Sounds of Blackness is a Grammy Award-winning vocal and instrumental ensemble from Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota who perform music from several genres music including gospel, R&B, soul, and jazz. The group scored several hits on the Billboard R&B chart and Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in the 1990s. One of the group’s current members is Cynthia Johnson, who rose to fame with Lipps, Inc.
The group was founded in 1969 by Russell Knighton at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the group was called the Macalester College Black Voices. It was in 1971 when current director Gary Hines took leadership over the ensemble, and the group name was officially changed to Sounds of Blackness (SOB). The group had acquired local celebrity status throughout the years though never signed with a record company because of various reasons including the fact that many companies were not comfortable with the group’s name. Some companies even suggested to Hines that the group’s name be changed to “The Sounds of Music.”[citation needed]
here’s my secret, when I wanna cry, I take a look around
And I see that I’m getting by
And I hold on
Hold On
A change is coming…
Here’s an October Surprise
by BooMan
Sat Oct 20th, 2012 at 09:24:36 PM EST
Iran’s uranium enrichment program is a complicated subject, as is the subject of nuclear non-proliferation efforts in general. I find it nearly impossible to write about in a blog format. Yet, I support nuclear non-proliferation efforts, including crippling sanctions on Iran’s economy aimed at reaching a deal that will allow Iran to have a domestic nuclear energy industry but which also satisfies everyone that Iran will not be joining the club of nuclear-armed nations. If Iran is ready to have one-on-one talks with the American government after the election, then I consider that as evidence that the president’s policy has worked very well so far.
The idea is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapons capability without having to resort to war, and to do it in a way that the international community believes in. That means that we need constant verification that Iran is complying with the agreement, but it also means that countries are satisfied that we’re not just trying to effect regime change or revolution in Teheran. It means that we recognize Iran’s right to have a nuclear power industry. And the principles we use must be applicable on a broad scale, not just for Iran. A successful nuclear policy vis-a-vis Iran should be part of a broader, international effort at nuclear disarmament, including in the USA, Russia, China, and Israel.
Within these broad outlines, the Obama administration has been successful without having any kind of breakthrough. Iran has never been so isolated, their currency is in free-fall, their best ally Syria is a mess, and now Iran wants to talk.
The United States and Iran have agreed in principle for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, according to Obama administration officials, setting the stage for what could be a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran.
Of course, the foreign policy debate between Obama and Romney is on Monday, so this announcement is fortuitous and creates real problems for Romney in terms of what kind of tone he wants to take. The Iranians have agreed in principle to meet with Romney, too, should he win the election. Would he blow up that opportunity to score cheap points in a debate?
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/10/20/212436/41
Mitt Romney Squirms from ‘Romnesia’ Sting
Saturday, October 20, 2012 | Posted by Deaniac83 at 1:56 PM
Oh, Romnesia stings. It got under Mitt Romney’s skin. If you have been living under a rock the past couple of days, here’s the quick and dirty on Romnesia: the President, campaigning in Viriginia on Friday, introduced a new term for Mitt Romney’s condition of abandoning his own policy positions at the speed of light: Romnesia.
Apparently, the sting was a little too much for Mr. Entitled:
“The Obama campaign has become the incredible shrinking campaign,” Romney said at an oceanside rally here with his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan. “This is a big country with big opportunities and big challenges. And they keep talking about smaller and smaller things.”
He thinks the president is being “petty.” Here’s a news flash, Mitt. If what the President said didn’t have a way of cutting to the bottom of the problem with your incredible dancing candidacy, you would never have spared a thought on it. The fact of the matter is, this campaign is about big things. Here are just a few big things the President pointed out in describing your Romnesia:
•You are openly lying about your own tax and spending plan that will immediately add $8 trillion to the debt and all you have offered to close the gap was defunding Planned Parenthood and killing Big Bird.
•The country is still waiting to hear whether you would have signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
•You are for really big government – government big enough to monitor every pregnancy in the country, and you are for letting employers block women’s access to contraception.
•You are running on the promise of taking health care away from 32 million people, letting insurance companies run the table by denying people based on pre-existing conditions and dropping them when they need insurance the most.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/10/mitt-romney-squirms-from-romnesia-sting.html
The Five Things You Need To Know About Obama’s Lead In Ohio Polls
Ohio rests at the center of Obama’s claim to an advantage in the Electoral College, but analysts offer diverging assessments of the race in the country’s most critical state. Some say Obama has a big lead, others say it’s a true toss-up and that Romney has the momentum. But what do the polls actually say in the Buckeye State? Here are five things to know.
1) Obama’s lead is small, but consistent
On average, Obama leads by 1.9 points in surveys conducted entirely after the first debate.
But although Obama’s lead is relatively modest, it’s also consistent. Romney only leads in two polls with a clear Republican-lean, and both were conducted in the immediate aftermath of the first presidential debate. Put differently: Romney hasn’t led a poll of the Buckeye State conducted that wasn’t conducted from October 4-8.
2) Obama is beneath 49 percent.
Most Ohio polls show Obama beneath 49 percent, averaging about 47.8 percent of the vote. That gives Romney a more credible path to victory than he has in Wisconsin, Iowa, or Nevada, where the majority of polls show Obama at or above 49 percent. Obama has the advantage with 18 days to go, but there’s room for Romney to run the table and squeak out a narrow victory. If Ohio is supposed to be a firewall, it doesn’t stretch high enough to preclude a Romney victory–at least not yet.
3) There isn’t strong evidence that Romney has made additional gains since his initial post-debate bump
While there’s plenty of talk about Romney’s “momentum” in Ohio, there isn’t much evidence that Romney has made additional gains since the first presidential debate.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/electionate/108927/the-five-things-you-need-know-about-obamas-lead-in-ohio-polls#
Presidential Tracking Polls Show Post-Debate Uptick For Obama
Posted: 10/20/2012 7:40 pm EDT Updated: 10/20/2012 8:42 pm EDT
No one would call it a “surge,” but the national tracking polls are beginning to show signs of a slight uptick for President Barack Obama.
The most recent national tracking surveys released as of Saturday continue to produce a mixed result in terms of the nominal leader, although all but one show a relatively close race between Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney. With the exception of the Gallup Daily tracking poll none produces margins for the leader large enough to be considered statistically significant for any individual poll.
However, the most recent releases of five of the six tracking polls show net movement to Obama or away from Romney of between 1 and 4 percentage points compared to results from interviews conducted by each pollster between the first and second presidential debates.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/20/presidential-polls_n_1993771.html?utm_hp_ref=@pollster
Romney: Hospital Visitation For Gay Couples Are ‘Benefits’ Not Rights
by David Badash on October 20, 2012
Mitt Romney wants you to know that allowing same-sex couples to visit each other in the hospital is a benefit — not a civil right — and he will let states take away that “benefit” if they want to. Two years ago, President Obama mandated that all hospitals treat same-sex couples with the same rights as married heterosexual couples, including visitation rights. (That’s also included, separately, in Obamacare.)
Also on the table, filed under “states rights” and not civil rights, is adoption of children by same-sex couples, and, presumably, single gay people.
“Governor Romney supports a federal marriage amendment to the Constitution that defines marriage as an institution between a man and a woman,” Romney advisor Bay Buchanan told Buzzfeed today. “Governor Romney also believes, consistent with the 10th Amendment, that it should be left to states to decide whether to grant same-sex couples certain benefits, such as hospital visitation rights and the ability to adopt children. I referred to the Tenth Amendment only when speaking about these kinds of benefits – not marriage.”
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/romney-hospital-visitation-for-gay-couples-are-benefits-not-rights/politics/2012/10/20/51681
After Brzezinski Says Obama Has Had Foreign Policy Successes, MSNBC’s Steele Responds “No One Gives A Damn”
From the October 22 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe:
http://mediamatters.org/video/2012/10/22/after-brzezinski-says-obama-has-had-foreign-pol/190805
GOP opposition to Fair Pay Act intensifies
By Steve Benen
Mon Oct 22, 2012 8:35 AM EDT.
For six months, we’ve waited for Mitt Romney to give his opinion on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. For six months, the Republican presidential hopeful has refused to take a stand.
So, the voting public will simply have to remain in the dark? Not exactly — there’s ample evidence that the Romney campaign and its surrogates strongly opposite the pay-equity bill.
http://youtu.be/a7rzPgc8kEY
Yesterday on ABC, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a leading Romney surrogate, argued, “[J]ust because they call a piece of legislation an equal pay bill doesn’t make it so. In fact, much of this legislation is, in many respects, nothing but an effort to help trial lawyers collect their fees and file lawsuits, which may not contribute at all whatsoever to increasing pay equity in the workplace.”
Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, said something very similar last week, criticizing the proposal as being little more than “opening up the lawsuits and statute of limitations.”
Romney allies have pushed this line for for months. Pete Hoekstra, the Republicans’ U.S. Senate hopeful in Michigan, called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay law “a nuisance.” A Romney surrogate in New Hampshire said the law is little more than “a handout to trial lawyers.” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) agrees.
Rich Beeson, political director for Mitt Romney’s campaign, dismissed this as a campaign issue altogether, saying of the Obama campaign, “[T]hey want to talk about the small things and distract America from the important things.”In other words, efforts to ensure equal pay for equal work are “small” and unimportant.
Romney may be reluctant to answer the Lilly Ledbetter question, but the truth is hardly elusive.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/22/14614367-gop-opposition-to-fair-pay-act-intensifies?lite
Colin Tom@ReporterPhoenix
“Tagg Romney: I wanted to take a swing at Obama, but that’s not how democracy works. Then I bought voting machines.” By @AndyRandPaulRyan
Breaking: RNC paid cheating GOP consultant Nathan Sproul’s Strategic Allied Consulting 416,000 in Sept.
Oh looky who is in the photo with crook Nathan Sproul?
Romney’s Son Tagg Invests In Voting Machines
Romney buys voting machines in Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, Washington and Colorado
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/528.391723-Romney-buys-voting-machines-in-Ohio-Texas-Oklahoma-Washington-and-Colorado
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.
“Late last month, Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis at FreePress.org broke the story of the Mitt Romney/Bain Capital investment team involved in H.I.G. Capital which, in July of 2011, completed a “strategic investment” to take over a fair share of the Austin-based e-voting machine company Hart Intercivic,” according to independent journalist Brad Friedman.
But Friedman is not the only one to discover the connection between the Romney family, Bain Capital, and ownership of voting machines.
Truth out reports:
“Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States.
In other words, a candidate for the presidency of the United States, and his brother, wife and son, have a straight-line financial interest in the voting machines that could decide this fall’s election. These machines cannot be monitored by the public. But they will help decide who “owns” the White House.”
I am not 100%,but I seem to remember an insidence with an outcome very much the same with a canadate in either 2000 or 2004 that he also purchased voting machines also in Ohio.Like l said i am not 100% sure,but that story sounds so familiar.Hopfully someone might be able to refresh my memory.
Steve King: Comparing Immigrants To Dogs Was ‘A Compliment’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/21/steve-king-immigrants-dogs_n_1998007.html#comments
WASHINGTON — Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on Sunday stood by eyebrow-raising comments he made in May, insisting that he was praising immigrants when he compared selecting visa recipients to choosing a “good bird dog.”
“It was a compliment … They knew it was a compliment, they turned it into an insult because they’re professional hyperventilators,” the immigration hardliner said in an interview on Des Moines NBC affiliate WHO-TV, posted by a site run by the campaign of his Democratic opponent, Christie Vilsack.
King said at a town hall earlier this year that when picking a good bird dog, it is important to avoid choosing “the one that’s sleeping in the corner.” He then added that immigrants to the United States should be looked at in the same way.
I’m really starting to hate this guy!
What do you mean starting,it seems any of them with an R in front of there name is a dirty mouthed,lying usless piece of s—t,that you step in and scrap off the bottom of your shoe with a stick,and fling to the garbage.I don’t think there’s even one i like,I hate the condisending why they stick there money in our face,like that makes them something special. Keep up those good feeling’s SG2.
The republicans party are freaking evil mofos!
FL TeaParty group encouraging wingnuts to sabotage Obama phonebanking efforts
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/21/1147503/-FL-TeaParty-group-encouraging-wingnuts-to-sabotage-Obama-phonebanking-efforts
A small Florida-based Tea Party group, Lee912, is urging Republicans to sabotage a key Obama campaign organizing tool, an online feature that allows supporters to access a list of phone numbers and place calls on behalf of the campaign from home.
Posting on the website, Meetup.com, the group’s founder — Dr. Joe Magnant, a vein specialist practicing in Fort Meyers, Fla. — asked Lee912 members Thursday to use the Obama phone list to campaign for Romney.
Magnant suggests callers make the case directly for the Romney-Ryan ticket or just mark the voter as “already called” (“This will remove them from their call list,” Magnant explains).
Romney Voting Machines: Phone the FEC: 1-800-424-9530,
1-202-219-3336
M-F, 8:30-5:30.
GOOD NUMBER TO KNOW,I’M CALLING.THANX
Clinton warned GOP about the danger of their cutting embassy security in 2011.
Friday, Oct 19, 2012 01:15 PM CDT
GOP voter registration scandal widens
A Virginia official is busted for tossing voter forms. Turns out he works for the national party, too
By Brad Friedman
A man originally reported to have been working for the Republican Party of Virginia was arrested by the Rockingham County, Va., Sheriff’s Office on Thursday and charged with attempting to destroy voter registration forms by tossing them into a dumpster behind a shopping center in Harrisonburg, Va.
“Prosecutors charged him with four counts of destruction of voter registration applications, eight counts of failing to disclose voter registration applications and one count of obstruction of justice,” according to a report late Thursday afternoon from TPM’s Ryan Reilly. More charges could be forthcoming, according to officials.
But there is more to the story, as evidence emerges to document that it ties into a still-expanding nationwide GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal that the BRAD BLOG first began reporting in late September, after we’d learned that the Republican Party of Florida had turned in more than 100 allegedly fraudulent and otherwise suspect voter registration forms in Palm Beach County. The story has continued to widen ever since, to a dozen Florida counties and several other states, now including Virginia, and even to the upper-echelons of the Republican Party itself.
The man arrested today was 23-year-old Colin Small of Phoenixville, Pa. As it turns out, he does not only work for the Virginia Republican Party. According to an online profile, he appears to be working for the Republican National Committee and, prior to that, served as an Intern for Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Joseph Tanfani at the Los Angeles Times is reporting that Small was “working as a supervisor as part of a registration operation in eight swing states financed by the Republican National Committee.”
He was first hired, says Tanfani, by Strategic Allied Consulting, the firm owned by the disgraced GOP operative and paid Mitt Romney political consultant Nathan Sproul. Even before this year’s registration fraud scandal, which began with Strategic in Florida, Sproul’s companies have long been accused of, though never charged with, destroying Democratic voter registrations in election after election and state after state, going back to at least 2004. Despite that, Sproul was hired by the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2004, by the McCain/Palin Campaign in 2008, and by Romney during the Republican Primary cycle.
Sproul’s company, Strategic Allied Consulting, was hired by the RNC in August for more than $3 million, reportedly as its sole voter registration company this cycle.
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/19/gop_voter_registration_scandal_widens/
On Tagg Romney’s voting machines: “I hope this is true” she wrote, “I hope we steal Ohio”
http://freakoutnation.com/2012/10/21/on-tagg-romneys-voting-machines-i-hope-this-is-true-she-wrote-i-hope-we-steal-ohio/
As reported here, 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. And so, the onslaught of justification enters the subject, carried out with extreme prejudice.
After the story broke on several outlets, Republicans dismissed the reality of this being problematic in our election process. It’s fine for them to implement Voter ID laws where no evidence of voter fraud exists, but Nathan Sproul’s nefarious practices of suppressing the Democratic vote come to light and we hear absolutely nothing from them.
Santorum: ‘Game over’ if Obama wins again
http://goo.gl/xH9JZ
At a campaign event for Iowa Rep. Steve King (R), former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum warned that the United States was “over” if President Barack Obama was re-elected in November.
“This is your moment. We lose — Steve King will tell you — we lose, and Obamacare implemented, it’s over. Hate to be that stark, but it’s over,” he said.
“We will no longer hear a candidate get up and talk about 47 percent of the people in a moment when no one was supposedly recording,” Santorum continued, alluding to a video of Romney describing nearly half of Americans as government-dependent victims who didn’t take responsibility for themselves. “Because everyone will be dependent upon government benefits. When that happens — our Founders pleaded and warned us against that — when that happens, game not on, but game over.”
Over for the republican party mabey,not the rest of us were gonna party like it’s 2099,ha!ha!Besides Ricky Santorum l beleive probobley still has his burning down below,but don’t worry with Obamacare you can get that problem checked out fairly reasonable thanks to PRESIDENT B. OBAMA.
Maya Soetoro-Ng: My Brother is the President of the United States
HUGE fired up crowd marches to go vote early in Raleigh.
The State of the Election Is All of Us
By Charles P. Pierce
at 12:53PM
Photo Illustration by DonkeyHotey for The Politics Blog
The state of the race is pretty much where it all began. The conventions had their moment, and they faded. The first debate had its moment, and it faded, too. The vice-presidential debate and the second onebetween the two guys on the top of the ticket did little more than return the state of the race to the status quo ante. This is an election that is going to be held well within the Margin of Chicanery, which is an entirely different topic, but it is also an election that could be close enough for the winning side to thank its One Great Scorer for the 18th-century anachronism that is the Electoral College, yet decisive enough to determine what kind of country we are going to be. And this does not so much mean how we are going to parcel out the wealth and benefits and power of our society, although those are certainly part of the equation. But the election itself — the millions of individual acts by which the country will decide those other questions — is itself subject to the greater overall question. Is, after all, a presidential election part of the political commonwealth? Is it a collective act of will, of desire, of greed, and of reclamation? Are all of these individual decisions independent of each other, or is an election — like the interstate highways, or the GI Bill — something we own in common, something we do together?
These weren’t supposed to be the stakes in this election. In fact, there is a strong pull in the general coverage to keep from admitting that those are the stakes even today. But they are the stakes because the malfeasance and nonfeasance of the previous administration made them the stakes. They are the stakes because the crimes and reckless avarice of the financial-services industry made them the stakes. They are the stakes because the Republicans have put them quite plainly on the table since the midterm elections of 2010. They are the stakes because a commitment to being part of a self-governing political commonwealth is the only means of common protection we have left and to deny that is to whistle your way past the true nature of the threat.
The president seems to be getting a grip on a piece of this. His stump speech does not talk about what he will do for us, but what we must do together — the hard, necessary work of self-government, as he put it in his speech to his party’s convention in Charlotte. Implicit in all his speeches is the notion that the first and most fundamental act in the construction of the political commonwealth is the first and most fundamental duty of any citizen. Voting, he appears to be saying, is not an expression of what we want so much as it is an expression of who we are. There are people who have made careers and a very comfortable living by telling the rest of us how we can’t expect “government” to do everything for us, and by railing against the “nanny state.” But who’s out there now, spouting off about all he’ll make the government do for us if we just put him and his zombie-eyed, granny-starving running buddy in charge of it? Who’s talking about Five Point Plans and North American Energy Independence and all the things he’ll do for us? And who’s out there talking about the hard work we’ve already done, and the hard work we will have to do, together, over the next four years? Who’s talking about freedom and independence the way they really were defined in Philadelphia, first in 1776 and then a decade or so later? Who’s talking about pledging to ourselves, in mutual support, our lives and fortunes and sacred honor? Who is expressing in real, if occasionally stumbling terms, a real faith in our ability to build a political commonwealth? Pro Tip: It’s not the guys who talk about liberty when what they really mean is the freedom to pillage and the free speech rights of con men and corporate grifters.
Still, it’s close. There are entire chunks of this country that the tremulous recovery has not yet reached. There is fear and doubt deep in the heart that no soaring rhetoric can fully extinguish. There is a tremendous impulse in the land to run to the man on the dancing white horse, with his Five Point Plans, and his promises that we can succeed in the work of self-government as long as we get the government out of the way. There is legitimacy to these feelings. The threat to the country, and to its commitment to self-governing democracy over the previous decade, and especially at the end of it, when the institutions of self-government seemed powerless to stop a cascade of destruction brought down on all of us by the institutions of private capital, the strength of which most of us never had begun to guess. That, through lassitude and a nearly bottomless thirst for snake oil, we had been complicit in the coring out of the strength of the institutions of self-government seemed terribly beside the point at the time, given the ruin that seemed to be looming to all points of the compass. But now, in the first real election conducted entirely after the crisis, and after the depths of the recession that it caused, we do not have that luxury anymore. The stakes are plainly clear. The decision, at this point, may well be irrevocable, and the first opportunity to make that decision is in the simple act of voting, and of explaining to ourselves why we vote. We vote because it is something we do together, for one another. We do not vote to take something back from someone else. We do not vote in a bubble, even if we think we do. Voting is communal, whether we want to look at it that way or not. We will have a self-governing political commonwealth or we will decide not to have one. And, right now, 20 days out, you’d have to be crazy or Nate Silver to think you know what which way that decision will fall.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/state-of-the-race-13887596#ixzz29xcjdjzs
AnnRomney: It was inspiring to walk alongside so many wonderful women united to beat breast cancer.
Joy Reid @TheReidReport @billplante
I respectfully disagree w/ my colleague @chucktodd on this. People not trusting the outcome of elections not= 2 birtherism
Miami County, Ohio Election Official Resigns Under Weird Circumstances
27 comments
By karoli
This is worrisome, not because a Republican election director resigned, but because it raises more questions than answers.
Via Dayton Daily News:
Steve Quillen, Miami County elections director, on Friday morning submitted his resignation “due to the stress of the upcoming presidential election.”
The Miami County Board of Elections held an executive session Thursday afternoon, and the board accepted Quillen’s resignation via a 4-0 vote at an emergency meeting Friday morning.
I’m thinking about how these things happen. If stress, usually what happens is the resignation is simply submitted to the board and the board accepts it, because stress is usually related to something internal, not external. It creates health issues and the like. Yet they held an emergency board meeting on Friday morning and as a result of that board meeting, accepted Quillen’s resignation.
Here’s something else that happened at that emergency board meeting:
Also during the meeting, the board voted to terminate a temporary election employee, but Luring would not say if these two actions by board were related.
There appears to have been a significant delay in getting absentee ballots out in this county, too. Due to be mailed out on October 2nd, it seems that it took longer than it should. And then there’s the weirdness surrounding orders from Secretary of State Jon Husted, ordering local officials not to contact voters by phone about issues with their absentee ballots. Instead, they must contact them by mail, which means a far longer delay in processing those ballots. Here’s one story from Butler County, Ohio, via Democratic Underground:
My father had a stroke a few years ago, and he has trouble reading. He votes absentee, so my mother can help him with the ballot. Well, he sent in his ballot a couple weeks ago, and he did EVERYTHING as instructed. Everything was signed, documented, etc. Proper postage and everything.
Yesterday, he got a letter from the Butler County board of elections saying something was not up to snuff with his ballot, and he had to provide one of the following blah blah blah. One of the choices is his drivers license number, which he already included on the absentee ballot. It says he has to deliver it by hand to their office and his deadline is November 16th.
I can think of a couple of possibilities. One, that this Republican elections director had some shreds of integrity in him and defended an election worker who reached out directly to voters in his mostly rural district if there was an issue with their ballot. Or two, that he saw issues with the new voting machines in this county which were possibly raised by that election worker fired, and found himself being forced to resign after the worker was fired. Or, perhaps it was just a tawdry affair between a worker and her boss. Or his boss. Who knows?
Ohio just raises the hackles on the back of my neck in every general election, and this one is no exception. This story has more to it than just stress and a random firing of an election worker. I smell it, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe one of the crack investigative reporters out there like Lee Fang will be able to get a fix on what’s going on.
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/miami-county-ohio-election-official-resigns
http://youtu.be/IDYhm3SoKZY
Stephanie Cutter ✔@stefcutter
The WSJ poll says of those Iowans who already cast their ballots, POTUS is winning among those, 67-32 #OFAgroundgame
http://youtu.be/fpQs_boQD9o
Survey USA Fla poll: Obama 48%, Romney 47%; Bill Nelson 48%, Connie Mack 40%
Survey USA:
In an election for President of the United States in Florida today, 10/19/12, Barack Obama is a nominal, statistically insignificant, single point ahead of Mitt Romney, 47% to 46%, according to a SurveyUSA poll conducted for WFLA-TV in Tampa. Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll 5 weeks ago, Romney is up 2 points, Obama is down 1 point. Florida’s critical 29 electoral votes remain up for grabs, 18 days till votes are counted. Romney has gained ground in each of 3 SurveyUSA tracking polls going back to 07/20/12. Obama’s once 12-point lead among Florida women has been reduced to 4 points. The contest is tied among men. Narrowly, Cubans vote Republican. Decisively, non-Cuban Hispanics vote Democrat. Voters under age 50 vote for Obama. Voters age 50+ vote for Romney. Whites vote for Romney 5:4. Moderates vote for Obama 5:4. Independents break 44% to 40% for Romney.
Voters with a high school education split 45% for each candidate. Voters with some college education split 47% for each candidate. Romney has a 5-point edge among those with a 4-year college degree. Obama leads among those who earn less than $80,000 a year. Romney leads among Florida voters who earn more than $80,000 a year. 4 of Florida’s 5 regions break for Romney. Obama’s advantage comes entirely from Southeast Florida, where he leads by 24 points. Obama has a Plus 3 Net Favorability today. Romney has a Minus 2 Net Favorability today.
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/survey-usa-fla-poll-obama-48-romney-47-bill-nelson-48-connie-mack-40#comments
Mitt Romney, Servant of the Right
Jamelle Bouie
May 17, 2012
Those who believe the former Massachusetts governor would become a moderate once in office are wrong.
The defining feature of the Republican presidential primaries was the constant Sturm und Drang over Mitt Romney’s ability to win Republican voters. Pundits claimed that Romney had a “ceiling” with conservatives in the party, and opponents like former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum routinely assailed the front-runner as a candidate whose commitment to conservatism was short-lived and inauthentic—a human “Etch A Sketch,” in the words of Romney’s own campaign spokesperson.
But when Romney locked up the nomination after months of bitter fighting, the party promptly came together behind him. Santorum, Romney’s main competitor, dropped out of the race on April 10. One week later, polls showed that 90 percent of Republican voters supported Romney against Barack Obama—identical to the number of Democrats who said they backed the president.
What drove the quick embrace of the former Massachusetts governor? It wasn’t love; conservatives aren’t thrilled with Romney, even as they prepare to support him. But they aren’t objecting to a marriage of convenience. Grover Norquist, founder of the anti-tax Americans for Tax Reform, explained Romney’s acceptability in his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. “We just need a president who can sign the legislation that the Republican House and Senate pass,” he said. “We don’t need someone to think. We need someone with enough digits on one hand to hold a pen.”
Romney’s appeal is that he can win a general election. The right has controlled the Republican Party for years, and all it needs is a titular leader to implement its policies. If conservatives could elect a corpse, they would, but because the Constitution requires a warm body, they’ll make do with Romney. What they want is a front man for their ideas, and throughout his campaign, Romney has been happy to oblige. His domestic-policy proposals are perfectly attuned to right-wing orthodoxy: “Repeal Obama-care.” “Repeal Dodd-Frank.” “Eliminate Title X family–planning programs benefiting groups like Planned Parenthood.” “Return federal programs to the states.”
http://prospect.org/article/mitt-romney-servant-right
Joy Reid @TheReidReport
The Romney voting machines connection should be a bigger story. Just the idea of it undermines people’s confidence in the election. @msnbc
Democrats massacre Republicans on first day of early voting in urban areas
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Submitted by jon.ralston on Sat, 10/20/2012 – 22:22
UPDATE: Democrats also decisively defeated Republicans in first round of absentee ballots, usually a GOP strength, posted in Clark County: 8,976-7,448, or 46-38. So raw number in Clark so far: Dems, 27,364-17,036. That’s 52-32, or 5 points above the registration edge.
So: After one day — remember it’s only oen day! — using absentees and early votes in Clark and early votes in Washoe (don’t have absentees yet), the Democrats have an 11,000-vote lead statewide. Let’s see where we go from here.
The early-vote numbers show a 26 percent edge in Clark County and 10 percent in Washoe County. That’s about a 10,000-vote lead in Washoe and Clark combined.
The Clark numbers: 55-29, or 18,388-9,588 (Actual registration: 46-31)
The Washoe numbers: 48-38, or 4,604-3,619 (Actual registration: 38-38)
Yes, it’s only one day. But if it continues like this, Nov. 6 is going to be a very bleak day for Republicans in this state.
http://ralstonreports.com/blog/democrats-massacre-republicans-first-day-early-voting-urban-areas#.UIPr2IF5mc0
http://youtu.be/FOatTWJAlpI
For Obama
If it’s true that united we stand and divided we fall, America will come crashing down should Mitt Romney be elected president. He’s already declared half the citizenry worthless, and said that as president, he’ll concern himself only with the others. All those deemed unworthy of Romney’s attention are low- and middle-income Americans, people who, unlike Romney himself, had no rich father’s shoulders to stand on. These are the people who most need a friend in the White House. Romney promises the back of his hand.
President Barack Obama has, to the contrary, shown compassion for the lower and middle classes, to a degree that his Republican critics find unmanly. The great achievement of the first Obama administration, comparable to the creation of Social Security under President Franklin Roosevelt and Medicare under President Lyndon Johnson, is the Affordable Care Act, a boon to Americans who can’t pay for expensive medical care without help. (Romney would abolish or weaken all three of those great programs, for being the work of Democrats and for disproving the political and economic theories of the extremists who support him.)
The very rich can buy all the medical care they want. Does that make them more deserving of care? Romney seems to think so, now. As governor of Massachusetts, though, he sponsored state health-care reform very much like what Obama has done at the national level. That was Romney’s greatest accomplishment, and now, running against Obama, he’s forced to refute it, to deny that he was ever sympathetic to the poor, that he was ever politically moderate. Today’s Republican Party won’t tolerate moderation and generosity in a presidential candidate. One might even feel sorry for Romney, except that he himself clearly feels no discomfort saying whatever is politically expedient, no matter how false.
It was at what Romney thought was a private Republican gathering that he made his now-famous statement that 47 percent of the American people aren’t worth doodley squat. After a video turned up on the Internet, Romney eventually made a sort of weaselly defense — “taken out of context,” etc. — but it was so insincere that nobody bought it. He wasn’t sorry for what he said; he was sorry he got caught. He’s not sorry for shipping American jobs to China as a private financial manipulator either. He’s sorry that Obama points it out. While Romney was exporting employment, President Obama’s stimulus spending was creating and preserving jobs — as many as 3.6 million, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. A substantial number, though not enough to replace the jobs lost in the economic collapse that began under President George W. Bush, who believed, like Romney, in the efficacy of reducing taxes on the very rich, even if that means raising taxes on everybody else.
Americans are divided already; Obama at least wants to try to bring them together. The gap would widen under the elitist Romney, and even if he ever felt inclined to cease the class warfare and gender warfare his party wages, the party wouldn’t let him. The choice this year is between a level-headed, well-intentioned, middle-of-the-roader and a political adventurer dominated by really nasty reactionaries. An easy choice, we believe.
http://www.arktimes.com/gyrobase/for-obama/Content?oid=2478386#fromMobile
Obama: For president
This editorial page, where The Charleston Gazette outlines its political beliefs, has made it abundantly clear that West Virginia’s largest newspaper supports Democratic President Obama for a second term in the White House. Nonetheless, we want to offer this official endorsement.
We think Obama is a brilliant statesman who has uplifted America after the debacle of the Bush-Cheney epoch.
When Obama assumed the presidency in 2009, calamity was occurring. The U.S. economy was collapsing, shedding up to 800,000 jobs each month. Millions of homes were sinking into foreclosure because of Wall Street’s fiasco with subprime mortgages bundled into flimsy securities.
Steadfastly, Obama imposed rescue measures to halt the hemorrhage. He clamped new policing on Wall Street and injected stimulus funds to save American industries from destruction. U.S. automakers were resuscitated. Millions of construction jobs were created.
Gradually, recovery has gained ground. The stock market has doubled in value since those dismal times. Although patterns of employment may be permanently trimmed by Internet-era streamlining, the growth of jobs this year is hopeful.
Aside from the economy, Obama has brought major advances to America. Some of them:
• He won a huge stride toward universal health insurance for all. His Affordable Care Act will cover 30 million more Americans who had no protection against disease or accident.
http://wvgazette.com/Opinion/Editorials/201210140047
CEO Asks Employees To Help Company ‘And Yourself’ By Donating $2,500 To Romney
By Igor Volsky on Oct 20, 2012 at 2:27 pm
Arthur Allen, CEO of ASG Software Solutions
A growing number of CEOs are pressuring their employees to vote for Mitt Romney, whose tax cut plan could offer millionaires an $87,000 tax break. Now, MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes, has uncovered at least one executive who called on his employees to donate up to $2,500 to the GOP presidential candidate’s campaign.
The show reported last week that Arthur Allen of ASG Software Solutions emailed his employees that they’d only have themselves to blame if they lose their jobs after Obama wins. But Allen sent another email on the eve of the Republican convention soliciting donations for the former Massachusetts governor:
To all ASG domestic employees,
This coming Monday, Mitt Romney will be officially nominated as the Republican Presidential candidate. I am encouraging everyone to go to the Romney for President web site and contribute as much as you can to his campaign for President, up to the maximum of $2500.00 per person. I am also encouraging you to contact all of your friends and relatives and ask them to support Romney and to go to the polls and vote on election day.
ASG, like many companies, is still struggling, even after 4 years. You probably heard that we tripped a bank leverage covenant on June 30th, and now must go through yet another round of unfavorable treatment by our lenders. Many of our domestic employees are still on the 4 day work week. Many of our customers are waiting until they see the results of the election before beginning to invest again. We need to elect a fiscally conservative President and Vice-President and stop this ridiculous government spending. I believe that Romney and Ryan can put us back on the path to sanity, but even then it is not going to be painless for our country and ASG.
Please help ASG and yourself by contributing to the Romney/Ryan campaign.
Mr. Allen
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/10/20/1054351/ceo-asks-employees-to-help-company-and-yourself-by-donating-2500-to-romney/
Texans Beat’em Chant!
Texans 26 – Ravens 3
What we gone do! What we gone do!
What!
What we gone do! What we gone do!
BEAT’EM!
Top Romney surrogate says pay equity is “nothing but an effort to help trial lawyers”:
http://thkpr.gs/RTHC9b
http://youtu.be/o8dph3gfv-g
yes, us women wanting EQUAL PAY is just something for lawyers…
take your crooked ass back to Florida.
How disgustingly typical it is of this ignorant little piss ant, Rubio, to turn a question about equality for women into a complaint about trial lawyers.
But, since he has no personal shame and publicly identifies as one of those vile republican types, nothing that dribbles down his chin surprises me. What does surprise me…..in fact, astounds me, is the fact that the head liar of the GOP, Romney, is quickly gaining on Obama and much of that is due to a turn in the women’s vote.
Maybe time has begun to rot my brain….but try as I might, I cannot begin to imagine why ANY woman would vote for two people, Romney and the other liar, Ryan, who CLEARLY have zero respect for women, do not trust women at all, and speak of them as though they are property.
In my mind, I tend to equate such women with those often described as “enablers”, who, while enduring spousal abuse, insist on protecting the very vermin who are assault prone and continue to abuse them.
And any women who does not recognize the immediate threat the GOP poses to women is guilty of gross ignorance.
President Obama can compare his record on women’s issues to any president since I’ve been following presidential politics……and that goes back to the second term of FDR! No one has worked harder to help women get a fair shot and the respect they deserve.
While young people don’t realize it, it was a workforce made up largely of women that got us through the second world war. And these were women who, until then, were kept mostly “pregnant and barefoot” as yesterdays he-men liked to say. But they built our planes, and ships, and weapons while their husbands fought our wars. They deserve never to be treated as second class citizens! Yet, that what the republicans insist on!
SURPRISE Thousands Rally to Support America in Benghazi Libya
Another big Ohio endorsement for President Obama: Akron Beacon Journal backs his re-election http://bit.ly/OTHeHd
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.
Liars,cheats,&thives.Ummm some christians.Thats how they roll on everything,No money ha ha screw you,he wants to smack our president,and he can buy 5 or6 states and looky looky my daddy won,cuase theres no rules for rich people,And l suckered you dopes who dont like the black guy,to vote for us to get richer,ha ha ha ha and you get less,and less how stupid are the american people the Romneys have no soul people think about what what your doing,PLEASE,we need PBO.
Voter fraud billboards that drew complaints of racism and intimidation will come down, Clear Channel says
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2012/10/voter_fraud_billboards_that_dr.html
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Clear Channel Outdoor will remove 30 billboards across the city that drew complaints of racism and intimidation with their message of “Voter fraud is a felony,” the company said Saturday night.
Jim Cullinan, a spokesman for Clear Channel Outdoor, said the billboards will come down immediately. He said the company continues its donation of 10 other billboards that will have messages to counter the offending ones.
Cleveland Plain Dealer Endorses Obama, Criticizes GOP Belligerence and Swagger
http://www.politicususa.com/cleveland-plain-dealer-endorses-obama-criticizes-gop-belligerence-swagger.html
The largest newspaper in the swing state of Ohio, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, endorsed President Obama for a second term today, citing his policies as best for Ohio, noting that’s he’s been met with unbending resistance and belligerence from Republicans and sounding the alarm on etch-a-sketch Mitt Romney’s domestic and foreign policies.
Todd Akin Compares Claire McCaskill To A Dog
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/10/21/1054761/todd-akin-compares-claire-mccaskill-to-a-dog/
Missouri senate candidate Todd Akin, who withstood GOP pressure to drop his bid after suggesting that women don’t become pregnant from “legitimate rape,” recently compared his opponent Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) to a dog. Akin made the remarks at a fundraiser in Springfield featuring supporter Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R):
“She goes to Washington, D.C., it’s a little bit like one of those dogs, you know ‘fetch,’” Akin said. “She goes to Washington, D.C., and get all of these taxes and red tape and bureaucracy and executive orders and agencies and she brings all of this stuff and dumps it on us in Missouri.”
what a charmer
I would rather be compared to a dog,that most people love,than an asshole.l rest my case.
Former Senator George McGovern Dead at 90
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/21/14592769-former-senator-george-mcgovern-dies-aged-90?lite
Former Senator George McGovern, who lost a 1972 presidential bid to Richard Nixon in a historic landslide, died early Sunday, his family said in a statement.
The 90-year-old passed away at a hospice in Sioux Falls, SD.
Steve Hildebrand, a spokesman for the family, issued a statement to NBC News which read: “At approximately 5:15 am CT [6: 15 a.m. ET] this morning, our wonderful father, George McGovern passed away peacefully at the Dougherty Hospice House in Sioux Falls, SD, surrounded by our family and life-long friends.
_________________
RIP Senator McGovern
RIP Senator McGovern
Presidential Tracking Polls Show Post-Debate Uptick For Obama
http://huff.to/WzPBuN via
Third instance of voter registration dumping found in Virginia
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/19/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.
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.
The silence is deafening from abc nbc cnn msnbc cbs on the Romneys owning voting machines in swing states! Why won’t you do your jobs?
their silence if very interesting, isn’t it?
Miami County, Ohio Election Official Resigns Under Weird Circumstances
http://shar.es/c2C9K
This is worrisome, not because a Republican election director resigned, but because it raises more questions than answers.
Via Dayton Daily News:
Steve Quillen, Miami County elections director, on Friday morning submitted his resignation “due to the stress of the upcoming presidential election.”
The Miami County Board of Elections held an executive session Thursday afternoon, and the board accepted Quillen’s resignation via a 4-0 vote at an emergency meeting Friday morning.
I’m thinking about how these things happen. If stress, usually what happens is the resignation is simply submitted to the board and the board accepts it, because stress is usually related to something internal, not external. It creates health issues and the like. Yet they held an emergency board meeting on Friday morning and as a result of that board meeting, accepted Quillen’s resignation.
Here’s something else that happened at that emergency board meeting:
Also during the meeting, the board voted to terminate a temporary election employee, but Luring would not say if these two actions by board were related.
There appears to have been a significant delay in getting absentee ballots out in this county, too. Due to be mailed out on October 2nd, it seems that it took longer than it should. And then there’s the weirdness surrounding orders from Secretary of State Jon Husted, ordering local officials not to contact voters by phone about issues with their absentee ballots. Instead, they must contact them by mail, which means a far longer delay in processing those ballots.
Beautiful heart.
Yes!
Good Morning, 3 Chics & Friends! Happy Sunday!
Good Morning, SG2, Ametia and Everyone :)
I love Sounds of Blackness Christmas cd.
This song brings back memories of when I use to sing in a Gospel group with my sisters.