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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.
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Fake Dispatch @Fake_Dispatch:
BREAKING: Warning to Obama: Andrew Breitbart was buried with video editing equipment. Tapes will continue to be released through eternity.
****dead****
Bloomberg News
Viagra Would Need Therapist OK in Ohio Bill
By Mark Niquette on March 07, 2012
If women considering abortions must face government-mandated examinations, it’s only fair that men who want drugs such as Viagra to treat impotence get the same treatment, an Ohio (STOOH1) lawmaker says.
State Senator Nina Turner, a Cleveland Democrat, has introduced a bill to require that physicians take specific actions before prescribing such drugs, including giving a cardiac stress test and making a referral to a sex therapist for confirmation that “the patient’s symptoms are not solely attributable to one or more psychological conditions.”
“We want to make sure that men, vulnerable, fragile men, who are not capable of making decisions for themselves, understand all of the side effects and the implications of these types of drugs,” Turner said in a telephone interview.
Her bill takes its place alongside similar efforts by Democratic lawmakers in states including Virginia (STOVA1), Georgia (STOGA1) and Missouri (STOMO1) in response to moves by Republican-controlled legislatures to limit abortions or oppose a federal requirement to include contraceptives in health-care plans.
A bill in Missouri would allow vasectomies only to protect a man from serious injury or death, according to the Associated Press, and in Virginia, which passed a bill requiring women to get an ultrasound before an abortion, state Senator Janet Howell sought an amendment requiring doctors to perform a rectal exam and stress test before prescribing erectile-dysfunction drugs.
For the Gander
“I think we should just have a little gender equity here,” Howell testified in January, according to a video posted on her YouTube channel.
If women considering abortions must face government-mandated examinations, it’s only fair that men who want drugs such as Viagra to treat impotence get the same treatment, an Ohio (STOOH1) lawmaker says.
State Senator Nina Turner, a Cleveland Democrat, has introduced a bill to require that physicians take specific actions before prescribing such drugs, including giving a cardiac stress test and making a referral to a sex therapist for confirmation that “the patient’s symptoms are not solely attributable to one or more psychological conditions.”
“We want to make sure that men, vulnerable, fragile men, who are not capable of making decisions for themselves, understand all of the side effects and the implications of these types of drugs,” Turner said in a telephone interview.
Her bill takes its place alongside similar efforts by Democratic lawmakers in states including Virginia (STOVA1), Georgia (STOGA1) and Missouri (STOMO1) in response to moves by Republican-controlled legislatures to limit abortions or oppose a federal requirement to include contraceptives in health-care plans.
A bill in Missouri would allow vasectomies only to protect a man from serious injury or death, according to the Associated Press, and in Virginia, which passed a bill requiring women to get an ultrasound before an abortion, state Senator Janet Howell sought an amendment requiring doctors to perform a rectal exam and stress test before prescribing erectile-dysfunction drugs.
For the Gander
“I think we should just have a little gender equity here,” Howell testified in January, according to a video posted on her YouTube channel.
Criminalizing Voters, Criminalizing Us
by nancy a heitzeg
In the year 2012, Criminal InJustice is focused on the Vote of Our Lives — efforts to get it out, get it counted, and certainly efforts to resist both the overt and covert attempts to suppress voter turnout.
A consistent theme throughout all these CI pieces is the role of criminalizing narratives in appealing to public fears through racialized imagery. Most of these narratives are directed towards Criminalizing President Obama. But these themes, of course. are used to criminalize his supporters as well, and contribute to on-going efforts to suppress voters on the left.
Voter ID Legislation
Late last month, all these themes collided in a not-so-perfect storm in Minnesota. The Minnesota Majority — drawing on sadly familiar Dead Breitbart lies about ACORN — exhibited this banner on a companion site devoted to pushing a yes vote on a Minnesota Voter ID Ballot measure. (Promoted by the Republican – dominated MN legislature, this ballot measure is an attempt to force Voter ID requirements after Governor Mark Dayton vetoed similar legislation last term. It would make Minnesota the eighth state to pass Voter ID legislation since the 2010 midterms. Currently, 20 states have some sort of Voter Id Requirement.)
http://criticalmassprogress.com/2012/03/07/ci-criminalizing-voters-criminalizing-us/
Silver Says Cuomo Needs to Reach Deal With New York Unions on Pension Plan
By Freeman Klopott – Mar 6, 2012 1:51 PM CT
Governor Andrew Cuomo must work out a deal with unions on his proposal to raise the retirement age and offer a 401(k)-type option for new workers before the Assembly will back it, Speaker Sheldon Silver said.
About 2,000 state and local workers descended on Albany today to meet with lawmakers and urge them to vote against the pension changes, which the unions said will cut retirement benefits by 40 percent. Cuomo, a Democrat, has said his plan will save local governments and the state $113 billion over the next 30 years. Democrats control the Assembly, while Republicans hold a majority in the Senate.
The governor has to work out with the unions a reasonable approach to save the money,” Silver, 68, told reporters after speaking to the crowd of public employees gathered in a convention hall near the Capitol. “I’m not a union leader. I don’t know the ins and outs of the current conditions of employment, but I know there can be a deal.”
Cuomo, 54, said last week he’s willing to meet with union leaders, after he previously said making changes to the pension system is solely the Legislature’s job. Last year, he won furloughs and wage freezes from the state’s two biggest unions by threatening to fire almost 10,000 workers. Those deals, which saved the state $450 million, were made as part of the collective-bargaining process.
Willing to Consider
The unions and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the sole trustee of New York’s $140.3 billion retirement fund, the third largest U.S. public pension, have taken aim at the 401(k) option, saying it will destroy the middle class. Silver said today he’s willing to consider the option.
“Some young, new employees in government might choose that option,” Silver said. “If I started, when I started, if that was an option, chances are I would have taken that option.”
Last week, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg led a group of local leaders, who collectively represent 15 million residents, to Albany to push lawmakers to approve Cuomo’s pension proposal. The group said that without changes, including raising the retirement age to 65 from 62 for most new workers, they’ll be forced to fire employees.
Cuomo has said pension costs will consume 35 percent of local-government budgets by 2015, up from 3 percent in 2001. New York’s retirement fund had 101.5 percent of the money needed to pay its obligations in 2010, better than any other state, according to an annual study by Bloomberg Rankings.
Cuomo put the pension changes into his budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins April 1. He has said that if lawmakers send him a spending plan without the measure, he’ll force the Legislature to choose between shutting the government or passing his plan by using a so-called budget extender. The process is used to keep the government operating when there’s no agreement on the budget. The governor has the power to put any item in an extender.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-06/silver-says-cuomo-needs-new-york-union-support-on-pension-plan-for-passage.html
“Wisconsin Bill Claims Single Moms Cause Child Abuse by Not Being Married.” http://yhoo.it/xvjrYI
Make It Stop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Virginia calling: An open letter to Bob McDonnell
By Laura Conaway
–
Wed Mar 7, 2012 4:39 PM EST
The kerfuffle in Virginia.
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell signed the forced ultrasound bill today, saying that it ensured no one would have to undergo an “internal” ultrasound, by which he means the vaginal probe kind. More about that on the show tonight.
For now, an open letter sent to us a couple days ago by Virginia lawyer Tara Louise Casey. She headlines it “What the Kerfuffle is Really About: An Open Letter to Governor McDonnell.”
As a Virginia citizen, and especially as a woman and a mother of a daughter, I have voiced my opposition to the mandatory ultrasound bill. Although I participated in the public protests to this legislation, I also sought to engage legislators and other constituents in discussions tempered with mutual respect and moderate voice. When the Virginia Senate passed this bill, I expressed my profound disappointment in what I viewed as the misguided failure of our legislative process. Nevertheless, I strove to maintain an open dialogue, free of platitudes and presumptions.
This evening, I learned that my Governor does not hold to the same rules in this debate.
Last Friday, Governor McDonnell sat down with National Review Online’s Jim Geraghty to discuss “the kerfuffle over the ultrasound bill.” I recommend this piece to every Virginian to read as the Governor has used this platform to express his perspective.
Below are his words from the interview and my responses:
“If you just read the papers, you have no idea what’s going on in the legislature because the reporting has been so poor this session.”
Governor, I have been there as a steadfast advocate and witness. The reason people are outraged and protesting is that they have been paying attention, very close attention. Sustained engagement in and educational outreach on the legislative process leading up this bill’s passage has been a civics lesson for many. Please, do not blame the media for this kerfuffle.
“I don’t think the objective of an abortion clinic is to try to talk women out of having the procedure. That obviously would not be positive for their bottom line.”
Governor, I encourage you to talk to a physician who has performed an abortion, because, based upon your comment, it would seem that you have not. If you had, you would soon realize that “the bottom line” is not what motivates these physicians in practice. To suggest otherwise would be an insult to their ethics and a gross mischaracterization. Please, do not blame the physicians for this kerfuffle.
“Despite the rhetoric of opponents, this was about empowering women with more medical and legal information that previously they were not required to get in order to give informed consent.”
Governor, Merriam-Webster has three definitions for “empower” — “to give official authority or legal power to; [to] enable; to promote the self-actualization or influence of.” It defies basic comprehension of this word to deduce that a mandate represents empowerment. In fact, this legislation thwarts any attempt at empowerment as it will interfere with a woman’s autonomous choice and assumes that her doctor would provide her insufficient information to make that choice. The last time Virginia ever passed a mandated medical procedure was the forced sterilization of the mentally ill, a scenario in which there is no presence of empowerment. Please, do not blame a misunderstanding of the word “empower” for this kerfuffle.
“Informed consent is required for every invasive medical procedure, from getting your ears pierced to having an abortion.”
Governor, even in an illustrative context, an abortion should not be placed on the same plane of medical procedures as an ear piercing. Ears are pierced at kiosks in the mall. Invasive medical procedures are performed by specially trained medical personnel in medical settings. Your relation of an ear piercing to an abortion reveals either your complete insensitivity to this issue, or your complete ignorance. Please do not blame a citizenry’s misunderstanding of this issue for this kerfuffle.
This is our Governor. This is his perspective.
Dear Reader, that is exactly what the “kerfuffle” is all about.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/07/10602954-virginia-calling-an-open-letter-to-bob-mcdonnell
The Story Behind the Obama Law School Speech Video
March 7, 2012, 7:09 pm ET by Andrew Golis
The web is abuzz today about video of a speech Barack Obama gave in 1990 (some reports have incorrectly identified the speech as occurring in 1991) at Harvard Law School defending the actions of Professor Derrick Bell. Bell, the law school’s first tenured black professor, had protested Harvard’s failure to offer tenure to women of color as law school professors. Online publisher Andrew Brietbart, who died last week, had said he possessed the speech and hinted that he would release it, arguing that it provided evidence that Obama has long held radical political beliefs.
Today, the website BuzzFeed published a clip of the speech along with an article explaining some past and current context for Obama’s remarks. The website claimed the clip was “not previously available online.” The editors at Brietbart.com responded that the video on Buzzfeed had been “selectively edited” and said that they would release the full footage tonight on Fox News.
But there’s nothing new about the clip or Obama’s role in the controversy at Harvard Law School. In 2008, as a part of our quadrennial election special The Choice 2008, FRONTLINE ran the same footage of the speech as a part of an exploration of Obama’s time at Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1991. It’s been online at our site and on YouTube since then. You can see that part of the film below.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/the-story-behind-the-obama-law-school-speech-video/
LOL!
These morons just won’t quit. They’re desperately looking for anything to throw dirt on him. So what do they do…go find a tape that already been in existence at FRONTLINE and pretend it’s the boogey man. Good grief! I hate stupid people. I really do.
Stylish M @StylishGurl:
*GASPS* how? When? Who let it happen? RT @dpleasant: Breaking: Barack Obama is black.
HILARIOUS
ANALYSIS: In Almost Every Primary, Romney Wins Big Among The Rich, Loses The Working-Class Vote
By Alex Seitz-Wald on Mar 7, 2012 at 2:20 pm
n February, a CNN poll found that regardless of age, race, sex, or party affiliation, all Americans agreed that Mitt Romney “favors the rich” over the middle class or poor, ThinkProgress noted. And it looks like the rich are returning the favor.
The Washington Post reported this morning that in both Michigan and Ohio, “voters making more than $100,000 per year turn[ed] out in much higher numbers this year than they did in 2008″:
In 2008, 22 percent of GOP primary voters in Michigan made at least $100,000, and that group made up 21 percent of the electorate in Ohio, according to exit polls. This year, 33 percent of voters in Michigan made that much money, while 30 percent of Ohio voters did. In both cases, the number of wealthy voters grew by about 50 percent — a pretty stunning increase in that demographic over just a four-year span.
In both states, Romney won among those making more than $100,000 by 14 points, even though he lost among all other income demographics.
This trend occurs in virtually every state that has voted thus far. A ThinkProgress analysis of exit/entrance polls from the 14 states that have conducted them shows that Romney consistently does best among those earning more than $100,000 or $200,000 a year, while more often than not losing among middle- and working-class voters.
The only states where this wasn’t true were Massachusetts, his home state where he served as governor, and Virginia, where Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich weren’t even on the ballot.
See the full breakdown of the 12 state exit polls HERE.
For instance, in Ohio, where Romney barely eeked out a win last night, Romney dominated among the wealthy, capturing 46 percent of those making more than $100,000 and a whopping 55 percent of those making more than $200,000. He lost among middle-class voters, by 11 points among those making $50,000-$100,000 and 6 points for people earning $30,000-$50,000.
Meanwhile, in Georgia, Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and South Carolina, Romney lost overall, but won in the top income bracket, in some cases by over 20 percent.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/03/07/439843/analysis-romney-wins-big-rich/
Rev. Al is in Alabama chin-checking the crackas who are attempting to SUPPRESS BLACK VOTERS.
March 06, 2012 4:40 PM
1980 And All That
By Ed Kilgore
In an effort to cheer up Republicans who may have read George Will’s column suggesting they forget about the presidency and focus on winning Congress, the Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn hauled out conservatives’ favorite comfort blanket: Barack Obama is another Jimmy Carter, 2012 is another 1980, and hard as it is to imagine for his acolytes today, Ronald Reagan was once thought to be a sure general election loser, too (or at least by the New York Times, whose 1980 editorial suggesting that Republicans were blowing a big winning opportunity is abundantly quoted to establish the premise).
McGurn then laboriously goes through parallels between 1980 and 2012: there was an incumbent Democratic president in place; there were turbulent, divisive GOP primaries; there was a party split that produced an independent candidacy; there were early polls showing Reagan losing to Carter by double-digits; there were MSM journalists saying the nominee an the party had gone too far to the right; there were candidate gaffes. Anticipating the most obvious objection to the hypothesis, McGurn has this deft maneuver:
[T]he parallels to 1980 take you only so far, and Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan. Still, at this same point in his campaign for the GOP nomination, neither was Reagan. The President Reagan we rightly admire for bringing down the Berlin Wall, reviving the U.S. economy, and attracting into the GOP millions of disaffected Democrats was still to come.
And he got there by transcending the conventional wisdom rather than allowing himself or his message to be limited by it.
Message to Mitt: hang tough and do not “move to the center.”
This is all well and good, I suppose, and you certainly can’t fault Mitt Romney for failing to make every effort to identify himself with St. Ronnie and the incumbent with Jimmy (see today’s Romney op-ed on Iran).
But in racing through the parallels between 1980 and 2012, McGurney fails to note the many rather important differences.
Yes, the economy sucks right now, with unemployment presently over 8%. But in 1980, America’s unemployment rate was nearly as high (7%), and we also had, as old-timers remember with a shudder, a 14% inflation rate and a prime borrowing rate of 15%. The chronic condition of the economy, known as “staglation,” was psychologically debilitating and even more frustrating to policymakers than today’s recession. Americans were definitely looking for something, anything, new, and Reagan offered that through an agenda of supply-side tax cuts and deregulation, approaches which had not, at that point, demonstrated their shortcomings and downsides.
Is Obama’s political situation really just like Carter’s? Well, there is this little matter of Carter facing a brutal, extended, divisive primary challenge from Ted Kennedy, which he barely survived. By the time of the Democratic Convention, when Carter’s approval rating was in the low thirties, there was a serious effort by major party leaders to unbind delegates and dump the president. This sort of intraparty heartburn does not look to be in the cards for Obama.
McGurney mentions John Anderson’s independent candidacy as a big problem for Reagan (presumably as a parallel to talk about a Ron Paul third-party run), and it was at one point. But by the general election stretch run, with Anderson bleeding support daily, the independent was heavily drawing such support as he retained from liberals—probably many of them the same people who voted against Carter in the primaries—and was running on a message well to Carter’s left (I happened to hear Anderson speak in California in October, when a big part of his pitch was his support for gay rights, a really unusual position in those days).
And then there was another Carter problem that has been long forgotten: when he was elected in 1976, a big part of his coalition was white southerners—and southern-inflected voters elsewhere, particularly in the midwest—voting for him as a matter of regional pride (in many case reinforced by religious identification, given his outspoken evangelical affiliation). As is generally the case after a “historic” breakthrough win, Carter’s regional and religious pull slackened greatly in 1980; he certainly did not benefit from endorsements by George Wallace and Jerry Falwell, as he did four years earlier. You could try to construct a parallel with Barack Obama’s historic levels of African-American support in 2008, but African-Americans are not exactly swing voters (as white southerners most definitely were in 1980), and even if there is a small dropoff in African-American turnout, it will affect the results on the margins, and most emphatically in states Republicans expect to win anyway.
I could go on with the many differences between 1980 and 2012, between Carter and Obama, and between Reagan and Romney, and between the America of that day and this (there was not, you might recall, much of a Hispanic vote in 1980), but you get the idea. Yes, if out of the blue inflation and interest rates explode, and Democrats become radically disaffected with Obama, and Americans Elect gets a candidate attractive to liberals on the ballot, and the African-American vote turns heavily against the president, and Mitt Romney becomes a symbol of fresh thinking—then you’ll have a good parallel case for another 1980 result this November.
Republicans are welcome to continue to comfort themselves with this sort of reasoning, but as Will said, they really do need a Plan B.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_03/1980_and_all_that035865.php
March 06, 2012 5:53 PM
34 and Counting
By Ed Kilgore
The growing ad boycott of Rush Limbaugh’s show by former (or occasional) sponsors, fed by rather massive social media pressure, is now becoming nearly as big a phenomenon as anything the old windbag himself says. According to Think Progress’ running count, 34 companies have now yanked or foresworn ads on the show. No one seems to know how many sponsors Rush has left (LifeLock and Lear Capital have announced they are sticking with the show), but the names on the “no go” list include some pretty big corporate titans, including Sears, AOL, Capitol One, JC Penney, and Netflix.
The right-wing blogosphere has been pretty quiet about this exodus, even as it continues to play the so’s-your-old-man game of trying (in vain) to find some lefty equivalent of Limbaugh.
As I’ve said all along, it’s good grim fun to watch a smug, self-righteous, inveterate bully get bullied for a change. If there is a Purgatory, we all may spend a few extra days paying for this schadenfreude, but at the moment it seems worth it.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_03/34_and_counting035868.php
It’s the only way to take down a BULLY. PUSH BACK. So glad folks aren’t letting up on this scumbag.
David Axelrod @davidaxelrod:
Isn’t it telling when the numbers guy can’t come up with the numbers? Mitt gets called on his $5b tax cut plan. http://apne.ws/ymAQ5L
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
The Romney Curve On Wage Pricing
Posted by Zandar
The Marquis de Mittens and Larry Kudlow get their monocles and harrumphing on over the soshulist redistribution ploy known as “minimum wage”. Now, Kudlow’s bad enough by himself…
“A lot of conservatives led by the Wall Street Journal editorial page were horrified when you said you want to index the minimum wage for inflation,” CNBC host Larry Kudlow said. “They said, look, that’s just going to raise the minimum wage. That’s going to raise the unemployment rate, especially for young people, especially for minorities. Why do you want to raise the minimum wage?”
Yeah, let’s pause here for a sec. In Kudlow’s world, raising the minimum wage equals more unemployment, because really jobs exist out there where $7.25 an hour is just too awful. Why, if we cut that in half, we could hire twice as many people and lower unemployment, especially for minorities (because hey, menial labor is all those people are good for.) Heck, we eliminate the minimum wage, we could have zero unemployment! Utopia accomplished! Sure, it’s not like $3.50 a hour is a living wage or anything, but we can call it “workfare”.
Meanwhile Mittens devours his own foot again.
Romney responded by noting that as governor, he had vetoed a bill to raise the minimum wage in Massachusetts.
“I vetoed it and I said, look, the way to deal with minimum wage is this: On a regular basis, I said in the proposal I made, every two years, we should look at the minimum wage, we should see what’s happened to inflation, we should also look at the jobs level throughout the country, unemployment rate, competitive rates in other states or, in this case, other nations,” he said.
“So, certainly, the level of inflation is something you should look at and you should identify what’s the right way to keep America competitive,” Romney continued. “So that would tell you that right now, there’s probably not a need to raise the minimum wage.”
If we got rid of the minimum wage, we could be more labor-price competitive with countries like Haiti, Somalia, China and Tonga. So, there’s that. This is how President Bain Capital here would solve America’s problems. We don’t have working poor. They’re making $7.25 an hour! How can you be poor if you’re making that much money? Heck, we cut that minimum wage, have states compete for corporations by seeing how low wages they can offer to enslave their workers,and that profit will trickle down to the working stiffs automatically! It’s the Laffer Curve of wage pricing, cut wages by enough and total incomes will skyrocket and lift all boats and stuff. Boom, competition creates winning.
What utter nonsense. But the most striking thing is that once again, Mitt can’t help himself. He honestly believes this stuff because to him, $7.25 isn’t an hourly wage, it’s a breakfast tip amount. In America, you can get that waiting tables. How can there be poor people in America when that happens? So why raise the minimum wage? You guys making $11,500 a year? You’ll be fine. Just get a better job. This is America.
Just look at Mitt Romney. Remember that come November.
http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2012/03/romney-curve-on-wage-pricing.html
Mittens to Americans: I’m the TURF, and y’all be the SERFS
March 06, 2012 6:26 PM
King of Maine
By Ed Kilgore
So former two-term indie governor of Maine, Angus King, threw the race to succeed Sen. Olympia Snowe into some disarray by announcing his candidacy, running again as an independent. According to conveniently timed polling from PPP, King runs ahead of any proposed configuration of Ds and Rs, even defeating the most popular Democrat, Rep. Chellie Pingree, whom Maine Democrats and progressives nationally had been encouraging to run.
Pingree is a close friend of King’s, and may well not run (if she’s going to, she needs to get a move on to collect signatures to get on the primary ballot; the deadline is March 15).
For Democrats, King is a mixed blessing. He’d likely smoke any Republican in the field if he were to receive open or not-so-open Democratic backing. He’s a social progressive. He endorsed Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008 (after backing W. in 2000). DSCC Chair Patty Murray did not rule out the possibility of Democrats eventually supporting him, though you’d have to guess he’d first have to promise he’d caucus with Democrats.
Haunting these deliberations is the memory of 2010, when Tea Party Republican Paul LePage sneaked into the governor’s mansion with only 38% after Democrat Libby Mitchell and independent Eliot Cutler split the liberal-moderate vote. That was a light-media midterm election, but still, you have to figure Democrats will do whatever it takes to keep that scenario from recurring, particularly if they can get assurances from King that he won’t betray or torment them in office. Barring that, they really need Pingree to run.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_03/king_of_maine035867.php
March 07, 2012 9:25 AM
Southern Discomfort
By Ed Kilgore
You can’t go too far wrong by assuming that anything Newt Gingrich says is off in some serious respect. Yet one completely irrational thing he keeps saying appears to have sunk into the collective unconscious of the chattering classes: Mitt Romney must win in the South before he can win the nomination.
My first reaction to that is: why? Are votes at the convention weighted by region? Is the South the principal battleground region in the general election? Does the South exert some sort of emotional demand on the GOP that must be satisfied?
And my second reaction is: didn’t Romney win in Florida and Virginia, former states of the Confederacy? Now it’s true much of Florida feels about as “southern” as New Jersey, and that Gingrich ran even with Romney in the Dixified northern part of the state. It’s also true that Mitt didn’t have to face Santorum or Gingrich in VA. And for that matter, I used to tease my extremely self-conscious Cavalier colleague Will Marshall that Virginia was merely a “border state.”
But votes are votes, and there are difficulties with any definition of “the South” (one is that “the South” is where people used to own people, but that would include states like Delaware, Maryland and Missouri that don’t exactly behave in a “southern” manner politically).
In any event, in my latest TNR column I’ve tried to unpack the whole “Mitt Must Win In Dixie” meme, and concluded it’s largely a crock. Yes, if he continues to struggle in the South and in the Midwest it could be a real problem for him in nailing down the nomination, but that’s just another way of saying you have to keep winning a majority of delegates in primaries and caucuses until you have a majority of all the delegates. Much of Mitt’s weakness in the South isn’t some mysterious cultural thing, but simply reflects the fact that “very conservative” and white evangelical voters don’t much like him, and there are a lot of those folks in the South. According to the exit polls, 73% of the primary voters in Tennessee were evangelicals/born-agains, as were 72% in Oklahoma and 64% in GA. It’s no surprise he lost those states, but if he strugges in any of them in November, he’s clearly going to be losing all over the place. So we should give this meme a rest going forward.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_03/southern_discomfort035876.php
Posted at 01:56 PM ET, 03/07/2012
It isn’t just immigration: Latinos agree with Dems about jobs, too
By Greg Sargent
The debate over how badly Republicans have damaged themselves among Latinos during the nomination battle understandably focuses on their efforts to woo primary voters by outshouting one another with ever-more-incendiary immigration rhetoric. But what if Latinos also agree with Dems about health care, jobs and the economy?
A new national poll of Latino registered voters by Univision News/ABC/Latino Decisions has some very interesting findings that cast doubt on GOP chances of making inroads among them:
* Fifty-five percent of Latinos think the best way to help the economy grow is for government to “invest resources in federal projects to stimulate the economy.” Only 31 percent favor lowering taxes to get the economy going again.
* Sixty-one percent of Latinos trust Obama and Dems to make the right decisions to improve the economy, versus only 24 percent who pick Republicans.
* Fifty-seven percent of Latinos say Obama’s health reform law should be left to stand, versus 28 percent who support repeal.
* Romney’s favorable ratings among Latinos are upside down, at 28-41, though many are undecided.
* Seventy-two percent of Latinos say that the GOP either doesn’t care about reaching out to them (45 percent) or is outright hostile to them (27 percent). Only 17 percent say the GOP has done a good outreach job.
In fairness, 39 percent say Dems are doing good outreach, versus 37 percent who say Dems don’t care and nine percent who call them hostile — not great numbers, suggesting Dems have some work to do themselves. And along those lines, another problematic number: 53 percent say they’re less excited about Obama than when he took office. But the GOP numbers are far, far worse.
You often hear it argued that the bad economy risks dampening Latino enthusiasm, to Obama’s detriment. But Latino agreement with Obama and Dems over basic priorities such as health care and whether government should invest to create jobs could stave off losses.
The Latino vote could prove pivotal to Obama’s efforts to hold the western states in order to offset losses in the Rust Belt. And the fact that nearly three-fourths of Latinos think the GOP either doesn’t care about or is outright hostile towards them is another sign that the primary may have badly damaged any GOP hopes of making real inroads with them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/it-isnt-just-immigration-latinos-agree-with-dems-about-jobs-too/2012/03/07/gIQARXQFxR_blog.html
Ohio’s Republican presidential primary was Super Tuesday’s highest-profile contest, but Ari Berman raised a largely-overlooked point about the results: “Obama got more votes in Ohio than Romney last night.”
from Axelrod about Willard:
If Romney couldn’t stand up to “the most strident voices in your party how can he stand up to Ahmadinejad?” Axelrod asked. “How are you going to stand up to the challenges of the presidency? These are tests. Presidential campaigns are tests. You are tested every single days in different ways. The Limbaugh thing was a test of leadership, and you have them all the time, and Mitt Romney has failed those tests in the campaign.”
Agreed, Mr. Axelrod. His MITTNESS is footing the bill for the Rushster, through his BAIN CAPITAL HOLDINGS. don’tcha know!
‘It can’t be scored’
By Steve Benen – Wed Mar 7, 2012 12:35 PM EST.
For the second time in as many months, Mitt Romney unveiled another tax plan recently, and this one was intended to make his party’s far-right base even happier. There’s a lot for a conservative to like: major new tax breaks for the wealthy, slashing the corporate tax rate, and eliminating estate taxes altogether.
The non-partisan Tax Policy Center published a fairly detailed analysis of Romney’s new proposal and found that it’s not only heavily tilted to benefit the rich, it also would make the deficit much worse — by nearly a half-trillion dollars in 2015 alone — because the former governor has made no effort to explain how he’d pay for these unnecessary tax breaks.
The Republican frontrunner talked to CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this morning, and defended his odd approach to fiscal responsibility.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsTIIjKsmZU&feature=player_embedded
‘It can’t be scored’
By Steve Benen – Wed Mar 7, 2012 12:35 PM EST.For the second time in as many months, Mitt Romney unveiled another tax plan recently, and this one was intended to make his party’s far-right base even happier. There’s a lot for a conservative to like: major new tax breaks for the wealthy, slashing the corporate tax rate, and eliminating estate taxes altogether.
The non-partisan Tax Policy Center published a fairly detailed analysis of Romney’s new proposal and found that it’s not only heavily tilted to benefit the rich, it also would make the deficit much worse — by nearly a half-trillion dollars in 2015 alone — because the former governor has made no effort to explain how he’d pay for these unnecessary tax breaks.
The Republican frontrunner talked to CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this morning, and defended his odd approach to fiscal responsibility.
Pat Garofalo ran this partial transcript of Romney’s comments:
“What I say is we’re going to cut the top marginal rate across-the-board by 20 percent, and at the same time, we’re going to limit deductions and exemptions to pay for most of that and then additional growth will pay for the rest of that such that our plan doesn’t increase the deficit. […]
“I haven’t laid out all the details of how we’re going to deal with each one of the deductions and exemptions, so I think it’s kind of interesting for the groups who try and score it because, frankly, it can’t be scored because those kinds of details are going to have be worked out with Congress.”
‘It can’t be scored’
By Steve Benen – Wed Mar 7, 2012 12:35 PM EST.For the second time in as many months, Mitt Romney unveiled another tax plan recently, and this one was intended to make his party’s far-right base even happier. There’s a lot for a conservative to like: major new tax breaks for the wealthy, slashing the corporate tax rate, and eliminating estate taxes altogether.
The non-partisan Tax Policy Center published a fairly detailed analysis of Romney’s new proposal and found that it’s not only heavily tilted to benefit the rich, it also would make the deficit much worse — by nearly a half-trillion dollars in 2015 alone — because the former governor has made no effort to explain how he’d pay for these unnecessary tax breaks.
The Republican frontrunner talked to CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this morning, and defended his odd approach to fiscal responsibility.
Pat Garofalo ran this partial transcript of Romney’s comments:
“What I say is we’re going to cut the top marginal rate across-the-board by 20 percent, and at the same time, we’re going to limit deductions and exemptions to pay for most of that and then additional growth will pay for the rest of that such that our plan doesn’t increase the deficit. […]
“I haven’t laid out all the details of how we’re going to deal with each one of the deductions and exemptions, so I think it’s kind of interesting for the groups who try and score it because, frankly, it can’t be scored because those kinds of details are going to have be worked out with Congress.”
Even for Romney, this is just weak. As WonkBlog noted this morning, “A tax plan that can’t be scored because it doesn’t include sufficient details is not a plan…. [Romney] has a statement about what he would like a reformed tax system to include: lower rates for everyone. But that’s cake-and-ice-cream stuff. All the hard questions — which tax breaks to close, for instance — remain unanswered, and it doesn’t appear that he plans to answer them anytime soon.”
This belies any claims Romney makes to policy seriousness. In effect, he’s arguing, “Sure, it looks like massive tax breaks and unspecified cuts will make the deficit drastically worse, but don’t listen to those sticklers with calculators.”
The moment Romney admitted his plan “can’t be scored” is the moment he gave away the game. If he lacks the courage to present a detailed proposal, he lacks the ability to participate in the grown-ups’ conversation.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/07/10601579-it-cant-be-scored
Santorum And Opus Dei
He is not a member, he tells us, but his chosen parish church has deep ties to the organization
St. Catherine is one of only about 10 sites in Virginia that offers “evenings of recollection.” These are monthly, hour-and-a-half long talks by lay people and priests belonging to Opus Dei. They are segregated by sex—St. Catherine men who attend these do so at the Reston Study Center, one town over, while women attend them at St. Catherine.
Sex-segregation for adults is commonplace for Opus Dei. Santorum is not just a weekly-mass Catholic; but a daily-mass Catholic. This too
In 2002, Santorum travelled to Rome with high-profile American members for the 100th birthday of Opus Dei’s founder, Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer. (The five-day event is where Santorum first criticized John F. Kennedy’s “separation of church and state” speech, speaking to a reporter.) He has also sent two of his sons to the Heights School, a Washington, D.C. school with ties to Opus Dei.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/03/santorum-and-opus-dei.html
Still Bad at His Job
by BooMan
Wed Mar 7th, 2012 at 12:40:08 PM EST
The Speaker of the House is still really bad at his job.
“The good news is we have a winning message. The bad news is that in order for that message to mean anything, we have to back it up with action.” -John Boehner, in a closed-door meeting with his caucus this morning.
The bad news for Republicans in the House of Representatives is that they actually have to do something. You know, like fund the surface transportation in this country before funding runs out at the end of the month. But Boehner can’t get that done, so he’s left begging and pleading with his own members to be reasonable.
Boehner bluntly warned lawmakers that if the House does not pass its own bill, it will be stuck with a two-year, $109 billion Senate bill, or “something that looks just like it,” according to a source in the room.
“You don’t like that? I don’t like it either. Why would any of us like it?” the Speaker told his members. “It means punting on the opportunity to pass an infrastructure bill that bears our stamp. It means giving up on the opportunity to make sure a bill is enacted that is responsibly paid for, that has full-scale reforms in it and most importantly, that is linked to increased production of American energy.
“But right now, it’s the plan.”
Boehner urged his caucus to show unity.
“The American people entrusted us with the majority in the House. What we do with it us up to us,” he said. “We can use it to take steps together, one at a time, toward the vision we share. Or we can do nothing. We can squander the time we’ve been given … allowing our internal disagreements to paralyze us.”
When he says “the time we’ve been given” he doesn’t sound like a man who anticipates holding onto the gavel after the November elections. Given his inability to snap out of his paralysis, I can hardly blame him.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/3/7/12408/57960
Santorum’s Culture War Edge
Many in Washington remain befuddled by Rick Santorum’s embrace of radical social reactionaryism in an electorate primarily concerned with the economy. What they miss is that was only through bringing such issues to the front and center that Santorum could break through the frothy oblivion to which Dan Savage had tried to send him. He realized that this was what positively motivates those who were not yet sold on Romney.
But this only reinforces my point about the politics of sex. It’s a wedge issue now for the left. Since contraception emerged as an issue, thanks to the posturing of Benedict XVI’s amen-chorus, Obama has seen his ratings slowly climb, while the GOP candidates’ unfavorable numbers keep growing. And Santorum’s canny use of the issues has helped him sustain a primary campaign that will now only serve to weaken, demoralize and drain money from Romney.
So this election could prolong the Republican agony for another electoral cycle at least. It could lead to a general election candidate dubbed both rich and out of touch and only lip-syncing the theological truths that evangelicals hold dear. If he loses, it could well mean another spasm of even more Christianist extremism the next time round, since Christianists will argue that running another faux-culture-warrior was the reason they lost.
I say: nominate Santorum and get this over with. Then find a Romney in 2016 who actually is more moderate and doesn’t feel the need to apologize for it. But this won’t happen. The one outlier that might just happen? A brokered convention where a Palin-like figure emerges. Or a mess, where Romney feels obliged to lie even more, smear even more, and war-monger even more to force himself into a stronger position in the fall.
I fear a weak GOP candidate held afloat by a tsunami of smear ads against Obama, using the race card, the Israel card, the religion card, the Birther card, and what have you – thrown in by billionaires who hate the guy or who are obsessed with Greater Israel. It could be one of the ugliest smear campaigns Romney has ever run – and that’s saying something.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/03/santorums-culture-war-advantage.html
Lookie here, thez pinning for de good ole days….
Tom Brokaw: George H. W. Bush Is ‘The Most Underrated Modern President Of Our Time’
by Nando Di Fino | 7:58 am, March 7th, 2012
The Morning Joe panel made a wonderful, Joe Scarborough-driven segue from Mitt Romney to George H.W. Bush on Wednesday morning, heaping praise on the nation’s 41st President and wistfully reminiscing on his presidency.
“He’s a great man. We all look to him and say, ‘Why can’t our politicians be like this today?’ There’s a glow about him,” Scarborough said. “I love the guy. I will say it — I love him. And yet in ’87 and ’88… he was savaged. And we got that wrong.”
Panel guest Tom Brokaw went into an anecdote about Bush and how he and Jim Baker won the election in 1988.
“Think about what happened four years later, Joe, because that’s also applicable to where we are now,” Brokaw said. “George Bush 41 presides over the winning war. He puts together the most impressive alliance that we have seen in the last 40 or 50 years to do that. His numbers go to 75, almost 80 percent approval…”
“The Soviet Union collapses, Christmas day ’91,” Scarborough added.
AND HIS SON GEORGE W. BUSH # 42 TOOK AMERICA INTO TWO EFFING WARS!
VIDEO
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/tom-brokaw-george-h-w-bush-is-the-most-underrated-modern-president-of-our-time/
A campaign years in the making
By Steve Benen – Wed Mar 7, 2012 11:35 AM EST.
Getty Images
When compared to some of the routine falsehoods Mitt Romney tells voters, this may not seem especially shocking, but the rhetoric is a standard line in the former governor’s stump speech, and it’s increasingly grating.
“I never thought I’d be doing this. I mean running for president of the United States, this is not what I planned.”
This is probably part of some kind misguided attempt at humility. In politics, voters sometimes don’t trust candidates who seem overly ambitious, so Romney feels compelled to pretend he just stumbled into the presidential campaign — twice.
But the truth is unambiguous: Romney has been on “a seven-year quest for the Republican presidential nomination.”
There isn’t even anything to debate here. As far back as 2006, then-Gov. Romney and his administrative team collected government hard drives, bought them, and then destroyed them. Why? According to Romney, it was because he was preparing a presidential campaign — for Pete’s sake — and he wanted to keep potentially-embarrassing information away from opposition researchers.
Even before getting elected governor, he was telling party activists in 2002 about his long-term plan to hold national office.
In September 2008, the AP reported, “While Romney wished McCain and Palin well, his friends and advisers say if they fail in the general election, Romney is primed — even anxious — to mount a second bid for the White House.”
Also in 2008, literally the very day he ended his campaign, his advisers were already telling reporters he would try again four years later.
In 2009, Romney wrote a campaign book. In 2010, Romney created a political action committee to help curry favor with Republicans whose support he’d soon seek, with a “special focus” on South Carolina and New Hampshire.
Romney would have voters believe he never thought about and never planned to run for president? Seriously?
.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/07/10601091-a-campaign-years-in-the-making
LOL Romney didn’t think he’d have to do anything to actually EARN the PRESIDENCY. He assumed hiis looks and $$$$ would get him into the Oval Office leather.
The Big Lies Of Mitt Romney, Ctd
Paul Waldman asks when the press will start calling them out:
There are lots of things Romney says about Obama that are distortions, just plain ridiculous, or unfalsifiable but obviously false, as when he often climbs into Obama’s head to tell you what Obama really desires, like turning America into a militarily weak, economically crippled shadow of Europe (not the actual Europe, but Europe as conservatives imagine it to be, which is something like Poland circa 1978). But there are other occasions, like this one, where Romney simply lies, plainly and obviously. In this case, there are only two possibilities for Romney’s statement: Either he knew what Obama has said on this topic and decided he’d just lie about it, or he didn’t know what Obama has said, but decided he’d just make up something about what Obama said regardless of whether it was true. In either case, he was lying.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/03/mitt-romneys-lies.html
Yglesias Award Nominee
“What does it say about a candidate, though, who wrote an op-ed in 2009 saying that, please apply what we did in Massachusetts nationally on an individual mandate, and then goes on the campaign trail yesterday and just lies? He lied yesterday. It’s on videotape. What does that — what are conservatives to think about that?” – Joe Scarborough.
My answer: that Romney is one of the hollowest, shallowest candidates for national office I’ve witnessed, and brazen lying in a smooth, authoritative advertizing voice, is his first resort
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/03/yglesias.html
oooh….scary…the President protested at Harvard…ooooh…
LOL GO BARACK!!!
I love seeing this. A leader from the start.
The Road Forward
by BooMan
Wed Mar 7th, 2012 at 10:27:31 AM EST
By my own criteria, Mitt Romney had a good but not great night last night and we should begin to see signs of the Republican electorate consolidating behind him. A sure sign of that will be if Romney wins the Kansas caucus on Saturday. So far, Santorum has owned this area of the country, winning contests in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Colorado. If nothing fundamental has changed as a result of last night, Santorum will win Kansas. The next thing to look for will be the results in Alabama and Mississippi next Tuesday. So far Gingrich has won handily in South Carolina, Georgia, and the Florida Panhandle. There’s no obvious reason why he shouldn’t continue winning in the Deep South. There is also no sign that Romney is improving his performance in the Deep South. He was beaten badly in Tennessee and Oklahoma last night. Can Santorum make a case to the voters in Alabama and Mississippi that he is the only one who can stop Romney? Personally, I doubt it. I think Gingrich will win those contests.
So, a week from now Romney will be able to point to victories in Hawaii and a bunch of U.S. territories like American Samoa and Guam, Santorum will have Kansas in his trophy case, and Gingrich will have won the two big states with the most delegates. Will that clarify anything? I don’t think it will clarify much other than that Romney is still not consolidating the base. But I did predict that a result like Romney achieved last night would help him consolidate the base. My problem is that I don’t think it will yield results in the next week. Look to the Missouri Caucuses on the 17th to see if Romney improves dramatically on the results he achieved during the Missouri primary last month. And then look to Illinois on the 20th. I think that is where Romney will breakthrough and have a big victory that finally begins an end to this process.
After Illinois, Romney’s next big challenge will be in Wisconsin where Santorum has been polling in the lead. If Romney sweeps Maryland, Washington DC, and Wisconsin on April 3rd, he’ll probably wrap this thing up that night. If he loses Wisconsin. he’ll have to wait until April 24th, when wins in New York , Delaware, Connecticut, and Rhode Island will more than offset Santorum’s victory in Pennsylvania.
For Santorum to prevent Romney from winning a majority of the delegates, he’ll need to somehow win in Illinois and Wisconsin. I think it’s that simple. As for Gingrich, he can hope to follow up wins in Alabama and Mississippi with a win in Louisiana on March 24th. But after that, he’s out of Deep Southern states until Arkansas votes on May 22nd, followed by Texas on May 29th. Can Gingrich go from March 13th to May 24th without winning a single contest? I kind of doubt it. If he stays in after Illinois, it will be for the purpose of helping Romney by dividing the vote. If he drops out, Romney’s job gets a little harder.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/3/7/102731/4740#10
Posted at 08:43 AM ET, 03/07/2012
The Morning Plum
By Greg Sargent
Last night, Mitt Romney won Ohio — a state that the GOP needs in order to win in November — by a single point. Against Rick Santorum.
Romney, by racking up a decisive win among delegates, confirmed that the nomination is within his grasp. But Santorum’s strong showing in Ohio, and his wins in other states, again revealed that key GOP constituencies aren’t willing to come to terms with Romney as their nominee, and that Romney has weaknesses that are only getting exacerbated by the battering he’s taking in the primary, ones that could haunt him in the general election.
The exit polls tell a familiar story: In Ohio, Romney won among college graduates — but lost among voters without college degrees. He won among those with incomes over $100,000, but lost among voters below that. Fewer than a quarter of Ohio voters think Romney “best understands the problems of people like you.”
More broadly, Dan Balz’s overview nicely sums up the damage Romney has sustained:
Romney is in worse shape at this point in the campaign than virtually all recent previous nominees. Demographically, his image among independent voters, the most critical swing group, is more negative now than it was when the primary battle began. He could be hurt among women. He is in trouble with Latinos, a growing part of the electorate that is tilting even more Democratic than it was four years ago. He is not as strong as he needs to be among working-class white voters, among whom President Obama has been consistently weak.
Romney will be able to reintroduce himself to key swing constituencies once he wins the nomination, so his current weaknesses could prove ephemeral. But Dems are betting that his negatives will be very difficult to shake, particularly when the Obama machine gears up to full strength and attempts to tattoo Romney permanently with the positions he’s adopted to muddle through the primary. Pretty soon, Romney will be facing an operation somewhat more formidable than Santorum’s shoestring campaign.
* Santorum’s coalition reveals Romney’s problems: Ross Douthat notes that Santorum is the first not-Romney to successfullly build a national coalition:
Santorum’s coalition is roughly the same one that Mike Huckabee tried to assemble in 2008. With a demographic mix of evangelicals and blue-collar Republicans, and a message that’s conservative on social issues but more populist than the party’s Wall Street wing on economics, it’s proven capable of delivering states from Minnesota to Mississippi, the Rockies to the Rust Belt.
This is, of course, another way of describing the coalition that can’t come to terms with Romney as the nominee.
* Romney struggles to broaden coalition: Ron Brownstein sums it up:
Tuesday’s results dramatized the inability of either candidate to consistently expand beyond the beachheads of support they have already established. In the most competitive states, Romney continued to struggle among the key elements of the party’s populist wing, particularly evangelical Christians, strong tea party supporters, working-class voters and voters who consider themselves very conservative.
* Wealthy voters put Romney over the top: Relatedly, Chris Cillizza makes a persuasive case that Romney might have lost Ohio if it hadn’t been for a significant rise in turnout among wealthy voters.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-morning-plum/2012/03/07/gIQAw7XjwR_blog.html
March 6, 2012
Super Tuesday
Long before Super Tuesday, the Republican Party had cemented itself on the distant right of American politics, with a primary campaign that has been relentlessly nasty, divisive and vapid. Barbara Bush, the former first lady, was so repelled that on Tuesday she called it the worst she’d ever seen. We feel the same way.
This country has serious economic problems and profound national security challenges. But the Republican candidates are so deep in the trenches of cultural and religious warfare that they aren’t offering any solutions.
The results Tuesday night did not settle the race. Republican voters will have to go on for some time choosing between a candidate, Mitt Romney, who stands for nothing except country-club capitalism, and a candidate, Rick Santorum, so blinkered by his ideology that it’s hard to imagine him considering any alternative ideas or listening to any dissenting voice.
There are differences. Mr. Santorum is usually more extreme in his statements than Mr. Romney, especially in his intolerance of gay and lesbian Americans and his belief that religion — his religion — should define policy and politics. Mr. Santorum’s remark about wanting to vomit when he reread John F. Kennedy’s remarkable speech in 1960 about the separation of church and state is one of the lowest points of modern-day electoral politics.
Mr. Romney has been slightly more temperate. But, in his desperation to prove himself to the ultraright, he has joined in the attacks on same-sex marriage, abortion and even birth control. He has never called Mr. Santorum on his more bigoted rants. Neither politician is offering hard-hit American workers anything beyond long discredited trickle-down economics, more tax cuts for the rich, a weakening of the social safety net and more of the deregulation that nearly crashed the system in 2008.
There is also no space between Mr. Romney and Mr. Santorum in the way they distort reality to attack Mr. Obama for everything he says, no matter how sensible, and oppose everything he wants, no matter how necessary. Rising gas prices? Blame the president’s sound environmental policies. Never mind that oil prices are set on world markets and driven up by soaring demand in China and Middle East unrest.
They also have peddled the canard that the president is weak on foreign policy. Mr. Romney on Tuesday called President Obama “America’s most feckless president since Carter.” Never mind that Mr. Obama ordered the successful raid to kill Osama bin Laden and has pummeled Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders, all without the Republicans’ noxious dead-or-alive swagger. Now, for the sake of scoring political points, Mr. Romney, Mr. Santorum and Newt Gingrich, who is hanging on only thanks to one backer’s millions, seem determined to push Israel toward a reckless attack on Iran.
Republican politicians have pursued their assault on Mr. Obama, the left and any American who disagrees with them for years now. There are finally signs that they may pay a price for the casual cruelty with which they attack whole segments of society. Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican of Alaska, said on Tuesday that the Republicans have left people thinking they are at war with women. Women are right to think that.
A new Pew Research poll shows that 3 in 10 voters say their opinion of the Republicans has worsened during the primaries. Among Democrats, 49 percent said watching the primaries have made them more likely to vote for Mr. Obama. That is up from 36 percent in December, which shows that Mr. Obama has risen as the Republicans have fallen.
But the president, who can be frustratingly inert at times, still has a long way to go.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/opinion/super-tuesday.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
Ohio: Romney’s Unimpressive Win
Jonathan Cohn
It looks like Mitt Romney may have escaped Ohio with the narrowest of victories. Just before midnight on Tuesday, with most precincts around the state reporting, he was ahead by 6,000 votes. But does such a slim win really count as a victory?
Even before Tuesday, we knew that Romney would get more delegates from Ohio, because Santorum’s campaign organization hadn’t gotten enough signatures in all of the state’s congressional districts. The state mattered because it was a bellwether. In particular, it was a chance for Romney to show he could vanquish Santorum once and for all. It doesn’t look to me like that happened.
In fact, the results in Ohio looked strikingly like the results from past contests. Romney won in and around the big cities, among wealthier and more educated voters. Santorum prevailed in rural areas, among voters with less money and less schooling. Going forward, Romney has all the advantages he had before: More money, better organization, and an increasingly large lead in pledged delegates.
But Romney is not expanding his base of support and he’s not winning over the doubters. In fact, you can make a pretty good case that, in Ohio, the anti-Romney vote was still bigger than the Romney vote. (In a related development, Santorum advisers are now explicitly appealing to supporters of Newt Gingrich, in the hopes of winning those votes.)
Yes, Romney remains the favorite to win the nomination. But he hasn’t won it yet. The next two weeks could be particularly brutal, as Romney must slog through caucuses in Kansas and Missouri, plus primaries in Alabama and Mississippi. The Illinois primary, on March 20, looks a bit more favorable, but right after that comes Louisiana.
Republican optimists point out, over and over again, that the long, difficult primary of 2008 ended up strengthening Barack Obama. That is true. But 2008 strengthened Obama because he was running against a formidable foe in Hillary Clinton – and because it sharpened his political skills without forcing him to take more extreme ideological positions. As many of us have noted, that is not happening right now.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/101444/ohio-republican-primary-analysis-romney-santorum
Rikyrah,
Check your email ASAP
Democrats seek hearing into judge’s Obama email
Two top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee called for a hearing Tuesday to examine a Montana judge’s conduct in forwarding an email that included a racist joke involving bestiality and President Barack Obama’s mother.
Reps. John Conyers of Michigan and Steve Cohen of Tennessee told Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, in their letter that the committee has a duty to investigate the potential consequences of Judge Richard Cebull’s email.
“At a minimum, forwarding this email illustrates poor judgment and of conduct that was unbecoming of a federal judge,” they wrote. “More troubling, however, is the possibility that public disclosure of the judge’s conduct may not only undermine the public’s view of his personal credibility and impartiality as a judge, but also the integrity of the … federal judiciary.”
A hearing would determine whether further investigation or legislative action was needed, they wrote. Congress can remove a federal judge for misconduct by impeachment in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate confirmation, but such action is rare.
Smith had no immediate response to their hearing request.
At least three complaints have been filed with the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals against Cebull regarding the email, which he forwarded to six friends on Feb. 20. One of the complaints was filed by Cebull himself. He asked 9th Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski “to conduct an inquiry as to whether recent activity of mine constitutes misconduct.”
Cebull did not return a message from The Associated Press on Tuesday. He has previously said that he forwarded the email because he disliked Obama and denied allegations of racism. News of the email broke Thursday when it was forwarded to a Great Falls Tribune reporter.
The judge sent Obama a letter of apology Thursday in which he said he accepted responsibility, assured the president that it will never happen again and said he had asked for a judicial review
Read more: http://fremonttribune.com/news/national/democrats-seek-hearing-into-judge-s-obama-email/article_73e3cb00-9a55-5581-93bd-5b6cce44555a.html#ixzz1oReWK7fl
Richard Cebull’s email was so disgusting and filthy, he should resign out of common decency. He cannot be trusted to be fair and impartial. His credibility as a judge is gone.
Resign Richard Cebull!
Because this can’t be posted ENOUGH
Civil Rights
Law Prof’s Popular Book Argues Drug War Is a System of Racial Control
Posted Mar 7, 2012 6:54 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
An Ohio State law professor’s book with a provocative title has become a surprise success, earning a spot on the New York Times paperback nonfiction best-seller list for six weeks.
The book by Michelle Alexander, a former director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Project in Northern California, is called The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Her thesis: The war on drugs was a deliberate effort to reverse civil rights gains. The New York Times reports on the book and its supporters and detractors.
Alexander chronicles the effects of get-tough drug policies in the book. Nearly one-third of black men are likely to spend time in prison at some point in their lives. When they are freed, many will face job discrimination, loss of the right to vote, and inability to receive benefits such as food stamps, public housing and student loans.
“It’s easy to be completely unaware that this vast new system of racial and social control has emerged,” Alexander told the Times. “Unlike in Jim Crow days, there were no ‘Whites Only’ signs. This system is out of sight, out of mind.”
Yale law professor James Forman Jr. will be challenging some of Alexander’s arguments in a law review article set to be published next month, the story says. He opposes mass incarceration, but says Alexander minimizes the rise in violent crime. More violent offenders are in jail, he says, than drug defendants
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law_profs_book_argues_drug_war_is_a_system_of_racial_control/?utm_source=maestro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily_email
this was frigging hilarious:
MARTIN BASHIR: Mitt Romney is the Prince Charles of the GOP
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/msnbc-tv/46649092/#46649092
So much for Super Tuesday clarity
By Steve Benen – Wed Mar 7, 2012 8:00 AM EST.
The Romney campaign manages to win and look weak at the same time.
Going into Super Tuesday, it was hardly unreasonable to think the fight for the Republican presidential nomination would effectively be over this morning. So much for that idea.
Mitt Romney, outspending Rick Santorum four-to-one in Super Tuesday states, had just put together a string of wins in Arizona, Michigan, and Washington, and looked well positioned to win as many as nine of the 11 states voting yesterday. Yesterday would be a triumph for the former governor, answering the questions surrounding the Romney campaign once and for all.
But as the dust settles on Super Tuesday, the results actually reinforce a very different question: why can’t this guy wrap up the nomination?
At one level, the results looked pretty good for Romney — he won seven states yesterday, including Ohio. But the margin in the Buckeye State was extremely close, despite Romney’s $4 million investment in Ohio; he underperformed in several other states; and he ended up losing four contests, including a primary in Tennessee he’d hoped to win.
Romney performed just well enough to remain the frontrunner, and just poorly enough to look weak and keep the Republican race going indefinitely.
In other words, last night looked an awful lot like the GOP nominating race thus far: Romney heavily outspending his weak rivals and putting together ambivalent victories, bolstered by a party that feels compelled to back him, even if it doesn’t want to.
If Republican leaders, officials, and voters see the Super Tuesday and feel good about the state of their party, they’re just not paying close enough attention. A weak frontrunner, struggling to put away ridiculous and underfunded challengers, is not a recipe for national success.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/07/10599816-so-much-for-super-tuesday-clarity
TPM2012
Jean Schmidt Loses House Seat In Major GOP Primary Upset
Eric Kleefeld- March 6, 2012, 11:51 PM
In a major upset, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH), a fiery conservative voice in the House of Representatives, has lost the Republican primary for her redrawn House seat.
With 99% of precincts reports, Iraq War veteran surgeon and 2009 Cincinnati Mayoral candidate Brad Wenstrup has 49% of the vote, to Schmidt’s 43%, a raw-vote lead of about 5,000 votes. Wenstrup had challenged Schmidt from her right on such issues as the debt ceiling, pitching himself as a Washington outsider.
Carl Weiser of the Cincinnati Enquirer reports that Schmidt has conceded defeat — she says she called Wenstrup to congratulate him, got his voicemail, and left a message
Schmidt was first elected to the House in a 2005 special election, only narrowly defeating Democratic candidate and Iraq War veteran Paul Hackett in a strongly Republican district.
In November of 2005, she gained fame (and infamy) for her floor remarks attacking Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA), a Vietnam veteran who had recently called for an orderly U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. On the House floor, she declared in a message to Murtha, “that cowards cut and run, Marines never do.”
The House then broke out in a round of boos from the Democratic minority. After a call for her remarks to be ruled “unparliamentary” and Schmidt to be forbidden from speaking for the rest of the day, Schmidt instead voluntarily withdrew her remarks.
But from that point on, Schmidt has always been a lightning rod for liberals, and something of a hero for conservatives. But in the new round of redistricting, local politics have caught up with her.
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/jean-schmidt-loses-house-seat-in-major-gop-primary-upset.php?ref=fpb
Super Tuesday: Romney Makes the Clown Show Go On
By Charles P. Pierce at 11:42PM
He likes us. He really, really likes us!
“We’re so excited,” Willard Romney told a ballroom full of increasingly nervous supporters here on Tuesday after the polls closed, “to be in the Bay State tonight.”
Hey, Skippy, you know who calls Massachusetts “the Bay State” in casual conversation? People from fking Utah, that’s who.
It was a strange, muted affair, this “victory” party of his, with supporters nervously walking out on the fake frontrunner’s speech to check the news from Ohio on the TV screens in the ante-lobby outside. Romney’s Super Tuesday was little more than a tattered triumph. Vermont was nice. The walkover in Virginia was a function of organizational incompetence on the part of the Gingrich and Santorum campaigns. And about as many Massachusetts voters turned out to vote for him as would have shown up at Fenway for a couple series against the Yanks. But nobody at the home of Willard Romney’s operation wanted to wake up on Wednesday morning with Rick Santorum’s having won in Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Dakota, and Ohio. (And not just because of what a colossal dick Rick Santorum is. And have I mentioned recently what a colossal dick he is?) Even if Ohio kinda sorta worked out, a night like that would send this race hurtling toward late spring or early summer, and what good is being inevitable if you can’t seem to get enough people to agree that you are? So the sense in the ballroom, and in the halls of the Westin Copley Place Hotel, and maybe America, was that of a good night that could wind up looking very, very bad, and a campaign that could end up with a balls-to-the-wall knife fight for delegates.
Not to mention the fact that there remains a substantial amount of Republican voters who would rather remove their spleens with a melon baller than vote for Willard Romney for anything. The open questions are starting to look like one huge abyss. Can he ever show any real strength in the South? (The odds that he will do so in Alabama or Mississippi are, ahem, long.) Is there anything else he can do to pander sufficiently to the crazoid elements in his party’s base short of immolating himself on Sarah Palin’s lawn? (Princess Dumbass Of The Northwoods came out again — on CNN, no less — and hinted, again, that she might be willing to throw herself into the race, and people reported this like it was real news. Suckers!) And when, oh, when will they finally see that, even though Willard is struggling to beat the colossal dick Rick Santorum, he is still The Only Man Who Can Beat Obama? ‘Ees a puzzlement, no question.
At the very least, Romney’s team seems to be the only one of the four remaining Republican campaigns that realizes that the past two weeks of anti-ladyparts campaigning has created a gender gap for the party this fall into which you could sink the Nimitz. Thus, I suspect, was he introduced last night by two women. Kerry Murphy Healey was first. She was the lieutenant governor he abandoned when not-giving-a-shit-about-Massachusetts became his fulltime job.
(Healey subsequently lost to the present Democratic governor, Deval Patrick, after running the most incompetent statewide campaign ever that did not involve Martha Coakley. One of her stretch-drive TV commercials was an anti-crime bit that showed a woman walking through a parking garage while ominous footsteps approached her from behind. Patrick being African-American, one did not exactly need the Enigma machine to decode that baby.)
Healey warmed up the crowd by saying, “He’s going to do all those things in Washington that he did in Massachusetts!”
(Romneycare! Romneycare!)
But Ann Romney, who’s taken a more active role in the campaign over the past few weeks — which is also not an accident — well she was even more forthrightly engaged in what’s actually going on, trying to spin the anti-ladyparts disaster in an interesting way. “The women I’ve talked to are interested in the economy,” she said. “The women I’ve talked to are interested in jobs. The women I’ve talked to are interested in the debt. The women I’ve talked to are interested in the education their children are getting. Those are the issues that the women I’ve met are concerned about.” Say what you will about the substance of the remarks, it’s at least an attempt at repositioning the disaster that has overtaken the party in this otherwise balmy winter of ours.
As for her husband, he looked pale and drawn and the beginning of his speech was barely even coherent, even by his standards. (He congratulated the other candidates by saying, “Thanks, guys. Nice races.”) I don’t think Romney ever thought the campaign would go on this long or be this hard. He’s always been shameless, but he seemed uniquely so, pitching himself as the native son come home, and not the wingnut-come-lately who’s been using the Commonwealth (God save it!) as a punchline for five goddamn years. “It’s great to be at our home in Massachusetts,” he began. “It’s nice to be able to go home tonight for the first time in two months. To go to our home and sleep in our own beds.”
Just shut up, okay? Please.
Willard sharpened up a little when he wound into his usual stump speech, in which he is prying the country’s soul out of the handbasket in which Barack Obama has shipped it off to hell. “President Obama seems to believe that he is unbound by the Constitution,” Romney said. “In a second term, he would be unrestrained even by the need to be re-elected.” I’m not sure what he thinks the president would do in that situation. Perhaps steal some more of the ideas that Romney wanted to run on in 2008.
As he spoke, you could see the people stealing away, huddling around the TV sets. It will go on. This time next week, Romney will be telling voters in Alabama and Mississippi what a hellhole that state was where he used to be the governor. The rubes will find this very funny. And he will know in the unsold part of his soul that he’s going to be running for president for a very long time.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/mitt-romney-super-tuesday-speech-7149004#ixzz1oROaHEFz
LOL All there of the clowns, ROMNEY, GINGRICH, AND SANTORUM keep saying the race is all about the ‘SOUL OF AMERICA”
NEWSFLASH: NONE OF YOU ARE IT.
****Hollaring****
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
The Oreos!
It’s Super Tuesday in wingut world, and other than the cable news pundits and political junkies, no one really cares. Flipper will continue his inevitable march towards the GOP nomination, and the rest of the candidates will hang in until their fat cat benefactors tell them to go and get a real job.
I actually want to blog about something much more important tonight: the 100th anniversary of the Oreo cookie! That little treat is as A-merry-can as apple pie.
So anywhoo, in honor of A-merry-ca’s favorite cookie, I would like to award some of my fellow Negro A-merry-cans with the first ever Oreo. (Kind of like the Oscars but less acting involved.)
1. Beyonce- This Diva gets two Oreos. She would have named that crumb snatcher White Ivy if she had her way.
2. Allen West- Allen gets three Oreos. Allen wants to be on the republican ticket as VP, but I don’t think they want to run two white guys this time around.
3. Larry Elder-Three Oreos for Larry. Larry actually wrote a book called “Stupid Black Men.” Yes he did.
4. Jesse Lee Peterson- I was just on Jesse’s show so I am only going to give him one Oreo. Jesse actually said that “black racists elected Obama.” Poor Jesse. I actually feel sorry for the guy.
5. O.J. Simpson-Juice never really cared much for you Negroes until he killed his wife and needed you all to set him free. Now Juice is where he belongs. I wonder if he hooked up with the Aryans in prison. Four Oreos for O.J.
6. Herman Cain- Herman, I notice that all your jump offs had one thing in common. Four Oreos for Herman.
7. Every black Tea Party member in A-merry-ca-What do you think all those Tea Party folks are going to do when they get bored with Obama? Five Oreos for you Negroes.
8. Thomas Sowell-Thomas probably doesn’t even eat Oreos. At least not the cookie part. Four Oreos for Thomas.
9. Tiger Woods- No comments needed. Five Oreos for Tiger.
10. Niger Innis- Maybe it’s his name. Anyway, Niger says that “Obama has failed the country.” I am guessing that Niger wouldn’t say that about a white president. Three Oreos for Niger.
Congrats on your Oreos, folks! Now go out and drink lots of milk.
http://field-negro.blogspot.com/
so sorry for the dup…but, I was LMAO when I read it this morning.
I spit out coffee all over my keyboard this moring reading FN. LMBAO
Former U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis says he was denied right to vote
Former U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis said he and his wife Lynda were denied the right to vote Tuesday in his Fentress County hometown.
“We walked in and they told me I was not a registered voter. I had been taken off the list,” said Davis, who served two terms representing the fourth congressional district of Tennessee, leaving office in 2011.
“These are people who I grew up with. I told them I live here. I went to school about 20 yards away.”
Davis has been voting in Pall Mall, Tenn., since 1995, he said.
He has also voted in city elections, in Pickett County’s Byrdstown, where he served as mayor from 1978-82, for about the last 15 years, he said.
“It’s always been this way and today, for some reason, they change it,” he said. “I had a sense inside of uneasiness when I was told that I was not allowed to vote. They didn’t offer me a provisional ballot, or anything, just told me I wasn’t registered.”
Fentress County administrator of elections Joey Williams said his office had received a notice from the state saying the Davises were registered to vote in Pickett County.
“We take a ‘deny no one’ stance,” said Williams. “We only enforce what we’re given.”
Blake Fontenay, spokesman for the Tennessee Department of State, which oversees the division of elections, said officials were planning to investigate what happened with the Davises.
“They were purged in Fentress and we need to find out why,” he said, adding that someone had called Davis and told him he could cast a provisional ballot back at the precinct later that day.
Davis confirmed that the official called.
“He said I would have to re-register,” Davis said. “And I told them I’m already registered, I’m not going to re-register. I’m a former member of Congress, state senator, House member, mayor and all my life, I’ve been involved in the community, coaching Little League, participating in Boy Scouts and serving on boards here, and I’m denied the right to vote. It just doesn’t make sense.”
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120306/NEWS02/303060082
SHEER FUCKERY! Folks had better recognize, there is an ALL.OUT. WAR.ON VOTERS.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
The Oreos!
FIELD NEGRO
It’s Super Tuesday in wingut world, and other than the cable news pundits and political junkies, no one really cares. Flipper will continue his inevitable march towards the GOP nomination, and the rest of the candidates will hang in until their fat cat benefactors tell them to go and get a real job.
I actually want to blog about something much more important tonight: the 100th anniversary of the Oreo cookie! That little treat is as A-merry-can as apple pie.
So anywhoo, in honor of A-merry-ca’s favorite cookie, I would like to award some of my fellow Negro A-merry-cans with the first ever Oreo. (Kind of like the Oscars but less acting involved.)
http://field-negro.blogspot.com/
BRILLIANT!
James Taylor Stumps for Obama, DNC
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/james-taylor-stumps-for-obama-dnc/
Singer-songwriter and North Carolina native James Taylor says he’s eager to infuse his performances with politics, stumping for President Obama when he tours the United States later this year.
“I am so – I really love this president. I love what it says about America, that we were able to elect this man,” Taylor, 63, said in an interview with local TV affiliate WCNC.
Taylor will hit the road in June and July for 18 concerts, including stops in general election battlegrounds Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio and Colorado, where, he said, he will proudly promote Obama.
He performed Friday at two fundraisers for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., that were also attended by first lady Michelle Obama. The events raised at least $675,000.
“It’s great that North Carolina sets the stage for this event,” Taylor said of the DNC. “I wouldn’t miss it. I will find some excuse to be down here. If asked, I will perform. I’d love to.”
Taylor said he’d like to perform “Carolina in My Mind” for the convention. His 1977 hit single “Your Smiling Face” is featured on the Obama Campaign’s official 2012 soundtrack.
In my mind, I’m going to Carolina. Going to Carolina in my MIND.
Good Morning, Everyone! :-)
Good Morning, Everyone :)