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IT’S 2012, THE 21ST CENTURY. DO NOT FUCK WITH THE DEMOCRATS
This jerk has some nerve,talking trash about any race,let alone the american indians,didn’t he study history,they were already here,when your relitives,schleped over on a boat,schmuck!Who the hell do you think you are.Go have another centerfold,done nature boy,isn’t that how you paid for schooling,and he bitched at E.W. for checking a box,get real.
Anyone watching 666 Park Ave.?
President Obama speaks in Las Vegas Nevada
Watch Live
http://new.livestream.com/barackobama/LasVegas
President Obama is LOSING his BASE!
HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
September 30, 2012 6:15 PMRomney’s Peculiarly Mormon Elitism
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood
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At first blush, it’s difficult to equate Mitt Romney’s faith with his recent comments that he’s powerless to convince America’s victim class—that 47% of the country he says are dependent on government entitlements—to vote for him. Isn’t Mormomism predicated upon the missionary effort to convert complete strangers (not to mention redistribution of wealth, through tithing)? Indeed, when the 47% video surfaced, many simply assumed the candidate was just pandering to the crowd of $50k/plate donors. The Real Romney was back somewhere in 2006.
But in his excellent piece on Romney’s work as Mormon stake leader in Massachusetts, New York’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells makes a convincing case that Romney’s faith and his elitism are in fact closely linked. Wallace-Wells reports that Romney’s missionary work in Lynn, Massachusetts, during which he oversaw a mostly failed attempt to convert a Cambodian community, never discouraged him. While others in his Church grew frustrated at their fruitless efforts, Romney seemed satisfied with their minimal progress, telling a colleague that “if you only get a handful of members, that’s still a good result.”
Romney’s missionary efforts were guided by the belief that if one was able to correctly follow Church guidelines, he would achieve salvation. If not, oh well. As Wallace-Wells put it: “What he offered was salvation via a rule book, a recipe for getting ahead in America that had less to offer the doubters, the uncommitted, the foreign.” Romney, perhaps swayed by the influence of party elites and his running mate Paul Ryan, has now lumped 47% of America into that same category.
In this way, Romney conceived of himself as a member of a series of overlapping elite clubs—Mormons, businessmen, suburban family men—who have played by the rules, and justly reaped the benefits. Quoting the Mormon scholar Claudia Bushman, Wallace-Wells writes that Romney seems to abide by the traditional Mormon perspective that he is something of a chosen one, inhabiting “an island of morality in a sea of moral decay.”
But the idea of elite membership—of exalted status—goes beyond this. Mormon faith holds that men don’t only wish to please God, they can eventually join him, be him. As Harold Bloom—that sometimes scholar of Mormonism—wrote last fall in the New York Times, “Mormons earn godhead though their own efforts…the Mormon patriarch, secure in his marriage and large family, is promised by his faith a final ascension to godhead, with a planet all his own separate from the earth and nation where he now dwells.”
This is not to say Romney thinks Mormonism represents the only path toward material success. Rather, Romney’s own Mormonism—and his success by it—simply reinforces the merits of the “No Apology” elitism he’s adopted on the campaign trail.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_09/romneys_peculiarly_mormon_elit040210.php
Barack Obama Must Thank Small Donors For Fundraising Lead
WASHINGTON — The new campaign finance playing field that was created when Barack Obama refused public funds for his general election campaign in 2008 was expected to favor candidates who could milk big donors for all they were worth. In the 2012 race, with both President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney refusing public funds, the candidates have certainly hauled in big donations, but the surprise has come in the money from small donors.
In raising money from those giving less than $200, Obama is a major league slugger while Romney is still waiting to be called up from the minor leagues. And that has made an enormous difference to the campaigns’ bottom lines.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/27/barack-obama-small-donors_n_1917521.html
Obama Plays Netanyahu Like a Fiddle, Romney Follows Behind
By: Sarah JonesSeptember 28th, 2012
Obama and Netanyahu talked today, and agreed that Iran shouldn’t have nuclear weapons. Romney raised his hand to announce that he also talked to Netanyahu, but can’t tell us what was said and then reiterated Obama’s Iran policy as his own. This comes as no surprise, since Romney has repeatedly proven himself to be a foreign policy novice — to put it kindly — and Obama’s foreign policy approach is more popular, both at home and abroad.
The media has been all atwitter with right wing talking points, why won’t Obama talk to Netanyahu? Somehow they missed that by schooling Netanyahu with the diplomatic but clear cold shoulder, Obama got everything he wanted.
On Tuesday at the UN, Netanyahu suddenly announced after relentless sabre-rattling that Israel would not attack Iran before the spring, taking off the table the pre-election strike that loomed behind his earlier words, when he falsely equated violence in Libya with the “regime” in Iran in an attempt to stoke the fires of war. Netanyahu also agreed with Obama that a diplomatic approach might work. This was a long walk from where he had been just days before.
Whether Netanyahu started showing respect for Obama because, unlike most conservatives, he can read polls or whether Obama’s cold shoulder finally sank in as Bibi’s only option given Romney’s plunge, or some combination of the two — the end result is Obama got what he wanted and what was best for the United States.
Obama got Netanyahu to back off his threats to attack Iran and he got Netanyahu to stop meddling in US elections. Netanyahu gave Obama credit for leading the effort to impose sanctions on Iran.
http://www.politicususa.com/obama-plays-netanyahu-fiddle-romney.html
Thank God,for our president,Willie would have our kids heading out to another war.
Nate Silver @fivethirtyeight
Obama’s ~5:1 edge in small donor contributions is pretty consistent with 2008 (Obama $335M, McCain $64M).
I spoke with my apolitical friend this morning..
and she was madder than a mutha about the 47% comments from Willard.
she reminded me that she was able to keep her grandparents in their home because of the medical assistance that Medicaid gave them.
I was like, ‘ yes, I remember’.
‘ and he was calling them moochers?’
me: ‘yep’
her: well, I called to check and see if I was all ok with my voter registration.
me– (over the phone doing the happy dance): I hear ya.
one person at a time, people. one person at a time.
Yes; Rikyrah. A good teacher repeats, and RE-peats and REPEATS. The truth seeps in and takes hold, and viola’ a new reality!
http://i45.tinypic.com/25ft6iu.jpg
my people..my people…my people….
BWA HA HA HA LOVING IT!
Obama Campaign Nearing 10 Million Donations
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/30/obama-campaign-10-million-donations_n_1926879.html
President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign is nearing 10 million donations, according to an email from campaign manager Jim Messina.
“Tomorrow, we could hit 10 million grassroots donations in 2012 alone,” he said. “It would be a historic milestone in grassroots politics, and a huge win for our way of building a campaign.”
According to Messina, the campaign had 9,725,074 donations as of Saturday night.
The Obama campaign had raised $157 million more than the Mitt Romney campaign as of the end of August. That lead is mostly due to small contributions under $200.
… Because some of can’t be bought by the KOCHES AND ADELSONS!
Vote counting company tied to Romney
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4725
Several Tanker trucks full of political ink have been spilled on Mitt Romney’s tenure as a vulture capitalist at Bain Capital. A more important story, however, is the fact that Bain alumni, now raising big money as Romney bundlers are also in the electronic voting machine business. This appears to be a repeat of the the infamous former CEO of Diebold Wally O’Dell, who raised money for Bush while his company supplied voting machines and election management software in the 2004 election.
In all 234 counties of Texas, the entire states of Hawaii and Oklahoma, half of Washington and Colorado, and certain counties in swing state Ohio, votes will be cast on eSlate and ePollbook machines made by Hart Intercivic. Hart Intercivic machines have famously failed in Tarrant County (Ft. Worth), adding 10,000 non-existent votes. The EVEREST study, commissioned by the Ohio secretary of state in 2007, found serious security flaws with Hart Intercivic products.
Looking beyond the well-documented Google choking laundry list of apparent fraud, failure and seeming corruption that is associated with Hart Intercivic, an ongoing Free Press investigation turned its attention to the key question of who owns the voting machine companies. The majority of the directors of Hart come from the private equity firm H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. has been heavily invested in Hart Intercivic since July 2011, just in time for the current presidential election cycle. But who is H.I.G Capital?
Out of 49 partners and directors, 48 are men, and 47 are white. Eleven of these men, including H.I.G. Founder Tony Tamer, were formerly employed at Bain and Company, and two of those men, John P. Bolduc and Douglas Berman are Romney bundlers along with former Bain and H.I.G. manager Brian Shortsleeve.
Thanks for this. Can we post on the voter thread?
Of course we already know Mitt Romney can’t win this ELECTION fair and square, so he will try his best to cheat, steal, lie, and run over anyone who gets in his way to get in the White House.
Netanyahu and Romney share ideology – and donors
A Haaretz investigation found that 19 of Netanyahu’s wealthiest American donors have also given to Romney, the Republican Party, and/or other Republican candidates.
By Chaim Levinson| 09:45 30.09.12
h Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly denies having any preference as to who wins the upcoming U.S. presidential election, it’s clear he is rooting for Republican Mitt Romney. The two see eye to eye on the Middle East, and Romney in the White House would make life easier for Netanyahu, assuming he is reelected next year
………………………
But the similarities don’t end with ideology: The two also have many donors in common. In fact, a Haaretz investigation found that 19 of Netanyahu’s wealthiest American donors, each of whom gave thousands of dollars to his campaign to defeat Moshe Feiglin in January’s Likud party leadership primary, have also given to Romney, the Republican Party, and/or other Republican candidates.
Surprisingly, Netanyahu’s donor list doesn’t include a single Democrat – a fact that indicates just how far removed he is from those American Jews who lean Democratic.
Altogether, Netanyahu received NIS 1,249,022 from 46 people for his primary campaign, an average of NIS 26,574 per person. By law, each donor’s name and address must be reported to the state comptroller, and it turns out that 37 of these donors were American.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/u-s-elections-2012/netanyahu-and-romney-share-ideology-and-donors.premium-1.467469
Cain S. LaTrans@snkscoyote
NBC’s David Gregory Misquotes Obama, Falsely Claims President Said ‘Al Qaeda Has Been Defeated’ http://thkpr.gs/QD7KEJ via @thinkprogress
utaustinliberal @utaustinliberal
Plouffe on how the MSM shills for Mitt: “We know the news media is anxious to write the Romney recovery and comeback story.” #MTP
http://youtu.be/FBfimdBILqw
ABSOULUTELY.LOVE.THIS .VIDEO Thanks!
Willie Nelson endorses President Obama 2012 on Melissa Harris Perry Show
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys
Don’t let ’em pick guitars and drive them old trucks
Make ’em be doctors and lawyers and such…
I love cowboys! ;)
ThinkProgress ✔@thinkprogress
Paul Ryan to Fox News: “I don’t have the time” to explain how to pay for our tax plan. Watch: thkpr.gs/QCPKdz
http://twitter.com/utaustinliberal/status/252400973983666177/photo/1
Here’s a sample of Plouffe on MTP from a GOP winger sight
In My Opinion
Billionaire Koch brothers try to buy state’s court
.
By Carl Hiaasen
chiaasen@MiamiHerald.com
The new stealth campaign against three Florida Supreme Court justices is being backed by those meddling right-wing billionaires from Wichita, Charles and David Koch.
They couldn’t care less about Florida, but they love to throw their money around.
Last week they uncorked the first of a series of commercials from their political action committee, Americans for Prosperity. The targets are Justices R. Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente and Peggy Quince.
They were three of the five-vote majority that in 2010 knocked down a half-baked amendment slapped together by state lawmakers seeking to nullify the federal Affordable Health Care Act.
The Florida Supreme Court upheld lower court decisions in finding that the proposed amendment contained “misleading and ambiguous language,” the hallmark of practically everything produced by this Legislature. Stoned chimpanzees have a keener grasp of constitutional law.
Conservative groups have gone after local justices before. In Iowa, a place which has nothing but vowels in common with Florida, three state justices were fired by voters after being vilified for ruling against a ban on gay marriage.
On the November ballot, Lewis, Pariente and Quince are up for merit retention, meaning voters can choose to retain them or not. This simple system was put in place to keep the state’s high court above the sleaze of political races.
The mission of the Kochs, hiding as always behind their super PAC, is to get the three justices dumped at the polls so that Gov. Rick Scott can appoint replacements.
This is worth repeating: If the Kochs have their way, Rick Scott — yes, that Rick Scott — gets to pack the Supreme Court with his own hand-picked crew.
Yikes is right.
The head of the Florida chapter of Americans for Prosperity is a person called Slade O’ Brien, whose job is to keep a straight face while saying things like: “We’re not advocating for the election or defeat of any of the justices. What we’re attempting to do is call more attention to them advocating from the bench.”
Meanwhile the state GOP’s executive board is less coy. It voted to oppose the retention of Quince, Lewis and Pariente, branding them “too extreme.”
Well, let’s have a peek at these dangerous radicals.
Justice Pariente, 63, has been on the court for 15 years. She was graduated from George Washington University Law School and clerked in Fort Lauderdale under U.S. District Judge Norm Roettger, who was no softie.
Justice Lewis, 64, who was graduated cum laude from the University of Miami Law School, has been on the court almost 14 years. Both he and Pariente were appointed by Gov. Lawton Chiles, not exactly a wild-eyed liberal.
Justice Quince, also 64, is the first African-American woman on the Supreme Court. A graduate of the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University, she worked for years prosecuting death-penalty cases in the state Attorney General’s office.
In 1999, she was jointly selected for the high court by Chiles and that wacky left-winger, Jeb Bush.
Twice before Floridians have voted to keep these justices, but now the Kochs from Wichita say they know better. You won’t see David or Charlie in any of the campaign commercials because they don’t like people to know they’re prying.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/29/3025110/billionaire-koch-brothers-try.html#storylink=cpy
Sat Sep 29, 2012 at 04:56 PM PDT.
A hidden Obama success story: weatherization and energy efficiency
by Willinois
I sometimes hear people say they wish Barack Obama had created more New Deal style programs to create jobs like the WPA or CCC. It would be even better if he did it to build clean energy projects and deal with climate change.
I often think, that’s a great idea! I liked it even better the first time when it was called the federal stimulus bill! Then I try to remember not to be such a sarcastic jerk and politely point out that Obama funded a lot of projects like that when he decided to make energy the main focus of the stimulus bill. Many forget or never knew.
Part of the trouble is that Obama didn’t advertise stimulus jobs with catchy acronyms like CCC or WPA. Sure, there were signs at some public works projects but it wasn’t mandatory. The vast majority of jobs saved or created by stimulus funding didn’t arrive with a sign to let people know where the money came from.
For example, energy efficiency and weatherization funding. I learned at Climate Progress that, after getting $5 billion in the stimulus bill, the Weatherization Assistance Program has weatherized 1 million homes as of September 27, 2012. Woohoo!
The program is a triple win. It creates jobs, helps deal with climate change by lowering energy use, and lowers monthly utility bills. The post at Climate Progress points out that “state governments have been using a network of over 1,000 local agencies and more than 4,000 private contractors while employing an average of more than 12,000 workers per quarter to perform weatherization services across the country
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/29/1137996/-A-hidden-Obama-success-story-weatherization-and-energy-efficiency
Sunday, September 30, 201
2State of the Race: Romney’s floor = Republican ceiling
Regular readers here know that I don’t pay much attention to the national polls but have been slightly obsessed (yes, that’s a bit like being slightly pregnant) with the state polls and the electoral map. One of the things I’ve been saying all along is that this race has been strikingly stable. It turns out that nowhere is that more true than Mitt Romney’s performance.
Romney began this race with a pretty solid 191 electoral votes. That includes all of the states John McCain won in 2008 plus Indiana. Anyone who’s been watching these projections from polling aggregates knows that, with the exception of occasionally adding North Carolina to bring him up to 205 electoral votes, Romney has NEVER LED in any other swing state. The only changes we’ve seen in them is to go from toss-up to Obama.
Today, it you take a look at any of the projections – from HuffPo to TPM to Real Clear Politics, you’ll see Romney is still at 191 electoral votes. In other words, the only real “swing state” (if we’re talking swinging between Romney and Obama) is North Carolina. And even that one is trending towards Obama at this point.
After this election is over, narratives about its course will certainly be written. Based on what I’m seeing now, they will likely try to tell the story of a race that was tied until the conventions and Romney’s remarks about 47% of Americans. That won’t be true. While it may have looked like a close race in national polls at one time, Romney hasn’t been able to put a single state in play on the electoral map to rise above his 191-205 base. As a matter of fact, all he’s been able to do is lose his small lead in North Carolina. In other words, what started off as his floor actually looks to be his ceiling.
The reason this is important is that, when you combine it with the reality that this is not simply a failure of the candidate, but a rejection of the Republican Party as it has positioned itself today, we can see that they are currently the party of 191 electoral votes – and loosing ground by the minute based on demographics
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2012/09/state-of-race-romneys-floor-republican.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FlpjFg+%28Smartypants%29
A Criminal Connection: Voter Fraud Firm Has a Long History with GOP
Friday, September 28, 2012 |
Posted by Deaniac83 at 3:36 PM
The Florida Republican Party and the Republican National Committee would like you to think that the latest scandal of voter registration fraud under criminal investigation in Florida by a firm they hired is just a bad accident. The firm was paid $1.3 million by the Florida GOP as well as another $3.1 million by the RNC. But now that the RNC, the FL GOP, and other state GOPs that hired the firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, have now fired them, and that should be put them in the clear.
Not so fast. This group, its former iterations, and its founder Nathan Sproul all have a long history with the Republican party, and particularly in the are of voter fraud and Democratic voter disenfranchisement. So much so, in fact, that Sproul has himself now noted that the RNC had him change the name of his firm so that the hire wouldn’t look suspicious.
Sproul said he created Strategic Allied Consulting at the RNC’s request because the party wanted to avoid being publicly linked to the past allegations. The firm was set up at a Virginia address, and Sproul does not show up on the corporate paperwork.
Why did they have to get the name changed? Because Sproul and the many iterations of this group has been associated with voter fraud before; multiple times. Notes the Republic Report, quoting from an investigation by ThinkProgress:
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/09/a-criminal-connection-voter-fraud-firm.html
Looking for David Plouffe vid from MTP. He was BITCH-SLAPPIN’ David Gregory all over the place.
oooh…can’t wait
I hope he smacked the ish out of David Gregory!
How Democratic Ads Are Exploiting Romney’s ‘47 Percent’ Moment
Benjy Sarlin-September 29, 2012, 8:36 AM
The usual sports metaphors barely do justice to how easy it is, in theory, to build an attack ad around your opponent demanding half the country “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” Softball pitch down the plate? Kickball, maybe? Tee ball?
Evidence is mounting that Mitt Romney’s leaked remarks about how 47 percent of Americans see themselves as “victims” are doing significant damage to his campaign both nationally and in key swing states around the country. While the hidden camera video has gotten plenty of play on its own in the press, Democrats are piling on as much as possible with a growing number of attack ads.
The degree of difficulty may be low, but the current body of ads connect Romney’s quotes to an impressive array of themes in a very short amount of time. Here’s how Democrats are using the hidden camera footage as a Swiss Army knife of messaging.
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/democratic-tv-ads-romney-47-percent.php
Things Are So Bad For Romney, Republicans Are Letting Him Tout RomneyCare
Evan McMorris-Santoro-September 28, 2012, 6:23 AM
A little more than 24 hours have passed since Mitt Romney took the base-alienating step of touting the health care law he signed while governor of Massachusetts in an interview with NBC. Unlike the last time his campaign heralded his signature achievement, however, the conservative grumbling was relatively muted.
Why? Because, Republicans say, things are so bad for Romney that they’ll even let him talk up his health care law.
Romney raised the law unprompted during a Wednesday interview with NBC, saying the Massachusetts law — which is very much like the national health care reform law he hopes to eliminate — is evidence that he has a heart.
“[D]on’t forget — I got everybody in my state insured,” Romney said. “One hundred percent of the kids in our state had health insurance. I don’t think there’s anything that shows more empathy and care about the people of this country than that kind of record.”
A similar statement from a Romney staffer in August led to a total freakout on the right. “This might just be the moment Mitt Romney lost the election,” RedState’s Erick Erickson said at the time. But this week, when the actual candidate was doing it? Not so big a deal
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/romney-romneycare-conservative-base.php?ref=fpblg
Posted at 04:14 PM ET, 09/28/2012
Obama is on track to win, but backers shouldn’t get overconfident. Here’s why.
By Jonathan Bernstein
One way of gaming out what is happening in this election is to compare George W. Bush’s approval rating in 2004 with Barack Obama’s approval rating now.
So where are we? Well, Obama continues to track Bush, but is running just slightly behind him. So consider that a warning for overconfident liberals — or conservatives in premature despair. By this metric, Obama is on track to win, but just barely.
The numbers, per Gallup. Obama is sitting at 50 percent approval in their current (September 25-27) reading, and has been at either 50 or 51 for each of the last six days. That’s four (or three) points behind where Bush was at the time; he had reached 54 percent approval over September 24-26 in 2004. But Gallup didn’t run a constant tracking poll on approval back then, and both of Bush’s other September numbers were at 52 percent, and he fell to 50 from October 1-3 — just where Obama is.
Bush, like Obama this year, had received a convention bounce that stuck for all of September, but he then fell spent most of October back just under 50, where he had been in August. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for him to win by just under three percentage points.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/obama-is-on-track-to-win-but-dont-get-overconfident-heres-why/2012/09/28/5ed65f4c-09a0-11e2-9eea-333857f6a7bd_blog.html
Posted at 02:06 PM ET, 09/28/2012
The GOP’s problem isn’t just the salesman. It’s what he’s selling.
By Greg Sargent
Politico is leading with a much-discussed story today that quotes a lot of Republicans lamenting that Mitt Romney is losing because he just isn’t a good politician. These folks just know Romney is very qualified to be president; his poor skills as a candidate are the problem, as are his pedigree and stiff personal style, which are ill suited to the moment.
Sure, Romney is a bad candidate. But to ascribe his problems only to his failures as a salesman for himself obscures a key aspect of all this: For now, at least, Romney’s problem is also what he’s selling.
For months, Romney’s basic argument was this: Obama made things worse. If your economic life sucks, it’s Obama’s fault; that’s grounds enough to fire him and replace him with someone who gets how the economy really works. But voters are not accepting that argument. They don’t blame Obama as much as Bush for the sluggish recovery. What’s more, despite their disappointment with the status quo, they don’t think Obama made things worse; they believe we’re at least on track to recovery. The recent NYT/CBS poll found solid majorities in Ohio and Florida think the economy is either recovering or will recover if Obama’s policies are given more time.
What about Romney’s policies? Here again, voters are not buying what he’s selling. For months, Romney led on the economy; he was enjoying the presumption of economic competence purely as an alternative vehicle for those disillusioned with Obama and the status quo. But when people started tuning in, and Romney began getting more specific about his own policies, and the public watched both conventions laying out each man’s respective vision, his advantage on the economy vanished entirely in a number of polls. Obama is even edging ahead in Florida and Ohio on who is more trusted on the economy. Clearly, not enough people believe Romney’s agenda of tax cuts and deregulation would engineer a faster recovery than is happening under Obama.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-gops-problem-isnt-just-the-salesman-its-what-hes-selling/2012/09/28/31665a9a-0990-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html
September 29, 2012
The 47 percent’s 10 percent effect
Nate Silver:
Mr. Obama’s probability of winning the Electoral College advanced to 83.9 percent in the Nov. 6 forecast, up from 81.9 percent on Wednesday.
Causation? The long answer, in Silver’s words: “[A] secretly recorded videotape … released on Sept. 17 showing Mitt Romney making unflattering comments about the ’47 percent’ of Americans who he said had become dependent on government benefits.”
The short answer, in blunt reality: Mitt Romney.
Silver recalls that he issued a tweet advisory after the tape’s release, warning that “Ninety percent of ‘game-changing’ gaffes are less important in retrospect than they seem in the moment.” This Fizzle Effect is infuriatingly real for devout partisans who always hear in the opposition’s latest blunder the explosive beginning of the dramatic end, only to watch the polls flatline.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2012/09/the-47-percents-10-percent-effect.html
September 29, 2012
Comparing the Obama and Bush Derangement Syndromes
Michelle Goldberg’s Daily Beast assessment of the on-screen pathologies of chronic Obama Derangement in Dinesh D’Souza’s “2016: Obama’s America” and Joel Gilbert’s “Dreams From My Real Father” (which portrays the president’s “mother [as] a whore”) is eloquently tidy and sociopolitically spot on: “This is who [right wingers] are. There’s nothing left to be shocked about.”
Any Obama-hating filth is no longer a kind of underground scuttlebutt; it’s potentially a proud blockbuster.
This compels a comparison–one that the right, anyway, would wish to make: Well, for eight years you guys on the left were vocal practitioners of hysterical Bush Derangement; what we’re doing is no different.
Let’s look at that. Let’s assume the opposing levels of sheer, unmitigated hatred–the left’s against Bush, the right’s against Obama–are roughly equal. But we must also look at the whys, without which the whats are merely stand-alone madness.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2012/09/comparing-the-obama-and-bush-derangement-syndromes.html
September 29, 2012
Romney plans to deliver extemporaneous “debate zingers”
When did it begin? With Al Gore’s sigh? With H.W.’s wristwatch-gazing? With “There you go again”? When did presidential debates begin shedding their cloak of broad, competitive competence and start wrapping themselves in the make-or-break “moment”? The NY Times:
Mr. Romney’s team has concluded that debates are about creating moments and has equipped him with a series of zingers that he has memorized and has been practicing on aides since August.
Pathetic. By Team Romney’s standards, Henny Youngman would have made the perfect POTUS. (Well, at least we would have laughed our way to Armegeddon.)
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2012/09/romney-plans-to-deliver-extemporaneous-debate-zingers.html
September 30, 2012
Bogart to Romney: Have an affair
Politico is running the most peculiar headline: “Defining moment eludes Mitt Romney.”
Isn’t his problem precisely 47 percent too many defining moments, from $10,000 bets to empty chairs?
And isn’t one month before the election a trifle late for candidate “definition,” especially for a candidate who’s been running twice as long as the current president has served?
Lectures a Republican strategist, “They’ve got the same people, doing the same thing they’ve been doing for eight years and there is no creativity.” Says another, “Get rid of all that staging. Be real … something dramatically real.”
Reminds me of a story. During the ’56 Stevenson-Eisenhower rematch a Democratic insider dropped by the California home of Humphrey Bogart, who was dying of esophageal cancer, to pay respects and shoot the political breeze, a conversational exercise that always lifted Bogart’s spirits. Ominous news, mentioned the insider; it seemed there was a rumor floating about regarding Adlai’s having once had an affair. The campaign was worried the story might get out. Worried? retorted Bogart. It’s the best thing that could happen to Stevenson, he half-joked. It might prove to voters that he’s human after all … or as today’s GOP strategists would put it, that he’s “something dramatically real.”
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/
Romney’s Goose is Cooked
by BooMan
Sat Sep 29th, 2012 at 10:58:12 AM EST
Walter Shapiro went to Ohio to explore his theory that Obama might lose because of a bad economy. What he discovered was something completely different.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – There are only two plausible explanations for what is going on this week in this swing state central to virtually all Mitt Romney’s victory strategies.
Either many top Ohio Republicans are in the grips of the worst panic attack since an Orson Welles 1938 radio drama convinced thousands that the earth was under attack by Martians. Or more likely, judging from the comments of these GOP insiders, Romney’s hopes of carrying Ohio are fast dwindling to something like the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot.
Shapiro discovered that no one likes Mitt Romney. One insider said, “Romney is a guy who is used to talking to the board of directors instead of the shareholders or the employees.” It seems to be the consensus.
“The Obama people have convinced Ohio voters of two things,” says Curt Steiner, a well-connected Republican public relations strategist. “That Mitt Romney doesn’t believe anything. And what he does believe is all anti-middle class.”
I’d argue that Romney has done plenty of the convincing, too. It seems like he’s mainly been campaigning against himself. It seems like Ann Romney is campaigning against him, too, saying that his biggest challenge in office would be maintaining his “mental well-being.” I mean, you know, no one knows Mitt better than Ann. If your own wife has doubts that you are tough enough to handle the job, what is left to talk about?
Just so you are clear what this all means, if Romney loses Ohio, he can win Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, and Nevada, and still lose the Electoral College 270-268. To win, he would have to win all those states and either New Hampshire or New Mexico, too.
What I am saying is that Romney’s goose is cooked
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/9/29/105812/359
The Last Stand of the Modern GOP
by BooMan
Sat Sep 29th, 2012 at 10:57:22 PM EST
Jonathan Chait wrote a nearly perfect piece back in February for New York Magazine. It was an attempt to explain the strategy (and a bit of the psychology underpinning the strategy) that the Republicans adopted in the wake of Barack Obama’s 2008 victory. Why go for total obstruction? Why move to the right on immigration? Why nurture the most far right elements of the party? Why embark on a massive voter suppression plan? Chait covered it all, and I think he nailed it. At its simplest, they know that the America they once knew and dominated is slipping away. They know that the GOP, as it has existed since 1980, is going to have to adapt or die. But they decided they should roll the dice on one more chance at glory. If they could pin the economic downturn on the president and gin up enough racial and class resentment, they might be able to take back the House in 2010 and the Senate and White House in 2012. With the trifecta for at least two years, they could make their last stand and perhaps stall the coming progressive revolution for a decade or more. Here’s a particularly good part of Chait’s piece:
Last summer, Obama was again desperate to reach compromise, this time on legislation to reduce the budget deficit, which had come to dominate the political agenda and symbolize, in the eyes of Establishment opinion, Obama’s failure to fulfill his campaign goal of winning bipartisan cooperation. In extended closed-door negotiations, Obama offered Republicans hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts and a permanent extension of Bush-era tax rates in return for just $800 billion in higher revenue over a decade. This was less than half the new revenue proposed by the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission. Republicans spurned this deal, too.
Instead the party has bet everything on 2012, preferring a Hail Mary strategy to the slow march of legislative progress. That is the basis of the House Republicans’ otherwise inexplicable choice to vote last spring for a sweeping budget plan that would lock in low taxes, slash spending, and transform Medicare into private vouchers—none of which was popular with voters. Majority parties are known to hold unpopular votes occasionally, but holding an unpopular vote that Republicans knew full well stood zero chance of enactment (with Obama casting a certain veto) broke new ground in the realm of foolhardiness.
The way to make sense of that foolhardiness is that the party has decided to bet everything on its one “last chance.” Not the last chance for the Republican Party to win power—there will be many of those, and over time it will surely learn to compete for nonwhite voters—but its last chance to exercise power in its current form, as a party of anti-government fundamentalism powered by sublimated white Christian identity politics. (And the last chance to stop the policy steamroller of the new Democratic majority.)
That is a B-I-N-G-O, right there.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/9/29/225722/752
Romney Would Have Let Bin-Laden Chill
by BooMan
Sun Sep 30th, 2012 at 09:47:03 AM EST
Here’s a reminder:
In April of 2007, Romney said, “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person,” but quickly changed his mind after bin Laden was killed. “Any thinking American would have ordered exactly the same thing,” he proclaimed earlier this year.
It’s rare for a politician to openly admit that they don’t think. But, really, it’s just one more flip-flop in a long string.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/9/30/9473/32618
Roland Martin had on Jim Wallis of Sojourners on . He has a film about the 47% –
http://www.theline.com
Wallis said the remarks by Willard were a fundamental challenge to the Christian notion of ‘ how do we treat the least of these.’
Juan Williams having a moment of sheer revelation…
…It still brings tears to my eyes.
Dispatch Poll: Obama widens lead as balloting starts
Source: Columbus Dispatch
A new Dispatch Poll shows him (Romney) trailing President Barack Obama in bellwether Ohio by 9 points, 51 percent to 42 percent.
A surge of Democratic support for Obama has transformed the race since the first Dispatch Poll had the two dead-even at 45 percent just before the Republican National Convention in late August.
The survey is the fifth major poll — from The Washington Post to Fox News — of Ohio voters in a week to show the president ahead by 5 to 10 points. He also leads in surveys of most of the remaining swing states.
Obama’s rise comes at an especially fortuitous time for the Democrat: Ohioans begin casting early ballots in two days.
-snip-
Read more: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/09/30/1-dispatch-poll-shows-obama-in-lead.html
Good Morning, Chics!
Love your choice this morning, Rikyrah! It makes me think about my sweet little parents! I still love them!
I’m watching you, young lady; showing those legs today are you? LOL
;)
Good Morning, Everyone:)
Good Morning, Ladies & Everyone! :-)