Happy HUMP day, Everyone. Bob Marley Week continues with REDEMPTION SONG
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Pingback: Serendipity SOUL | Wednesday Open Thread | Bob Marley Week … | Higher Education Journal
found this at Balloon Juice:
Thank you. I’m so fucking tired of the assholes around here who can’t concede for one moment that President Obama has ever done anything right. I had a front row seat during the AIDS epidemic, when the American President couldn’t be bothered to pretend that he gave a shit that literally thousands of Americans were dying, because they were gay. I watched every human being I loved curl up to die like stray cats in some alley, while the American President (and most of the American people)looked the other way. To everybody out there who can’t pass up the opportunity to shit all over anything remotely good, I have a message for you from a few hundred dead gay activists who spent the last breaths in their bodies fighting for the right to be treated like human beings in this country: Go fuck yourself. This matters, and those of us who get it are happy, and if you can’t be happy for our sake, that says more about you than it does this President or this moment.
I am a 52 year old Gay man. The Reverend is preaching the truth. Those of us old enough to come of age during the rise of HIV/Aids concomitant with Reagan and the Christian Right (Moral Majority) well remember the horrors of that era. Hatred and Homophobia and Hysteria ruled our lives. While our friends literally shriveled up and died? Seriously Gay Marriage debate 25 years ago? LOL. An fucking ABSURD concept that would never happen! Not in our life times (for those of us still around to grow old). What President Obama has done for the Gay/Lesbian community is simply amazing. A president publicly endorsing Gay Marriage versus some Senile has been actor who refused to even acknowledge or say the word AIDS or HIV. It’s a no brainer kids. Obama wins.
Maddow brought it home tonight. She took quite a few of the points from the SSM thread and laid it out there. Visuals are good. I’m highly visually and she always does a great job with visuals.
FUCK YOU, you racist muthafucka.
hell no…ain’t nobody gonna forget your Prop8 racist ass shyt:
…………………………………
Dan Savage is unsatisfied:
So Barack Obama is for marriage equality. Personally. Because he knows some monogamous same-sex couples who are raising children. (Non-monogamous couples can’t get legally married, of course, unless they’re straight.) But the president also supports the “concept” of states—states like, say, North Carolina, which yesterday banned any recognition of same-sex relationships in reality, not in concept—”decding the issue on their own.” So the president supports same-sex marriage but he believes that states should be able to ban same-sex marriages
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/
Sounds another white dictator who throws a hissy fit because his ‘black’ puppet didn’t cater to his every whim.
This weasel has no clue about the LAW or the Constitution. Does Savage know that Rich white guys created these laws, paid to get them on the books and the citizens of NC voted for them. They got what they voted for, so live with it. The president knows this isn’t a federal issue. So go fuck yourself, Dan Savage.
In shift of position, Obama says he supports same-sex marriage
In an interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, President Obama clarified his views on same-sex marriage, saying he believes gay couples should be allowed to marry. The president has been under intense pressure for his self-described “evolving” position on the issue since Sunday, when Vice President Biden said he was “absolutely comfortable” with gay marriage.
Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics
Wed May 09, 2012 at 09:34 AM PDT.
Mitt Romney accuses President Obama of doing too little and also too much on college affordability+*
by Laura Clawson
It’s not a flip flop, it’s just rank, amoral campaign opportunism: Mitt Romney is simultaneously attacking President Obama for not having prevented college tuition from rising and for his efforts to keep college affordable.
On the one hand, Romney’s campaign would have us know that one of the ways the “Obama economy” is causing American families to struggle is that “Since President Obama Took Office, The Average Cost Of College Has Increased By 25% At Four-Year Public Schools Across The Country.” On the other hand, at a campaign event on Monday, Romney characterized Obama’s fight to, among other things, keep student loan interest rates low as “In an effort to try to get [young voters] engaged, he’s going to promise to give a lot of free stuff to them. And to say, I’ll pay for your education, or I’ll get rid of the loans.”
It’s kind of an achievement, actually: Romney is making two attacks on the same subject that contradict each other and yet are both wildly inaccurate. Yes, tuition at public four-year colleges has increased by 25 percent—21.7 percent if you control for inflation. But Obama does not control state higher education budgets, which determine tuition levels. Romney, though, did control a state budget as governor of Massachusetts, and cut higher education funding and increased what students had to pay. So Romney is attacking Obama for something that isn’t under Obama’s control but that once was under Romney’s control, with the exact results Romney is attacking Obama for.
Then to top it off, Romney is attacking Obama for his efforts to make college more affordable in the ways that are at the president’s disposal. Obama, for instance, included a tax credit for tuition in the stimulus, has fought for Pell Grants, has done what he can to lower student loan payments without congressional action, and is pushing Congress to keep student loan interests from doubling on July 1. But though Obama has focused on this issue repeatedly throughout his presidency, Romney is attempting to brand these efforts as a late in the game attempt to essentially buy the votes of young people, to “give a lot of free stuff to them.”
In other words, when it comes to college costs, Romney’s got nothing—he’s got a bad record and no plan to make things better. And rather than trying to develop a plan, he’s just going to throw accusations at President Obama that are variously contradictory, irrelevant and false. Sounds like his entire campaign, actually.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/09/1090060/-Mitt-Romney-accuses-President-Obama-of-doing-too-little-and-also-too-much-on-college-affordability
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In shift of position, Obama says he supports same-sex marriage
In an interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, President Obama clarified his views on same-sex marriage, saying he believes gay couples should be allowed to marry. The president has been under intense pressure for his self-described evolving position on the issue since Sunday, when Vice President Biden said he was absolutely comfortable with gay marriage.
Read more at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics
This doesn’t change anything, folks. This issue is not under PBO’s rule. It’s a state’s issue and NC proved it yesterday by getting the issue on the ballot and the North Carolinians voting for it. Please, everyone knew he was for same-sex marriage. And now that he’s said it, NOW WHAT, FOOLS?
Bill Clinton as a GOP model
By Steve Benen – Wed May 9, 2012 1:20 PM EDT.
For those who followed politics closely in the 1990s, you’ll recall that Republicans hated Bill Clinton with the heat of a thousand suns. GOP officials and activists woke up every day with one question on their minds: “How can I destroy the Clinton presidency today?”
It was rather remarkable, then, to see Mitt Romney in Michigan yesterday, suggesting the former Democratic president is a great model. “President Clinton, remember, he said the era of big government was over. President Obama brought it back with a vengeance,” Romney said, before praising Clinton on welfare reform.
A Romney aide said the move is intended to “devised as a trick to drive a wedge between centrist and liberal Democrats.” This might be more effective if it was less ridiculous.
As Ed Kilgore put it, “[E]ither [Romney] (or his speechwriter) hasn’t the slightest clue what he’s talking about, or he’s lying
It’s particularly outrageous for Romney to claim that the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act of 2010 was some sort of betrayal of the New Democrat legacy. “New Democrats” (for example, the Progressive Policy Institute, the preeminent New Democratic think-tank) relentlessly agitated for something very like the ACA going back to the early 1990s. Indeed, they differed from the defining New Democrat, Bill Clinton, only in preferring the “managed competition” model to the somewhat more rigid approach embraced by the Clinton administration itself.
During the 2008 presidential primaries, the only significant differences between the health care proposals of Barack Obama and of Hillary Clinton (notice the last name again!) was that she insisted on the individual mandate that Mitt Romney had implemented in Massachusetts and that Mitt Romney’s party now denounces as slavery.
Making matters worse, Romney said Obama, unlike Clinton, is turning his back on New Democratic principles by calling for a return to a top marginal tax rate of nearly 40%. Remind me: who pushed the top rate to that level in the first place? Oh, right, now I remember: that was Clinton.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/09/11619878-bill-clinton-as-a-gop-model?lite
Wed May 09, 2012 at 07:51 AM PDT.
Mitt Romney Super PAC rolls out first attack ad of general election+*
by Jed Lewison
So Restore Our Future, the Mitt Romney Super PAC with the nonsensical name, is out with its first negative attack ad of the general election … and it goes after Hilary Rosen and Bill Maher for allegedly saying mean things about Ann Romney:
If this is the best Mitt Romney’s Super PAC can do, they’re in a lot of trouble. The ad is absurd on its face: it tries to attack President Obama because of some out-of-context statements coming from two television personalities. Even if the statements weren’t out of context, they had nothing to do with the fact that Ann Romney has battled through serious illness, and nobody is going to believe otherwise.
Moreover, just like everything connected to the Romney campaign, the ad is premised on a blatant falsehood: neither Rosen nor Maher are White House insiders, let alone spokesmen. Regardless, President Obama, Vice President Biden, the White House, and the president’s reelection campaign have all made it clear they rejected the remarks.
But probably the most notable thing about the ad is what it doesn’t talk about: Mitt Romney or the economy. Given that Romney’s entire campaign is premised on the idea that he alone has the business experience to accelerate economic growth, that’s a pretty glaring omission.
.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/09/1090018/-Mitt-Romney-Super-PAC-rolls-out-first-attack-ad-of-general-election
THIS WHITE ENTITLED MOFO RIGHT HERE:
Willie Brown knows what DAY.IT.IS.
Obama ‘disappointed’ in North Carolina gay marriage ban passage
By BYRON TAU |
5/8/12 10:44 PM EDT
President Obama’s reelection campaign is expressing their disappointment that North Carolina voters have decided to add a gay marriage amendment to the state’s constitution.
“The President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same sex couples,” Obama’s North Carolina spokesman Cameron French said in a statement.
“He believes the North Carolina measure singles out and discriminates against committed gay and lesbian couples, which is why he did not support it. President Obama has long believed that gay and lesbian couples deserve the same rights and legal protections as straight couples and is disappointed in the passage of this amendment,” French said.
The AP reported Tuesday that the measure, called Amendment 1, passed by North Carolina voters. Obama has faced renewed questions about his ‘evolving’ stance on same-sex marriage in the wake of Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks Sunday that he was “comfortable” with gay marriage. The Obama campaign first announced their opposition to the measure in March.
http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/05/obama-disappointed-in-north-carolina-gay-marriage-122871.html
AGAINST IT THEN FOR IT THEN AGAINST IT AGAIN
GOP Blocks Student Loan Bill, Will Blame Obama For Blocking Student Loan Bill
So Barack Obama was all, hey students, let me come to your college and sing you some Al Green and whisper sweet nothings about Derrida and Pound and TS Eliot and also about how it is important that the interest rate on your student loan does not DOUBLE, and Republicans were all hey that is not fair because our position is really unpopular and you are being “political” and “pathetic” by pointing it out! And then they were all oh wait, we guess we will be against the interest on student loans rising too, and we are so against it that we will block your bill to keep those interest rates from doubling, because that is how you show you are “for” something when you are a Republican.
But whyfore the hold-up, Senate Republicans? Oh, Obama wanted to pay the $6 billion tab by “boosting Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes on high-earning stockholders of some privately owned corporations,” and you want to pay for it by repealing Obamacare. That does make sense, and is totally fair. In the meantime, perhaps these entitled college snobs could ask their parents for $20 big, or get off the couch and get three jobs.
Why does Barack Obama threaten to veto the GOP’s good-hearted and good-faith student loan bill? Does he hate all college students, or just the white ones? Probably just the white ones. [LAT]
http://wonkette.com/472062/gop-blocks-student-loan-bill-will-blame-obama-for-blocking-student-loan-bill
Where Are The Democrats’ Political Hit Men?
Missing:
What Obama lacks right now … is a bludgeon — a super PAC loaded with cash to hammer home negative advertising. Super PACs, as you may have heard, have emerged as the hit men of 2012. Why? Because super PACs offer two key advantages that make them ideal as attack dogs: unrestrained fundraising and a little distance from the candidates they support. They can accept unlimited donations from corporations, unions and individuals, and they do not need to obtain a candidate’s approval for the messages they are putting out.
But liberals seem too prissy and purist to join that fight. I can’t see anything wrong with contributions to GOTV operations, especially among the young and minorities – but when you have a big, fat, plutocratic target waiting to be defined by advertizing, and armed with an arrow-shower of lies about the president, purism against Citizens United seems somewhat perverse – especially since Romney’s picks to SCOTUS could be even further to the right than Scalia and Thomas.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/
Sullivan calling someone prissy and purist- KETTLE<
rikyrah check your email please. Thanks!
Redefining ‘compromise’
By Steve Benen – Wed May 9, 2012 10:40 AM EDT.
Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), a member of the House Republican leadership and the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, was recently asked about lawmakers’ capacity to compromise. As Robert Schlesinger noted, his response was illustrative.
“Compromising is one thing as long as you’re compromising and moving in the direction of your principles,” the right-wing lawmaker said. “If you’re compromising and moving away from the direction of your principles, I’m not sure it’s a compromise.”
And I’m not sure if Price has access to a dictionary. “Compromise” involves give and take, with concessions on both sides. To reach a resolution, compromise necessarily involves rivals accepting something less than their original goal.
I thought of Price’s recent comments again this morning after hearing the latest from Richard Mourdock, the Republicans’ U.S. Senate nominee in Indiana. He told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd this morning, among other things, “I certainly think bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.”
This wasn’t a slip of the tongue. Mourdock also told CNN that bipartisanship means “Democrats joining Republicans to roll back the size of government,” and he told Fox News, “I have a mindset that says bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.”
In this guy’s mind, the only acceptable “compromise” is the one in which he gets what he wants.
Remember, Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein, centrist political scientists with enormous establishment credibility, have explained that American governance is broken because the Republican Party is “ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
As Mourdock helps demonstrate, the radicalization of the GOP isn’t over. The costs for the nation will likely continue to be severe.
.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/09/11617626-redefining-compromise?lite&tw_p=twt
Romney’s Latino Problem
by BooMan
Wed May 9th, 2012 at 10:42:29 AM EST
It’s hard to exaggerate what an unholy mess Mitt Romney has made for himself on the issue of Latino immigration. He really has two big problems. First, he’s said what he’s said, and his positions on immigration, amnesty, and deportations are all in the public record. To say those positions are a major turnoff to the Latino community would be a major understatement. His second problem is the fundamental dishonesty of what he’s trying to do in attacking Obama’s record. He has surrogates out there serving as directors of outreach to the Latino community who are blaming the president for not passing an immigration reform bill and for deporting too many people. Those would be fair criticisms if it wasn’t the near-unaimous opposition from the Republicans that prevented Obama from signing a bill, and if Romney didn’t plan to deport far more people with far less discretion than Obama.
One outreach director got so flummoxed over these contradictions that she blurted out the following nonsense:
“I think as a candidate, to my understanding, that he’s still deciding what his position on immigration is,” she said. “So I can’t talk about what his proposal’s going to be, because I don’t know what Romney exactly — he’s talked about different issues. And what we saw in the Republican primary is that there’s a very diverse opinion on how to deal with immigration. So I can’t talk about something that I don’t know what his position is.”
This is similar to the difficulty the Obama administration is having explaining his “evolving” views on gay marriage. But, with Obama, his ambivalence is an isolated case. Romney can’t afford to continually reinforce his reputation as a flip-flopper who always puts his finger in the wind before taking a position on an issue. He came out too strongly against any kind of humane immigration policy to pivot now without incurring a tremendous cost. No one will believe that his new, softer positions are anything other than pure cynicism.
This is a guy who just tried to take credit for saving the auto industry he sought to destroy. He’s willing to say anything , no matter how preposterous. But that’s not a good thing.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/5/9/104229/5980#5
Puck signs iron-clad confidentiality agreement…
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
Los Angeles-based celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck will cook for President Obama’s glam fundraising dinner at George Clooney’s house this Thursday, May 10th, TMZ.com has exclusively reported. The $40,000/person dinner was the subject of a big fundraising push with the Obama, Clooney & You sweepstakes, which offered the chance for two donors and their guests to join the President, the movie star, and Southern California’s richest presidential supporters. (Above: The President and Clooney at the White House)
“There will be a special menu — not the standard Wolfgang catering–and, as one source put it, ‘The food is going to be a lot better than the Oscars,'” TMZ reported.
http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/2012/05/celebrity-chef-wolfgang-puck-will-cook.html
Rep. Allen West On Food Stamps: ‘That’s How You Enslave The American People’
No West, denying FOOD to folks who need it is a way to STARVE & KILL the American people. You TWISTED SON OF BITCH.
CRAZY ZEALOTS They want a THEOCRISY
Jueseppi,
Here is the slave catching treason accusing coon…
Told ya’ll she was black. SMGDH And she looks familiar.I’ve seen her at other events/rallies.
She’s a PAID GOP HOUSE NEGRO-OPERATIVE!
Working on the outside of our Constitution>… WTF?
Bullseye!
Aretha Franklin going into Gospel Hall of Fame
http://www.thegrio.com/entertainment/aretha-franklin-going-into-gospel-hall-of-fame.php
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The queen of soul is taking her place in the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
Aretha Franklin is one of six people who’ll be inducted into the Hall on Aug. 14 in Hendersonville, Tenn. She’ll be joined by bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs, family group The Hoppers, contemporary Christian singer Dallas Holm, the late TV evangelist Rex Humbard and Christian rock band Love Song.
Franklin’s gospel roots run deep, starting with her father who was a prominent Baptist minister. Her 1972 album, “Amazing Grace,” has sold over 2 million copies and is one of the best-selling gospel albums of all time.
Kerry Says Goodbye to Lugar
by BooMan
Tue May 8th, 2012 at 09:33:04 PM EST
John Kerry didn’t have to do this, but I am glad he did. I’m trying to imagine any Republican doing this for a defeated Democrat. And, no, Joe Lieberman doesn’t count.
Kerry Statement on Sen. Lugar’s Indiana Primary
WASHINGTON, DC – Senator John Kerry (D-MA) tonight issued a statement on the Indiana primary results:
“This is a tragedy for the Senate and the loss is particularly felt by all of us who have been privileged to serve with Dick on the Foreign Relations Committee. It’s a blow to the institution during a period when the institution itself has been strained. Whether he was serving as Chairman or Ranking Member of our Committee, wielding the gavel or working the floor, Dick’s approach to governing was always the same: he wanted to find serious answers to some of foreign policy’s most vexing questions. He’s a class act and a gentleman and in a Senate that has seen so much change and transition these last years, his expertise on complicated issues honed over 36 years simply can’t be replicated. I know, however, that Dick Lugar will finish out his sixth term in the Senate with the same determination and effectiveness that has marked every year of his service here, and he will have many more contributions still to an institution he reveres and that reveres him.
“Dick’s Nunn-Lugar efforts have become almost shorthand for bi-partisanship in foreign policy, and they should be recognized. But for me, on a personal level, two other efforts stand out as epitomizing who Dick is and why he’ll be missed. For me, it started with the work we did together in the 1980’s to help bring about free and fair elections in the Philippines. I was just a freshman senator, but I was lucky to get to know Dick Lugar as a dignified, thoughtful and capable public servant who even then was becoming an institution within this institution. He was serious, he was fair-minded, and I saw firsthand during our trip to the Philippines that he had a very personal and special understanding of what the United States means to the rest of the world. That cause animated a Hoosier who was a reserved and humble public person, but who proudly recounted for President Reagan the difference the United States made in giving voice to the Filipino peoples’ democratic aspirations. I saw that same commitment in Dick Lugar many times over the years but never more so than in the long, tough, and patient process required when we worked together on the New START Treaty two years ago. His wisdom and his patience was invaluable in laying out the case and particularly in building Republican support and finding the path to those 71 votes.
“It will soon almost sound cliched to say that America is safer today because of Dick Lugar’s 36 years of service in the Senate, but it really does bear repeating. His record on our Committee will long be remembered in the same context as another chairman, William Fulbright of Arkansas, whose Senate service also ended in a difficult primary defeat, but who is remembered today not for one loss, but for a legacy of following the facts and speaking the truth despite the political risks. This is a tough period in American politics, but I’d like to think that we’ll again see a United States Senate where Dick Lugar’s brand of thoughtful, mature, and bi-partisan work is respected and rewarded. That kind of seriousness of purpose should never go out of fashion.”
I could list out some of Dick Lugar’s galactic-sized mistakes on foreign policy or his miserable record on economic and social issues, but Kerry’s right. Lugar accomplished many admirable things in the Senate, and he earned a reputation for thoughtfulness. Forget his positions on the issues; we need more people with Lugar’s temperament, not less.
I hope a lot of the Republicans who went out and voted for Lugar today will cross the aisle and vote for the Democrats in the fall. A message has been sent. People who like and admire Dick Lugar aren’t welcome in the GOP anymore.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/5/8/21334/88225
May 08, 2012
The Romney campaign’s abject squalidness
Romney’s presidential campaign could make Goebbels look pragmatically righteous. I mean that. It’s not intended as mere hyperbole or just a trifle of partisan pushback. Because were Joe around to witness Mitt’s extraordinary overreaches, he would likely think to himself: “Whoa, Mitt, you’re taking the Big Lies too far and thus spoiling a great political tactic. Look, I, even I, required the basic reality of two fronts before I invented stories about those fronts. But Mitt, Mitt, mein Mensch, you’re actually inventing the preconditions for the realities you choose to sell to the homevolk. And Mitt, given your patently laughable gibberish, before long the powerfully big Lie will be a spent advantage.”
Need proof? Here’s Mitt, in 2008:
If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed…. With [the bailout], the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check
And here’s Mitt, yesterday, in Cleveland:
I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy, and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet. So, I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back.
Not even a whisper of shame, or a knowing chuckle, or a wink. On an issue of immense importance, Romney simply presented pure fantasy as factual history. And one will not find, in American history, such an astonishing level of naked duplicity in any presidential campaign. One must go outside America’s borders, go outside the American character, outside the American political experience, to find such abject squalidness.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2012/05/the-romney-campaigns-abject-squalidness.html
May 09, 2012
Mourdock’s brief moment
Richard Mourdock’s raison d’etre, as the NY Times explained it, “is to cease the efforts at bipartisanship that defined the six-term tenure of Mr. Lugar and push for a more conservative agenda among Republicans on Capitol Hill.” And so it would seem that Mourdock is in search of a preexisting fait accompli. I guess that’s one way to fulfill one’s campaign promises: swear to accomplish the already accomplished.
Mourdock, who also wants to abolish the departments of education, energy, commerce, and housing and urban development, detects an epidemic of Beltway bipartisanship that has escaped the rest of us–except, of course, Mourdock’s ever-vigilant tea partiers. It certainly has escaped Sen. Lugar, who, in his concession speech last night, brooded that “We are experiencing deep political divisions in our society right now [which] have stalemated progress in critical areas.”
Still, it further appears that Mourdock is about more than mere stalemate–George Will’s political ideal of constantly opposing forces of roughly equal power whose legislative product is zero. In fact, Mourdock appears to detest stalemate, telling the Times: “This is a historic time, and the most powerful people in both parties are so opposed to one another that one side simply has to win out over the other.”
Putting aside that all eras, in one way or another, are historic (the political paranoid, however, invariably interprets his own time as filled with especial import), Mourdock’s statement can be read as containing either an Anglo-parliamentary temperament or a chilling, totalitarian wish.
In the former, separated powers are regarded as tedious filigree to be constitutionally avoided, so as to effect swift, decisive governance and unimpeded change. It is also a profoundly democratic system–more so than ours–in that it avails itself of swifter internal change; which, when one seems stuck with, say, a George W. Bush, is a pleasant option to have at one’s disposal.
There’s something final about Mourdock’s phrasing, though–“one side simply has to win out over the other”–in addition to the unpleasant extremists who follow him, that leads one to think his desire leans more to the absolutism of mid-20th-century fanatics. Compare, for instance, the preceding quote to this justification of one-party rule:
[L]et it be understood, [our singular authority was] not against the will of the people, but only when the people, having in the course of time, and by means of a series of elections … had expressed their wish to entrust their destiny to [us]…. [W]e had lived long enough with opposition and we had had enough of it…. It was now time to have done with it and to start building up.
You might say those were rather famous last words, for they were spoken, in postwar Nuremberg, by the devout Hermann Goering. Their intense nihilism, grounded in the utopian instinct for a universal recreation, are eerily similar to the infantile squawkings of America’s tea-party types who find bipartisanship detestable, compromise unendurable, and absolute control indispensable.
Such is the fanatic’s creed. In the United States, its popularity erupts from time to time, but always remains within a minority and soon–very soon, in the historical relativity of time–vanishes into the diseased obscurity whence it came, but always lurks.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2012/05/mourdocks-brief-moment.html
Mitt Romney won’t stand up to his own party
By Dana Milbank, Published: May 8
The Washington Post
Almost four years ago, I was watching Sarah Palin rile up a Clearwater, Fla., crowd with anti-Obama broadsides when a spectator let loose a bloodcurdling cry of “kill him!”
To his credit, John McCain realized the Obama hatred was getting out of hand, and a few days later, when a woman at one of his events called Obama an “Arab,” McCain did one of the most honorable things in his political career. “No, ma’am,” he said, taking the microphone from the woman and enduring some boos from supporters. “He’s a decent, family-man citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”
Now that the year is again divisible by four, the anti-Obama hatred is flaring anew. But I worry that Obama’s current opponent doesn’t have the strength of character to push back against the most dangerous voices on his side.
The latest sign of trouble came Monday, when a woman speaking at a Mitt Romney event in Euclid, Ohio, said that Obama was operating outside of the Constitution and “should be tried for treason.” Many in the crowd of 500 applauded this call for the commander in chief of the United States to be charged with a capital offense.
But Romney didn’t push back against this outrage. Instead, he said he thinks the Constitution is “brilliant” and mentioned nothing about treason. Only when reporters pressed him later did Romney state that he did not, in fact, think Obama should be put on trial for being a traitor to his country.
This was just the latest instance of Romney being unwilling to confront the darker forces of the right:
Days earlier, Romney made scant effort to defend one of his aides, Richard Grenell, who had been hired only weeks before to serve as a foreign policy spokesman. Conservative groups complained noisily because Grenell is openly gay. Romney declined to push back publicly against the conservatives, and Grenell resigned.
This followed Romney’s unfortunate response two months ago to Rush Limbaugh’s claim that a Georgetown University student who testified about birth control was a “slut” and a “prostitute.” The candidate declined to rebuke Limbaugh, saying only that “it’s not the language I would have used.”
Go back further to the Republican debates, when Romney, like the other presidential candidates, didn’t make any real-time attempt to distance himself from ugly behavior by the debate audiences: lustily applauding the record number of executions in Texas, cheering when a moderator spoke about a hypothetical 30-year-old dying because he lacked health insurance, booing when a gay service member asked a question about the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romney-wont-stand-up-to-his-own-party/2012/05/08/gIQAO7BUBU_story.html?hpid=z4
May 8, 2012, 6:53 pm
Mitt Romney Bails on the Truth
By DAVID FIRESTONE
Mitt Romney’s claim that his ideas contributed to the revival of the auto industry is preposterous and easy enough to knock down. It’s exhausting, however, to refute each and every laughable distortion or outright untruth that he and his campaign issue virtually every day.
Mr. Romney told a Cleveland television station yesterday that he would “take a lot of credit” for the industry’s comeback because he recommended that General Motors and Chrysler go through bankruptcy, which they did. “I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet,” he said.
To anyone with the slightest knowledge of what happened in Detroit in 2008 and 2009, that’s a breathtaking statement. The companies didn’t survive simply because they declared bankruptcy; they were bailed out with $80 billion in taxpayer money. That proved to be one of the government’s best investments in modern times, and 1.45 million people are working as a direct result of it.
And Mitt Romney unequivocally opposed that bailout.
He didn’t just oppose it in 2008, when he wrote a notorious op-ed essay for The New York Times saying if the bailout were granted, “you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.” He also said the bailout was unnecessary while campaigning for the Michigan primary earlier this year, defying the auto executives who say that’s nonsense. Even the newspaper that endorsed him, the Detroit News, said the government saved the industry from “the darkest hour of its history.”
It’s unlikely Mr. Romney will be able to get away with this kind of thing in Michigan, where people know better. But for months he and his campaign have pushed the boundaries of veracity on a huge range of subjects, from the number of jobs created during the Obama administration to the economy’s effect on women to the phony “apology tour” he claims the president has taken.
For these crimes against accuracy he is chided by newspaper fact checkers and denounced by editorialists. Greg Sargent of the Washington Post regularly notes how much Mr. Romney is counting on the public’s amnesia about the depth of the recession and its generally faulty memory of recent events, such as the Detroit bailout.
Otherwise, the Romney campaign hasn’t paid much of a price for its untruths. Mr. Obama has done his share of exaggerating, too, and voters may figure that all politicians do it. That’s a false equivalency: unlike Mr. Romney’s campaign, the president’s is grounded in reality.
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/mitt-romney-bails-on-the-truth/
Romney’s Attack on Obama’s College Affordability Record
Ben Adler on May 8, 2012 – 4:56 PM ET
Over the weekend Mitt Romney’s campaign issued press releases, pegged to visits to key swing states, listing the purported failures Obama’s first term. Headlines such as “FOUR YEARS OF BROKEN PROMISES FOR VIRGINIA” and “AMERICAN FAMILIES ARE STRUGGLING IN THE OBAMA ECONOMY” lead to lists of facts about the hardships the country faces, from large numbers of home foreclosures to high gas prices.
One statistic in particular stands out, especially in light of Romney’s effort to woo young voters: “Since President Obama Took Office, The Average Cost Of College Has Increased By 25% At Four-Year Public Schools Across The Country.” This fact, while technically true, is wildly misleading. It doesn’t adjust for inflation. Adjusted for inflation the percentage increase is 21.7 percent. That’s much too high, but is it Obama’s fault?
The president does not control tuition at state institutions. But he has attempted to mitigate rising tuitions through financial aid to needy students. Obama doubled funding for Pell Grants, created a tuition tax credit worth up to $10,000 over four years and capped student loan payments.
The result is that the actual price that students pay for college has barely risen at all. The College Board crunched the numbers and found, “Between 2006-07 and 2011-12, average published tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities increased by about $1,800 in 2011 dollars, an annual rate of growth of 5.1% beyond inflation. The average net tuition and fees in-state students pay after taking grant aid from all sources and federal education tax credits and deductions into consideration increased by about $170 in 2011 dollars, an annual rate of growth of 1.4% beyond inflation.” So this supposed 25 percent increase is really just an increase of $170. That pretty much demolishes Romney’s point.
But no one would argue that Obama’s efforts have eliminated the problem of college affordability altogether. At best, they’ve merely temporarily softened it. So while Romney’s attack on Obama may not be fair, it would still be theoretically possible for him to offer students more in the future.
But Romney has offered no plan of his own for college affordability. As Inside Higher Ed notes, “Education is not even mentioned on his campaign website’s list of ‘issues.’” And he supports Representative Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget that proposes enormous cuts to domestic social spending. This would cut Pell Grants dramatically. On Tuesday Senate Republicans filibustered the Democratic effort, backed by the White House, to pass legislation that would prevent student loan interest rates from doubling.
Romney, the fantastically wealthy son of an auto executive, has evinced a “let them eat cake” attitude towards college affordability. His parables of youthful ambition involve borrowing $20,000 from one’s parents to start a business. Here’s what Romney said about student loans at a town hall in Youngstown, Ohio: “My best advice is find a great institution of higher learning. Find one that has the right price—shop around. In America this idea of competition, it works and don’t just go to the one that has the highest price, go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education and hopefully you’ll find that and don’t take on too much debt and don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on.” On Monday in Ohio Romney derided Obama’s efforts to aid college students as “free stuff,” to win young voters. “Romney suggested he would try to lower tuition costs by increasing competition between universities,” TPM reports.
Obama laid out a detailed agenda in January for college affordability. Contrary to Romney’s caricature of Obama as a big government liberal throwing good money after bad, it is Obama, not Romney, who has articulated a reform agenda that would harness the forces of market competition to lower tuition. Obama proposes to “to shift aid away from colleges that fail to keep net tuition down, and toward those colleges and universities that do their fair share to keep tuition affordable, provide good value, and serve needy students well.” He would create a higher education program modeled on Race to the Top that would incentivize improved affordability and outcomes and he would create a college scorecard so that families could see which school offers them the best value.
“Romney has no plan to speak of,” says Kevin Carey, policy director at the nonpartisan think tank Education Sector. “Obama arguably has not done much to tackle the core problem of rising tuition, although the policies announced around this year’s State of the Union were a good start. And Obama has done a whole lot to treat the symptoms of the rising tuition problem, by fighting for more funding for Pell grants—and succeeding fantastically, the program has more than doubled in spending under his administration—trying to keep student loan interest rates low and introducing alternative loan payback options.”
The candidates also differ on for profit colleges. The Obama campaign has attempted to crack down on colleges that take government tuition subsidies and offer students poor educations with low graduation rates or degrees that are worthless in the job market. Romney champions the for-profit college industry. Romney recently praised for profit schools such as the University of Phoenix and Full Sail University, drawing criticism from experts who note their expensive tuitions, low rates of financial aid and questionable academic merit.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/167773/romneys-attack-obamas-college-affordability-record
Posted at 09:11 AM ET, 05/09/2012
The Morning Plum:
Dems pick Scott Walker’s opponent
By Greg Sargent
Yesterday, Wisconsin Democrats chose Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett as their choice to take on Scott Walker in the recall battle. If you read through the statements put out by labor unions about Barrett’s victory and the upcoming fight to oust Walker, a few things immediately become clear.
This fight is no longer about collective bargaining — the issue that sparked this whole fight to begin with. It will be about Wisconsin’s worst-in-the-nation job growth, and the failure of Walker’s larger ideological approach to produce the jobs he promised. Perhaps even more crucially, it will be about the general exhaustion of Wisconsinites over all the fighting Walker’s agenda has unleashed.
As the labor-backed We Are Wisconsin put it: “Tom Barrett is a strong leader who will end the political turmoil Scott Walker has brought to this state and reunite Wisconsin to get us moving forward again.”
Dems hope that the fact that Barrett wasn’t even labor’s choice in the primary will enable them to make this case more effectively. The narrative will be all about restoring balance after Walker’s experiment in extremism — which won plaudits from the national right — sparked months of political chaos in the state. Opinionmakers will widely note that this recall fight is a key battle in the national war over labor’s future; look for Democrats to downplay this storyline.
Walker has raised enormous sums for the race, and he will almost certainly outspend opponents. But the question is whether more ad spending can even persuade large numbers of voters in such a polarized state. Months of massive ad expenditures have not moved Walker’s numbers, raising the possibility that this battle will be won on the ground — the one area where labor and Dems can match Walker’s organization.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
May 08, 2012 3:04 PM
Some Dare Call It Treason
By Ed Kilgore
At Ten Miles Square, Jonathan Bernstein makes a good point about the brouhaha over Mitt Romney not contradicting a woman at one of his town hall meetings who said Obama should be tried for treason:
[I]f everything that Mitt Romney, Republican Members of Congress, and the other Republican presidential candidates say about Barack Obama was true, then Obama should be tried for treason. It’s that kind of rhetoric that’s the problem, not Romney’s immediate response to what someone says at a rally.
As Jonathan notes, encouraging “the crazy” has become an extraordinarily regular feature of GOP politics these days:
[W]hat Romney did say in answering the question [about Obama’s “treason”] was just about as goofy as what he didn’t say. The question was about Obama supposedly not governing within the Constitution, and Romney, in answering that, made sure to say that in his view the Constitution and the Declaration were “not just brilliant, but probably inspired.” Which is standard rhetoric these days within the GOP — it used to be good enough to just emphasize the Declaration (because it specifically invokes God), but now one has to pretend to believe that the United States is all special and all (that is, “exceptional”) because God wanted it that way. You know — in the old days, we would call that a “dog whistle” and move on, but I watched an awful lot of GOP debates this year, and the truth is that the presidential nomination was about 90% dog whistle and 10% substance. And that’s probably a generous reading.
So why should have Mitt Romney turned a hair when one of his supporters came out and said what his party’s rhetoric has been encouraging them to think all along? The “crazy people” aren’t just more honest than many conservative pols; in some respects, they are even more logical.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_05/some_dare_call_it_treason037215.php
Mourdock: Bipartisanship Ought To Consist Of Dems Coming To GOP Point Of View
Making the rounds on morning television after defeating Sen. Dick Lugar in the Indiana primary, Richard Mourdock dismissed Lugar’s parting shot.
“I have a mindset that says bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view,” Mourdock said on Fox, according to Politico. “You know, I’ve said many times through this campaign that one of the things I hope to do is to help build a conservative majority in the United States Senate and continue to help the House build a Republican majority and have a Republican White House and then bipartisanship becomes having Democrats come our way. So that’s what we’re working towards and I think in the days ahead, Mr. Lugar will join our effort.”
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/mourdock-bipartisanship-ought-to-consist-of-dems-coming
Lugar defeat fits Obama campaign narrative on GOP
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/la-pn-lugar-defeat-obama-campaign-20120508,0,7809174.story
The defeat of Sen. Dick Lugar in his bid for a seventh term in Indiana has given Democrats new hope of holding on to their narrow majority in the Senate.
The result could also play out in the race for president, fueling the narrative of an Obama campaign running as much against the tea party-infused Republican Congress as it is against Mitt Romney.
Within an hour of Richard Mourdock being declared the winner, the White House released a statement from President Obama hailing Lugar’s “distinguished service.”
“While Dick and I didn’t always agree on everything, I found during my time in the Senate that he was often willing to reach across the aisle and get things done,” Obama said.
Yes, but Dickie boy got caught up in the Teabagging foolishness, and let it sway him to some degree. He’s 80, he’s doen his time. NEXT!
The costs of a shrinking government
By Steve Benen – Wed May 9, 2012 9:18 AM EDT.
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President Obama spoke at SUNY Albany yesterday, sketching out an economic to-do list for Congress, and raised an important point that generally goes overlooked: when it comes to the recovery, “one of the biggest drags on our economy” has been public-sector layoffs.
“[A]fter there was a recession under Ronald Reagan, government employment went way up. It went up after the recessions under the first George Bush and the second George Bush. So each time there was a recession with a Republican President, we compensated by making sure that government didn’t see a drastic reduction in employment.
“The only time government employment has gone down during a recession has been under me. So I make that point just so you don’t buy into this whole bloated government argument that you hear.”
It’s maddening in large part because so much of the global economic crisis was hard to control, but this aspect — public-sector employment — was easy. It was within Washington’s power to prevent the layoffs of teachers, firefighters, and police officers, and Democrats did that for a while in 2009, but as stimulus funds ran out, mass layoffs began. Republicans were given an opportunity to save these jobs, but they refused, arguing hat the economy would improve if more public-sector workers were unemployed.
We’re left to wonder what could have been, but we have some ideas. The Wall Street Journal ran an important piece the other day, noting that the national unemployment rate would be 7.1% right now — a full point lower than it is now — if the government hadn’t laid off so many public-sector workers. TPM’s Brian Beutler published this great chart this morning:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/09/11616488-the-costs-of-a-shrinking-government?lite
Political AnimalBlog
May 08, 2012 6:02 PM
Mitt’s Latest Big Speech: Big Lie #2
By Ed Kilgore
If Mitt Romney in his Michigan speech today lied about the recent past, it’s nothing compared to the big lie he keeps telling about his own plan for the immediate future.
This is a time for new ideas, new answers and a new direction. That is the only way that our future can be better than the past.
Let me describe some of the policies of that new direction. I will be discussing these throughout this campaign.
I will improve healthcare by getting it to work more like a consumer market, and I will repeal and replace Obamacare. Individuals will be able to buy their own health insurance policies, either through their employer or directly. And the kind of competition we see in everything from auto insurance to cell phones to broadband will finally slow the growth of healthcare costs.
I will improve schools and universities and colleges with greater choice, greater accountability, and greater application of the technologies that have transformed so much of our economy.
I will help usher in a revival in American manufacturing. If we take an entirely new and different direction in energy, in trade, and in labor policies, we will see more manufacturing jobs come back to America than those that are leaving America. I am absolutely convinced that with the right policies and leadership we can see a resurgence in American manufacturing.
New and emerging small businesses and so-called gazelle, or fast-growing, businesses will spring up across the country by instituting pro-growth regulations, pro-growth taxes, pro-growth intellectual property protections, and pro-growth labor policies.
There are little lies scattered through this litany, empty as it is of specifics. My favorite is his claim that it’s easy to control health care costs through competition, which is presumaby a reference to his championship of the conservative pet rock of interstate insurance sales. It might well bring down insurance premiums for people healthy enough to be the object of all that competition, but for everyone else, it could make the status quo much, much worse, destroying existing state regulations that protect access to health insurance and seek to provide some parity in rates, as companies gratefully migrate to states that let them do whatever they want.
But let’s get to the big lie: all this talk about newness. As Greg Sargent observes:
The big danger for Obama is the possibility that swing voters will accept the basic premise of Romney’s candidacy — that his success in the private sector shows he possesses basic leadership qualities and a talent for turning around troubled enterprises that can be applied to a whole country. Obama’s rebuttal is that Romney amounts to more than whatever aura of competence he manages to project; he is offering a set of policies, priorities, and ideas about the economy that we’ve already tried and that have already failed.
Romney’s big speech today was all about obscuring this. In addition to repeatedly proclaiming his approach is unlike anything we’ve tried before, he repeatedly claimed that Obama is the candidate who embodies the failed policies of the past — an effort to muddy the waters around what is increasingly becoming the central argument of the campaign.
I don’t know about you, but the only specific Bush administration policy I’ve heard Romney reject on the campaign trail this year is comprehensive immigration reform. Is encouraging undocumented workers to “self-deport” the secret to all this exciting economic activity Mitt is projecting as the payoff for supporting his policies? And has he ever specifically repudiated the recent comment of an RNC spokesperson that his economic policies are just an “updated version” of W.’s?
It’s a long way to November, and there ought to be some opportunity for enterprising reporters to ask Romney point-blank: “What economic policies of the George W. Bush administration would you not wish to reimpose?” It’s not like this was going to come up during the GOP primaries, since hhis rivals were as complicit as he is in the big lie that somehow Bush had nothing to do with the financial crash or the recession, and/or that it was his ill-defined “big government” heresies that were the problem. Mitt needs to be challenged on this regularly, until he finally comes up with something genuinely new or shuts up about it or just admits his campaign is a straight-up Restoration.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_05/mitts_latest_big_speech_big_li_1037218.php
THIS NEEDS TO BE TWEETED TIL THE COWS COME HOME
““What economic policies of the George W. Bush administration would you not wish to reimpose?”
May 09, 2012 8:59 AM
No-Drama Election Night
By Ed Kilgore
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Unless you get pretty far down-ballot, last night’s ballot-counting was notable for a complete lack of drama. Richard Lugar’s demise was obvious from the first returns showing him running poorly even in Indianapolis, and he wound up losing to Richard Mourdock by more than twenty points (61-39), which is pretty amazing for a six-term incumbent who has generally been firmly in his party’s ideological mainstream.
In North Carolina, the passage of Amendment One, which not only banned same-sex marriage but sruck down legal protections for all kinds of domestic partnership arrangements, was no surprise. But the margin was: 61 for, 39 against. This will undoubtedly embolden marriage equality opponents, who haven’t gotten a lot of good news lately. Expect a lot of talk in coming days about the impact of ballot initiatives like Amendment One in turnout mobilization efforts by both parties.
In the North Carolina gubernatorial primaries, again, the expected occurred: Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton defeated former congressman Bobby Etheridge for the Democratic nomination by a 46-38 margin, easily overcoming the 40% threshold for victory without a runoff. He will face the 2008 GOP nominee, former Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory, who brushed aside minor opposition. McCrory begins as the front-runner, but both national parties will likely target the state so long as Obama looks competitive there.
And in Wisconsin’s Democratic primary to choose a recall opponent for Scott Walker, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett easily defeated former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk by a 58-34 margin, despite Falk’s heavy labor support. Barrett and Falk are holding a “unity event” today, and despite public-sector union issues with Barrett, Democrats should have little trouble pulling together in the drive to topple Walker—who has a vast warchest, mostly from out-of-state conservatives—on June 5.
UPDATE: As you may have heard, Lugar’s election-night concession speech was the usual “good luck to our team in the next round of the playoffs” kind of speech that implicitly endorsed Mourdock. But the prepared statement his campaign released soon afterwards was a teeth-clenched attack on “rigid partisanship” that did not include an endorsement. The Evansville Courier & Press conveniently published the two Lugar statements back-to-back.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_05/nodrama_election_night037229.php
Obama campaign helps supporters with new election laws
New voter ID and registration rules are on the books in 17 states and more are in the pipeline, so the Obama campaign is giving volunteer organizers and voters a crash course on the new election laws.
Experts say these new rules could diminish participation among young and minority voters — two groups that are key to President Obama’s re-election strategy.
In Florida, where a new law requires political parties to certify organizers registering voters and turn over signed forms within 48 hours or face steep fines, the campaign has begun training volunteers on the details. In Wisconsin, where — barring a successful legal challenge — a new photo ID rule will be in effect, Obama volunteers have hosted talks over sandwiches at private homes and public libraries about the new requirements.
Before the Obamas’ arrival at a rally in Richmond, Va., over the past weekend, the campaign ran a video on the arena’s jumbo screens warning voters to expect tighter requirements in the Old Dominion. Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell is considering whether to sign legislation into law there that would require voters who don’t bring their IDs to the polls to return with valid identification for their votes to be counted.
Without mentioning the proposed Virginia law directly, Michelle Obama made a plea to college students during the Richmond rally, which was held on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University, to make certain they update their voter registration as soon as they return to school.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-05-08/obama-new-voter-laws/54844900/1
May 08, 2012 5:20 PM
Mitt’s Latest “Big Speech:” Big Lie #1
By Ed Kilgore
Mitt Romney gave another much-ballyhooed “big speech” today in Michigan, aimed at clarifying the differences between his approach to the economy and the president’s.
Well, mission accomplished, but not exactly in the way he intended.
There were two “big lies” are the heart of the speech. I’ll discuss them in separate posts.
Here’s number one:
President Obama chose to apply liberal ideas of the past to a 21st century America. Liberal policies didn’t work then, they haven’t worked over the last four years, and they won’t work in the future. New Democrats had abandoned those policies, but President Obama resurrected them, with predictable results.
President Clinton said the era of big government was over. President Obama brought it back with a vengeance. Government at all levels now constitutes 38% of the economy, and if Obamacare is installed, it will reach almost 50%.
President Clinton made efforts to reform welfare as we knew it. President Obama is trying tirelessly to expand the welfare state to all Americans, with promises of more programs, more benefits, and more spending.
Old-school liberals saw a problem and thought a government-run program was the answer. Obamacare is the fulfillment of their dreams. Federal bureaucrats will tell all Americans what they have to have in their health insurance policies. And an unelected board will tell seniors what treatments Medicare will cover….
The liberals of the past raised taxes, often with little thought of how they would hurt small business, and the economy. Like them, President Obama proposes to raise the tax on small business. He wants to increase the marginal tax rate paid by the most successful small businesses from 35% to 40%. It’s a throwback to discredited policies, and it will kill jobs.
So the claim here is that Obama turned his back on the Clintonian “New Democrat” heritage and went back to the bad old liberal ways of the distant past.
Who do you think is the most reliable interpreter of the Clinton legacy? Bill Clinton, or perhaps his wife? Or Mitt Romney? And who do you think is the better judge of whether Obama is going back to the “tired old liberalism” Clinton sometimes derided? This time I’ll give your three options: (a) Again, Clinton; (b) the liberals who disagreed with Clinton’s course for the party, and who disagree with Obama’s just as vociferously, or (c) Mitt Romney?
I take this a bit personally, having been a “New Democrat” myself back in the day, but there are really only two ways to deal with this passage of Romney’s speech: either he (or his speechwriter) hasn’t the slightest clue what he’s talking about, or he’s lying. It’s not real hard to figure out which is the case.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_05/mitts_latest_big_speech_big_li037217.php#more
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/08/11601679-white-supremacists-accused-of-planning-for-race-war-in-florida?lite
Members of a white supremacist skinhead group called American Front trained with AK-47s, shotguns and explosives at a fortified compound in central Florida to prepare for what its reputed leader believed to be an “inevitable race war,” prosecutors said Tuesday.
According to court documents, members of American Front discussed acts of violence that included causing “a disturbance” at City Hall in Orlando, shooting at a house and attacking an anti-racist skinhead group.
At least 10 members of the group, which authorities described as a militia-styled, anti-Semitic domestic terrorist organization, have been arrested in Florida since the weekend, including at least three people on Tuesday.
This post should have come with a warning, SG2. Just plain UGLINESS & EVIL-looking MOFOS all the way around. And Black folks should be feared because? Enlighten me here please.
found this in the comments at TOD:
hopefruit2
May 9, 2012 at 9:00 am
Okay now that most or all of the NC votes have been reported- here is a report of the counties with the most turn (40% or higher), their breakdown by race, candidate voted for in 2008, and how they voted on Amendment 1. Don’t allow the media to push false narratives about PBO and “black voters” when 100% of the blame goes to Republican/conservative voters who supported McCain in 2008 and will probably vote for Romney in 2012.
1. First, there were 15 counties with turnout of 40% or higher. 10 of them went for John McCain in 08; 5 for Obama. Of the ten that went for McCain in ’08, ALL of them voted FOR the ban. All of them were heavily white, ranging from 85%-98% white, with 9 of the 10 counties being 90% or higher white. Incidentally, the county with the highest turnout by proportion in the entire state was Mitchell county – (50-60% turnout), which is 98% white and went HEAVILY for John McCain (71%) in 08
2. Of the five “high” turnout counties that went for Obama in ’08, THREE of them voted AGAINST the ban. They ranged from 14-21% black. The two Obama ’08 counties that voted FOR the ban were 35% and 36% percent black. They were Bladen and Hyde counties.
3. Total number of votes cast in entire state was 2,135,740. Of that total, 1,303,952 or ~ 61% were FOR the ban. Of the votes that were FOR the ban, 909 came from Hyde county, and 7412 came from Bladen county. Assuming ALL the black people in both counties showed up and voted for the ban, that would yield 318 “black” votes from Hyde county and 2,668 from Bladen county. So the heaviest black turnout in these two counties would yield a total of 2,986 votes (which is an overestimate, since I’m assuming that 100% blacks showed up).
4. Now if all black voters from these counties were to vote AGAINST the ban, shifting these 2,986 votes out of the “FOR” column and to the “AGAINST” column, we would still have an enormous deficit in the “AGAINST” and the ban would have still passed as it did – and by the SAME margin! So the black voters in these two counties would have made absolutely NO difference in outcome – whether they voted for or against because their numbers are simply too small!!!
5. The county with the highest population in NC is Wake county – went for Obama in ’08 and is ~21% black. Wake county voted AGAINST (57%) the ban.
ABC’s Robin Roberts To Interview Obama Today
ABC News’ Robin Roberts will interview President Obama today at the White House. A portion of the interview will air tonight on “World News with Diane Sawyer” and the full interview will air tomorrow morning on “Good Morning America.”
For all the flack about Amendment One…
it lost 61-39.
So, no ‘ BLAME THE BLACK FOLKS’ for you.
Evidence of a party ‘beyond redemption’
By Steve Benen – Wed May 9, 2012 8:00 AM EDT.
Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) isn’t the first mainstream Republican to be driven from office by a right-wing primary challenger, but his primary defeat last night is arguably the most shocking — and says the most about the radicalization of today’s Republican Party.
When Utah Sen. Robert Bennett was rejected by his party, he could at least blame the process. When Florida Gov. Charlie Crist was discarded, we could point to his relative moderation by contemporary GOP standards.
With Dick Lugar, it’s … different.
Lugar is a giant — a veritable legend — of Indiana politics, having been a popular mayor of Indianapolis and a successful senator who never faced a serious challenge before this year. On Capitol Hill, Lugar developed a reputation as a consistent conservative, generally on the right on nearly every issue (lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 77%), but who nevertheless conducted himself with class and dignity — a senator who enjoyed universal respect, especially on international affairs, where his stature is largely unrivaled.
The senator has been a quiet, understated leader. He lost by 20 points.
Lugar had been encouraged to do as Orrin Hatch had done — abandon sensible positions, stop working with anyone with even slightly different positions, and pander shamelessly to the most extreme contingencies within his party. But Lugar didn’t want to become a right-wing caricature, because after so many years of public service, he didn’t feel like he had to. Hoosiers knew him and trusted him; his party and his state wouldn’t cast him aside easily.
Did I mention he lost by 20 points?
Former Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.) said a while back, “If Dick Lugar, having served five terms in the U.S. Senate and being the most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy, is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption.”
Well, guess what. Lugar not only faced a serious challenger, he was also humiliated by his own party — which suggests the Republican Party probably is “beyond redemption.” The purity campaign, intended to drive independent thought and even hints of moderation from the GOP altogether, continues, and as of last night in Indiana, it’s working.
——————————————————————————–
Who beat him? State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who, naturally, challenged Lugar from the right. Mourdock is a favorite of right-wing groups like Club for Growth, and has staked out extreme positions, including his recent boast that bipartisanship is “wrong” and that he wouldn’t intend to work with Democrats on any issue.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/09/11615238-evidence-of-a-party-beyond-redemption?lite
found this tweet:
bloomberg: Since Kennedy, Dems 23 years in power, 42 million jobs. repubs-28 years in power, 24 million jobs. Wake up.
Moaning Joke had on a guy who used to work with Bain Capital harking his book for the superrich. His meme: Being poor is good for the economy. SMGDFH Willie Geist asked Conrad when was the last time he’s spoken to Mitt Romney, and he said they’d been in touch. Umm, see where this is going?
for real?
being poor is good for the economy?
you’re kidding
Seriously, rikyrah. I can’t wait to find the clip. It was premeditated, the appearance. The media is helping Romney, by hosting these greedy, evil people to make the case for his history with Bain. You know us Black folks, we can READ BETWEEN THE LINES.
Good Morning, Everyone! :-)
Good Morning, Ametia and Everyone :)