Thursday Reads

Posted: June 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, court rulings, Crime, Foreign Affairs, Mitt Romney, morning reads, religion, Republican presidential politics, Syria, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Good Morning!!

Last night I wrote about Mitt Romney’s claim that he “longed” to serve in Vietnam, but instead sacrificed his fondest dream by living in France for the war years. But he wasn’t always averse to wearing a uniform. When he was in prep school at Cranbrook, he once played a “prank” in which he impersonated a police officer and stopped a car in which four of his “friends” were out on a double date.

But until I read this piece by Joe Conason, I had no idea that Romney had repeatedly dressed as a Michigan state trooper even when he was a student at Stanford.

According to Robin Madden, one of Romney’s Stanford classmates, Romney once showed him a state trooper’s uniform and said he’d gotten it from his father George Romney, who was then Governor of Michigan. Madden told Conason:

“He told us that he had gotten the uniform from his father,” George Romney, then the Governor of Michigan, whose security detail was staffed by uniformed troopers. “He told us that he was using it to pull over drivers on the road. He also had a red flashing light that he would attach to the top of his white Rambler.”

In Madden’s recollection, confirmed by his wife Susan, who also attended Stanford during those years, “we thought it was all pretty weird. We all thought, ‘Wow, that’s pretty creepy.’ And after that, we didn’t have much interaction with him,” although both Madden and Romney were prep school boys living in the same dorm, called Rinconada.

Is there no end to this man’s weirdness? Just one more Romney story and then I’ll move on to something else. The New York Times has a front page story today on Romney’s neighbors in La Jolla and how annoyed they are by him.

ON Dunemere Drive, it seems as if just about everyone has a gripe against the owners of No. 311.

The elderly woman next door complains that her car is constantly boxed into her driveway. A few houses over, a gay couple grumbles that their beloved ocean views are in jeopardy. And down the street, a widow grouses that her children’s favorite dog-walking route has been disrupted.

Bellyaching over the arrival of an irritating new neighbor is a suburban cliché, as elemental to the life on America’s Wisteria Lanes as fastidiously edged lawns and Sunday afternoon barbecues.

But here in La Jolla, a wealthy coast-hugging enclave of San Diego, the ordinary resident at the end of the block is no ordinary neighbor.

He is Mitt Romney.

The biggest complaints seem to be about the Romney’s plans to turn their beachfront home into a giant “McMansion. The article says that the Romneys haven’t asked any of the neighbors over to their house, but Ann and Mitt do take walks and interact people they see along the way.

Mr. Romney and his wife take regular walks around La Jolla, exchanging pleasantries with fellow strollers and occasionally enforcing the law. A young man in town recalled that Mr. Romney confronted him as he smoked marijuana and drank on the beach last summer, demanding that he stop.

The issue appears to be a recurring nuisance for the Romneys. Mr. Quint, who lives on the waterfront near Mr. Romney, said that a police officer had asked him, on a weekend when the candidate was in town, to report any pot smoking on the beach. The officer explained to him that “your neighbors have complained,” Mr. Quint recalled. “He was pretty clear that it was the Romneys.”

I hope our libertarian readers are paying attention.

The Washington Post reports that there has been another massacre in Syria.

Two activists in Hama said Wednesday that at least 30 people, and possibly many more, had been killed in Qubair, northwest of Hama, after the militias known as the shabiha raided the village. Government forces had blocked roads leading to the village and prevented activists from gathering evidence of the killings, they said.

But one of the activists, Asem Abu Mohammed, said he had received frantic calls for help from people in the village starting in the late afternoon.

Another activist, Mousab al-Hamadi, said people in the village told him that many women and children were among those hacked to death with knives by the militiamen.

Also at the WaPo, there is an interesting graphic piece: Ray Bradbury: 10 of his most prescient predictions. Bradbury apparently foresaw earbuds, Facebook, ATM’s, and E-books!

This story is a couple of days old, but did you hear about the hundreds of mormons and ex-mormons who participated in Salt Lake City’s gay pride march?

They came in suits and skirts, and they drew tears and cheers.

More than 300 current and former members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints participated in the Utah Gay Pride Parade on Sunday as part of a group called Mormons Building Bridges.

“I haven’t recognized them as equals,” one marcher, Emily Vandyke, 50, told the Salt Lake Tribune. “They have been invisible to me.”

She carried a sign with words from a Mormon children’s song: “I’ll walk with you, I’ll talk with you. That’s how I’ll show my love for you.”

It’s a start, anyway.

Another judge has ruled the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional.

The law was challenged by 83-year-old Edith “Edie” Windsor after the federal government failed to recognize her marriage to her partner Thea Spyer, after Spyer’s death in 2009. Her marriage was recognized by the state of New York.

The Defense of Marriage Act was enacted in 1996 and Section 3 of the law, which the case challenged, defined marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman. It prohibited legally married same sex couples from receiving federal benefits.

“Thea and I shared our lives together for 44 years, and I miss her each and every day,” said Windsor. “It’s thrilling to have a court finally recognize how unfair it is for the government to have treated us as though we were strangers.”

U.S. District Court Judge Barbara S. Jones of the Southern District of New York ruled the statue violated the constitution’s guarantee of equal protection because it discriminated against married same sex couples.

This next one is pretty funny: Senator Asks DOJ to Investigate SWAT-ting Attacks on Conservative Bloggers

A number of conservative bloggers allege they have been targeted through the use of harassment tactics such as SWAT-ting (fooling 911 operators into sending emergency teams to their homes), in retaliation for posts they have written, and now Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., has stepped into the matter. He has sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to investigate the SWAT-ting cases to see if federal laws have been violated.

Who are these bloggers and when were that “SWAT-ted?” Are there videos? Inquiring minds want to see them.

ABC News spoke with two prominent conservative bloggers who were victims of SWAT-ting, a hoax tactic used by some hackers to infiltrate a victim’s phone system, often through voice over IP (VOIP) technology to make calls appear as if they are coming from a residence. The perpetrators call police to report a violent crime at that home to which the police respond, sometimes with SWAT teams.

And ABC names names! Victim 1: Patrick Frey AKA Patterico. Victim 2: Erick Erickson of Red State and CNN fame. Victim 3: Robert Stacy McCain of “The Other McCain.” Victim 4: Ali Akbar, whoever that is. Other victims are referred to but not named. And the culprit? The mysterious Brett Kimberlin, whom the wingers think is a prominent “progressive.”

Brett Kimberlin, a man who was convicted of a series of bombings in Speedway, Indiana in the 1980s and made headlines in 1988 when he claimed to have once sold marijuana to then-vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle….

Kimberlin, who is now the director of a non-profit organization called Justice Through Music, told ABC News that he did not commit or ask anyone to conduct the SWAT-ting hoaxes that were perpetrated against Erickson and Frey.

“Of course not, it’s ridiculous. It’s totally irresponsible for them to even say this,” Kimberlin told ABC News. “There is no truth to anything about the SWAT-ting.”

This is so bizarre. I read all about it at Cannonfire ages ago. I can’t believe ABC News bought into this nonsense.

In crime news, someone mailed body parts to two schools in Vancouver. Naturally, the prime suspect is Luka Rocco Magnotta.

St. George’s senior school student Trevor Leung was working on his computer Tuesday afternoon when he saw the Yahoo news alert: a package of human remains had been discovered in the mail room at the nearby St. George’s junior school.

Leung didn’t know then that it was a human foot. Or that earlier, at about

1 p.m., a package containing a hand had been opened by a staff member at another Vancouver school, False Creek elementary.

By then, investigators in Montreal and Vancouver were on the phone, trying to establish whether the body parts were linked to the murder case involving former Canadian porn actor Luka Rocco Magnotta.

Ugh! Thank goodness that monster is behind bars for now.

George Zimmerman won’t have a second bail hearing until June 29, so he’ll be behind bars for awhile also. The article says that Attorney Mark O’Mara claims that Zimmerman “has learned his lesson.” I guess that will be up to the judge to determine.

Finally, a bit of provincial sports news: The aging Boston Celtics have LeBron James and the Miami Heat on the ropes in the NBA Playoffs.

Boston is the first road team in the series to win just as the Oklahoma City Thunder did in taking a 3-2 Western series lead. Both are trying to to rally from 2-0 deficits, never done in the same conference finals round.

No two teams have ever come back from 2-0 deficits in the same year in the conference finals. The only time it has happened twice during the same stage was 2005, when the Washington Wizards and Dallas Mavericks topped the Chicago Bulls and Houston Rockets in the first round.

“We’re just hanging in there and I tell (them), ‘Hang in, hang in there, don’t overreact,’ ” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said.

Game 6 in the East finals is Thursday in Boston (8:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).

Le Bron is such a choker. He’s loaded with talent but just doesn’t have the necessary fire in the belly.

Now what are you reading and blogging about today?

Romney “longed” to serve in Vietnam, but took four draft deferments

Posted: June 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Anti-War, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 20 Comments

Mitt Romney, age 19, demonstrates in favor of the draft at Stanford U., 1966

In his 2012 campaign for the presidency, Mitt Romney has been a strident supporter of every possible use of U.S. military power abroad.

He has said he wouldn’t hesitate to attack Iran in order to prevent them from getting nukes. He even wrote an op-ed about it for the Washington Post.

He has argued for U.S. military intervention in Syria, and has been loudly critical of President Obama’s approach to the Syrian uprisings. He has also criticized Obama’s decision to pull out of Iraq and his strategy in Afghanistan.

Finally, Romney has argued for dramatic increases in defense spending, while at the same time claiming he will cut the federal deficit if elected.

Based on his hawkish policy positions, it seems relevant to ask what Romney did when he was eligible for military service; and the AP recently took a look at Romney’s military service–actually his lack of military service. Not to put too fine a point on it, Romney is a chicken hawk. His (non)military history also shows that his etch-a-sketch behavior began quite early in life.

As you can see in the photo above, Mitt actually participated in a demonstration in favor of the Vietnam-era draft while a student at Stanford. From The Daily Mail, January 6, 2012:

Taken at the height of the swinging Sixties, Mr Romney holds a sign declaring ‘Speak Out, Don’t Sit In’ as, alongside like-minded individuals, he proclaims his support for Lyndon Johnson’s ever-expanding draft….

A newspaper clipping headlined ‘Governor’s son pickets the pickets’ states: ‘Mitt Romney, son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, was one of the pickets who supported the Stanford University administration in opposition to sit-in demonstrators.’

The photograph was taken on May 20, 1966, shortly after a group of students had taken over the office of Stanford University President Wallace Sterling.

They were protesting at the introduction of a test designed to help the authorities decide who was eligible for the draft.

Of course Romney himself could have been drafted in 1966, but he applied for and received a student deferment in the same year he participated in the pro-war demonstration. After one year at Stanford, young Mitt left school to serve as a mormon missionary in France. From MSNBC.com:

Though an early supporter of the Vietnam War, Romney avoided military service at the height of the fighting after high school by seeking and receiving four draft deferments, according to Selective Service records. They included college deferments and a 31-month stretch as a “minister of religion” in France, a classification for Mormon missionaries that the church at the time feared was being overused. The country was cutting troop levels by the time he became eligible for the draft, and his lottery number was not called.

Romney received three more deferments during his missionary service, even though the Mormon church was strongly supportive of the Vietnam war and was limiting the number of deferments it signed off on. Romney got three of them though. Gee, I wonder why?

After his first year at Stanford, Romney qualified for 4-D deferment status as “a minister of religion or divinity student.” It was a status he would hold from July 1966 until February 1969, a period he largely spent in France working as a Mormon missionary.

He was granted the deferment even as some young Mormon men elsewhere were denied that same status, which became increasingly controversial in the late 1960s. The Mormon church, a strong supporter of American involvement in Vietnam, ultimately limited the number of church missionaries allowed to defer their military service using the religious exemption.

Later, a 23-year old Romney had turned against the war he avoided.

“If it wasn’t a political blunder to move into Vietnam, I don’t know what is,” a 23-year-old Romney would tell The Boston Globe in 1970 during the fifth year of his deferment.

His 31-month religious deferment expired in early 1969. And Romney received an academic studies deferment for much of the next two years. He became available for military service at the end of 1970 when his deferments ran out and he could have been drafted. But by that time, America was beginning to slice its troop levels, and Romney’s relatively high lottery number — 300 out of 365 — was not called.

Later, when he ran for the Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994, Romney was quoted in the Boston Herald as saying:

“I was not planning on signing up for the military”…”It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam, but nor did I take any actions to remove myself from the pool of young men who were eligible for the draft,”

But he in fact had applied for and been granted four deferments–nearly as many as Dick Cheney got.

Mitt’s views on Vietnam continued to “evolve.” During his last run for president in 2007, he the Globe again quoted Romney on Vietnam:

“I was supportive of my country,” Romney said. “I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there, and in some ways it was frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were fighting in Vietnam.”

Romney’s views on Vietnam had gone full circle–from enthusiastic pro-war demonstrator, to draft dodger, to vocal critic of U.S. policy, to claiming he never wanted to go to war, but never tried to get out of it, to nostalgia for how much he “longed” to be in Vietnam while he served out his extra-long 4-D deferment.

What a guy!

Mitt Romney: “It is without question the largest one-time careless expenditure of government money in American history” Really?

Posted: May 18, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Psychopaths in charge, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 44 Comments

Mitt Romney mocks the people of New Hampshire for preserving historic landmarks

The title of this post is a quote from Mitt Romney’s speech this afternoon in Hillsborough, New Hampshire. Politico reports:

Mitt Romney used a 19th-century stone bridge here today to anchor his attacks against President Barack Obama, calling the 2009 economic stimulus the “largest one-time careless expenditure of government money in America’s history.”

“This is the absolute bridge to nowhere if there ever was one,” Romney told supporters as he motioned to the stone bridge behind him. “That’s your stimulus dollars at work — a bridge that goes nowhere. And so I hope that the president comes here, and takes a look at some of the stimulus program, there’s a long list by the way.”

Wow, the government must have really spent a lot of money for Romney to be this bent out of shape. Let’s see, how much stimulus money went into the bridge?

More than $150,000 from the federal stimulus bill was awarded to restore this one — which doesn’t cross a body of water and hasn’t had vehicle traffic in more than a century. Local officials say they want to turn the stone arch and its surrounding areas into a public park.

“It is without question the largest one-time careless expenditure of government money in American history, and the bad news is it was not just wasteful spending,” Romney continued. “It is wasteful borrowing as well because we still are going to be paying on that debt for years and years and years.”

Wait a minute! That has to be a misprint, right? Why just today Mitt and Ann Romney donated $150,000 to his presidential campaign. He must have meant $150 million went to the bridge. But no, the entire cost of the restoration was about $288,000, with the state providing the start-up funds.

What is Romney getting at here? Does he want to stop preserving historical sites and monuments? Is it really wrong for small towns like Hillsboro that are dependent mostly on tourism to want to preserve their historic sites and at the same time build lovely parks to attract visitors who might also spend their money in town? At the same time, the project provided much-needed jobs for New Hampshirites struggling to survive in a difficult economy.

The bridge that Romney complained about is named Sawyer Bridge, and it is one of the few remaining stone arch bridges in New England. The town of Hillsborough is home to four of them. From Huffington Post:

Romney’s attack on the $288,000 bridge restoration will run into several immediate challenges: Funding for the project was overwhelmingly supported by state Republicans, including a significant number who have now endorsed Romney for president. The infrastructure project created much-needed jobs during tough economic times. And it left behind a public park enjoyed by Granite State residents who take great pride in their early-American and colonial history — and who will be casting critical, swing-state votes in November. It’s a curious breed of conservatism that would find offense in the job-creating conservation of a stone arch bridge that is one of the earliest examples of dry-laid masonry vaults in New England.

I have to wonder, is Romney opposed to any federal support to preserve historic sites? What about the National Parks? Would Romney sell off that land if he were president? Would he open them to oil drilling and other kinds of industrial development?

Think about it. For Romney expenditure of $150,000 in federal stimulus funds represents “the largest one-time careless expenditure of government money in American history.” Really? I can think of some worse, more careless expenditures of government money. What about the Vietnam War? What about the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Bush financed with borrowed money that was kept off-budget?

Just to get a sense of the financial cost of those wars, I located this paper by Stephen Daggett of the Congressional Research Service (PDF) that lists the costs of America’s wars in $2011 dollars. According to Daggett in 2011,

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress has appropriated more than a trillion dollars for military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere around the world. The House
and Senate are now considering an additional request for $33 billion in supplemental funding for
the remainder of FY2010, and the Administration has also requested $159 billion to cover costs of
overseas operations in FY2011.

That’s more than the cost war in Vietnam, which in 2011 dollars was $738 billion. At that time the war in Iraq had cost $784 billion and the war in Afghanistan had cost $321 billion. And Romney is whining about New Hampshire getting $150 THOUSAND to restore a historic bridge while creating jobs and increasing income from tourism?

There is something seriously wrong with the way this man’s mind works.

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