Willie Hugh Nelson (pronounced /wɪli nɛlsən /; born April 30, 1933)[1] is an American country music singer-songwriter, as well as an author, poet, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger (1975) and Stardust (1978), made Nelson one of the most recognized artists in country music. He was one of the main figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed at the end of the 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound. Nelson has acted in over 30 films, co-authored several books, and has been involved in activism for the use of biofuels and the legalization of marijuana.
Born during the Great Depression, and raised by his grandparents, Nelson wrote his first song at age seven and joined his first band at ten. During high school, he toured locally with the Bohemian Polka as their lead singer and guitar player. After graduating from high school in 1950, he joined the Air Force but was later discharged due to back problems.
SG2 likes them cowboys with big trucks, big buckles and tight jeans! Sooky! Sooky! ;)
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GOP blows secrets and risks lives in document dump ahead of debate
http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/10/19/issa-compromises-libyan-allies-with-benghazi-document-dump/
Libyans who have been secretly helping the U.S. have had their identities exposed by documents released Friday by House Oversight Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, a senior administration official confirmed to NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell.
Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy’s ”The Cable” blog broke the story following Rep. Darrell Issa’s release of State Department communications Friday afternoon:
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) compromised the identities of several Libyans working with the U.S. government and placed their lives in danger when he released reams of State Department communications Friday.
Mr. President,
Did Mitt Romney step in with the Benghazi attack during the Second Presidential Debate?
President Obama: Please proceed, Governor.
Mitt Romney: Candy, I want this on record.
ALERT: Ed reports at 11pET from Freeport, IL, where Bain Capital-owned Sensata is shipping jobs and machinery to China!
http://on.msnbc.com/RaHkry
5 disturbing facts about romney.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/5-disturbing-stories-about-mitt-romney-expose-his-private-worldview?paging=off
this needs far more exposure. this is the real mitt romney.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/mitt-romneys-heartless-advice-woman-whose-pregnancy-might-have-killed-her?page=0%2C0
No evidence found of Al Qaeda role in Libya attack
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-attack-20121020,0,95514.story
U.S. intelligence agencies and witnesses paint a picture of an assault carried out with little planning at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.
Darrell Issa Putting lives @ risk! Resign immediately, Darrell Issa!
Paul Ryan Attacks Obama over Libya, but He Voted to Cut Embassy Security Funding by $400 Million.
http://bit.ly/PXQ8iK
House Republicans cut the administration’s request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012….Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans’ proposed cuts to her department would be “detrimental to America’s national security” — a charge Republicans rejected.
Ryan, Issa and other House Republicans voted for an amendment in 2009 to cut $1.2 billion from State operations, including funds for 300 more diplomatic security positions. Under Ryan’s budget, non-defense discretionary spending, which includes State Department funding, would be slashed nearly 20 percent in 2014, which would translate to more than $400 million in additional cuts to embassy security.
CIA documents supported Susan Rice’s description of Benghazi attacks
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/benghazi-attack-becomes-political-ammunition/2012/10/19/e1ad82ae-1a2d-11e2-bd10-5ff056538b7c_story.html
The Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attack last month weren’t supported by intelligence, according to documents provided by a senior U.S. intelligence official.
“Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate as a reaction to Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”
Darrell Issa needs to resign!!!!!!!!!!!!
Issa Benghazi Document Dump Reveals Name of Libyan Woman Activist Working With U.S.
http://angryblackladychronicles.com/2012/10/19/issa-benghazi-document-dump-reveals-name-of-libyan-woman-activist-working-with-u-s/
Darrell Issa, Jason Chaffetz and the rest of the idiots in the Republican party — Mitt Romney included — are so hell-bent on finding a way to blame President Obama for the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, that they are acting like proper assholes, and recklessly endangering people’s lives.
One such life? A Libyan woman human rights activist who is leading a campaign against violence, and who was detained in Benghazi. According to an administration official, this woman “expressed fear for her safety to U.S. officials and criticized the Libyan government,” and until today, she wasn’t publicly associated with the U.S. government. She was relatively safe.
But this afternoon, Darrell Issa — in a stroke of sheer idiocy — published reams of State Department documents this afternoon, and this woman’s name appears in the documents — unredacted.
Fri Oct 19, 2012 at 09:00 AM PDT.
Nearly 70 yrs old and voted for 1st time today
by OlkateFollow .
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I’ve never written a diary before, but I wanted to share my pride in my husband and what I hope his vote may represent. My husband of nearly 25 years voted for the first time today. He’s on his way right now to drop off our ballots. My husband who has expressed nothing but disdain for politics in all the years we have been together. For my husband, family, work, friends and baseball…those were his priorities.
My husband started working at 15 in the seafood business here in Washington state. His first job was on the production line. Even when he had a management position, he still worked on his feet. Sometimes in Alaska he would work for 18-20 hours, catch 2-3 hours of sleep and be back into the plant to make sure things were set up for the next day. It’s hard enough to work on your feet in any job. But add cold, wet rooms and concrete floors…it takes a toll.
So at 63 he took early retirement. He struggled with this decision and we discussed the financial ramifications and the personal ramifications for over a year. I’m quite a bit younger than my husband and we’re not financially in a position for me to retire. But I knew and he knew he could not physically endure the pain anymore. He needed hip and knee replacement surgery. Had to have them. He worked for a company that would not allow him to take the time off to recover and know that his job would still be there when he was capable to go back to work. They had to offer him a job…just not his old job. So he retired and had his surgeries and is not in pain anymore. I am so grateful he no longer has to endure such pain. And I’m so grateful for the extra time we’ve been able to share because he is retired.
So now it’s 6 years later and my husband asked how hard is it to register to vote? I hid my surprise (I was flabbergasted) and told him it was easy we could do it online. So he asked me to help him register. It was amazingly quick…took less than 5 minutes…and badda bing, my 69 year old spouse was registered to vote for the first time in his life.
Please follow me below the orange pig in a blanket…..
.
About a week ago I finally asked him why he decided to vote as he has never really been interested in politics. Ever. And he said it was because of me. Because I cared so much about who was elected and because I talked with such passion about the issues, he finally ‘got it’. Finally he said, finally it sunk into him that these guys like Romney and Ryan could cause me harm. They could cause me harm when he (my husband) was no longer around (alive) to protect me. And R & R could also cause his children and his grandchildren harm because R & R, along with the other Republicans, want to change Social Security and Medicare in a way that weakens or eliminates both programs.
He went on to explain, it wasn’t just the social safety net, it was also the harm the current crop of Republicans could inflict on the environment. They don’t even believe that global warming is real. They want to drill baby drill. My husband has heard me rant about equal pay and equal opportunity. He’s seen my own struggles working in an industry dominated by men. He’s heard me rant about war. And why didn’t we pay for the damn wars?
Finally he finished by saying, he had overheard a conversation I had with a friend. I was going on about how I had learned a hard lesson back in 2001. I learned that it did matter who was President. That one person, the wrong person, could in fact screw things up so badly, that life as you know it comes tumbling down. But also I found that one person could also impact things in a good way and I was going to try my hardest to help impact things in a good way.
And so my dear husband decided it was time to vote. It was time to help me and help his children. And that is my hope. That these tea party freaks and Republican pukes miscalculated the American public when they tried to pit the senior generation against the younger generation. My hope is that the American public does in fact remember what a mess George Bush created and that we give Obama more time to ‘fix’ the mess he inherited. My hope is we all leave the planet in better shape than we found it. And my hope is that my husband is around to vote in more elections because every election is important and because it’s just too hard to think about life w/o my dear husband.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/19/1146954/-Nearly-70-yrs-old-and-voted-for-1st-time-today
WAIT! Obama Has Re-Taken The Lead In An Average Of National Polls
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-re-takes-the-lead-in-the-real-clear-politics-2012-10?utm_source=twbutton&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=politics
RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight, the two most credible and widely cited polling aggregators online, both have Obama back in the lead in the RCP Average and FiveThirtyEight Forecast, respectively.
With FiveThirtyEight, Obama never lost the lead, he just severely diminished it.
http://youtu.be/kxunh04Vhsc
October 19, 2012 2:44 PM
How Do You Measure the Ground Game?
By Ed Kilgore
At Daily Beast today, John Avlon and Michael Keller attempt to assess the quality of the two presidential campaigns’ GOTV “ground games,” but immediately run into different theories of how they should be measured.
Much of the piece focuses on the well-established and very large Obama advantage in the number of field offices in battleground states (with charts supplied!), including particularly large margins in Ohio (122 to 40), Iowa (66 to 13), Colorado (61 to 14) and Wisconsin (68 to 24). But then Team Mitt people are quoted as mocking this metric as insignificant:
“Democrats love to use that metric,” says a frontline GOP operative. “The Obama campaign is a byproduct of the president—big government. But we’re contacting more voters than ever—we just crossed 34 million voter contacts on phones and 6 million doors, blowing past the McCain totals in 2008. The Obama campaign isn’t releasing their numbers, which tells me they don’t have them. So there’s this fallacy that the Obama campaign has this great ground game, but we’re just not seeing it on the ground.”
But then there are also bountiful quotes from Republicans not involved directly in the campaign conceding that the GOP generally gets out-gunned on the ground, and suggesting that the Romney campaign, under media-centric chieftain Stu Stevens, probably hasn’t made any revolutionary advances this year.
So it pretty much comes down to who you believe. And all other things being equal, I’d sure want three-to-one advantages in the number of field offices.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_10/how_do_you_measure_the_ground040621.php#comments
BREAKING: Judge blocks Arizona law that bars funding to Planned Parenthood
http://bit.ly/XAmaGQ
PHOENIX (Reuters) – A federal judge barred Arizona on Friday from applying a new law that bars Planned Parenthood’s health clinics from receiving money through the state because the organization also performs abortions.
District Court Neil Wake granted a temporary injunction to Planned Parenthood, which had sued Arizona to block the law in July. He denied the state’s motion to dismiss the case.
October 19, 2012 4:45 PM
More Bobbing and Weaving on Abortion
By Ed Kilgore
Strangely enough, Mitt Romney’s ever-slippery position on abortion policy, one of the enduringly shameful features of his entire public career, is at the center of an argument that the mean old Obama campaign and the mean old Democrats are lying about Mitt’s positions and denying him his proper mantle of moderate conservatism.
Kevin Drum’s not having any of that:
It’s true that Romney thinks (accurately) that no flat ban on abortion is likely to cross the president’s desk in the near future. So in the sense of trying to figure out what will actually happen over the next four or eight years, it’s probably true that a President Romney wouldn’t have a chance to sign a flat ban on abortion.
But that’s only half of what any election is about. The other half is about what a prospective candidate wants to do. I don’t think the United States will ever return to the gold standard, for example, but the fact that Ron Paul supports it tells me that he’s a crank. That’s reason enough not to vote for him.
Likewise, even if Romney never has the opportunity to sign a nationwide ban on abortion, he’s obviously saying that he’d like to if he ever got the chance. What’s more, Romney probably would get a chance to overturn Roe v. Wade by appointing a Sam Alito clone to the Supreme Court, and he knows very well that this would result in plenty of states flatly banning abortion. This tells me he’s an abortion extremist, and it tells me a lot about who he is. It’s fair game
Correct. But I’d go further. Aside from Romney’s comment on a hypothetical flat federal abortion ban, which would be obviously unconstitutional until such time as a President Romney stacked the Supreme Court to reverse Roe, he promised in his “My Pro-Life Pledge” ukase published by National Review in the early stages of the nomination fight to “advocate for and support a Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to protect unborn children who are capable of feeling pain from abortion.” That would be a federal version of the state legislation being promoted around the country testing the very margins of Roe by banning abortions before an arbitrary point at which a very small minority of scientists and a very large majority of antichoicers claim a fetus can feel pain.
So looking at the big picture, Mitt Romney’s promised to do everything within his power to restrict abortion rights under Roe, and then everything within his power to get it reversed, all within a “pro-life” position that sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t include exceptions for the incredibly tiny percentage of pregnancies resulting from rape, incest, or direct threats to the life of the woman involved. And this has been his basic position since 2007, or at least as long as Paul Ryan has refrained from public praise of Ayn Rand as his great mentor and become a self-proclaimed Thomist.
It should also be recalled that Mitt has identified himself unambiguously with the argument of conservative religious figures that the HHS contraception coverage mandate is objectionable because it includes “abortifacients,” reflecting the belief of anti-choice ultras that Plan B, IUDs, and even standard contraceptive pills actually kill human beings.
This does not add up to a “moderate” position on abortion, however Team Mitt tries to bob and weave and play the victim.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_10/bobbing_and_weaving_on_abortio040624.php
http://youtu.be/fYfJWybKCy0
BREAKING: New BLS Report: Unemployment Rate Dropped in 41 States + D.C. in September.
http://1.usa.gov/4r0UF9
THE COOK REPORT
The Possibility of a Popular, Electoral Vote Split is Very Real
Don’t be too surprised if Romney wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College in this presidential race.
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Updated: October 18, 2012 | 9:23 p.m.
October 18, 2012 | 3:26 p.m.
AP Photo/Ron Edmonds
Nail-biter: George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000.
Partisans still hoping that their candidate will build a clear lead in the presidential contest are likely to be disappointed. The race seems destined to be a close one, with the outcome remaining in doubt to the very end. President Obama won the second debate, but not by nearly enough to make up for his devastating loss in the first one. Obama was on the verge of putting the race away heading into the first debate, but his weak performance and Mitt Romney’s commanding effort effectively changed the race’s trajectory. Although Obama’s poll numbers are no longer dropping, he is locked in a tight contest: He trails Romney by 1 to 4 percentage points in national polling, yet he still holds a fragile lead in the Electoral College.
Romney entered the first debate with an edge arguably in only one battleground state: North Carolina
. Going into the second debate, the former Massachusetts
governor also led narrowly in Florida
and Virginia
, putting him ahead in three of 11 battleground states. Obama now holds small leads in Colorado
, Iowa
, New Hampshire
, and Wisconsin
, with a slightly wider advantage in Nevada
. He still leads, in my judgment, in Ohio
by about 4 points (although going into the second debate, one senior Romney strategist claimed that the two men were essentially tied at 47 percent in the Buckeye State). Romney is polling far back in Michigan
and Pennsylvania
, states that are effectively noncompetitive.
Although history and this column have argued that the popular vote and the electoral vote usually go in the same direction (that’s what happened in 53 of 56 presidential elections), today, Romney’s national popular-vote situation is different than his Electoral College challenge. Romney’s scar tissue in swing states—the damage inflicted on him by negative ads funded by the Obama campaign and Priorities USA, targeting Bain Capital, plant closings, layoffs, outsourcing, income taxes, and bank accounts in Bermuda, the Caymans, and Switzerland—is still a huge problem. This is compounded by the fact that before the ads aired, voters knew very little about Romney; because of that, they had no positive feelings or perceptions to help him weather the assault. As a result, the attacks stuck as if he were covered in Velcro. Hence, the swing states, many of which have endured saturation advertising since June (73,000 ads in Las Vegas alone), behave differently than the fortysomething other states that have seen little advertising.
With a race this close, small but important factors will likely be key.
About 4 million more Latinos are registered to vote this year than in 2008, and Obama has the support of 69 to 70 percent of them, according to the polls—a finding that tops his 67 percent showing in 2008. But to what extent will lower enthusiasm levels among Latinos this year offset that support? Substantially more 18-to-29-year-olds are registered voters today than were four years ago. However, in a just-released national survey conducted by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, Obama is leading by only 19 points, 55 percent to 36 percent, among likely voters in that age cohort, well behind the 66 percent he won four years ago. The Obama campaign is moving heaven and earth in the social-media sphere to try to boost his performance and the turnout among this key group, but will it work?
Although most observers expect that the Obama campaign will have an even better voter-identification and get-out-the-vote operation in 2012 than in 2008, hardly anyone has a clue about what kind of ground game the Romney campaign will mount. The remarkably effective Republican field operation in President Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign was allowed to grow flaccid in intervening years; how much of it the Romney campaign has been able to replace or replicate since he nailed down the nomination in April is anyone’s guess.
No doubt Republicans were kicking themselves on Wednesday morning after the second debate over how badly Romney muffed the Libya question. Obama, in one of the few selected questions of the evening that seemed designed to help Romney, had been asked about security mistakes that led to the deaths of Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans in Benghazi. Obama ignored the question and launched into a discussion of the loss and the administration’s efforts to bring to justice those who killed the four Americans. All Romney had to do was to suggest to the man who asked the question to repeat it again because apparently the president had not heard it, as he certainly didn’t answer the question. Although admittedly snarky, such a move would have been devastating for the president, because he has few available answers at his disposal. Instead, Romney went off talking about what Obama said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack.
I am now reconciled to the fact that this will be a race to the wire. I am watching Ohio and a handful of other swing states that are right at, or near, the 270-electoral-vote tipping point. In the end, the odds still favor the popular and electoral vote heading in the same direction, but the chances of a split like the one in 2000 are very real, along with the distinct possibility of ambiguity and vote-counting issues once again putting the outcome in question. Ugh.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/cook-report/the-possibility-of-a-popular-electoral-vote-split-is-very-real-20121018
Romney’s Etch-A-Sketch Complete: He’s Now A White Obama
The cynicism of the GOP can sometimes make you laugh or cry. In 2009, a newly elected president was eager to reach out to Republicans, a Democrat who adopted tax cuts as a third of the stimulus, incorporated Republican ideas on the individual mandate and healthcare exchanges, increased domestic oil and gas production, decimated al Qaeda and killed bin Laden etc etc. He got zero House votes for a desperately needed stimulus in his first month as president. And yet that GOP now blames Obama for being obstructionist and portrays Romney as the great healer:
The cynicism turns my stomach. And what turns it even more is that it might just possibly work. He’s been ahead nationally for ten days straight, after all.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/10/romney-moves-in-for-the-kill.html
BREAKING: Sensata temporarily closes plant in response to tonight’s ‘ED Show’ broadcast
http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/10/19/breaking-sensata-responds-to-ed-show-closes-plant-for-weekend/
Bainport.com reports that in response to Friday’s live broadcast of The Ed Show on MSNBC, Sensata sent workers in Freeport, Illinois, home (with pay) today and closed the auto sensor plant for the entire weekend, barricading the entrances and telling second shift workers not to report.
Robert Redford endorses President Obama
http://huff.to/QwgLh4
Attorney Eric Holder, investigate Tagg Romney’s purchase of voting machines that will be used in the 2012 elections in Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, Washington and Colorado. The Romneys are trying to bully, lie & cheat their way into the White House.
The conservative newspaper Salt Lake City Tribune just endorsed the President.
For some context about how extraordinary this is:
@MWM4444
The Salt Lake City Tribune endorsed Dewey, Eisenhower, Nixon, Goldwater, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush/41, Bush/43, McCain, … and President Obama.
The Salt Lake City Endorsement:
@skepticalbrotha
African Americans represent 27% of turnout on first day of #EarlyVoting in North Carolina. @MaddowBlog
@skepticalbrotha
African Americans represent 27% of turnout on first day of #EarlyVoting in North Carolina. @MaddowBlog
Third instance of voter registration dumping found in Virginia
A third instance of fraudulent voter registration has been uncovered in the important swing state of Virginia, where a Republican consultant has been arrested and thousands of discarded voter registration forms were recovered from a dumpster earlier this week. According to the Not Larry Sabato blog, a law student at James Madison University registered to vote on campus, but found when she tried to verify the change online, found that her form had never been submitted.
On Thursday, Raw Story reported that 31-year-old Colin Small, a Republican operative employed by Pinpoint, a firm contracted by Republican Party of Virginia, was arrested and charged with “four counts of destruction of voter registration applications, eight counts of disclosure of voter registration application, and one count of obstruction of justice” for throwing active voter registration forms into a dumpster.
Not Larry Sabato blogger Ben Trippett wrote that 2 to 3 weeks ago, a woman, identified only by her first name, Lucy, attempted to update her voter registration at a table on the campus of James Madison University.
She stopped to fill out a voter registration form to change her voting address from her parents house in Fairfax to her dorm address in Harrisonburg so she could vote in person on election day,” wrote Trippett. ”On Wednesday night Lucy went online to check her voter registration status and found out she had not been registered in Harrisonburg- meaning whoever was collecting her form on campus had not turned it in.”
This makes James Madison the third Virginia location where operatives have collected voter registration forms and disposed of them. According to the blog, the registration forms recovered from the dumpster were completed at “a local street festival and a registration at the local community college.”
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2n4mlu/www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/19/third-instance-of-voter-registration-dumping-found-in-virginia/
Jonathan I. Ezor@ProfJonathan
If your parents paid for Harvard, Harvard Law, and your 1st house, but you think you are self-made, you might have #Romnesia.
Romney family buys voting machines through Bain Capital investment
Tagg Romney, the son of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, has purchased electronic voting machines that will be used in the 2012 elections in Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, Washington and Colorado.
Jeff Gauvin@JeffersonObama
#CNN #POLL Registered Voters, Obama 50% Romney 43% —#Obama +7 —-After Jim Crow Style Black & Latino LV Filter Screen: Romney +1
Attorney General Eric Holder: Investigate Tagg Romney owning voting machines in OHIO
http://www.change.org/petitions/attorney-general-eric-holder-investigate-tagg-romney-owning-voting-machines-in-ohio
__________________
It’s a conflict of interest that needs to be brought to a stop!
Mitt Romney: “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt
In North Carolina, 60,331 African Americans took advantage of EarlyVoting on the first day. @OFA_NC
Mr. Romney’s defense budget: It doesn’t add up
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mr-romneys-defense-budget-doesnt-add-up/2012/10/18/89067636-1705-11e2-a55c-39408fbe6a4b_print.html
To bolster his tax plan, Romney is citing a study based on repealing almost all middle class tax breaks.
ThinkProgress: “The study assumes that nearly all middle class tax breaks — including those for children, mortgages, and employer contributions for health care — are repealed in their entirety”
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/10/19/1046711/romney-tax-study-repeal/?mobile=nc
Laura Clawson reminds us what would have happened to the auto industry if Romney had had his way: “Romney,” writes Laura Clawson, “would have skipped the bailout and gone straight to bankruptcy, a plan that would have resulted in disaster. Now, he wants voters to think that because the president eventually took GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy, it was the right answer all along.
Dozens of debunkings later, Romney still misleading on auto rescue
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/18/1146555/-Dozens-of-debunkings-later-Romney-still-misleading-on-auto-rescue
It turns out Mitt Romney made massive profits off the auto rescue he opposed and the misfortune of auto workers he used to falsely attack President Obama.
The Nation’s comprehensive investigative report
http://www.thenation.com/article/170644/mitt-romneys-bailout-bonanza
“Mitt Romney was not an effective governor.” MA legislators share how they feel about Romney’s record as governor.
Mitt Romney was not an effective governor
Elected officials from Massachusetts describe how the real Romney hardly ever reached across the aisle: http://bit.ly/VjpNDU
Truth Team breaks down yesterday’s CDC report on contraception and lays out how Obamacare improves women’s health and economic security by improving access to birth control:
http://bit.ly/WwnpsB
Cecile Richards: What’s at Stake in This Election – OFA Florida
Vandals spraypaint swastikas on Obama Colorado campaign office | The Raw Story
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/19/vandals-spraypaint-swastikas-on-obama-colorado-campaign-office/#.UIHQQOlNAxY.twitter …
U.S. budget deficit shrinks by over $200 billion, reaches 4-year low
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/12/14399005-us-budget-deficit-shrinks-by-over-200-billion-reaches-4-year-low?lite
Texas A&M campus of 60,000 evacuate after bomb threat
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-bomb-threat-texas-a-m-20121019,0,5034672.story
HOUSTON — Texas A&M University officials evacuated the campus of about 60,000 Friday after the school received a bomb threat, authorities said.
The school, which is located in College Station, about 95 miles north of Houston, received the threat by phone about 11:30 a.m. CDT, spokesman Lane Stephenson told The Times.
Stephenson could not say more about the threat, or how campus police have responded. He said officials planned to release more information at briefing this afternoon at the emergency operations center in nearby Bryan, Texas.
The Raw Story@RawStory
Third instance of voter registration dumping found in Virginia: http://goo.gl/qUMvQ
Live Video: Attorneys for George Zimmerman go to court to ask for access to personal records of Trayvon Martin.
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nbcnews.com/49478983#49478983
Trayvon Martin’s school records has been granted.
O’Mara: Mr. Martin’s passing? What? The kid didn’t just pass away. He was killed by George Zimmerman, O’Mara!
The State is concerned about Trayvon’s family safety in releasing addresses!
Judge Lester’s order will remain in regards to Trayvon’s family’s addresses.
Judge has also granted subpoenas for Trayvon’s Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Judge: State will get George Zimmerman’s medical records. Judge will look at them and decide later which ones go to prosecutors.
Judge refuses the deposing of Mr. Crump by George Zimmerman’s attorneys!
____________
HA!
Judge set an Oct. 26 hearing on gag order motion, emergency order motion, whatever else’s pending.
First Thoughts: Obama’s Midwest firewall?Has Obama built a Midwest firewall?…
New NBC/WSJ/Marist polls: Obama leads Romney 51%-45% in Wisconsin and 51%-43% in Iowa… Romney camp insists the Iowa race is MUCH closer than our poll suggests…
*** Obama’s Midwest firewall? Is this campaign about one region and one region alone? How the Midwest goes, so goes this election? Now the question is whether Mitt Romney and Republicans have made inroads in the Midwestern battlegrounds or not. They say they have. But our new NBC/WSJ/Marist polls of Iowa and Wisconsin, plus our survey last week of Ohio, suggest that President Obama has built a firewall in the Midwest, even after Romney’s momentum from that first presidential debate. In Wisconsin, Obama leads Romney by six points among likely voters, 51%-45%, which is virtually unchanged from the margin last month. In Iowa, Obama is up by eight points, 51%-43%, which also is nearly identical to where it was in September. And as we revealed last week, Obama was ahead in Ohio, 51%-45%. What’s significant here: If Obama wins all three states, he surpasses 270 electoral votes. But if Romney is able to pick off one of them, that widens the GOP’s path to 270 and narrows the Democratic one.
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/19/14556668-first-thoughts-obamas-midwest-firewall?lite.
Jeff Gauvin@JeffersonObama
Andrew Sorkin on MSNBC…pro-Romney Wall Street now donating to Obama in panic after bashing POTUS w/ smear ads..now see Obama winning
utaustinliberal@utaustinliberal
BO: “If you say you support women but you support a legislation that allows employers to dictate contraceptive coverage, you have Romnesia”
utaustinliberal@utaustinliberal
BO: “If ou say that you’re a champion of the coal industry, yet while u were Governor, u said a coal plant would kill you. U have Romnesia”
http://youtu.be/lJGysBwWrJE
http://youtu.be/2eQZMNI-hf4
Martin O’Malley@GovernorOMalley
Like his secret tax returns, Mitt Romney has a secret plan for the economy… “a hide and seek budget.” #SketchyDeal
utaustinliberal@utaustinliberal
Kelly Ripa: “What’s the best thing the President ever gave you?” FLOTUS: “My children.” #LiveWithKellyAndMichael
AMEN!
@BarackObama
President Obama: “He’s conveniently forgetting what his own positions are … We need a name for this condition—let’s call it #Romnesia.”
http://youtu.be/NwvktD4WzT0
What’s up with Gallup?
By Steve Benen
Fri Oct 19, 2012 8:50 AM EDT.
A new daily ritual seems to have taken hold for much of the political establishment. Step 1: wait until 1 p.m. eastern. Step 2: go to Gallup’s homepage and look at the horse-race numbers. Step 3: go absolutely berserk. Step 4: wait 24 hours and start over.
Over the last week or so, Gallup’s daily tracking poll has found Mitt Romney leading President Obama by an increasingly large margin. Some see this as reason enough to assume that Romney will be elected president and believe the conventional wisdom should be shaped accordingly. Others, including Republican pollsters, believe Gallup’s numbers are suspect.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/19/14556262-whats-up-with-gallup?lite
http://youtu.be/ZP-rJrMV80o
President Obama at the Alfred E. Smith dinner.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#49471715
Counterpunch: President Obama’s Greatest Political Strength
Wednesday, October 17, 2012 | Posted by Deaniac83 at 5:21 PM
21
Last night, President Obama put Mitt Romney in his place, while Romney looked like a petulant rich boy who doesn’t think the rules apply to him. Let me correct that. Romney is a petulant rich boy who doesn’t think that the rules apply to him. The President was prepared, he was on the offense, and he let Mitt Romney get away with nothing. In the first debate, Romney made it clear that he isn’t interested in debating the facts, only in getting away with lies. And the media gave him a pass. So this time, the President showed up as the man who we know to be the greatest counterpuncher in American politics – certainly in my lifetime and probably ever – and he decimated Romney’s lies.
You can read about the antics elsewhere. I will just say that Romney did himself no favors by trying (and failing) to roll over the moderator, and by telling THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES “you’ll get your chance.” But if Romney’s attitude was one of a smug, entitled bully, President Obama responded by spanking that bully on national television. Let’s get to a few of those instances:
Warm-up Act: The president exposed the entitled smug early, along with the right wing philosophy of government.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Governor Romney doesn’t have a five-point plan; he has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules. That’s been his philosophy in the private sector; that’s been his philosophy as governor; that’s been his philosophy as a presidential candidate. You can make a lot of money and pay lower tax rates than somebody who makes a lot less. You can ship jobs overseas and get tax breaks for it. You can invest in a company, bankrupt it, lay off the workers, strip away their pensions, and you still make money.
Right to the bottom-line of Republican economic (and social) philosophy: there’s one set of rules for us, the schmucks, and another set for the Romneys of the world. They do not see this as unfair; they believe that wealth alone gives the rich moral superiority over the rest of us. Mitt Romney does not see anything wrong with his income from investments being treated favorably over the income from work for the rest of us. He sees nothing wrong with bankrupting a company and stealing their pensions for the gain of himself and his investors.
This isn’t merely a talking point. This is the very core of Republican economic policy and belief. That is why Mitt Romney’s party can unashamedly hold tax cuts for 98% of Americans to giveaways for the richest people. That’s why they can openly advocate for suppressing a woman’s religious liberty to decide for herself what sort of health care to avail herself to and claim to be on the side of religious liberty – because in their book, religious liberty does not belong to individuals but employers, churches, and the government
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/10/counterpunch.html
On Libya, The Mother of All Rope-a-Dopes from President Obama
Thursday, October 18, 2012 | Posted by Deaniac83
If you’re curious, yes, I borrowed part of the title from Liberal Librarian here. At the debate on Tuesday night, Mitt Romney thought he was moving in for the kill, and he got spanked hard on Libya. Not only was he check mated by the President when he decided to nitpick on whether or not the President said the words ‘act of terror’ describing the attacks in Benghazi the day after they happened, moderator Candy Crowley chimed in and set the record straight, on a direct quote from the President’s statement in the Rose Garden.
Jon Stewart provided the most hilarious take on this exhange:
Pause the video and watch the president’s face and his eyes when he knows he’s got Romney on the ropes. The President knew this was going to happen. You could see it in his eyes. It is almost as though he re-asserted the fact that he did call it an act of terror in the Rose Garden precisely to elicit that response from Romney.
Mr. Romney wasn’t watching the president in action throughout his statements, but unfortunately for Romney, the President was watching him. The President knew Mitt Romney is at best an uninformed lightweight, especially on foreign policy, and that almost the entirety of his – and to be honest, the Republican party’s – critic of the President’s foreign policy rested on: words. Think about this: the whole of their beef with the Obama foreign policy has been (inaccurately) that Obama talks too gently to our supposed enemies, and he doesn’t grovel enough to the governments of our allies (well, just one ally: Israel).
The conservative critic of Obama’s foreign policy is based on what they think the President says: Obama’s tour to the middle east was an “apology tour,” he isn’t using enough threatening words against Iran, he’s not giving Israel enough props (a country whose president and Defense Minister agree that President Obama is the best ally of Israel ever when it comes to security), etc. etc. etc.
So President Obama knew the only place Romney could bring the attack from: he was going to say that the president said the wrong things. Romney signaled early that he’d go that way by opening his Libya attack with a cherry-picked version of statements from administration officials and then by accusing them of playing politics. The President was also pretty sure that Romney moved himself into the conservative fact-free bubble where what Fox thinks the President said and what the President actually said are one and the same. And so he came back strong, whipped Romney for it, and laid out on the table what the President knew Romney did not know: that the President had in fact referred to the Benghazi attack as an act of terror on the day after.
This is where I part ways with Jon Stewart. He thinks Romney, in his zeal to nitpick with words, walked into a trap that wasn’t really set. I think that the President knew that Romney could do nothing but nitpick with words, and he carefully laid out that subtle trap. Subtle to everyone else, but enough for Romney to take the bait.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/10/libya-in-debate-mother-of-all-rope-dopes.html
Snow Job on Jobs
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 18, 2012
Mitt Romney talks a lot about jobs. But does he have a plan to create any?
You can defend President Obama’s jobs record — recovery from a severe financial crisis is always difficult, and especially so when the opposition party does its best to block every policy initiative you propose. And things have definitely improved over the past year. Still, unemployment remains high after all these years, and a candidate with a real plan to make things better could make a strong case for his election.
But Mr. Romney, it turns out, doesn’t have a plan; he’s just faking it. In saying that, I don’t mean that I disagree with his economic philosophy; I do, but that’s a separate point. I mean, instead, that Mr. Romney’s campaign is telling lies: claiming that its numbers add up when they don’t, claiming that independent studies support its position when those studies do no such thing.
Before I get there, however, let me take a minute to talk about Mr. Romney’s claim that he knows how to fix the economy because he’s been a successful businessman. That would be a dubious claim even if he were honestly representing his business career, because the skills needed to run a business and those needed to manage economic policy are very different. In any case, however, his portrait of his own experience is so misleading that it takes your breath away.
For Mr. Romney, who started as a business consultant and then moved into the heady world of private equity, insists on portraying himself as a plucky small businessman.
I am not making this up. In Tuesday’s debate, he declared, “I came through small business. I understand how hard it is to start a small business.” In his speech at the Republican convention, he declared, “When I was 37, I helped start a small company.”
Ahem. It’s true that when Bain Capital started, it had only a handful of employees. But it had $37 million in funds, raised from sources that included wealthy Europeans investing through Panamanian shell companies and Central American oligarchs living in Miami while death squads associated with their families ravaged their home nations. Hey, doesn’t every plucky little start-up have access to that kind of financing?
But back to the Romney jobs plan. As many people have noted, the plan has five points but contains no specifics. Loosely speaking, however, it calls for a return to Bushonomics: tax cuts for the wealthy plus weaker environmental protection. And Mr. Romney says that the plan would create 12 million jobs over the next four years.
Where does that number come from? When pressed, the campaign cited three studies that it claimed supported its assertions. In fact, however, those studies did no such thing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/opinion/krugman-snow-job-on-jobs.html?_r=0
‘Almost four minutes’
By Steve Benen
–
Fri Oct 19, 2012 7:59 AM EDT.
3
White House photo
President Obama with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the morning of Sept. 12, 2012.
Reflecting on this week’s debate, the argument over President Obama’s response to the attack in Benghazi continues to be a stand-out moment. Mitt Romney thought he’d caught the president in an important misstep — Obama said he’d called the attack an “act of terror” the day after the violence — but the moment quickly collapsed when even the moderator conceded the president was correct.
Yesterday, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-N.Y.) tried a new line of attack: sure, Obama called the attack an act of terror while speaking in the Rose Garden the morning of Sept. 12, but he didn’t use the phrase quickly enough in the speech.
Oh for crying out loud.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/19/14555248-almost-four-minutes?lite
Romney Speech Raised Red Flags for Military School, Documents Show
When Mitt Romney addressed a crowd of cadets at Virginia Military Institute on October 8, he was supposed to give a major foreign policy speech that steered clear of partisan politics. That’s because VMI personnel observe the US military’s tradition of political neutrality when in uniform. But internal emails obtained by Mother Jones show that Romney’s campaign pushed to burnish his commander-in-chief credentials by maximizing military optics around the event.
Members of Romney’s staff sought to use the VMI logo in their campaign materials, requested that uniformed cadets be let out of class early to attend Romney’s speech, and asked VMI “to select a few cadet veterans and give them a place of honor” standing behind Romney during his address.[….]
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/romney-speech-vmi-emails
Person of Interest fans:
1. Mr. Reese looked HOT last night.
2. How about those blasts from the past?
3. That woman, and you know who I’m talking about – is one cold mutha.
4. I love how the worlds keep going in motion to eventually, they will collide.
5. I love Harold and Bear.
http://youtu.be/fhppCd4cWUk
NC early voting outpaces 2008 turnout; Wake sees big increase
http://www.wral.com/throngs-swamp-early-voting-sites-in-nc/11673771/
Raleigh, N.C. — Early voting in North Carolina got off to a fast start Thursday, surpassing first-day vote counts from 2008, as candidates and campaigns continued to encourage voters to hit the polls before Election Day.
Throngs of people swamped one-stop voting locations statewide and waited for up to an hour to cast ballots. In Wake County, votes outpaced 2008 numbers by nearly one and a half times.
“For a very first day of early voting, I do think we’ve had a much better turnout than in 2008,” said Cherie Poucher, elections director for Wake County.
In 2008, 7,917 ballots were cast on the first day of early voting at five one-stop voting sites across Wake County, Poucher said. On Thursday, with three additional early voting sites, Wake County received 11,245 ballots – a 42 percent increase.
Why Do The Gallup Poll’s Likely Voter Results Differ From The Rest?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/18/gallup-poll_n_1982004.html#comments
_______________
LIES!
The disrespect just keeps coming
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45755822/ns/msnbc-the_ed_show/#49471206
Reality Check: Massachusetts Debt Spiked Under Gov. Romney
What happened to the Massachusetts debt? Mitt Romney happened!
Mitt Romney was elected governor of Massachusetts and took office in January of 2003. He did not seek re-election, and left office in January of 2007.
Bill Clinton: GOP Has Tried To Keep Unemployment High For Political Gain
http://huff.to/TyDVSO
Mika Brzezinski: Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women” story is “insulting”
http://huff.to/QuAiyB
Tagg Romney Invested in Ohio Electronic Voting Machines
http://www.politicolnews.com/tagg-romney-invested-in-ohio-electronic-voting-machines/#.UICTEk_Jh_F.twitter …
Forget About The Polls, These Are The Numbers That Really Matter In The Presidential Race
http://www.businessinsider.com/electoral-map-romney-obama-paths-to-victory-2012-10?utm_source=twbutton&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=politics
With less than 20 days to go until voters head to the voting booths, the presidential race has now come down to a tight battle for the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the election.
The majority of electoral college votes are already locked up in the ‘safe columns’ for either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. But at least eight states — with a combined 95 electoral college votes — are still up for grabs.
Here’s a look at what each candidate needs to do to get to 270..
Mitt Romney’s Campaign Begins To Pull Resources Out Of North Carolina
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/18/mitt-romney-north-carolina_n_1982517.html
Mitt Romney’s campaign feels strongly enough about a win in North Carolina on Nov. 6 that it has begun transferring staff to other battleground states.
Lawrence O’Donnell Challenges Romney’s Son Tagg To A FIGHT!
that segment was OFF DA CHAIN!!!
when Lawrence slipped back into his Boston accent, I nearly fell out.
BWA HA H AH HA HA HA HA
Good Morning, Chicas!
Good Morning, Ametia, SG2 and EVERYONE :)