“When Doves Cry” is a song by the American musician Prince, and the lead single from his 1984 album Purple Rain. It was a worldwide hit, and his first American number one single, topping charts for five weeks. According to Billboard magazine, it was the top-selling single of the year.[citation needed] It was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, shipping two-million units in the United States.[2]
According to the Purple Rain DVD, Prince was asked by the director to write a song to match the theme of a particular segment of the film – one which involved intermingled parental difficulties and a love affair. The next morning, Prince had reportedly composed two songs, one of which was “When Doves Cry”. According to Per Nilsen, Prince’s biographer, the song was inspired by his relationship with Vanity 6 member, Susan Moonsie.
Hat tip: Anita Christine!
“The Office Of The President of The United States is not a caucasian office, or a Black office, or a Latino/Hispanic office. It is not a red office, or a blue office, it is not a Progressive office, a Conservative office or a GOP office. It is not a Republican office, or a Liberal office, it is not a Independent office or a left or right wing office.
It IS The Office Of The President Of The United States Of America…..ALL America.”
HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!!!!!!
MANY BLESSING TO ONE AND ALL.
Happy New Year, Everyone!
Does anyone remember this moment from the 1984 Summer Olympics?
I can’t remember, Rikyrah! Maybe Ametia remembers?
This song is dedicated to my hubby; I miss you this New Years eve, even though I’m with my new grandson. I LOVE YOU HONEY BUN.
Awww…that’s so sweet!
Happy New Year to both of you! Happy New Year to the little sweetie too!
Maze forever!!!!!!!!!!!!
Happy New Year, Everyone :)
Just me and Peanut ringing in the new year together….along with her new playdough ice cream and popcorn maker (sigh)…
Happy New Year Rikyrah & Peanut! Enjoy the ice cream! ;)
Enjoy your New Year, rikyrah & Peanut!
HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL!!!!!
Happy New Year, Dannie!
Happy New Year, Dannie. All the best to you in 2012!
HAPPY NEW YEAR DANNIE!!
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney led the Des Moines Register Iowa poll released Saturday night, with Texas Rep. Ron Paul close behind and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum in third. Romney had 24%, Paul was at 22% and Santorum had 15% in the final major poll before Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses.
The poll from the states largest paper has a good track record; its poll released shortly before the 2008 Republican caucuses almost mirrored the outcome a few days later.
In 2008, the poll showed 32% of those surveyed supported Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who went on to get 34% of the vote in the caucuses and Romney, who finished second in the poll with 26%, got 25% in the caucuses.
The latest two major polls of Iowa Republicans were similar to the Register poll. An NBC/Marist poll released Friday showed Romney with 23% and Paul with 21%, and a CNN/Time/ORC International poll released Wednesday showed Romney and Paul statisti cally tied for the top spot, with 25% and 22%, respectively.
Now for a little Minnesota funk
There you GO, SG2! :-)
Yeah baby!
Got some of these in the crock pot
http://www.roadfood.com/photos/10539.jpg
Yum Yum gimme some..
I’m loading up…
BWA HA HA *I’m watchin you young lady*
;)
That’s what I’m talking ’bout!
I love Sly Stone
You might like to hear my organ
playing “Ride Sally Ride”
Shake Your Groove Thing
DNC Vice-Chair: Mitt Romney Needs To Repudiate His Son’s Birther Remarks
R.T. Rybak, the mayor of Minneapolis and a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, says Mitt Romney needs to personally and publicly rebuke the birther joke his son Matt made Friday in New Hampshire.
“Mitt Romney has never had the guts to stand up when one of his surrogates has said something wrong, even his own son,” Rybak told TPM on Friday evening. “He doesn’t have the guts to stand up when someone says something that outrageously wrong.”
On Friday, Matt Romney joked that his father would release his tax returns — a key attack on him from Democrats — when Obama gave in to the demands of conspiracy theorists.
“I heard someone suggest the other day that as soon as President Obama releases his grades and birth certificate and sort of a long list of things, that maybe he’d do that,” Matt said.
After the line caused a stir, Matt Romney created a Twitter account for the purpose of apologizing for the comment.
“I repeated a dumb joke. My bad,” he tweeted.
Rybak was unimpressed with the apology.
“It’s a bad joke that the Romneys think they can repeat a lie to distract from his failure to be honest about his income,” he told TPM. He was in Iowa Friday to bracket Romney, who toured the state with Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ).
Rybak said the joke exposed Romney’s failure to repudiate birther comments from others like Donald Trump, whom Romney met with earlier this year. Romney has strongly stated in the past that he believes Obama was born in the United States.
But Rybak said Romney needs to publicly condemn his son’s joke as well. He accused the Romney campaign of trying to curry favor with the more extremist wing of the GOP.
“I think this is another example of Romney, or in this case the Romneys, saying anything they can to try and win a vote because they can’t win by simply saying what they’re for,” he said.
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/dnc-vice-chair-mitt-romney-needs-to-repudiate-his-sons-birther-remarks.php
.Sat Dec 31, 2011 at 10:33 AM PST.
MONTANA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
by The Troubadour
This is huge.
The Montana Supreme Court has just upheld the state’s ban on corporate spending in state elections, a ruling that stands in stark opposition to Citizens United and overturns a lower court’s ruling that had deemed Montana’s century-old ban on election spending unconstitutional.
The immensity of this moment – and the potential reverberations this ruling could have – cannot be overstated, for Montana’s highest court has provided a blueprint for how other states can contravene the Citizens United decision in state and local elections.
The Great Falls Tribune Reports:
The Montana Supreme Court restored the state’s century-old ban on direct spending by corporations on political candidates or committees in a ruling Friday that interest groups say bucks a high-profile U.S. Supreme Court decision granting political speech rights to corporations.
The decision grants a big win to Attorney General Steve Bullock, who personally represented the state in defending its ban that came under fire after the “Citizens United” decision last year from the U.S. Supreme court.
“The Citizens United decision dealt with federal laws and elections — like those contests for president and Congress,” said Bullock, who is now running for governor. “But the vast majority of elections are held at the state or local level, and this is the first case I am aware of that examines state laws and elections.”
The State of Montana has, since the 1912 Corrupt Practices Act, banned direct corporate spending in state elections. When, in 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its Citizens United decision that corporate free speech – in the form of political campaign spending – was constitutionally protected, Montana’s ban was immediately challenged in the courts as unconstitutional.
Three Montana corporations – Western Tradition Partnership, Champion Painting and Montana Shooting Sports Association – took the State to court, charging that the 1912 Corrupt Practices Act was unconstitutional. A lower court agreed, and ruled that Montana corporations’ election spending was now protected by the First Amendment based on Citizens United.
However, in an incredible and deeply significant decision, Montana’s Supreme Court ruled against the lower court using strong, unequivocal language.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/31/1050271/-MONTANA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?via=siderec
THIS IS A BFD!
Friday, December 30, 2011
Last Call
Posted by Zandar
This week’s “Obama is DOOOOOOOOOOMED” article comes from CNN, where commentator Brad Chase accuses the President of ignoring the youth vote…and in turn, America’s twenty-somethings will completely abandon the Democrats and stay home in 2012 unless the President tackles the student debt crisis.
The sobering reality: just 55.3 percent of Americans between 16 and 29 have jobs. And earlier this year, Americans’ student loan debt surpassed credit card debt for the first time ever.
Rather than develop a lasting initiative to help young unemployed Americans, the President launched “Greater Together” – a campaign tool that offers community forums rather than jobs. Rather than provide a bailout to those crushed by the burden of educational loans, his student debt relief program was pathetic – only reducing interest rates by a measly 0.5 percent.
No wonder less than half of Americans 18-29 approve of Obama.
In other words, candidates in both parties are so busy buying off the Boomers that the broke-ass Millenials simply fail to count. Chase goes on to say that student debt relief would go a long way in getting voters under 30 back into the big blue tent, along with jobs jobs jobs.
But here’s the thing: the Democrats did just that with student loan relief bills in the House and Senate…which are still sitting in committee and have no chance of passage because Republicans immediately vowed to block the legislation in the Senate and have no intention of bringing the bill out of committee in the House. And the Republicans happily killed the American Jobs Act.
And for this, Millenials should stay home and not vote, nor should they care about what happens because Washington’s just going to screw them over anyway, right?
Let me ask you a question. How does the youth vote staying home get more and better Democrats in Congress? Answer: it doesn’t. And the last time the Republicans had control of Congress and the White House? They passed a law specifically designed to screw over Millenials on student debt, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which classified student loans specifically as debt that cannot be forgiven by bankruptcy and made it harder to declare bankruptcy anyway.
That’s what Republicans did for the Millenials.
Now tell me again why attacking President Obama and staying home on Election Day is such a smart idea as far as getting this law fixed, guys. I’m all ears.
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2011/12/last-call_30.html
Ron Paul’s principles and Glenn Greenwald’s duplicity
Saturday, December 31, 2011 |
Posted by rootless_e at 11:12 AM
Glenn Greenwald: Whatever else one wants to say, it is indisputably true that Ron Paul is the only political figure with any sort of a national platform — certainly the only major presidential candidate in either party — who advocates policy views on issues that liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed are both compelling and crucial. The converse is equally true: the candidate supported by liberals and progressives and for whom most will vote — Barack Obama — advocates views on these issues (indeed, has taken action on these issues) that liberals and progressives have long claimed to find repellent, even evil. [..] He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield.
This is the bill Ron Paul introduced in Congress in 2001.
The President of the United States is authorized to place a money bounty, drawn in his discretion from the $40,000,000,000 appropriated on September 14, 2001, in the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Re- covery from and Response to Terrorists Attacks on the United States or from private sources, for the capture, alive or dead, of Osama bin Laden or any other al Qaeda conspirator responsible for the act of air piracy upon the United States on September 11, 2001, under the authority of any letter of marque or reprisal issued under this Act.
So Greenwald thinks that private pirates licensed to kill roaming the world is morally pure, but the US government taking violent action against an armed enemy is evil. The moral bankruptcy of Libertarianism has never been more starkly on display. Paul reintroduced that bill in 2007. By the way, the only US Congressional Representative to vote against the Afghan war was Barbara Lee. Paul voted for it. Lee is black, female and a supporter of President Obama so she fails the moral purity test, I guess. Part of Paul’s appeal for the fake-left must be his steadfast commitment to making symbolic moral stands that don’t mean anything, but always voting with the GOP when needed – that and his convenient moral flexibility.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2011/12/ron-pauls-princples-and-glenn.html
December 31, 2011
Romney’s strategy: Occupy Obama
In a customarily squalid re-advertisement of Republican indifference to intellectual integrity and human decency, John Boehner’s spokesman told the NY Times:
Americans expect their elected leaders to work together to boost job creation, even in an election year. Divided government can be challenging, but that’s no excuse for [Obama] to put his presidency on autopilot when so many Americans are looking for work.
That statement, as you might have guessed, was in tailored response to the president’s announced re-election strategy of: I’ve had it with the wretched Republicans. Haven’t you?
The Times frames it a bit less colloquially:
President Obama, heading into a grueling re-election campaign, plans to intensify his attacks against an unpopular Congress, concluding that he cannot pass any major legislation in 2012 because of unrelenting Republican hostility to his agenda.
As I’ve already noted elsewhere and often, I have little doubt as to the actual “re-election” portion of that scenario. The question is the extent of the “grueling” part. Current polling indicates a tight race between Obama and the GOP’s eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, but current polling is about as relevant to November 2012 as Sarah Palin’s Facebook comments are to the theoretical future of quantum physics.
Yet to come are hundreds of headlines of yet unknown, electoral influences; namely, the vicissitudes of foreign affairs and the economy’s health. Republicans are of course doing whatever they can to cast the worst conceivable gloom on the former and poison the latter. But Obama’s greatest strategic challenge is less likely to come in defending his record — and in attacking Romney’s as an immense explosion of dazzling flip-flops — than in battling what appears to be the emerging Romniac strategy: to Occupy Obama, or rather to pre-occupy Obama with unrelenting blitzkriegs of lying monstrosities.
Obama’s European socialism, his Marxist “entitlement society” of leveled outcomes, his unAmerican values, his apologetic foreign policy — these are but the beginning salvos of a Romney assault designed to deflect the incoming shells of his own flip-floppery, as well of course to entice the media into a bloody indulgence and, it goes without saying, to delight the hooligan base.
I’m betting it won’t work. Nearly a year of this humbug will undoubtedly thrill the core Obama-haters, and for a while it will unsettle the independently clueless; but 10 unremitting months of such brazen bullshit are several months too many. On the stump Obama will cast that cool smile, he’ll look about to comedically confirm that he’s indeed surrounded by reality and realists, and then, having done both, he’ll chuckle. And the crowd will chuckle. And in short order Romney will appear, to the many, to be precisely what he is: desperate and foolish.
Two other items: the no little matter of a probable Ron Paul third-party run, which will drain Romney of vital votes in essential states; and then there’s the GOP base’s disaffection with the unreliable Romney, which should score some quantifiable effect on GOP turnout.
A “grueling” re-election campaign? Notwithstanding present polling, I’d label that assessment gratuitous.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2011/12/romneys-strategy-occupy-obama.html
December 30, 2011
Ron Paul’s staggering obliviousness
It’s top-down ahistorical hornswoggling like Ron Paul’s, or, in his case, just historical ignorance, that so often feeds, perpetuates and I daresay even consecrates America’s bottom-up stupidity. Paul’s is the dullard’s choice of demagogic sincerity: It is important to note that not all demagoguery comes in the form of deliberate misrepresentation; some, like Paul’s, is populist quackery straight from the uninformed heart — and to the broadly unenlightened, nothing appeals like the clean, radiant integrity of the alarmingly unenlightened.
At this all too obvious point in the prolonged, blood-curdling pratfall known as the Republican presidential contest, slamming Ron Paul with further evidence may seem superfluous. But what the hell. Here he is, speaking to an Iowa audience on Wednesday, observing that “In many ways, I identify with both groups” — the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street — which “are just tired of it all”:
I think it makes my point. There’s a lot of people unhappy, and they’re not so happy with the two-party system because we have had people go in and out of office, congress changes, the presidency changes, they run on one thing, they do something else. Nothing ever changes.
That string of stunning fatuities, indeed, makes my point.
Ronald Reagan’s reign of kindergarten ideology changed nothing? It didn’t plant the pathogenic seed in the body politic’s developing worldview that government is the common enemy? The subsequent, logically inexorable Gingrich Revolution of ’94 didn’t fundamentally coarsen our discourse and poison our politics? The concomitant prosperity of Bill Clinton’s era, notwithstanding his imposition of higher taxes on higher incomes, meant nothing at all? The vulgar, one-two punches of a George W. Bush and the retention of a Gingrichlike Congress didn’t careen us into fiscal implosions, bellicose nightmares and mass unemployment? And President Obama — who, by the way, has done pretty much precisely what he promised — hasn’t decisively turned those sinister tides?
Nothing ever changes? My dear Mr. Paul, in the past three decades America has undergone the gut-wrenching horrors and forced edification of a sort of national primal scream; the twoscore period of 1980-2020 likely will be chaptered in 22nd-century American history books as either the era of irreversible decline or anguished rebirth. And you, Mr. Paul, while standing right in the thick of it, have somehow mistaken this whirlwind for the doldrums.
I’d be less discontented with the ahistorical garbage you’re selling, Mr. Paul, if I believed your salesmanship to be disingenuous — something, say, more along the demagogic lines of a blustering Huey Long. But of course it isn’t. You actually believe the insipid claptrap you’re hustling — to the insipid, hook-line-and-sinker hordes.
The upside? These overtures of yours, Mr. Paul, to the gullibly overwrought Tea Party/Occupy Wall Street crowd “fuel speculation that [you] will make a third-party bid.”
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2011/12/ron-pauls-staggering-obliviousness.html
one of my favorite clips from Love Actually:
LOL
December 31, 2011 10:00 AM
Keeping the focus on Romney’s tax returns
By Steve Benen
Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry expressed some interest in Mitt Romney’s elusive tax returns last week, and the Democratic National Committee is trying to keep the story going this week.
For those who can’t watch clips online, it’s a 40-second video noting that every major Republican presidential candidate in the post-Watergate era — and if we go back a little further, this includes George Romney in 1968 — has released their tax records. Mitt Romney, at least for now, refuses.
In releasing the video, DNC National Press Secretary Melanie Roussell explained the likely rationale for Romney’s reluctance: “It would show that on the millions of dollars in income he enjoys each year, Mitt Romney pays a lower tax rate than teachers, fire fighters, police officers or other middle class wage earners. Mitt Romney will tell you that it’s not required by the law that he release his returns but when he’s advocating for policies that benefit the wealthy and the well-heeled, voters have a right to know what conflicts he might have with his own finances.”
Romney has, in fact, repeatedly told interviewers that he’s not “required by law” to release his returns. That’s true. The problem for Romney, though, is that every nominee from both parties did it anyway, not because it’s mandatory, but because they thought it was the right thing to do.
We can only speculate as to exactly why the former one-term governor is so reluctant, but it’s a pretty safe bet that Romney doesn’t want the public to know he pays a lower tax rate than middle-class workers. Because Romney still collects seven-figure checks from his vulture-capitalist firm, he benefits from the “carried interest” loophole, which taxes private equity and venture capital income at a lower, 15% rate, as compared to 35% on ordinary income.
As we discussed the other day, it creates a dynamic that Romney would prefer to downplay:
1. Mitt Romney is worth $250 million.
2. He got rich by laying off American workers.
3. He pays a lower tax rate than you and the rest of the middle class.
4. He wants to be president so he can keep it this way.
For what it’s worth, some in the media are beginning to find this interesting. (When presidential candidates start hiding things, it’s inevitable that reporters will get at least a little curious.) Yesterday Romney sat down with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and, in response to several questions, said he’d “consider” releasing his tax returns “if I become president.” In other words, after the election Romney might do what every other modern candidate has done before the election.
Whether Romney’s preference for secrecy proves untenable remains to be seen, but my hunch is the longer he drags this out, the bigger the problem will become.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_12/keeping_the_focus_on_romneys_t034437.php
Iran Could Be Big Story Next Year
by BooMan
Sat Dec 31st, 2011 at 01:58:36 PM EST
I’m finally done fighting with my brand new Christmas smoker. I got it up to temperature and it’s smoking a 4lb. brisket. Now I can get back to blogging. One thing I feel is likely to come to a head in 2012 is the situation with Iran’s nuclear program. I’m pleased to see that new sanctions and threats of even more sanctions have finally brought Iran back to the negotiating table. The invasion of Iraq freaked the Iranian government out for a while and they stopped working on a nuclear weapon. At least, that’s what our intelligence community concluded, much to the neo-cons consternation. But it appears that they started it again once it became clear that we were bogged down in Iraq like a dinosaur in the La Brea tar pits. As Iraq marks today as a new national holiday, signifying the official end of the U.S. occupation, Iran can no longer count on America’s overextended military for protection. They can threaten to close the Straits of Hormuz, but they can’t think they’d be able to do it with impunity or that America would be stretched thin by their response.
The Obama administration does not want a military conflict with Iran, and it may not need one to stop Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
Top negotiator Saeed Jalili has said Iran is ready to rejoin EU-led talks with major powers on assuaging Western concerns over its nuclear programme even as tensions with the United States soar in the Gulf.
“We will give a resounding and many-pronged response to any threat against the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Jalili told Iranian diplomats gathered in Tehran in comments reported on Saturday. But both he and other officials left the door open to resuming long-stalled talks led by European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton on Western concerns over Iran’s nuclear program me.
“We officially told them to come back to the negotiation based on cooperation,” Jalili said.
The thing to worry about is the possibility that these talks fail. And that could be a big story in 2012 that has a big impact on the U.S. presidential elections and on the government and stability of Iran.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2011/12/31/135836/84
Romney claims Obama will be a ‘footnote in history’
Posted by
CNN’s Kevin Liptak
(CNN) – Mitt Romney chose to ignore his GOP rivals at an event in New Hampshire Saturday, opting instead to issue a sharp line of attack against President Barack Obama.
Romney, who is running well ahead of his competitors in the Granite State, said Obama would be remembered only as a “footnote” in history.
“I was asked yesterday by a reporter how the president would be remembered in history,” Romney said. “I said as a footnote in history. We have major challenges and he hasn’t dealt with them. We have a debt problem. What’s he done about it? Made it worse!”
Even if Obama were to lose re-election next November, he will have made history as the first African-American elected president.
Romney appeared at the event on New Hampshire’s seacoast, taking a quick detour from campaigning in Iowa to shake hands and meet voters in the town of Hampton. Romney was introduced by two key backers in New Hampshire: former Gov. John H. Sununu and former Sen. Judd Gregg.
Romney’s decision to forgo attacks on his GOP rivals reflects the comfortable leads he’s established in the site of the first-in-the-nation primary. A CNN/Time/ORC International poll taken December 21-27 shows Romney running more than twenty points ahead of his closest competitor. Romney got the support of 44% of likely GOP primary voters, while Ron Paul, who was in second, garnered 17%.
Speaking about Obama, Romney painted the incumbent as someone without the skills required to improve America’s stalled economy.
“I don’t think he’s a bad guy, I think he’s overwhelmed and over his head,” Romney said.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/31/romney-obama-a-footnote-in-history/
President Obama Signs Defense Authorization Bill http://dlvr.it/12zp6M
Flash Workout with The First Lady
December 31, 2011 10:25 AM
The right’s new target: Girl Scouts?
By Steve Benen
Conservatives’ antipathy towards the Girl Scouts has generally been found on the fringes. In 1994, for example, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family published a memorable attack on the Girl Scouts, insisting the group “lost their way” after the Scouts made a religious oath optional for membership. (For the religious right, faith shouldn’t be voluntary; it should be mandated on children by authority figures demanding vows of allegiance.)
I can’t find it online anymore, but back in 2005, Amanda Marcotte had a great item about various paranoid voices on the right, complaining about “radical lesbian feminists” having taken over the Girl Scouts.
In general, most of the American mainstream ignored all of this, and the Girl Scouts were not caught up in the right’s culture war. But just over the last few days, conservatives’ hostility seems to have reached new heights.
The right-wing media closed out 2011 by attacking the Girl Scouts of America for, in the words of Glenn Beck website The Blaze, publishing a book that “refers young readers to Media Matters for America as one of the primary sources for debunking lies and deceit.” Fox News led the charge, devoting more than 15 minutes over two days and three programs to the GSA’s “liberal ideology,” including its purported ties to Planned Parenthood.
It was a quite week for these attacks. The cast of “Fox & Friends” told viewers the Girl Scouts have a “liberal bias”; a co-host of Fox News’ “The Five” called the Girl Scouts’ book “indoctrination”; and CNN contributor Dana Loesch not only lamented the “moral decline” of the Girl Scouts, she also suggested conservatives should stop buying their cookies as a form of political protest.
Comedy Central responded with the appropriate derision.
Don’t be fooled by those cute little outfits or merit badges. The Girl Scouts aren’t just selling you a pack of cookies — they’re selling you a pack of lies, with a light coating of toasted coconut communism. Why do the Girl Scouts teach survival skills? It’s clearly an attempt to build some kind of liberal tween militia. Volunteering and “helping” others? Just another strategy to mobilize the working poor and other key Democratic voting blocs.
We need to shield our nation’s girls from this dangerous organization and stop them from drinking the Kool-Aid, no matter how well it washes down those Thin Mints.
December 31, 2011 11:00 AM
Mitt Antoinette
By Steve Benen
It’s a campaign tactic that’s been around for a long while, but Mitt Romney seems eager to perfect it: identify the candidate’s most damaging flaws, then project those flaws onto the candidate’s rivals. This week offered a classic example.
Mitt Romney on Thursday sought to portray President Barack Obama as out of touch with the struggles of everyday Americans — a charge he himself has often faced — by comparing the president to a former French queen who was overthrown during the French Revolution.
“When the president’s characterization of our economy was, ‘It could be worse,’ it reminded me of Marie Antoinette: ‘Let them eat cake,’” Romney said, referring to the infamously dismissive remark toward the poor attributed to the queen.
As Jon Chait noted, this is “in keeping with his favorite method of deflecting attacks.”
Romney anticipates his greatest vulnerability, then peremptorily lobs the charge against his adversary. That way, when his opponent uses the charge it’s repetitive.
Romney first deployed this technique against New Gingrich. He has deployed a furious assault against what was briefly his chief adversary, painting him as a flip-flopper who has wavered on abortion and even supported health care reform in Massachusetts. Gingrich was left stammering helplessly in response. After sifting through the charges and counter-charges, all the Republican voters knew was that you had two candidates accusing each other of flip-flopping and trying to help sick people get health insurance. The natural next step is to open his general election campaign by portraying Obama as a callous aristocrat.
At this point, anything’s possible.
It takes quite a bit of chutzpah for any candidate to campaign this way. For crying out loud, Romney accused Gingrich of taking both sides of every issue and being an unreliable champion of far-right causes. How does one even intellectually process something like this? Is it the result of a pathological lack of self-awareness, an assumption that voters are idiots, the belief that the media is hopelessly incompetent, or some combination of all of them?
But this Marie Antoinette line is arguably even more beautiful. Romney — who, by the way, speaks fluent French and spent nearly three years in France — amassed an enormous fortune thanks to a vulture-capitalist firm known for breaking apart companies and firing their American workforces. Despite a quarter-billion in the bank, and several mansions (one of which he intends to quadruple in size), Romney is running on a campaign platform that includes slashing public investments that benefit working families (including the total elimination of funding for Planned Parenthood), massive tax breaks for the very wealthy, repealing safeguards that protect the public from Wall Street recklessness, and calling for more foreclosures on those American families struggling to keep their homes.
Two weeks ago, Romney told PBS he’d like to see President Obama stop criticizing “Wall Street” and “insurance company executives” altogether. Yesterday, he debated whether he meets the “classical” definition of “a Wall Street guy.”
Romney thinks it’s funny to joke about being unemployed; he finds it inconvenient when he doesn’t have anything smaller than a $100 bill in his wallet while on the campaign trail; he doesn’t blink when offering to make a $10,000 bet; and he considers a $1,500 a year tax cut for the typical middle-class family to be a meaningless “band aid.”
This guy wants to compare Barack Obama to Marie Antoinette?
If votes are awarded on the basis of audacity, Romney should go ahead and start drafting his inaugural address.
Update: A couple of emailers remind me that Romney also intends to repeal the Affordable Care Act, taking health coverage away from millions. “Let them eat cake,” indeed.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_12/mitt_antoinette034439.php
Elections – POLITICS
Virginia Attorney General Intervenes in GOP Primary Ballot Dispute
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is intervening in the Virginia presidential primary dispute and plans to file emergency legislation to address the inability of most Republican presidential candidates to get their name on the ballot, Fox News has learned.
Only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul qualified for the Virginia primary, a contest with 49 delegates up for grabs.
The failure of other candidates to qualify — notably Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry — led to complaints that the 10,000-signature requirement is too stringent.
Cuccinelli, who is a Republican, shared the concerns.
“Recent events have underscored that our system is deficient,” he said in a statement. “Virginia owes her citizens a better process. We can do it in time for the March primary if we resolve to do so quickly.”
Cuccinelli’s proposal is expected to state that if the Virginia Board of Elections certifies that a candidate is receiving federal matching funds, or has qualified to receive them, that candidate will upon request be automatically added to the ballot.
Two former Democratic attorneys general are also backing the move, along with a former Democratic state party chairman and a former Republican state party chairman.
Former state Attorney General Tony Troy called the Virginia process a “legal and constitutional embarrassment.” Fellow former top Virginia prosecutor Steve Rosenthal said: “This is not a Democratic or Republican issue. If it takes emergency legislation, then we need to do it.”
Sources told Fox News that Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell is expected to support the emergency legislation as well.
Perry has meanwhile filed a lawsuit, while a local activist has filed another lawsuit on Gingrich’s behalf — though the individual is not with the campaign.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/31/virginia-attorney-general-intervenes-in-gop-primary-ballot-dispute/#ixzz1i95WX7mP
Obama campaign offers to sell Romney’s son a birth certificate mug
By Alicia M. Cohn – 12/31/11 11:16 AM ET
President Obama’s campaign would be happy to sell Mitt Romney’s son a birth certificate mug from the president’s campaign store.
Romney’s son Matt joked Friday that his father might release his tax returns when Obama releases his birth certificate.
The campaign tweeted from Obama’s official Twitter feed: “Mitt Romney’s son thinks President Obama should release his birth certificate. Guess he doesn’t have one of our mugs? http://OFA.BO/N13uCf”
The mugs read “Made in the USA” under a photo of Obama, and included a replication of the president’s birth certificate.
There’s really no way to make the birth certificate conspiracy completely go away, so we might as well laugh at it — and make sure as many people as possible are in on the joke,” the Obama campaign store posted.
Romney’s son also used Twitter later in the day to apologize for “repeating a bad joke.”
Obama Campaign Manager Jim Messina had already capitalized on the comment in an email to supporters that slammed the “Tea Party line” and suggested they help “drive up the cost of this kind of politics.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/twitter-room/other-news/201855-obama-campaign-offers-to-sell-romneys-son-a-birth-certificate-mug#.Tv9acPl0JgY.twitter
December 31, 2011 9:15 AM
Enjoy the payroll tax break while it lasts
By Steve Benen
Last week, after a needlessly-contentious process, Congress approved a two-month extension of the payroll tax break. As part of the agreement, a conference committee will try to come up with an agreement to extend the cut through the end of 2012.
I’ve been rather pessimistic about the likelihood of success, and yesterday, the odds got worse.
The Senate Republican leader announced Friday that he had chosen three of his colleagues to try to thrash out a bipartisan deal on payroll taxes, unemployment benefits and Medicare.
The three Republican senators will join four Democratic senators and 13 House members on a conference committee wrestling with the issues, which tied the Senate in knots for more than two months.
The newly named Republican conferees are Senators Jon Kyl of Arizona, Michael D. Crapo of Idaho and John Barrasso of Wyoming.
These aren’t three senators you’d appoint to a conference committee if you want to be constructive. These are three senators you’d appoint to a conference committee if you want to be destructive.
Kyl, for example, was instrumental in sabotaging the super-committee process, and was described by Democratic negotiators as “walking napalm.” Crapo and Barrasso, meanwhile, are two far-right senators who’ve never demonstrated any willingness to accept concessions on anything.
What’s more, note that the House GOP leadership has already announced its conferees, most of whom have already said they don’t want a payroll-cut extension no matter what concessions Democrats are willing to make.
The conference committee will technically have until March 1, when the cut expires, but as a practical matter, they’ll have to wrap up a deal well before then, giving both chambers a chance to debate and vote on an agreement.
Of course, the likelihood of there even being an agreement now borders on fanciful. Republican participants won’t be willing to compromise, and most of them don’t fear failure since they oppose tax breaks for the middle class on principle.
What about the risk of being blamed? Remember, as far as GOP leaders are concerned, the process itself offers cover. Instead of last week, when House Republicans became the clear villains, when the conference committee struggles to come up with a bipartisan solution, the party will find it easier to spread the blame around.
“It’s not our fault,” GOP leaders will say. “We tried to work with Democrats on a deal, but one didn’t come together. Oh well.”
For Republicans, it’s the best of all possible worlds: middle-class taxes would go up, the economy would take a hit, public disgust for Washington would be renewed, and the media would feel obligated to say “both sides” failed to reach an agreement.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_12/enjoy_the_payroll_tax_break_wh034436.php
A Lion of the Pulpit, Aging Now, Has a Message for New Generations
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
Published: December 30, 2011
Several hours before the other ministers were to arrive, a young preacher named Reginald High drove up to a tidy town house here, the home in retirement of the greatest black churchman in America, the Rev. Gardner C. Taylor. At 93, after a lifetime of religious and political vigor, Dr. Taylor was finally bending to the ravages of age. He said he had been thinking a lot lately of the biblical Jacob — “old and weak, leaning on his staff,” yet still worshiping God.
That week in early December, Mr. High helped Dr. Taylor get out of bed and change from nightclothes into olive gabardine slacks, a brown checked jacket and a gold tie. That done, Mr. High settled Dr. Taylor into a cushioned seat, discreetly replacing the wheelchair he has recently required. On this day in particular, Mr. High knew, Dr. Taylor needed to preserve every atom of his dignity.
During his long career, Dr. Taylor led Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, from obscurity to national prominence. He had been one of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest allies in the civil rights movement. He had received more than a dozen honorary doctoral degrees, had been named by Baylor University as among the dozen most effective preachers in the English-speaking world and had been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton.
Behind the public figure, though, resided the private man, a mentor and teacher and inspiration to dozens of younger ministers. It was this less visible part of Dr. Taylor that mattered perhaps most within African-American Christianity, where a black pastor is measured by his living legacy, his “sons” and “daughters” in the ministry.
Some of Dr. Taylor’s protégés — the Rev. Dr. Charles G. Adams of Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit; the Rev. Dr. Johnny Ray Youngblood of Brooklyn, a national leader in the ministry to black men; the Rev. Dr. Suzan Johnson Cook, the United States ambassador at large for international religious freedom — became famous themselves. Others, like the six ministers coming to visit Dr. Taylor on this day, had less public careers. Mr. High, at 42, embodied the latest link in the chain.
“I will often tell folks,” Mr. High said, “that I think the Lord put Dr. Taylor together with me at the right time. He was slowing down, and I was ready to receive.”
As for Dr. Taylor, there is that persistent image of the elderly Jacob blessing his son Joseph. “It was the signal of an old man at the end of his years, blessing those who would come after him,” Dr. Taylor said. “It speaks of someone passing on whatever legacy, whatever memories, whatever experiences he had to the next generation.”
The two men met in 2004, right after Dr. Taylor had moved to Raleigh, and Mr. High was assigned on one rainy night to drive him to a ministers’ conference. As Mr. High opened his car trunk to retrieve an umbrella, Dr. Taylor spotted a set of golf clubs and mentioned that he, too, played. Two months later, much to Mr. High’s surprise, the grand man of the black church called to invite him to shoot a round.
The lessons that began on the fairways of the Bull Creek Golf and Country Club continued in Dr. Taylor’s study. He read and critiqued Mr. High’s sermons, then had the young man practice delivering them. “Dig deeper here,” Dr. Taylor might advise. “Put more imagery here.” Or, “Say that differently.”
Dr. Taylor passed along his wisdom about how to handle congregational politics. He also talked about politics of the partisan sort, as an African-American rose to the presidency. And one day Dr. Taylor, the father of a daughter, said to Mr. High, “You gave me the son I never had.”
So nothing felt more right, more faithful in every meaning of the word, than for Mr. High to have become a caregiver to Dr. Taylor in recent months. He supplied the strong shoulders and firm feet for physical tasks, the tender concern to make sure that a proud man met the outside world looking his best.
At the same time, as it happens, Dr. Taylor was taking another step to solidify his place in history. At the loving instigation of the journalist, publisher and talk show host Tavis Smiley, he assembled a mixture of sermons, autobiography, interviews and even favorite jokes into a combined book and compact disc, “Faith in the Fire: Wisdom For Life” (SmileyBooks).
“It’s abundantly clear to all of us that he will not be with us forever,” Mr. Smiley said of the project. “A new generation may know little of him. So I hope this book will allow them to know him — his genius, his compassion, his humanity.”
At the meeting in Raleigh this month, a half-dozen ministers who do know him entered Dr. Taylor’s bedroom just before noon. One recalled the way Dr. Taylor prayed with him after the death of his sister in a train accident. Another remembered reading Dr. Taylor’s books about pastoring and preaching “to learn all the things they didn’t teach at Harvard Divinity School.” A third recounted Dr. Taylor’s lesson in humility: “Don’t get so excited about yourself.” After half an hour, having consumed as much energy and concentration as Dr. Taylor could summon, the visit closed with one of his favorite hymns, “It Is Well With My Soul.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/us/gardner-c-taylor-ministers-to-generations-to-come.html?_r=1
African-American churches can make a difference in 2012 presidential election
By LESLIE WATSON MALACHI Other Words The Star Democrat | 0 comments
The 2008 election was a hopeful one for African-Americans in our democracy not because of who was elected, but because of who turned out to vote. We voted at a nearly identical rate to our white neighbors for the first time in U.S. history. In fact, African-American women had the highest turnout rate of any group of any race.
More than 40 years after the end of the Jim Crow era (albeit amid the resurrection of what many are calling the “New Jim Crow”), we closed that persisting gap of participation. In greater numbers than ever before, we stood up and we spoke with our vote
But since 2008, our right to vote which is essentially a form of free speech has been under an unprecedented attack. Shortly after the election, over half of Republican voters said that they believed the presidential election had been stolen for Barack Obama by ACORN, a now-defunct organization that worked to register new voters, including many African-Americans.
In response to this false myth promoted by right-wing media and politicians, state legislatures across the country have been trying to make it harder to register to vote. The most common form this takes is voter ID laws, which, under the guise of preventing the over-hyped problem of “voter fraud,” in fact keep millions of voters from the polls. These laws, which are on the books or being considered in 41 states, target voters who don’t have certain types of government identification. They are overwhelmingly young, elderly and persons of color.
What’s even more discouraging than the faulty basis of these restrictive laws is where they come from. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group funded by large corporations that writes legislation for state legislators, is pushing these voter ID laws to states around the country. Why do big business interests care about restricting voting rights? Because voting is the only way those of us without millions of dollars to spend on elections can make our voices heard.
The real goals of these laws were thrown into sharp light in Tennessee this year, when we learned about Dorothy Cooper, a 96-year-old black woman who was denied a voter ID because she couldn’t produce a copy of her marriage license. Mrs. Cooper had voted nearly every year since she was of voting age, and had never before run into a problem registering even in the Jim Crow South. Mrs. Cooper wasn’t trying to commit fraud. She was trying to exercise her right and her duty as a citizen. Yet she was treated like a criminal.
While we can and should fight the enactment of these laws, we can’t stop there. The most important thing you can do to make sure your voice is heard in the democratic process is to know your rights and vote. This is especially true for African- Americans, who are disproportionately being targeted and impacted by these new laws.
The Black Church has a longstanding history of championing political, educational, and economic rights, not only for African- Americans but for all citizens. And in this modern era, we must continue the fight.
The right to vote, especially for African- Americans, is under attack. Churches, laity, pastors and ministry leaders, who were essential to securing that right, will be essential to preserving it.
http://www.stardem.com/opinion/article_b1b07ac0-9946-5321-927f-fe8f1438c57a.html
The right to vote, especially for African- Americans, is under attack. Churches, laity, pastors and ministry leaders, who were essential to securing that right, will be essential to preserving it.
AMEN!
Occupy the voting booth!
Romney’s Super PAC Is Destroying Gingrich
And he can thank the Citizens United ruling
Newt Gingrich might well be the first big-name casualty of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that rewrote the rules on campaign financing. The decision cleared the way for “super PACs” like the one backing Mitt Romney called Restore Our Future, which has poured $2.8 million so far into nonstop TV ads attacking Gingrich, reports the New York Times. Gingrich’s standing in the polls has plunged since the spots started airing three weeks ago, and it’s all perfectly legal because the group operates independently of the Romney campaign (even if it’s run by former Romney aides).
These super PACs can take in unlimited donations, unlike the candidates’ official campaigns, and the arms war is just beginning. “Iowa is ground zero of what we can expect in every competitive state for the rest of the presidential election,” says the executive director of a group that tracks such things. Obama backers already have formed a super PAC of their own, called Priorities USA Action.
http://www.newser.com/story/136535/romneys-super-pac-is-destroying-gingrich.html
Happy New Year Japan
It is now officially New Year 2012 in Japan. Here is a short video of one of the Fireworks display’s in Japan Tokyo.
Rick Perry Advisor: ‘There Has Never Been A More Ineptly Orchestrated, Just Unbelievably Subpar Campaign’
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70976.html
DES MOINES — With a revamped message and a significant TV presence here, Rick Perry is hoping to revive his disappointing presidential campaign with a surprise finish Tuesday.
But even as they hold out hope that Perry can find a way back into contention, some of his advisers have begun laying the groundwork to explain how the Texas governor bombed so dramatically in a race that he seemed to control for a brief period upon his entry in August.
Their explanations for the nosedive come against the backdrop of a campaign riven by an intense, behind-the-scenes power struggle that took place largely between a group of the governor’s longtime advisers and a new cadre of consultants brought on this fall. In the end, the outsiders won out — and ever since have marginalized Perry’s longtime chief strategist while crafting a new strategy in which the Texan has portrayed himself as a political outsider and culture warrior.
In a series of interviews with POLITICO, sources close to the campaign depict a dysfunctional operation that might be beyond saving because of what they describe as the political equivalent of malpractice by the previous regime.
“There has never been a more ineptly orchestrated, just unbelievably subpar campaign for president of the United States than this one,” said a senior Perry adviser.
Perry’s steep plunge from front-runner to butt of jokes was chiefly the result of his own embarrassing verbal stumbles, most notably his insta-classic “oops” moment when he couldn’t recall the names of the cabinet departments he wants to eliminate.
Yet the view of the outsiders who took over Perry’s campaign is that the candidate was set up for failure by an insular group led by Dave Carney, the governor’s longtime political guru, which thought they could run a presidential campaign like a larger version of a gubernatorial race and didn’t take the basic steps needed to professionalize the operation until the candidate already was sinking.
“They put the campaign together like all the other Perry campaigns: raise a bunch of money, don’t worry about the [media coverage], don’t worry about debates and buy the race on TV,” said a top Perry official. “You have to be a total rube to think a race for president is the same as a race for governor.”
thought they could run a presidential campaign like a larger version of a gubernatorial race
“You have to be a total rube to think a race for president is the same as a race for governor.”
told you they were amateurs.
White priviledged to the CORE.
Rick Perry’s photo belongs under this:
in·ept adj \i-ˈnept\
Definition of INEPT
1: lacking in fitness or aptitude : unfit
2: lacking sense or reason : foolish
3: not suitable to the time, place, or occasion : inappropriate often to an absurd degree
4: generally incompetent : bungling <inept leadership
***HOLLERING***
LMBAO
theonlyadult
Must read NYT story about how Mitt Romney is LITERALLY buying the election. This is the level of evil we’re up againt. http://nyti.ms/uG4HlQ
ThinkProgress:
With 500K+ signatures collected, recall of Gov. Scott Walker appears inevitable http://thkpr.gs/sBu4tz
Dear Scott Walker,
BWA HA HA HA
Memo to Scott Walker: Put yo hade betwix yo legs, and kiss your AZZ goodbye!
this fake-azz phoney MOFO right chere
another fool with crocodile tears. give it up Newty -newt; you’re losing.
Republicans were soo poor growing up. Poor pitiful republicans!
[wpvideo nsBFF5mw]
LOL these are some desperate, PANDERING fools right here.
African American Watch Night rings in new year
http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-12-29/entertainment/17131097_1_watch-night-slave-new-year-s-day
There are no party favors, no paper whistles, no shiny hats for these New Year’s celebrants. They won’t be greeting the new year with a Champagne toast while the ball drops in Times Square.
It will be joyful, but sober, especially during those last 10 minutes when the preacher stops preaching, the choir quiets down and those who are so inclined, get down on their knees and pray.
It’s called the Watch Night service, a Methodist custom that African Americans adopted and adapted as a spiritual and political ritual during the time of slavery. It continues today around the nation and the Bay Area, with many remembering the most important Watch Night service, that of Dec. 31, 1862.
Skeptical that President Abraham Lincoln would keep his word about emancipation, African Americans, both free and slave, as well as abolitionists, prayed through the night and into the day. Abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass stayed at a church in Rochester, N.Y., until 10 p.m. on New Year’s Day, awaiting a cable that assured him that the law had been passed.
I know of several churches in my area that still have Watch Night. My parents use to go to Watch Night all the time when I was a child.
Weekly Address: Working Together in the New Year
Raagee Anagheel
Countdown to President Obama’s re-election day = 309DAYS left. Register to vote,get state ID,call your friends,relatives to do the same,knock on your neighbor & tell them to register to vote.we do not have any year,month,week,day,hour,minute or second to spare. The time has come. The clock is ticking. If you care about this country.If you love this nation.If you want all of us to go forward as a nation. Elect The Greatest President in our lifetime. A transformational leader.A true Patriot.A consistent,steady,calm & respectful leader.A great husband.A loving father.BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA 4 MORE YRS. The Alternative is a no brainer.
Good Post, Raagee!
DITTO!
GOP’s bullying tactics are winning Obama’s reelection for him
http://tiny.cc/8ej2h
I have had enough of political bullying. What candidates are doing and saying to each other is tantamount to character defamation and harassment, both of which are against the law.
I am a retired teacher mentor. I substitute, provide professional development for teachers and mentors and enjoy working in a school setting. We are all there for the same reason — student achievement and success in the real world.
But the adults in the real world who want to be president are misbehaving. If politicians would step out of their situations and take a birds-eye view, they would see that their campaigns focus on picking apart the other guy or gal, or the other party. It does not have to be this way.
Interesting commentary. I’ve always wondered how teachers are handling all this political vitriol with their students.
The National Shame of Texas
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/the-national-shame-of-tex_b_1176242.html
When listening to Rick Perry campaign in Iowa, the question that occurs to those of us who have watched and reported on him since 1985 is simple: How in the hell can this be happening? There is a bright shining light on the Texas governor’s ignorance and hypocrisies and yet the latest poll shows him with 14 percent of the Iowa caucus vote.
What’s the matter with Iowa?
His latest bit of oblivion occurred when he was asked yesterday about a landmark Supreme Court case called Lawrence v. Texas. During the early 70s, while the rest of America was worrying about the Vietnam War, the Arab oil embargo, and violence in the streets, free love and cheap marijuana, down here in Texas our state government was fretting over consenting adults of the same sex making love. The state passed a law making it illegal. A quarter of a century later, Harris County sheriff’s deputies in Houston were looking for a gunman and broke into the apartment of two men engaged in sex. They were arrested under the Texas law. Eventually, the men decided to fight to protect their privacy and the Texas Homosexual Conduct Law was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court during Rick Perry’s third year as governor.
But yesterday in Iowa, the man who has fought so hard to protect marriage as an institution reserved for the union of males and females, admitted to the Austin American Statesman’s Ken Herman that he didn’t know a damned thing about the Texas law. Perry’s flat-out stupidity on this issue must be difficult for even his most ardent supporters to process. When the Texas GOP nominated him for governor in 2010, the party’s platform had a plank that called for making it a felony for same sex couples to be married and any public servant who performed such a service to be prosecuted as a felon. The measure did not become law but Perry’s going to be back in Texas shortly after his further national embarrassment and he’s likely to be bored and vengeful.
More..
Good Morning, sunshine & Everyone! Happy New Years Eve!!!!
Thanks for the coffee. I need it. *wipes eyes and takes a sip*
Good Afternoon, Everyone :)
Have a good rest of the day :)