

The fire-breathing Tea Party favourite had threatened to up-end the nomination battle with her entry back in June. But she has wilted over summer and her evanescent campaign has seen its support collapse, even among the trenchant social conservatives that Bachmann was relying on.

Tonight should be fertile ground for Bachmann: the debate is co-hosted by the Tea Party Express group and is being billed as “the Tea Party debate” by CNN.

At CNN, Paul Steinhauser offers Five things to watch for in CNN/Tea Party Republican debate, and at the Christian Science Monitor Peter Grier offers three things we might see at tea party event tonight

Personally, I plan to watch the New England Patriots and Miami Dolphins on Monday Night Football, but I’ll check in periodically to see what’s happening. I’m hoping someone will watch this debate so I don’t have to!

Saturday: Walk Like a Bahraini Youth Activist

Posted: March 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Click Image to go to the NYT Lens.

Good morning, news junkies!

I’ve gotten quite hooked on the NYT’s new Lens blog, particularly the regular interview/photo essays compiled by Lens editor James Estrin. A couple months ago, Estrin zoomed the focus in on Eirini Vourloumis and her photographs of Spanish-speaking converts to Islam–you may remember my linking to the interview at the time. This week’s spotlight is on Hazel Thompson and her work documenting the roles of women in Bahrain. There’s also a video of Thompson discussing her experiences at the link. Fascinating stuff.

To the right… from Hazel Thompson’s “Measure of a Woman”… The Youth Activist: Enas Ahmed Al-Farden is the vice president of the Bahrain Youth Forum Society. She is also a radio announcer and a product marketing manager. She lives with her parents and is engaged to be married.

If you have some free time after you’re finished reading this roundup, both the spot on Bahraini women and the earlier one on Latino Muslims are well worth the investment. (I’ll link to them again at the end.) In the meantime, here are the rest of my Saturday picks… grab a cup of whatever gets you up and running in the morning and enjoy.

Economy

  1. As of November, men’s unemployment is down .04 percent over the previous 12 months, and women’s unemployment over the same period is up .04 percent. Between July 2009 and January 2011, women lost 366,000 jobs while men gained 438,000.
  2. The public sector has shed 426,000 jobs since August of 2008. 154,000 of those jobs were in education. Women comprise only a little over half of the public workforce but have lost 83.8% of the jobs during the recovery-in-name-only.
  3. And, just look at who is exempt from Walker’s proposal to strip collective bargaining: public officers, firefighters, and state troopers. It’s the public employee unions made up mostly of women that are facing threat of annihilation.

  • Wonk’s two cents: The Taxed Enough Already (TEA) crowd never shuts up about the “debt we’re creating for our children,” but they sure don’t seem to be looking in the right place if that’s what they’re really concerned about.

although borrowers who develop severe and lasting disabilities are legally entitled to get federal student loans forgiven, the process for deciding who is eligible is dysfunctional, opaque and duplicates similar reviews conducted by other federal agencies. Many borrowers have been denied for unclear reasons, and many others have simply given up.

  • On Thursday, Zaid Jilani from Think Progress posted the graph I’ve been looking for. This is what the workers in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana are protesting:

CLICK GRAPH TO GO TO THINK PROGRESS.

Women’s Rights

  • The Center for Reproductive Rights’ Melissa Upreti, via RH Reality Check, reports that “Nepal Advances As U.S. Backslides on Women’s Rights.” What takes the cake is that Nepal’s Supreme Court cites Roe in its groundbreaking affirmation of a woman’s autonomy, access to abortion, and well-being over that of a fetus. I almost want to laugh and tell Nepal’s Supremes that their ruling sounds better than Roe. Our dear Roe has, among other things, successfully kept women’s rights in perpetual limbo for almost 4 decades. As much as I believe in the privacy argument, I’m a much bigger believer in the autonomy and equity arguments.

  • Here’s a good companion essay to read after Clark’s piece. Margot Badran, via the SSRC’s Immanent Frame, writes of “Egypt’s Revolution and the New Feminism.” From Badran’s pen to the goddess’s ear:

Will the youth now be willing to accept patriarchal authoritarianism sustained by the old family law, a law so out of sync with contemporary social realities—with their own realities? It is very hard to see by what logic they could do so. Freedom, equality, and justice cannot be reserved for some only. For the youth, female and male, who raised this revolution, freedom, equality, and justice are surely non-negotiable, and dignity, the order of the day. This is the essence of the new feminism, call it what you will.

  • I missed this one last week. William John Cox’s “Political Upheaval and Women’s Rights,” via Truthout. Excellent long view essay. Cox really lays it all out there. Fundamentalism is a threat to women everywhere, be it in the Mideast or in the US.

[There’s more, so if you need a coffee refill or anything, now would be a good time for an intermission before you click to continue. ]

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