The Monkey is a novelty dance, most popular in 1963. The dance was popularized by two R&B records: Major Lance‘s “The Monkey Time“, and The Miracles‘ “Mickey’s Monkey” both Top 10 Pop hits released during the summer of 1963.
The monkey is often referenced on the animated series Johnny Bravo (in every theme song in addition to many times in the actual show), although it may be a completely different dance. The tv series The Simpsons also referenced the dance at least twice (in seasons 4 and 8).[1] The thrash metal band Exodus reference the dance in their song “The Toxic Waltz” (from Fabulous Disaster) with the lyric “Used to do the monkey, but now it’s not cool”. Characters in the anime series Overman King Gainer do the monkey in the opening animation and in the show itself.
Can you shimmy, watusi, do the jerk, tighten up, mashed potatoes, twist, funky chicken, hustle, cabbage patch, running man, electric slide, Texas two step? Want to learn a few steps of the oldies but goodies? Stay with 3 Chics this week, as we get down with it. don’t hurt yourselves, now!
Furor Over The Daily Texan’s Trayvon Martin Editorial Cartoon
by
Jason Cohen
|
Mar 28 2012, 7:46 PM
Update:
The Daily Texan editorial board issued another statement at 7:05 p.m. on Wednesday night.
On Tuesday, a cartoon ran on the Opinion page of The Daily Texan that offended many readers, and we sincerely apologize for our decision to run it.
The cartoonist, Stephanie Eisner, no longer works for The Daily Texan.
However, the decision to run the cartoon showed a failure in judgment on the part of the editorial board.
The statement goes on to say that the incident “prompts us to reflect on a larger problem that persists at The Daily Texan and on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin,” and that “The Daily Texan will hold an open forum in the coming weeks to raise consciousness of race and diversity both at the Texan and on campus.”
Update, 4:35 p.m:
As Wells Dunbar and Ben Philpott of KUT News reported, The Daily Texan cartoonist Stephanie Eisner has issued a statement apologizing for her “ambiguous cartoon.”:
“I apologize for what was in hindsight an ambiguous cartoon related to the Trayvon Martin shooting. I intended to contribute thoughtful commentary on the media coverage of the incident, however this goal fell flat. I would like to make it explicitly clear that I am not a racist, and that I am personally appalled by the killing of Trayvon Martin. I regret any pain the wording or message of my cartoon may have caused.”
Original post, 8:42 a.m.:
The first couple of headlines in reaction to the above editorial cartoon, which ran in Tuesday’s Daily Texan, pretty much summed up the furor:
The Houston Press: You Won’t Believe UT’s Daily Texan Trayvon Martin Cartoon
Gawker: University of Texas Student Paper Wins ‘Most Racist Trayvon Martin Cartoon’ Contest
“The paper pulled this comic off their website as we were writing this post,” wrote Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan. “Good backlash anticipation.”
But that did not turn out to be the case. An editor’s note appended to the cartoon, which was written and drawn by University of Texas at Austin sophomore Stephanie Eisner, explained that it “was temporarily taken down at 2:20 p.m. to alleviate web traffic and prevent the web site from crashing. It was republished at 4:50 p.m.” 52 minutes later, The Daily Texan editorial board expanded on that action with a statement:
A controversial editorial cartoon on the Trayvon Martin shooting was published Tuesday on the Opinion page of The Daily Texan. The Daily Texan Editorial Board recognizes the sensitive nature of the cartoon’s subject matter.
The views expressed in the cartoon are not those of the editorial board. They are those of the artist. It is the policy of the editorial board to publish the views of our columnists and cartoonists, even if we disagree with them.
Dr. Gregory Vincent, who holds the position of Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin also issued a statement, writing that:
We embrace free speech on campus and encourage the open exchange of ideas, especially in our student media.. However, we recognize that the cartoon published in today’s Daily Texan was of questionable taste and was offensive to many members of the campus community.
The cartoon was the top story at 10pm for Austin’s ABC affiliate KVUE, which took note of the coincidence that there was also a “Justice for Trayvon” rally at the state capitol building on Austin Tuesday night.
That rally was also the top story on the front page of Wednesday’s Daily Texan. But the paper also covered its own controversy with Huma Munir writing the story.
Naturally she got an interview with Eisner, who said she felt the media coverage of the Martin case was overblown.
I feel the news should be unbiased. And in the retelling of this particular event, I felt that that was not the case. My story compared this situation to yellow journalism in the past, where aspects of news stories were blown out of proportion with the intention of selling papers and enticing emotions.
Munir also reported that Eisner said “some of the media seems to be sensationalizing the facts and making race the more prominent aspect of the case.”
But that, wrote Ben Sherman of the progressive blog Burnt Orange Report (in a post that was actually written before Munir’s story had been published) is simply wrong:
The tragedy of this murder is the murder itself, and the racial component is undeniable. It must be discussed when talking about the motive for the case and the handling thereof. The cartoon, which misspells Trayvon’s name, mockingly depicts this murder as a hateful man against an innocent child, but that is exactly what happened. Eisner’s cartoon boils down the vicious murder of an American child to a media conspiracy to bash white people.
http://www.tmdailypost.com/article/media/furor-over-daily-texans-trayvon-martin-editorial-cartoon
ABOUT WILLARD:
Appealing to voters in Wisconsin by joking about the time your dad laid off a lot of workers in Michigan. Brilliant. is.gd/3FrJQC—
Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) March 28, 2012
THE ADS WRITE THEMSELVES.
How Can We Help President Obama Today?
By Charles P. Pierce
at 2:46PM
Buy him a ticket home so he can bat around the Romneybot 2.0, because the billowing smoke from its interior is starting to get a bit blinding.
Not only is the Supreme Court sitting in judgment of a health-care reform law of which Willard Romney is the obvious grandparent, but, in running away from that historical fact, he’s once again running backwards over his own feet. That embarrassing scene with Leno last night, wherein Romney essentially threw people with pre-existing heart conditions onto an ice flow and waved bye-bye from the shore, coupled with the apparently immortal image of Romney as an Etch-A-Sketch candidate, has reinforced the widely held notion that, not only is Romney an unprincipled opportunist, but also that he does indeed believe that there are only two kinds of people in the world — himself, and The Help. This, in turn, seems to be affecting Willard’s poll numbers, which, if we are to believe the folks to whom the ABC/Washington Post gremlins spoke, are beginning to indicate that, the more people are exposed to the mechanism, the less they like the way it operates:
Thirty-four percent hold a favorable opinion of Romney, the lowest for any leading presidential candidate in ABC/Post polls in primary seasons since 1984. His unfavorable score is higher than Obama ever has received; it’s been exceeded by just one other Republican candidate this year, Newt Gingrich, and by only one top candidate in 28 years, Hillary Clinton in 2008.
Bear in mind: Outside of the Etch-A-Sketch gaffe, which merely reinforced a view of Romney that was already pretty general throughout the land, Romney’s unpopularity apparently increases the closer he gets to being the actual candidate. He’s really not doing or saying very much, but everything he says and does seems to land with considerable impact on the country’s last nerve….
Romney’s favorability rating is lower than other leading candidates have received in ABC/Post polls during previous January-to-June nominating seasons. The previous low was Bill Clinton’s 39 percent in March 1992.
Bear in mind: At that point in the 1992 campaign, Clinton had been hit with his draft status, how much dope he may or may not have smoked, whether or not he’d gone to Russia on a secret New Left spying mission, and the whole Gennifer Flowers eruption. The worst things that have happened to Romney are having an aide make a bad analogy about him on television, and that otherwise sensible people refuse to shut up about what he once did to his dog. Compared to Clinton, Romney’s walked on gilded splinters. Of course, Romney has one problem that Clinton didn’t have.
He’s Mitt Romney.
This is the second time he’s run for president, and it’s the second time this has happened. The more the electorate sees him, no matter if there is an intervening event or not, the more it doesn’t like him. By and large, the Republican primary race is over. Mitt Romney is going to be the nominee of the party for president. There is no reason that the president can’t join the general election battle right now — not against “the Republicans,” or “some of those politicians on the campaign trail” — but against Mitt Romney specifically. The country has decided it doesn’t like the Romneybot very much. The country should not be allowed to change its mind on that one. I’d declare opening day as fast as I could.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/mitt-romney-poll-numbers-7675223#ixzz1qSu3cTQI
3/27/2012
The Niggering of Trayvon Martin:
We see this again and again. A black male who captures the imagination of the nation must be degraded by the right. He must be turned into something else, some Other. President Obama can’t simply be an educated black man from a lower middle-class background with whom they disagree ideologically. No, he’s got to be an enemy, a foreigner, a nigger. It’s hard to denigrate someone who might be like you, conservatives. But it’s easy to attack a nigger because he’s just a nigger. Or a coon.
When 17 year-old Trayvon Martin was shot dead, the process of transforming him from an average middle-class high school student to a dangerous thug who was asking for it began almost immediately (putting aside the profiling that George Zimmerman did the second he started stalking Martin around their gated community in his SUV). News reports say his body was tagged “John Doe” and held in the morgue for three days. Sorry, race apologists, but if that had been a white child, especially the white child of, say, a Tea Party member, there’d have been a fucking riot. Or, more likely, it just wouldn’t have happened.
Now, the niggering of Martin is in full swing as fake photos, school records, Facebook postings, and even his tweets are put under the microscope. A police report that portrays Martin as the initiator of violence has been leaked. And the news media is going along with the victim-blaming that is being spun out by authorities and the right, allowing that it’s in any way relevant that Martin was suspended from school once, for instance.
The niggering of Trayvon Martin works as every niggering does. It gives conservatives cover for their belief in the innate goodness of guns and the innate badness of anyone non-white who just dresses vaguely gangsta. It gives racists, open and closeted, a reason not to care. It allows them to see him as deserving of some punishment in general: if Zimmerman hadn’t killed him, this narrative goes, well, fuck, chances are Martin would have been a criminal and better to get it over with now than pay for his incarceration.
The Rude Pundit read over Martin’s “No_Limit_Nigga” Twitter postings, although he felt skeevy about it (and he’s sure that Tucker Carlson didn’t feel any skeevier than usual). It’s pretty much a journey through retweets and responses and sexual shit that all fall into the category of “stupid shit teenagers say.”
Then, on page 25, is this: “Retweet if your biggest fear is losing your Mom.” Martin did so. Twice.
Yeah, reality is way more complicated. Or simple, really. If you take “nigger” out of the equation, you’re left with “child.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2012/03/niggering-of-trayvon-martin-we-see-this.html
Rene Stutzman is a despicable human being.
YELLOW JOURNALISM——-> RENE STUTZMAN!
DR @pollbuster:
BREAKING NEWS: House Republicans Reject Violence Against Women Act. Which means they must be for violence against women.
Argument recap: A lift for the mandate?
Analysis
The Supreme Court spent 91 minutes Wednesday operating on the assumption that it would strike down the key feature of the new health care law, but may have convinced itself in the end not to do that because of just how hard it would be to decide what to do after that. A common reaction, across the bench, was that the Justices themselves did not want the onerous task of going through the remainder of the entire 2,700 pages of the law and deciding what to keep and what to throw out, and most seemed to think that should be left to Congress. They could not come together, however, on just what task they would send across the street for the lawmakers to perform. The net effect may well have shored up support for the individual insurance mandate itself.
The dilemma could be captured perfectly in two separate comments by Justice Antonin Scalia — first, that it “just couldn’t be right” that all of the myriad provisions of the law unrelated to the mandate had to fall with it, but, later, that if the Court were to strike out the mandate, “then the statute’s gone.” Much of the lively argument focused on just what role the Court would more properly perform in trying to sort out the consequences of nullifying the requirement that virtually every American have health insurance by the year 2014.
The Wednesday morning argument offered the Court three mutually exclusive options: strike down all of the Affordable Care Act along with the mandate (the challengers’ position), strike down only two core changes in the way the health insurance system works (the government position), and strike down nothing but the mandate (the position of a Court-appointed lawyer). Not one seemed to be especially appealing to members of the Court, and each of the three lawyers who came to the lectern faced tough and often skeptical questioning, from across the bench.
Congress’s capacity to react in a sensible way also came into some question, particularly from Justice Scalia and, in a way, from Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, both of whom seemed to harbor doubts that the lawmakers would be up to the task of working out a new health care law if this one failed, either totally or partially. Scalia noted the problems in the filibuster-prone Senate. Kennedy wondered whether expecting Congress to perform was a reference to “the real Congress or the hypothetical Congress.”
(NOTE TO READERS: Because of the need to return to the courtroom for the second argument, on the constitutionality of the new law’s expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor, this post will be expanded following that argument. There will be a separate recap on the Medicaid hearing.)
http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/03/argument-recap-a-lift-for-the-mandate/
rolandsmartin @rolandsmartin:
On Thursday at 7:15 am est, I will interview George Zimmerman friend, Joe Oliver, on @tjmshow. You don’t want to miss it!
OMG! Joe Oliver is embarrassing.
ABWisdom @adbridgeforth:
BREAKING. RT @thehill On House floor, Dem lawmaker recounts being raped, molested http://bit.ly/H1hpjc #VAWA #women
March 28, 2012 11:51 AMThe “What Then” Debate
By Ed Kilgore
Now that there is a reasonable possibility that the Supreme Court will strike down as unconstitutional the individual mandate that represents the glue holding the Affordable Care Act together, we are hearing the first stirrings of debate, on both sides, of the inevitable “What Then” question.
Some Democrats actually think it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. James Carville can see a campaign issue in the most abject policy defeats:
“I think this will be the best thing that has ever happened to the Democratic Party,” Carville said Tuesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”
He added: “You know, what the Democrats are going to say, and it is completely justified, ‘We tried, we did something, go see a 5-4 Supreme Court majority’.”
Carville, who gained fame working on Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, predicted health care costs will only increase in the future, in which case Republicans will be to blame for leading the drive to expel a federal program designed to help Americans cover those costs.
“Then the Republican Party will own the healthcare system for the foreseeable future. And I really believe that. That is not spin,” Carville said.
Robert Reich spoke for those progressives who really disliked the design of the ACA, and might be able to turn its destruction into a fresh opportunity to take a different direction:
If the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate in the new health law, private insurers will swarm Capitol Hill demanding that the law be amended to remove the requirement that they cover people with pre-existing conditions.
When this happens, Obama and the Democrats should say they’re willing to remove that requirement – but only if Medicare is available to all, financed by payroll taxes.
If they did this the public will be behind them — as will the Supreme Court.
There’s been less debate so far among Republicans, who seem to think that polls indicating the unpopularity of ObamaCare will give them a breathing space to regroup if it’s cut down by the Court, even though polls also show many features of the ACA are very popular. David Frum offered Republicans a reality check about public opinion, even if the law is upheld:
“Repeal” may excite a Republican primary electorate that doesn’t need to worry about health insurance because it’s overwhelmingly over 65 and happily enjoying its government-mandated and taxpayer-subsidized single-payer Medicare system. But the general-election electorate doesn’t have the benefit of government medicine. It relies on the collapsing system of employer-directed care. It’s frightened, and it wants answers.
Since conservatives cannot go back to what they were proposing just a few years ago—you know, a competitive system of private insurance options complemented by an individual purchasing mandate and federal regulation of coverage denials and rates—they may have problems responding to this scenario.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_03/the_what_then_debate036353.php
Rubio pushes Dream Act ‘Without the Dream’
By Steve Benen
Wed Mar 28, 2012 12:39 PM EDT
Following up on an item from a couple of weeks ago, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has been a senator for about a year now, but hasn’t managed to do much of anything. The sum total of his legislative accomplishments? A resolution designating September 2011 as National Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Month.
As Rachel explained in a recent segment, the Florida Republican “is not a particularly serious guy in terms of what he has done in his Senate life or even as a Senate candidate.” That’s clearly true. But given his right-wing worldview, his ethnicity, and the electoral significance of his home state, Rubio is widely seen as a strong contender for the Republican presidential ticket in 2012.
And to that end, Rubio is scrambling to prepare for the national spotlight, publishing a memoir, hiring opposition researchers to identify potential controversies in his background, and even starting work on an important piece of legislation.
Recognizing the importance of immigration policy, the far-right senator is reportedly eyeing a proposal that would be similar to the popular Dream Act, only the Rubio version would take out the important parts.
Mr. Rubio’s idea to make it palatable to his party is to offer them legalization without citizenship. “You can legalize someone’s status,” he says, “without placing them on a path toward citizenship.” He warns that if Dream Act youths became citizens, they could — horrors — someday sponsor family members to enter legally. This idea is nothing more than some newly invented third-class status — not illegal, but not American.
It’s the Dream Act without the dream and should be dismissed out of hand….The only Dream Act worth passing is simple. It tells high schoolers who want to make something of themselves, for the good of the country, to go ahead. Join the military or go to college and take your place as full-fledged citizens in the only country you know. That Republicans reject this shows how far they have strayed from American ideals of assimilation and welcome.
If Rubio thinks this will help him appear more credible, he really hasn’t thought this through.
——————————————————————————–
The larger immigration issue isn’t complicated. Every year, tens of thousands of young, undocumented immigrants graduate from American high schools, but are quickly stuck — they can’t qualify for college aid, and they can’t work legally. America is the only home they’ve ever known — in most cases, they were, at a very young age, brought into the country illegally by their parents — but at 18, they have few options.
The DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act), which has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support, provides a path to citizenship for these young immigrants — graduate from high school, get conditional permanent residency status, go to college or serve in the military, pay some steep fees, and become eligible for citizenship. The Pentagon has urged Congress to pass it, and the CBO found that it lowers the deficit, a priority Republicans at least pretend to care about.
President Obama strongly supports the bill, and were it not for a Republican filibuster, it would have become law in late 2010. That GOP lawmakers like Orrin Hatch and Dick Lugar helped write the bill is a detail that seems to have slipped down the memory hole.
Rubio seems to think he can strike a compromise with a pale imitation of a popular, bipartisan proposal, but this almost certainly can’t pass, since it will satisfy no one. So why bother? I suspect it’s because Rubio and his party’s leadership realize the GOP has a severe problem with Latino voters, and want to be able to say, “We support a different version of the Dream Act, so feel free to vote for us.”
I don’t imagine voters who care about the issue will fall for this, but for a senator eager to do something notable with Senate power, it’s apparently the best Rubio can come up with.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/28/10904901-rubio-pushes-dream-act-without-the-dream
Dogs Don’t Like It
By Ed Kilgore
Even as Mitt Romney struggles to get his opponents out of the GOP presidential contest, his image is drifting into some really dangerous territory going forward. A new ABC/WaPo poll has these striking findings about the Mittster’s current levels of popularity:
Mitt Romney trails Barack Obama by 19 points in basic popularity as the 2012 presidential contest inches closer to the main event, with a record 50 percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll now rating Romney unfavorably overall.
Thirty-four percent hold a favorable opinion of Romney, the lowest for any leading presidential candidate in ABC/Post polls in primary seasons since 1984. His unfavorable score is higher than Obama ever has received; it’s been exceeded by just one other Republican candidate this year, Newt Gingrich, and by only one top candidate in 28 years, Hillary Clinton in 2008.
Romney’s got three challenges: comparatively weak support in core Republican groups, lower popularity than Obama’s in the political center and more Americans — about one in six — who have yet to form an opinion of him one way or the other.
Obviously the “I don’t know” vote offers Mitt some opportunities for improvement (though it should be of great concern to his team that his unfavorables have begun to spike precisely as he is becoming better known). It’s also reasonably inevitable that core conservatives will gradually grow to like him, if love seems a bit of a stretch. But his standing among independents and moderates should set off some alarm bells in RomneyLand:
Obama is also up with independents, 50 percent of whom hold favorable views to 46 percent unfavorable.
But Romney lags among that key group, with 35 percent of independents viewing him favorably to 52 percent unfavorable.
Among voters who identify themselves as moderates, Obama holds a 61 percent to 34 percent positive edge, while Romney is seen unfavorably by more. Forty-eight percent of centrists have a negative view of Romney, to 35 percent favorable.
These are some pretty big, bad numbers for the guy embraced by GOP insiders as far and away the most electable of candidates. And it’s not helpful to him that the only way he can respond to one negative dynamic—the harsh criticism of his conservative primary rivals—is by taking positions unlikely to improve his standing with non-conservatves.
The real nightmare scenario for Republicans is that Mitt could turn out to be one of those candidates who just can’t get over the hump with multiple categories of voters: a candidate equivalent to the mythical brand of dog food containing the best ingredients, packaging and marketing that money can buy but turns out to be a failure because “dogs don’t like it.”
We’re hardly at the point when you can say that with any confidence right now. But a separate WaPo piece hilariously describing the rare breed of voters who are actually passionate about Mitt Romney shows that his negative charisma factor has to be taken seriously.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_03/dogs_dont_like_it036354.php
Explaining Black Folks to Jonah Goldberg
by BooMan
Wed Mar 28th, 2012 at 09:44:33 AM EST
Jonah Goldberg wonders if there is a bubble surrounding elite blacks that leads them to be more concerned about white racism than black-on-black crime. It’s a potentially interesting question, but before we can get to that we have to pause and ponder why Goldberg is posing the question in the first place. The answer is that the right-wing is responding to the uproar over the Trayvon Martin case with confusion about why it is being treated as such a big deal. In their view, black kids are being murdered all over this country every day, largely by other black kids, and we rarely if ever see any stories about those victims. In their view, this indicates that the only thing driving the Trayvon Martin controversy is that the shooter was initially reported to be white, even though he is half-Peruvian.
This is the wrong way to think about this controversy. This case involves several layers of injustice. Most obviously, we know who pulled the trigger. Find me a case of black-on-black crime where the shooter has been identified and confessed but has not been arrested. If you find a case like that, then we can talk about why that case is not receiving any attention. But in the absence of such a case, black-on-black crimes are oranges to Trayvon Martin’s apple. Beyond the lack of an arrest, we have the way the police treated the investigation. They appear to have engaged in some witness tampering. They drug tested the corpse, but not the shooter. They made no effort to learn whether the victim lived in the neighborhood or to locate his parents. They didn’t use his cell phone to aid them. They didn’t collect key evidence, like the shooter’s clothing. They defended their decision not to prosecute by referencing the Stand Your Ground law that doesn’t seem to apply. They overruled the lead investigator who doubted the veracity of the shooter’s account and wanted to charge him with manslaughter. And they leaked damaging information about the victim that has no relevancy to the case. I probably haven’t covered every way in which this investigation was screwed up, but I think I’ve covered the biggest issues.
No one has suggested that Trayvon Martin was doing anything wrong. And he’s dead. Can a black boy be killed with impunity in this country?
Finally, this case is important because of how it happened and how the circumstances make black people feel about their level of security in our country. The boy was identified as suspicious on the basis of his race. The shooter had a pattern of asking people to look out for black boys. He referred to Martin as “these assholes” and as a “fucking goon” or “fucking coon.” Perhaps because Martin was talking on a cell phone through an ear piece he appeared to be acting peculiarly, but considering the racial animus of the shooter’s comments on the 911 call, it’s clear that his main suspicion was based on Martin’s appearance alone. People in the black community are accustomed to being treated with suspicion, but that doesn’t make it okay to assume every black kid you see is an asshole and a goon. For a man to make that determination and then go confront a black kid and wind up shooting and killing him, and then to face no legal consequences…?
Are we supposed to just shrug that off?
And, you know, it’s possible that the shooter started a fight that he wound up losing. Maybe he was getting his ass kicked. Maybe his head was being pounded into the sidewalk. Maybe he felt like his life was in danger. Maybe Trayvon was reaching for his gun. It’s possible that he really acted in self-defense in order to save his own life.
It would have been helpful if the police had treated the case as a homicide investigation instead of leaving evidence uncollected and cherry-picking statements from the witnesses. It would have been helpful if they had treated Trayvon Martin as a victim of homicide, looked at his phone and called his parents. But they didn’t do any of that.
What Goldberg is missing is that the outrage in this case has as much to do with how the police behaved as it does with the death of Trayvon Martin.
As for his larger question about black elites, he may very well be right that black teenagers in our ghettoes are more concerned about being the victim of black-on-black crime than they are with white racism, while black columnists for the New York Times have the opposite priority of fears. The problem with that observation is that it explains very little and it has absolutely nothing to do with the Trayvon Martin case.
http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2012/3/28/94433/4030/0/post#here
Romney’s problem: disliked candidates usually lose
By Steve Benen
Wed Mar 28, 2012 11:20 AM EDT.
At this point in his lengthy political career, Mitt Romney has had quite a while to introduce himself to the American public. He is, after all, in the midst of his second presidential campaign, and has been on the trail pretty much non-stop for nearly six years.
Indeed, Romney is poised to win the Republican presidential nomination, which has kept him the national spotlight consistently for the last year. And yet, after getting a good long look at the former governor, a striking number of Americans just don’t seem to like him.
Mitt Romney trails Barack Obama by 19 points in basic popularity as the 2012 presidential contest inches closer to the main event, with a record 50 percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll now rating Romney unfavorably overall.
Thirty-four percent hold a favorable opinion of Romney, the lowest for any leading presidential candidate in ABC/Post polls in primary seasons since 1984.
That last point is of particular interest. It’s tempting to think every major-party frontrunner emerges from a primary process with weakened favorability numbers — intra-party contests are often bruising — but that’s just not the case. Four years ago, Obama became better liked as voters got to know him, but this year, Romney isn’t just disliked, he’s also more disliked at this point in the process than any candidate in nearly three decades.
Here’s a chart I put together showing Obama’s and Romney’s favorability ratings overall and among Democrats, Republicans, independents, and self-identified moderates.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/28/10904057-romneys-problem-disliked-candidates-usually-lose
Posted at 12:51 PM ET, 03/28/2012
Yup: Killing health reform would actually have consequences
By Greg Sargent
Peerless Supreme Court watcher Lyle Denniston has just posted a piece taking stock of today’s argument over the fate of Obamacre without the mandate, and he finds a surprising silver lining for the White House:
The Supreme Court spent 91 minutes Wednesday operating on the assumption that it would strike down the key feature of the new health care law, but may have convinced itself in the end not to do that because of just how hard it would be to decide what to do after that. A common reaction, across the bench, was that the Justices themselves did not want the onerous task of going through the remainder of the entire 2,700 pages of the law and deciding what to keep and what to throw out, and most seemed to think that should be left to Congress. They could not come together, however, on just what task they would send across the street for the lawmakers to perform. The net effect may well have shored up support for the individual insurance mandate itself.
The dilemma could be captured perfectly in two separate comments by Justice Antonin Scalia — first, that it “just couldn’t be right” that all of the myriad provisions of the law unrelated to the mandate had to fall with it, but, later, that if the Court were to strike out the mandate, “then the statute’s gone.” …
Congress’ capacity to react in a sensible way also came into some question, particularly from Justice Scalia and, in a way, from Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, both of whom seemed to harbor doubts that the lawmakers would be up to the task of working out a new health care law if this one failed, either totally or partially.
Yes, it turns out that health reform is complicated, and killing the mandate at its core might have a serious impact on the rest of the law. Which makes the decision over the mandate’s fate kind of a momentous one, because allowing all those other provisions to crash and burn with the mandate might actually have far reaching consequences, particularly since it’s all but certain that Congress isn’t up to the task of replacing the law with anything else in the way of reform!
It’s good to see that these tangential matters are at least part of the conversation, and that the real world consequences of doing away with the largest social reform since the 1960s — one that will impact one sixth of our economy and millions of Americans — just might play a small role in affecting the final decision. Isn’t it?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/yup-kiling-health-reform-would-actually-have-consequences/2012/03/28/gIQAJbiggS_blog.html
Source: Sanford police chief, state attorney made Zimmerman ‘no charge’ call in person
By Joy-Ann Reid
A source with knowledge of the investigation into the shooting of Trayvon Martin tells theGrio that it was then Sanford police chief Bill Lee, along with Capt. Robert O’Connor, the investigations supervisor, who made the decision to release George Zimmerman on the night of February 26th, after consulting with State Attorney Norman Wolfinger — in person.
Wolfinger’s presence at the scene or at the police department in the night of a shooting would be unusual, according to the source. On a typical case, police contact the state attorney’s office and speak with an on duty assistant state attorney; they either discuss the matter by phone or the on duty assistant state attorney comes to the crime scene – but rarely the state attorney him or herself.
A spokesman for the Sanford police department confirmed that Lee and O’Connor went to the shooting scene that night. Sgt. Dave Morgenstern said that is typical for a homicide case, particularly in for someone like O’Connor, who was hired by Lee last year to oversee all criminal investigations for the department.
TheGrio reached out to all of the parties involved for comment. A recording at the telephone number for State Attorney Wolfinger’s media representative states that the Trayvon Martin case has been reassigned to the Jacksonville state attorney’s office and that Wolfinger’s office would have no comment. And a spokesperson for the state attorney’s office replied to theGrio by email saying, “by law, we are unable to discuss the facts involving this investigation.”
TheGrio could not reach former chief Lee for comment.
http://www.thegrio.com/specials/trayvon-martin/source-sanford-police-chief-state-attorney-made-zimmerman-no-charge-call-in-person.php
This statement is the most sensible thing Speaker Boehner’s said since Former Speaker Pelosi passed him the gavel.
Watch your back, Boehner; look who’s standing behind you!
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno _ Mitt Romney, Part 2- Obama Care & Tax Code
VIDEO
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xpqpy2_the-tonight-show-with-jay-leno-mitt-romney-part-2_news
Chief Justice Roberts: Can government require you to buy a cell phone? (0:42)
Mar. 27, 2012 – Chief Justice Roberts asks the Solicitor General Verrilli if the government can require the purchase of cell phones for emergency services, just as the health-care law requires for health insurance.(Audio: Supreme Court of the United States/Photo: The Associated Press)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/chief-justice-roberts-can-government-require-you-to-buy-a-cell-phone-042/2012/03/27/gIQA9kkreS_video.html#
Ron Johnson, contraception, and the power of the Internet
By Steve Benen
Wed Mar 28, 2012 10:07 AM EDT.
I’ve long been concerned about whether Ron Johnson, elected to the Senate in 2010, is really up to the job. After all, the Wisconsin Republican has argued that snow in Greenland is evidence of global cooling; he thinks “sunspot activity” is responsible for global warming; and at the height of the BP oil spill disaster, he said he’d sell his BP stock, just as soon as it was more profitable for him to do so.
This week, however, Johnson broke new ground, sharing his unique perspective on contraception access. Scott Keyes asked the far-right senator about the issue, and posted this startling clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0P4DXlsqUE&feature=player_embedded
For those who can’t watch clips online, Keyes asked Johnson about the millions of American women who can’t afford access to birth control. The Republican replied, “My wife actually went online here in Wisconsin and typed in, ‘what if I can’t afford birth control?’ Came up, bam. If you can’t afford it, you can get birth control in this country.”
When Keyes asked what that meant, Johnson added, “You can get it. Go online, type it in. It’s easy to get.”
I can appreciate the power of the Internet as much as the next guy, but if Ron Johnson believes low-income Americans can simply go online and — “bam” — easily find cheap contraception, he seems to have a comically exaggerated sense of the efficacy of online services.
Indeed, ThinkProgress put the senator’s advice to the test.
ThinkProgress went online and Googled “what if I can’t afford birth control?” The very first link explained that the entire process, from the initial exam to a follow-up to the pills themselves, can cost upwards of $210 the first month. The rest of the first-page results included two sites informing women that if they can’t afford contraceptives, “don’t have sex,” four sites attacking Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, and one site explaining how birth control is a lot more expensive than many believe.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/28/10903112-ron-johnson-contraception-and-the-power-of-the-internet
GO TO HELL, RON JOHNSON!
What about women who can’t afford a computer to “GO ONLINE?”
Romney: ‘You’ve got to get insurance
By Steve Benen
Wed Mar 28, 2012 9:35 AM EDT.
Did you catch Mitt Romney on “The Tonight Show” last night? It was generally a light-hearted conversation, though Jay Leno, to his credit, asked about health care policy.
On health care, Leno pushed Romney to explain what he would offer Americans with pre-existing medical conditions so that they might retain their coverage, perhaps the most popular provision of the president’s healthcare law.
“People with pre-existing conditions, as long as they have been insured before, they are going to be able to continue to have insurance,” Romney said, describing his vision for health care if the Affordable Care Act were to be struck down or repealed.
“Suppose they haven’t been insured,” Leno countered.
“If they are 45 years old and they show up and say I want insurance because I have heart disease, it’s like, ‘Hey guys. We can’t play the game like that. You’ve got to get insurance when you are well and then if you get ill, you are going to be covered,'” Romney responded.
Like most Republicans, Romney has always backed an individual health care mandate — the same policy the GOP now considers Nazi-Communist-Fascist tyranny — and it’s interesting that he’s still capable of defending the idea, at least on a conceptual level. Indeed, the five words in that answer that stood out for me were, “You’ve got to get insurance.”
Now, as Greg Sargent noted, Romney’s conversation with Leno got a little trickier when the host pushed further, forcing the former governor to hedge on what happens to those with pre-existing conditions who didn’t have insurance before. That’s hardly encouraging and warrants some clarification from Team Romney.
And while Romney’s aides are at it, maybe they can also explain this 2007 video, uncovered this week by our pal James Carter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GlRr4–mmg&feature=player_embedded
The part that stood out for me came about 41 seconds in, and in the context of the campaign, it’s arguably pretty important.
——————————————————————————–
Remember, for the better part of the last year, Romney has said, repeatedly and at times angrily, that he never intended for his Massachusetts health care law to serve as a national model. The evidence to the contrary is overwhelming, but that’s his lie and he’s sticking to it.
But in this October 2007 clip, then-presidential candidate Romney was explaining what he did at the state level, defending his law’s efficacy, and said, “That’s how we’re going to be successful nationwide.”
Is that so.
Romney can’t, or at least shouldn’t, have it both ways. He’s said his state law was never supposed to go national and he’s said “we’re going to be successful nationwide” if his state approach to health care is adopted at the federal level.
Which is of these beliefs does Romney still accept as true?
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/28/10902666-romney-youve-got-to-get-insurance
‘Mitt Romney Has Changed Positions More Often Than A Pornographic Movie Queen’
Arlen Specter, the former moderate Republican Pennsylvania senator who switched to the Democratic party in 2009 and now performs standup comedy, told a joke about Mitt Romney on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that stunned the other panelists.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski asked him about what he thought was the future for the Republican party.
“Well, the Republican party has moved so far to the right, you can’t recognize Mitt Romney. What Mitt Romney will appear in October?” said Specter.
Paraphrasing a recent joke by Bill Maher, Specter said, “Mitt Romney has changed positions more often than a pornographic movie queen.”
The joke drew awkward chuckles, and co-host Joe Scarborough defended the joke as something a comedian would say, and then he cut to footage from Specter’s standup routine.
Throughout the interview, Specter assailed the wings of both parties for challenging moderates and primaries and decried the decline of bipartisanship. Specter was defeated in a 2010 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate by Joe Sestak, who lost to Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) in the general election.
http://tweetbe.at/progressives/trend/1mqdq-positions-more/
Miami Police detective says racism “alive and well”
MIAMI (Reuters) – A black veteran Miami police officer said on Tuesday that “racism is alive and well” in the United States and is evident in the case of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed African American teenager gunned down by a neighborhood watch volunteer in central Florida last month.
George Zimmerman, the white Hispanic crime watch volunteer, has managed to avoid arrest under Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law because he said he shot and killed Martin in self-defense.
But Miami Police Department homicide detective Sergeant Ervens Ford, who has joined in public protests to demand justice for Martin, said in an interview that the law does not apply in the racially tinged case.
“He (Martin) would have had a better ‘Stand Your Ground’ (case) than Zimmerman,” Ford said.
“It does not apply when you chase after a person, when you, essentially, are the aggressor,” he said.
He was referring to the fact that Zimmerman, 28, said in a 911 call that he was chasing the 17-year-old Martin shortly before the shooting because he looked to be “up to no good” and was dressed in a “hoodie” hooded sweatshirt.
On the call, Zimmerman had also identified Martin as a black youth.
SNIP
Ford said his advice to his own children was to try to avoid any sign of conflict, especially with law enforcement officials.
“It’s not a conflict that young black males are going to win. They’re going to lose every time, unfortunately,” he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/miami-police-detective-says-racism-alive-well-235149541.html
Posted at 04:10 PM ET, 03/27/2012
President Obama joins Pinterest
By Natalie Jennings
The Obama 2012 campaign unveiled a Barack Obama Pinterest page on Tuesday, taking advantage of the fast-growing social network by sharing images of Obama and his family, campaign supporters and paraphernalia and visuals that support administration policies
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/44/post/president-obama-joins-pinterest/2012/03/27/gIQAAZHleS_blog.html#pagebreak
March 27, 2012
Shocker: Jen Rubin likes the looks of this, for Romney
Jennifer Rubin can’t really be as transcendently simple-minded as she seems to be, but every day she makes another gallant stab at proving that proposition wrong. Today, for example, she argues that “Obamacare” — brace for intensely ominous dependent clause: the door that opens the barn to any and every exercise of federal power — would, for the Obama reelection team, be better off laid to rest by the Supreme Court. An administration victory there, writes Rubin, would only electrify Republicans as well as the hostile independent vote, they of unsurpassed Constitutional expertise.
[B]ecause Obamacare is such a political loser, the Republicans are now in an enviable position: If they lose at the court, they win with the public, and if they win at the court, the left is demoralized. So conservatives can just sit back and enjoy the arguments. It’s the ultimate “heads I win, tails you lose” sort of case.
Why liberals would be “demoralized” by Obamacare’s legal collapse is a matter left unilluminated by Rubin, and probably for good reason. HHS v. Florida would likely emerge for progressives in many of the same ways as Roe v. Wade emerged as a politically motivating power on the right; it would also open the political door for a speedier transition to Medicare for all, a movement which would of course absolutely delight the liberal collectivity.
And if Obama wins the case? Well, a win is a win. And other than the greatest obviousness — that chief executives prefer winning to losing — a win would, as well, drive a stake at least partially through the heart of the right’s otherwise interminable chant about unConstitutional Obamacare.
But, opposite these arguments are also the potential realities of an erasure of Obama’s signature achievement as president, in addition perhaps to not a few liberals declaring their permanent state of despair against the unending ascendence of right-wing fanaticism.
In other words, one simply cannot know how this will play out, either way. But to Jennifer Rubin? Not a problem. She has as her guide her stack of mimeographed talking points from the Romney campaign; and what’s more, for Jennifer things always seem to play out in a knowing flash of immeasurable, pseudoconservative cleverness — which comes across, yep, as pathetically simple-minded.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2012/03/shocker-jen-rubin-likes-the-looks-of-this-for-romney.html
Posted at 04:54 PM ET, 03/27/2012
The tragic death of bipartisan compromise
By Greg Sargent
So Olympia Snowe, in an extraordinary act of candor, has confessed that she’s really upset with President Obama for not calling her often enough during the past two years. She says Obama deserves a failing grade when it comes to his willingness to work with Republicans — and that things would be far better if he had tried harder.
When Snowe recently announced her retirement, and blamed it on the sad death of bipartisan compromise in Washington, a lot of commentators agreed that her retirement signaled something very tragic indeed. Snowe is continually granted the benefit of the doubt on these matters. She is credulously accorded the label of “moderate willing to work with Obama,” based mainly on her vote for the stimulus, and on her supposed work with Dems to pass health care reform, before “partisanship” on both sides somehow forced her to oppose the final bill.
Alex Pareene corrects the record:
How hard did she try, again? If I recall correctly, she intentionally delayed the process for months before finally voting against a plan she’d previously voted for, never making a single substantive criticism of the policy of the bill in the fear that her criticism would then be addressed by Democrats and she’d be forced to come up with a new reason to oppose the bill, because it turns out she didn’t actually want to vote for healthcare reform, and she would not have supported any plan to expand coverage to all Americans, no matter how it worked.
So this is the problem. In the popular imagination, and in Barack Obama’s naive pre-2010 fantasies, “bipartisanship” means “working together to accomplish things.” In reality, in the Senate, it means “indulging moderates, forever.” For Olympia Snowe, the act of calling Olympia Snowe is more important than the act of … passing legislation to solve problems.
The Affordable Care Act is based on a policy idea that had been embraced by prominent Republicans for two decades, before Jim DeMint decided that defeating it would constitute Obama’s “Waterloo,” and before Mitch McConnell decided that denying Obama bipartisan support for all of his proposals was a paramount strategic goal. In ultimately opposing health reform, Snowe threw her lot in with DeMint and McConnell.
More broadly, Snowe joined other moderate Republicans, such as Susan Collins, in voting against Obama’s plan to create jobs through infrastructure spending, even though Reublicans had previously endorsed the idea that such spending helps the economy.
After claiming to be undecided, Collins voted for the Blunt amendment to undo Obama’s contraception compromise, even though polls have shown that it’s supported by broad majorities, including of independents and Catholics. Scott Brown, another independent moderate, voted for it too. Fellow moderate GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski, who also voted for it, subsequently admitted this vote had betrayed moderation.
If bipartisan compromise is dead in Washington, then maybe it has something to with the fact that self proclaimed moderate Republicans simply stopped supporting any proposals that could reasonably be labeled bipartisan compromises.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-tragic-death-of-bipartisan-compromise/2012/03/27/gIQAFGmpeS_blog.html
Mitt Romney, Visionary
By Tom Levenson March 27th, 2012
From his Leno sit-down:
Though Mr. Romney has devoted much of his campaign to promising to get the federal budget in order, he dodged a question about whether he’ll name the federal agencies he’d like to cut. “Depends on whether I have that answer to that,” Mr. Romney said.
Huh?
I mean, I know that Romney is trying to do everything he can to avoid the career ending disaster of actually detailing the plans behind the impossible claims he’s made about the taxes, budget, and the stuff he’s going to cut that no one beyond the 27% wants to see drowned in the bathtub. But even with that goal, this with Leno is simply nonsense, vapor, word salad worthy of a Palin. “Depends on whether I have that answer to that” ! ?
Dude: you do have that answer. It’s your proposal. Your campaign. You can say it: you’re going to put most of us on the rack so that the Nascar owners and your Malibu neighbors can grab a bit more. Get it off your chest. You’ll feel so much better…
Instead we get an answer that is composed of equal parts contempt for his fellow citizens and a banality so deep it blows right past Arendt’s evil and catches up to the absurd well before the ringmaster calls the blow off.
This is the man that thinks he’s suited to the presidency. And in head to head polls dangerously more than 40% of American voters agree with him.
I’m bringing out the heavy artillery. Brandy till bedtime, my friends.*
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/03/27/mitt-romney-visionary/
Fox News Needs to Clean Up Its Act
by BooMan
Tue Mar 27th, 2012 at 09:28:15 PM EST
I don’t know what’s up with the comments at Fox News’ website. I rarely visit the site and I had never looked at the comments in any of their articles until the Trayvon Martin case became national news. I have to be honest, though. Their comments aren’t just racist. It’s like a competition to see who can make the most racist comment possible. I have occasionally skimmed white supremacist forums. I don’t like to do it because I worry that I’ll wind up under surveillance. But the few times I’ve checked those forums, they’ve been a lot more substantive and thoughtful about their racism than anything you see at Fox.
What do I mean by that? They actually have conversations about things and debate issues. They engage with each other and respond to what other people are saying. They may be interpreting everything in a really racist or anti-Semitic way, but they’re strategizing about how to do things. Maybe they’re focused on enacting stricter immigration laws or winning over new recruits or getting some of their folks elected. But it’s a forum. It’s a forum that isn’t 100% pointless.
And don’t get me wrong. I know that the comments sections of newspapers are notorious for their stupidity and hatred. But none of them that I’ve seen even begin to compare to what I’ve seen at Fox News in the last two weeks.
As I see it, there are two problems here. The first is that Fox News is clearly attracting a virulently racist online audience. The second is that they are not doing enough to monitor their threads. Fox News wants to sell advertising. That’s their business model. If they don’t clean up this mess, we just might make sure transcripts of these Trayvon Martin threads are emailed to every corporate board with a teevee advertising budget in the country, every newspaper, every congressman, and to the dreaded crew at MSNBC.
If they don’t clean it up, it must mean that they want to be one of the most racist forums in the country.
http://www.boomantribune.com/
March 28, 2012 8:35 AM
From Health Reform To a Medicaid Expansion
Here’s my brief nutshell analysis of what’s on tap at the Supreme Court today:
Pretty much everyone understands that yesterday’s oral arguments represented the Big Enchilada, and we’ll all just have to get used to the fact that nobody—and that includes fearful progressives and gloating conservatives—actually knows what is going to happen to the individual mandate.
Today’s issues—severability and the ACA’s Medicaid expansion—mainly matter if the individual mandate does indeed fall. On the former issue, neither the administration nor ObamaCare opponents really want the “guaranteed issue” and community rating provisions of the law—basically the provisions that protect folks too sick to get private health insurance at affordable rates right now—to survive without a mandate; such an outcome would send premiums through the roof. But the administration would like the provisions that help poorer Americans—notably the Medicaid expansion—to survive in any event, along with reforms aimed at curbing health care spending, especially in Medicare. So that’s the position federal attorneys will take.
The constitutional challenge to the Medicaid expansion is not taken that seriously by anyone other than genuine judicial radicals who seek a ruling that would not only stop the ACA’s major expansion of Medicaid elibility, but call into question the whole system of federal-state relations on which big portions of the New Deal and Great Society rely. If the Justices start looking amenable to this challenge, then some of yesterday’s progressive panic is fully justified.
If you want a fuller preview, check out Wonkbook’s analysis.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/
Posted at 08:51 AM ET, 03/28/2012
The Morning Plum: What will happen to the uninsured?
By Greg Sargent
If you want to understand what’s really at stake in the battle over Obamacare — as it’s playing out before the Supreme Court and in the presidential race, where the GOP contenders are all vowing to repeal it — you need to watch Mitt Romney’s appearance on Jay Leno last night.
It comes down to this: Should the federal government play any meaningful role at all in helping the millions of uninsured who can’t get coverage — particularly those with preexisting conditions?
On Leno, Romney repeated his vow to transfer health reform back to the states. But he was also repeatedly pressed to say what he would do for those with preexisting conditions if Obamacare were repealed. Without saying how, Romney replied that people with preexisting conditions should continue to get insurance — as long as they’ve been insured in the past. He refused to say what should be done about those who have never had insurance. Here’s the exchange (video here):
LENO: So you would make the law stand for children and people with preexisting conditions.
ROMNEY: People with preexisting conditions — as long as they’ve been insured before, they’re going to continue to have insurance.
LENO: Suppose they were never insured?
ROMNEY: Well, if they’re 45 years old, and they show up, and they say, I want insurance, because I’ve got a heart disease, it’s like, `Hey guys, we can’t play the game like that. You’ve got to get insurance when you’re well, and if you get ill, then you’re going to be covered.’
LENO: I know guys at work in the auto industry, and they’re just not covered…they’ve just never been able to get insurance. And then they get to e 30, 35, and were never able to get insurance before. Now they have it. That seems like a good thing.
ROMNEY: We’ll look at a circumstance where someone was ill, and hasn’t been insured so far. But people who have had the chance to be insured — if yu’re working in an auto business for instance, the companies carry insurance, they insure all their employees — you look at the circumstances that exist. But people who have done their best to get insured, are going to be able to be covered. But you don’t want everyone saying, `I’m going to sit back until I get sick and then go buy insurance.’ That doesn’t make sense. But you have to find rules that get people in that are playing by the rules.
That last section is a bit garbled, but the basic fact here is that when asked what the federal government should do about those with preexisting conditions who have never had insurance, Romney won’t say. This echoes Romney’s recent exchange with a student who asked what the federal government would do to help with student loan debt. Answer: Nothing.
What’s particularly interesting about the above exchange is that Romney himself detailed exactly the problem that the individual mandate is designed to fix: If people wait until they get sick before getting insurance, it fouls up the system. As he puts it, this “you’ve got to get insurance when you’re well.” Romney’s recognition of the policy problem, of course, is why he passed a mandate at the state level in Massachusetts.
But now Romney is obliged by GOP primary politics (and perhaps by his actual beliefs) to insist that a federal mandate is an unconstitutional usurpation of American freedom. So he’s forced to give a nonsensical answer to the core policy and moral question that’s left behind if we do away with Obamacare: What should the federal government do about those who can’t get insurance covarge, thanks to preexisting conditions?
Until Romney details otherwise, his answer, for all practical purposes, is: Nothing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
Romney just wants to covet the title of PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, well, just because, he thinks he’s entitled to it. Nothing more.
I think yesterday was a turning point in the Trayvon Martin case for many reasons.
Reason 1 – the bullshyt of the police department trying to smear Trayvon in the media had serious blowback from folks.
hence, the ‘leaks’ from yesterday about the original police reports, including that the original officer wanted to charge Zimmerman with manslaughter, but was told to drop it by the states attorney, who, I will point out again, THIS IS THE REASON THAT HE WAS REMOVED FROM THIS CASE.
Trayvon’s parents in the halls of Congress. Don’t tell me that the federal government, i.e. the Justice Department, doesn’t have EVERYTHING to do with what’s been happening. The DOJ is being awfully quiet, but the folks down there in Sanford, with a federal probe just beginning up their behinds, are like, ‘ every man for himself’. THEY KNOW that something was done wrong, and, if the original report is to be believed, it was from ‘higher ups’. WTF is a states attorney doing involved in a random shooting -SO SOON. HOW COME the coverup came so complete.
I believe when it’s all said and done, we will find out that Zimmerman’s Daddy the Judge called the States Attorney, and he called the Police Chief, and they thought it would just ‘blow over’, and they could bullshyt their way through this.
Remember the line they gave the parents and the lawyers, and how they wouldn’t release anything…
UNTIL the DOJ came a knockin’.
Oh, this web is just beginning to be spun, and they’re gonna catch up all the evil in it.
KARMA will collect on those EVIL bitches, and it ain’t gonna be pretty
Remember the line they gave the parents and the lawyers, and how they wouldn’t release anything…
Rikyrah
It was unbelievable how these mofos put up a fight to NOT release
the 9-1-1 tapes.
It’s corruption from the top down. Norman Wolfinger didn’t just remove himself from the case. His ass was shown the door!
Good Morning, 3Chics!
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good Morning, 3 Chics & Everyone. Happy HUMP day! :-)