They'd rather lie than give President Obama any credit

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Aw, c'mon!  Romney?  15% give him credit for the death of bin Laden?  Give us a break.....
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... one poll found that 15 percent of Ohio Republicans gave Romney credit for the death of Osama bin Laden. Did they really believe that? Probably not, but they didn't feel comfortable praising Obama. ... -- Romney needs a game-changer to turn the tide his way

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/09/30/2314907/romney-needs-a-game-changer-to.html#storylink=cpy

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Republicans passing around the blame?

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I believe that this poem by Hal O'Leary gives a good explanation of why the Republicans will immediately turn to passing around the blame when they lose this election.  (Or have they already begun the blaming?)

(Poem brought to my attention by commenter Dale on the Cagle Post.)
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Blame
By Hal O'Leary

BLAME
(pantoum)

To say there's blame enough to go around.
It means of course that no one will be blamed,
And those responsible will not be found.
With guilty parties never being named,

It means of course that no one will be blamed.
The ethics we once counted on are gone.
With guilty parties never being named,
Gone also is the truth we counted on.

The ethics we once counted on are gone.
Deceit is now the key to our success.
Gone also is the truth we counted on,
And with it, loss of trust is limitless.

Deceit is now the key to our success.
It's now 'the thing' for one to lie and cheat,
And with it, loss of trust is limitless.
We've got to recognize it as deceit.

It's now the thing for one to lie and cheat,
And those responsible will not be found.
We've got to recognize it as deceit,
To say there's blame enough to go around

©Hal O'Leary

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"Hal O'Leary is an eighty-six year old veteran of WWII. who now believes that for the survival of the race, all war must be made obslolete [sic]. Having spent his life in the theatre as a Secular Humanist, Hal belives [sic] also that it is only through the arts, poetry in particular that one is afforded an occasional glimpse into the otherwise incomprehensible. He is the recipient of an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from West Liberty University, with more than forty pieces published in more than thirty different publications from seven different countries."
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Why Romney is losing Ohio

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Goodbye, Columbus: Why top Ohio Republicans think Romney has lost the state
By Walter Shapiro, September 28, 2012

There are only two plausible explanations for what is going on this week in this swing state central to virtually all Mitt Romney’s victory strategies.

Either many top Ohio Republicans are in the grips of the worst panic attack since an Orson Welles 1938 radio drama convinced thousands that the earth was under attack by Martians. Or more likely, judging from the comments of these GOP insiders, Romney’s hopes of carrying Ohio are fast dwindling to something like the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot.  

Presidential candidates have rebounded from downbeat polls before, especially when we are still five weeks from Election Day. So Romney’s problem is not just the recent Ohio surveys that show him losing to Barack Obama by as many as 10 percentage points. Instead, what is striking is the funereal interpretation that downcast Ohio Republicans derive from these numbers. Maybe Romney isn’t down by 10 points, they argue, but the GOP presidential nominee seems destined to lose by a solid 5 points – and in closely divided Ohio that represents a loss of nearly landslide proportions. (That would mean that Obama would slightly improve his 2008 victory margin against John McCain.)

Many of the well-known Ohio Republicans I interviewed offered their blunt assessments only after they were guaranteed complete anonymity. That is often the Faustian bargain of political journalism in 2012: robotic talking points on the record or something resembling honesty with no names attached. The reason, though, that I am emphasizing the don’t-quote-me part of the equation is that I was stunned by the vehemence of the thumbs-down-on-Mitt verdict. All but conceding the state to Obama, these Republicans were offering what may be the biggest rejection of Ohio since Philip Roth wrote “Goodbye Columbus.”  

The Romney problem in Ohio is not so much campaign strategy as the candidate’s inability to transcend who he is. “The Obama people have convinced Ohio voters of two things,” says Curt Steiner, a well-connected Republican public relations strategist. “That Mitt Romney doesn’t believe anything. And what he does believe is all anti-middle class.” 

And Mark Weaver, a Republican campaign strategist and lawyer with a doggedly optimistic assessment of Romney’s chances here, concedes, “The Obama campaign has been usually good at character assassination.”

At 7:28 a.m. Friday on WSYX, the ABC affiliate in Columbus, viewers saw a frequently broadcast Obama commercial deriding Romney for his sneering at the 47 percent of Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes. The male voice-over concludes, “Instead of attacking folks who work for a living, shouldn’t we stand up for them?” 

Republican insiders privately concede that Romney’s “47 percent” comments at a fund-raiser have been devastating because they validate pre-existing concerns about Bain Capital, the candidate’s wealth, and his impolitic affection for overseas bank accounts. Fifty-eight percent of Ohio voters in a recent Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS poll predicted that the policies of a Romney administration would “favor the rich.” 

Scott Jennings, a native Kentuckian who directs the Romney campaign in Ohio, stalwartly rejects any whiff of defeatism about his candidate’s chances of carrying the state. Wearing a cream-colored cowboy hat, a souvenir from a Wednesday night Rodney Atkins country-music fund-raiser for Romney, Jennings argues: “Public opinion is a process and not an event. Campaigns go up and campaigns go down. We’ve still got 40 days to go. There can be a lot of seminal events.”

Not surprisingly for a nuts-and-bolts campaign operative, Jennings emphasizes the Romney campaign’s ground game and the superiority of those efforts compared to 2008. (Given the sense of doom hovering over the McCain campaign after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it is not a difficult benchmark to beat). Jennings confidently throws around Ohio numbers like 1 million door knocks and 3 million volunteer phone calls. This type of personalized voter contact can indeed matter in a close election, which is why Obama carried such unlikely states as Indiana in 2008. But the problem for a reporter – especially one who has heard similar claims in many prior presidential campaigns – is that ground games are difficult to assess before Election Day.

I came to Ohio to test a theory: that Obama might face some of the same political problems that upended Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland in 2010. Personally popular, Strickland nonetheless lost a 2-point race to John Kasich, who hammered home the state’s declining jobs numbers since the incumbent took office. In politics, causation matters far less than results. Richard Nixon, for example, had little to do with putting a man on the moon. But he was the lucky president at the end of the phone line in 1969 when Neil Armstrong – an Ohio native – made a giant leap for mankind. 

As is sometimes the case in political reporting, clever hypotheses do not survive their first contact with actual data. While Ohio’s unemployment rate was over 10 percent during the run-up to Strickland’s reelection, it is now 7.2 percent, nearly a percentage point below the national average. Working for Obama, as well, are results of the auto bailout in a state where more than 800,000 jobs are tied to the car industry. In a recent Washington Post poll, 64 percent of Ohio voters said that the federal loans to General Motors and Chrysler were mostly a good thing for state’s economy. 

Kasich, the son of a mail carrier, did not have Romney’s problems in connecting with economically frightened voters. As Terry Casey, a longtime Kasich adviser deeply involved in the 2010 campaign puts it, “Because of John’s blue-collar roots he didn’t seem like a guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth.” While sorting out a governor’s personal responsibility for the economic performance of his state requires a vast array of mathematical models, Casey boasts: “If Obama ends up winning, he should send a big thank-you note to John Kasich. Kasich may be the most valuable player in turning things around for Obama in Ohio.” 

What often matters in politics is the trend line – and in Ohio, despite lingering misery, there appears to be a small uptick. When asked the are-you-better-off-than-four-years-ago question in the Quinnipiac/Times/CBS poll, 29 percent of Ohio voters said that their lives had improved and an equal number said that their personal situation had worsened.  

In 1984, even though national unemployment was over 7 percent, Ronald Reagan could credibly run for reelection with a “morning in America” theme because economic growth had outpaced virtually all projections. The same may be true this year, to a lesser extent, for Obama in Ohio. 

With roughly 1 million no-excuses-needed absentee ballots being mailed early next week to Ohio voters who requested them, the political clock begins ticking louder for Romney. The familiar remedy for a candidate who is trailing in the polls and dogged by an inconsistent message is to throw off the handlers and reveal himself. As upbeat GOP strategist Mark Weaver says: “Romney needs to spend more time in Ohio and speak from the heart. And he’s beginning to do just that.”

The potential pitfall for Romney in Ohio, though, is the person behind the political veneer. As a Ohio Republican insider, who resisted my pleas to put this colorful metaphor on the record, told me, “Romney is a guy who is used to talking to the board of directors instead of the shareholders or the employees.” 

When a presidential nominee is perceived by his own party as not being able to talk even to Americans wealthy enough to own stock, there are deep political problems from Lake Erie to the Ohio River.

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Is your vote equal to everybody else's in the U.S.?

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Electoral College math: Not all votes are equal
By SETH BORENSTEIN, September 29, 2012

When it comes to electing the president, not all votes are created equal. And chances are yours will count less than those of a select few.

For example, the vote of Dave Smith in Sheridan, Wyo., counts almost 3 1/2 times as much mathematically as those of his wife's aunts in northeastern Ohio.

Why? Electoral College math.

A statistical analysis of the state-by-state voting-eligible population by The Associated Press shows that Wyoming has 139,000 eligible voters — those 18 and over, U.S. citizens and non-felons — for every presidential elector chosen in the state. In Ohio, it's almost 476,000 per elector, and it's nearly 478,000 in neighboring Pennsylvania.

But there's mathematical weight and then there's the reality of political power in a system where the president is decided not by the national popular vote but by an 18th century political compromise: the Electoral College.

Smith figures his vote in solid Republican Wyoming really doesn't count that much because it's a sure Mitt Romney state. The same could be said for ballots cast in solid Democratic states like New York or Vermont. In Ohio, one of the biggest battleground states, Smith's relatives are bombarded with political ads. In Wyoming, Smith says, "the candidates don't care about my vote because we only see election commercials from out-of-state TV stations."

The nine battleground states where Romney and Barack Obama are spending a lot of time and money — Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin — have 44.1 million people eligible to vote. That's only 20.7 percent of the nation's 212.6 million eligible voters. So nearly 4 of 5 eligible voters are pretty much being ignored by the two campaigns.

When you combine voter-to-elector comparisons and battleground state populations, there are clear winners and losers in the upcoming election.

More than half the nation's eligible voters live in states that are losers in both categories. Their states are not closely contested and have above-average ratios of voters to electors. This is true for people in 14 states with 51 percent of the nation's eligible voters: California, New York, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Georgia, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Indiana, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Louisiana and Kentucky. Their votes count the least.

The biggest winners in the system, those whose votes count the most, live in just four states: Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada. They have low voter-to-elector ratios and are in battleground states. Only 4 percent of the nation's eligible voters — 1 in 25 — live in those states.

It's all dictated by the U.S. Constitution, which set up the Electoral College. The number of electors each state gets depends on the size of its congressional delegation. Even the least populated states — like Wyoming — get a minimum of three, meaning more crowded states get less proportionally.

If the nation's Electoral College votes were apportioned in a strict one-person, one-vote manner, each state would get one elector for every 395,000 eligible voters. Some 156 million voters live in the 20 states that have a larger ratio than that average: That's 73 percent — nearly 3 out of 4.

And for most people, it's even more unrepresentative. About 58 percent of the nation's eligible voting population lives in states with voter-to-elector ratios three times as large as Wyoming's. In other words, Dave Smith's voting power is about equal to three of his wife's aunts and uncles in Ohio, and most people in the nation are on the aunt-and-uncle side of that unbalanced equation.

"It's a terrible system; it's the most undemocratic way of electing a chief executive in the world, " said Paul Finkelman, a law professor at Albany Law School who teaches this year at Duke University. "There's no other electoral system in the world where the person with the most votes doesn't win."

The statistical analysis uses voter eligibility figures for 2010 calculated by political science professor Michael McDonald at George Mason University. McDonald is a leader in the field of voter turnout.

Former Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming defends the Electoral College system for protecting small states in elections, which otherwise might be overrun by big city campaigning: "Once you get rid of the Electoral College, the election will be conducted in New York and San Francisco."

Sure it gives small states more power, but at what price? asks Douglas Amy, a political science professor at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts: "This clearly violates that basic democratic principle of one person, one vote. Indeed, many constitutional scholars point out that this unfair arrangement would almost certainly be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on those grounds if it were not actually in the Constitution."

Article 2 of the Constitution says presidents are voted on by electors (it doesn't mention the word college) with each state having a number equal to its U.S. senators and representatives. While representatives are allocated among the states proportional by population, senators are not. Every state gets two. So Wyoming has 0.2 percent of the nation's voting-eligible population but almost 0.6 percent of the Electoral College. And since the number of electors is limited to 538, some states get less proportionately.

Adding to this, most states have an all-or-nothing approach to the Electoral College. A candidate can win a state by just a handful of votes but get all the electors. That happened in 2000, when George W. Bush, after much dispute, won Florida by 537 votes out of about 6 million and got all 27 electoral votes. He won the presidential election but lost the national popular vote that year.

That election led some states to sign a compact promising to give their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. But that compact would go into effect only if and when states with the 270 majority of electoral votes signed on. So far nine states with 132 electoral votes have signed, all predominantly Democratic states.

Because of the 2000 election, conservatives and Republicans tend to feel that changing the Electoral College would hurt them, George Mason's McDonald said, and after their big victories in 2010, the popular vote compact movement stalled. But that analysis may not necessarily be true, he added. McDonald said before recent opinion polls started to break for Obama there seemed to be a possibility that he could win the electoral vote and lose the popular vote because of weak turnout — but still enough to win — in traditionally Democratic states like New York and California.

Former Stanford University computer scientist John Koza, who heads National Popular Vote, which is behind the electoral reform compact, said Democrat John Kerry would have won the Electoral College in 2004 while Republican Bush won the popular vote, if only 60,000 Bush votes in Ohio had changed to Kerry votes.

History shows that candidates have won the presidency but not the popular vote four times, and in each case it was the Democrat who got the most votes but lost the presidency: 1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000.

The Associated Press analysis suggests that in this year's election, the current system seems to benefit Romney. The AP re-apportioned electoral votes based on voting-eligible population and not congressional delegations, so that, for example, Wyoming and the District of Columbia would have only one elector instead of three, and California would have 58 instead of 55.

Based on polling, states strongly in the Romney camp have 191 electoral votes in the current system but would have only 178 if the electoral votes were allocated based on voting-eligible population. Based on similar polling, Obama would benefit by about five electoral votes if electors were apportioned by that population. The nine battleground states would gain even more sway, jumping from 110 electoral votes to 118.

That would compound the perceived problem of a shrinking number of battleground states being all that mattered in the election, leaving the overwhelming majority of states standing around as "spectator states," Koza said.

John McGinnis, a professor of constitutional law at Northwestern University, defends the current Electoral College, arguing that while the mathematics of electoral proportionate calculations is correct, the conclusion that it over-represents small states is not. Larger states still have more sway because they have more electoral votes, he said.

Further, the historical agreement to give each state two senators regardless of their population and to base electoral votes on congressional delegation rather than population "was an essential compromise" when framers were drafting the Constitution, McGinnis said. Without that compromise, there might not have been a Constitution or nation, he said.

But Finkelman said his reading of history is that the compromise wasn't about power between small and large states as much as it was about power of slave-holding states. He said James Madison wanted direct popular election of the president, but because African-American slaves wouldn't count, that would give more power to the North. So the framers came up with a compromise to count each slave as three-fifths of a person for representation in Congress and presidential elections, he said.

Electoral College supporter McGinnis said the emphasis on battleground states is actually good because they are representative of the country. But he acknowledges as an Illinois resident, "I realize when I vote here it's completely irrelevant."

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GOP losing confidence!

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GOP insiders now see chances for Senate takeover fading
Posted by David Lightman at Sep 28, 2012

Republican insiders have soured on the party's chances of winning a Senate majority this year, a new National Journal Political Insiders Poll reported Friday.

A poll analysis called the outlook "a stunning drop in optimism for a party that began 2012 confident it would regain control of the chamber."

Democrats now control 53 of the Senate's 100 seats but 23 of those Democratic seats are up for re-election this year. Only 10 Republican seats are up.

But prospects for a GOP takeover appear to be fading. Missouri, once thought to be a close contest, appears to have swung Democratic. And North Dakota, considered a Republican stronghold, is now too close to call.

The poll found 4 percent of Republican insiders saw the party's chances of winning back the Senate as high. The Journal called this finding "a free-fall in confidence from when National Journal Insiders were asked about Senate races in February."

At that time, 66 percent of Republicans were confident they'd win the seats needed for a majority. Last year at this time, the figure was 79 percent.

Democrats went the other direction. 59 percent of the party's insiders say odds are low they'll lose the majority. Seven months ago, 16 percent felt that way.
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Missouri Republican Akin at it again

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Seems to me that Akin isn't acting "gentlemanlike".....
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Akin's 'ladylike' phrase draws ire in Missouri Senate race
By Jason Hancock, September 27, 2012

Comments by Republican Todd Akin once again are stirring controversy, this time with a claim that U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill was not acting "ladylike" during their recent debate.

Akin said Thursday that McCaskill's demeanor during last week's debate differed vastly from her 2006 campaign against Jim Talent, which he contends demonstrates she thinks he's going to win this fall.

"I think we have a very clear path to victory, and apparently Claire McCaskill thinks we do, too, because she was very aggressive at the debate, which was quite different than it was when she ran against Jim Talent," Akin said at a news conference in the state Capitol. "She had a confidence and was much more ladylike (in 2006), but in the debate on Friday she came out swinging, and I think that's because she feels threatened."

The comments - which come a little more than a month after his campaign was nearly derailed after claiming during a TV interview that victims of "legitimate" rape have a biological ability to ward off pregnancy - reverberated around the Internet and drew an immediate rebuke from Democrats.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Akin's comments were "demeaning to women and offensive to all" and she called on national Republicans to repudiate them.

Jackson County Legislator Crystal Williams, a Democrat, said, "It's insulting beyond belief, particularly since it is coming from a man who has so little knowledge and understanding of women's lives."

Ryan Hite, Akin's press secretary, said the campaign had no comment. McCaskill's campaign could not immediately be reached for comment.

During their first face-to-face showdown at a debate sponsored by the Missouri Press Association, McCaskill wasted no time going after Akin, using her opening statement to paint a picture of the six-term Republican congressman as a political extremist who is "so far on the fringe."

But on Thursday, Akin said it was McCaskill whose views do not fall in line with the majority of Missourians.

"She's out of step badly with the state of Missouri," Akin said, later adding: "Her voting record just doesn't fit."

Following his remarks on rape last month, Republican leaders in Missouri and nationally joined together to call on Akin to drop out of the race. If he did not, they pledged that they would not support him with money or resources, despite the fact that most predict Republicans would be hard pressed to regain control of the Senate without Missouri's seat.

This week, however, the deadline for dropping out passed and many of those same Republican leaders switched course and publicly declared their support for Akin.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which could funnel millions of campaign dollars into the Show-Me State, hinted earlier this week that it might jump into the race on Akin's behalf. A spokesman for the committee said Thursday it would have no comment on Akin's latest remarks.

But Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the chairman of the committee, said Thursday that he does not intend to put money into the Akin race.

"We have no plans to do so," Cornyn told The Louisville Courier-Journal in an interview. "I just think that this is not a winnable race. ... We have to make tough calculations based on limited resources and where to allocate it, where it will have the best likelihood of electing a Republican senator."

However, the Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee associated with South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, announced Thursday that it was pledging $290,000 in support of Akin.

One Republican who has refused to jump on the Akin bandwagon is former Republican U.S. Sen. John Danforth of St. Louis. He said earlier this week that Akin has tainted the GOP's brand and alienated women.

"He has become the type of somebody who has just been totally written off by women, and I think that's the problem," Danforth told the online news site PoliticMO.

Meanwhile, women's groups and unions are lining up in opposition to Akin.

Women Vote!, the independent expenditure arm of EMILY's List, a group that supports pro-choice women Democratic candidates, and the Service Employees International Union, announced a $1 million buy in Missouri to run campaign ads against Akin.

For his part, Akin last week launched a "Women for Akin" group in an effort to appeal to women voters.

Despite those efforts, Thursday's comments appeared to bring the women's issue back to the forefront.

"I'd like to know what his definition of 'ladylike' is, because we know his definition of rape is incorrect," said Barb Womack, chairwoman of the Missouri State Women's Political Caucus. "Woman will remember in November. Trust me."

At his news conference, Akin insisted he will still win on Nov. 6.

"Here comes a voter into the voting booth and he's voting for (Mitt) Romney," he said. "Is he going to cross over and vote for Claire McCaskill? I don't think so. That doesn't make any sense at all."

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Mitt wants to give away our American heritage!!

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Thanks to the poster on The Olympian who provided a pointer to this article.
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The Geography of Nope
By TIMOTHY EGAN, September 27, 2012

SALT LAKE CITY - In a part of Italy where chestnut trees are thick in the Apennine foothills, I once asked a neighbor in the little community where we lived how I might kill a wild boar. This impulse was driven by appetite, mostly - glimpses of those feral beasts on my morning runs that had me dreaming of a blood-red ragu made of local cinghiale.

The answer was, dream on. If you want to hunt in Italy, or most of Europe for that matter, you'd better belong to a private club, with access to a rich man's estate.

It struck me then, in the kind of epiphany that takes living in another country to appreciate, that the public land endowment of the United States is one of the greatest perks of this democracy. Rich or poor, every citizen of the United States of America has title to an area almost the size of Italy.

This ticket to roam free in the American backyard is no constitutional guarantee. The great, unfenced public domain, much of it forested or hidebound in sage and mesquite, is the envy of the rest of the world only because a few visionary souls bucked the powers of their day.

But now the powers of this day are trying to tear away at that inheritance. The election could determine whether big sections of our shared setting continue to be held by the general public. A radical plan to overhaul a century of sensible balance has been embraced by the Republican presidential ticket.

Handing over millions of acres of public land has long been a dream borne on the vapors of single-malt Scotch sipped inside trophy homes in the 1 percent ZIP codes of the West. Usually, the idea vanishes with the vapors. Not this year.

First, a little background. We play on this turf - national parks, national forests and the 252 million acres of the Bureau of Land Management. We use much of it as a source for oil and natural gas. We look to it for clues about the continent's first inhabitants: native sites, holding shards of cultures that predate Charlemagne's time. Or we just let it be.

Finding the right balance is the trick. Imagine two families who hate each other trying to manage the same summer home. The biggest threats over the last 50 years have come from demands of the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion - a Western-sounding name for a property grab by well-connected special interests.

It takes a truly small-minded politician, or one so ignorant of the nation's rich public land history, to upset the balance. This year, that politician is Mitt Romney.

Romney, you may recall, made news in the West earlier this year when he told a Nevada newspaper that "I don't know what the purpose is" of all this federal land in the West. It would be nice to think he just doesn't get it, because he's never spent any time in the free outdoors.

But Romney has since coupled the black hole of his knowledge with support for Republican efforts to end federal control over large sections of the West. The Utah legislature has passed a bill, signed by the governor, that demands that the federal government hand over almost 30 million acres to the state. Other states are looking to follow Utah's lead, and Romney has cheered their efforts.

Who cares, so long as the oil drillers stay away from the canyons, arches and ochre-colored wonderlands of the West? As for state control - why should anyone think a governor here in Salt Lake City would be any less of a steward than someone in a federal uniform?

Here's why: The states, of course, are cash-strapped, and want these lands only so they can industrialize them quickly, with minimal regulations. If you want to know what our public lands would be like under states in the pocket of oil companies, just look at the closing days of George W. Bush's presidency, when drillers pressed to scar up land near some of the most iconic national parks and monuments in the Southwest. Only a change in administrations, and lawsuits that back the people's right to manage the lands properly, stopped them in their tracks.

Second - and more importantly - these are our lands they want to take away. The toddler in Tuscaloosa has equal claim to the stunning Vermilion Cliffs outside the Grand Canyon as does a cowboy in Arizona. One day, when we are a nation of 600 million, these community-owned treasures will be all the more valuable.

Romney has promised to let oil companies have their way - no surprise, given that his chief energy adviser, Harold Hamm, is an oil billionaire with stakes in multiple energy sites throughout the West.

But no major-party presidential nominee has ever taken a stance as radical as Romney's. At a wide-ranging public lands conference at the University of Colorado in Boulder earlier this month, veteran public lands users - ranchers, hikers, managers - from all facets of the political spectrum expressed astonishment that Romney had sided with his party's most extreme fringe.

The first presidential debate - next Wednesday, Oct. 3, in Denver - gives the moderator Jim Lehrer a chance to ask a rare question about something beyond the cackle of magpies inside the Beltway. Please, Jim: your audience at the University of Denver, and all over the West, would love to hear something about the public lands stance of both candidates.

I had some hope for a more mainstream view when Paul Ryan was named Romney's running mate. He boasted that he's summited 28 of Colorado's 14,000-foot mountains. Alas, Ryan also claimed to have run a sub-three-hour marathon, only to get caught lying - shaving off more than an hour - when Runner's World fact-checked him.

Better to take the top of the ticket at his word: a lord of the manor who wants to give away our home on the range.

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A Primer for Voters

Here's what every sensible voter knows today: If you are a woman and you vote Republican, you are voting against your own self-interest. If you work for an hourly wage and you vote Republican, you are voting against your own self-interest. If you are a union member and you vote Republican, you are voting against your own self-interest. If you are active or retired military and you vote Republican, you are voting against your own self-interest. If you are a member of the middle class and you vote Republican, you are voting against your own self-interest. If you rely on Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid and you vote Republican, you are voting against your own self-interest. If you are unemployed or underemployed and you vote Republican, you are voting against your own self-interest. If you own or work for a small business and you vote Republican, you are voting against your own self-interest. If you are poor and you vote Republican, you are voting against your own self-interest. If you are in school or if you have children in school and you vote Republican, you are voting against your own or your family's self-interest. If you are a man with a wife, daughter, mother, or sister and you vote Republican, you are voting against your family's self-interest. I could say more, but you get the picture.

Get Ready, Olympian Commenters

From the Tacoma News Tribune -

We usually enjoy getting reader comments on the letters to the editor and Inside Opinion blogs. Many of those comments are insightful, cogent, pithy and humorous. Sometimes we are alerted to mistakes or more information we might want to take into account.
But all too many comments – particularly those made anonymously – are cruel, off-topic and sometimes downright obscene. They tend to discourage commenters who are interested in a civil conversation, and we’ve heard from readers that they no longer submit letters because of the nasty comments that inevitably are posted.
To address the problem, we’ve switched to Facebook commenting. You now use your Facebook account to post comments online at blogs.thenewstribune.com/letters (the letters blog) and blogs.thenewstribune.com/opinion (the Inside Opinion blog).
Read more here: http://blog.thenewstribune.com/letters/#storylink=cpy

Want to eliminate a certain blogstress and her multiple aliases? 

GOP "Pledge Zombies" in California

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Is Grover Norquist's no-tax pledge losing its grip on GOP?
By Dan Morain, September 27, 2012

The question was simple enough. If California Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen could do it over again, would she have signed the pledge in which she promised to never vote to raise taxes?

She paused and thought and finally said she didn't know.

"The pledge has become subject to arbitrary and illogical interpretations," the Modesto Republican said.

Olsen is one of several California Republicans who openly question the wisdom of the 33-word pledge in which politicians vow to "oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes."

Beltway conservative Grover Norquist promotes the pledge, using it to become a force in American politics and raise millions into his Americans for Tax Reform. Although the pledge plays well in Republican-dominated regions, cracks have developed in California.

Three of the four Republicans running in the most hotly contested state Senate races reject the pledge. No fewer than six Republicans who have legitimate shots at winning Assembly seats are non-signers. Five Republicans who could win congressional seats also reject it.

"I'm philosophically against abdicating my responsibility to someone else," said Riverside County Supervisor John Tavaglione, a non-signing Republican who has a strong chance of winning his congressional race.

Perhaps rejecting the pledge suggests Republicans are facing reality. Clearly, the California GOP needs to try something new. The party teeters on insolvency, registration sits at 31 percent, and the political system has changed.

An independent commission, rather than politicians, drew legislative and congressional districts that are more balanced, and the top-two primary forces politicians to appeal to moderates.

In Sacramento, Democrats hardly bother negotiating with Republicans over the budget – the most important legislation each year – because Pledge Zombies cannot talk about taxes.

As always in politics, there's a money angle. Lobbyists are frustrated by the blank stares they get when the topic turns to budgets and taxation, and interest groups are using their checkbooks to make their views known.

[snipped]

Channeling Norquist, the Flashreport issued a not-so-subtle warning: "Moving forward, (Americans for Tax Reform) will be working to educate Californians as to how their representatives in Sacramento vote on this important matter."

Olsen shrugged. Business and industry groups, including oil and agriculture, backed the measure, which included provisions to help farmers in her San Joaquin Valley district.

She was one of three Assembly Republicans, independent Nathan Fletcher, and two Senate Republicans who voted for the measure.

"This was really important to my constituents," Olsen said. "They're the ones I'm accountable to, and no one else."

[snipped]

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Vitamin Mitt causes "dumb and dumber"

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Jon Stewart Wonders If Romney Is Getting Dumber
By Serena Dai, September 26, 2012

Barack Obama must be the luckiest dude on the planet, Jon Stewart said last night on The Daily Show, because something is happening to Mitt Romney: He is getting dumber and dumber as the election goes on.

 For example, at the start of the campaign, Romney touted a plan with 150 pages and 59 policy ideas to boost the economy. But then, just eight months later, Romney told people at a fundraiser in the infamous 47 percent video that he would boost the economy just by getting elected president because it would raise confidence.

"This is the businessman candidate," Stewart says. "He's gone from having a 59-point economic plan to magic. Don't worry, all this country needs is a little shot of vitamin Mitt. ... It's like he's Charlie from Flowers for Algernon, and the serum is wearing off."
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Who's the stinker?

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Paul Ryan vs. The Stench
By Roger Simon, September 25, 2012

Paul Ryan has gone rogue. He is unleashed, unchained, off the hook.

“I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him,” Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, told The New York Times on Sunday.

Coming from a resident of Iowa, a state where people are polite even to soybeans, this was a powerful condemnation of the Republican nominee.

Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, “If Stench calls, take a message” and “Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.”

Even before the stench article appeared, there was a strong sign that Ryan was freeing himself from the grips of the Romney campaign. It began after his disastrous appearance on Friday before AARP in New Orleans. Ryan delivered his remarks in the style dictated by his Romney handlers: Stand behind the lectern, read the speech as written and don’t stray from the script.
Ryan brought his 78-year-old mother with him and introduced her to the audience, which is usually a sure crowd pleaser.

But when Ryan began talking about repealing “Obamacare” because he said it would harm seniors, one woman in the crowd shouted, “Lie!” Another shouted “Liar!” and the crowd booed Ryan lustily.

Who boos a guy in front of his 78-year-old mother? Other 78-year-old mothers.

That was Friday, and that was the end of Ryan following the game plan. At a certain point, all running mates on failing campaigns feel they must break free from the manacles placed on them by the top of the ticket. Sarah Palin began pursuing her own path once she learned that John McCain was having strategy sessions with his morning bowl of Farina.

Dan Senor, one of Romney’s closest advisers, has kept a tight grip on Ryan, traveling with him everywhere and making sure he hews to the directions of the Romney “brain trust” in Boston. (A brain trust, rumor has it, that refers to Ryan as “Gilligan.”)

But on Saturday, the day after he was booed, Ryan broke free. Appearing at a town hall meeting at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Ryan showed the glitz, the glamour, the razzle-dazzle that he was supposed to bring to the campaign in the first place.

He did a PowerPoint presentation for the crowd. According to the National Journal, be began thusly: “ ‘I’m kind of a PowerPoint guy, so I hope you’ll bear with me,’ Ryan told the audience as he began clicking through four slides, which showed graphs depicting U.S. debt held by the public from 1940 to present, debt per person in the United States, percentage of debt held by foreign countries and a breakdown of federal spending. He then launched into a 10-minute monologue on the federal debt.”

A word about PowerPoint. PowerPoint was released by Microsoft in 1990 as a way to euthanize cattle using a method less cruel than hitting them over the head with iron mallets. After PETA successfully argued in court that PowerPoint actually was more cruel than iron mallets, the program was adopted by corporations for slide show presentations.

Conducting a PowerPoint presentation is a lot like smoking a cigar. Only the person doing it likes it. The people around him want to hit him with a chair.

PowerPoint is usually restricted to conference rooms where the doors are locked from the outside. It is, therefore, considered unsuited for large rallies, where people have a means of escape and where the purpose is to energize rather than daze.

Ryan’s PowerPoint slides were officially labeled: “Our Unsustainable Debt (U.S. Debt Held by Public as a Share of Economy),” “Your Share of the Debt,” “Who Funds Our Reckless Spending?” and “How the Government Spends Your Money.”

The Romney campaign was furious. But Ryan reportedly said, “Let Ryan be Ryan and let the Stench be the Stench.”

According to Ryan’s official schedule, on Wednesday he “will attend a Victory Town Hall at Walker Manufacturing in Fort Collins, Colorado, and a Victory Rally at America the Beautiful Park in Colorado Springs, Colorado.”

Sources close to the Ryan campaign tell me his two new PowerPoint presentations will be: “How a Bill Becomes Law” and “Canada: Friendly Giant to the North.”

Ryan Fever. Catch it!

[Author’s note: Jonathan Swift did not really want Irish people to sell their children for food in 1791; George Orwell did not really want the clocks to strike thirteen in 1984; Paul Ryan, I am sure, calls Mitt Romney something more dignified than “Stench” and Microsoft did not invent PowerPoint as a means to euthanize cattle. At least I am pretty sure Microsoft didn’t.]
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Obama's ads more honest than Romney's

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Americans say Obama's ads are more honest, but expect both sides to lie, Esquire/Yahoo poll finds
By Brendan James, September 26, 2012

In an election season that has produced reels of negative ads and dizzying spin, more Americans find that President Barack Obama's ads remain honest, giving his campaign a 12-point lead over that of his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, according to the Yahoo!/Esquire poll.

Many Americans appear to agree with Romney pollster Neil Newhouse's statement that "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers," though perhaps not in the way the Romney campaign would like. Among the general population, 42 percent found that the president's ads stick to the truth, while only 30 percent said the same about Romney's campaign ads.

[snipped]

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Politicians: sly political foxes or herd animals who believe what they say?

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Unraveling the political art of the repeated lie
By ANDREW FIALA, September 25, 2012

Politicians are adept at exaggeration and obfuscation. They spin the truth, occasionally telling outright lies. Large numbers of people then repeat the latest political hogwash, forwarding it, posting it and replicating it in the media echo chamber. With enough reverberation, even obvious humbug can sound like truth.

It is not surprising that politicians stretch the truth. Five centuries ago, Machiavelli noted that a successful politician had to be as cunning as a fox. A sly political fox knows how to manipulate, ingratiate, provoke and inspire.

A good politician understands that social life is lubricated by white lies and insincere pleasantries. We say thank you when we don't mean it. We give unwarranted compliments. And we smile and nod even when we disagree. Social life would be cold and hostile if we were unwilling or unable to dissemble.

It is interesting that we are so willing to go along with the fakery and deception. Machiavelli explained that "the one who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived." Politicians know how to appeal to our basic credulity. We are social animals who respond to the moods of our fellows without much concern for truth. We like to repeat gossip and rumors. We tend to believe and trust those who are like us.

We prefer stories that reinforce our other ideas and beliefs, pleasant stories that are easy to understand. No politician is going to admit that public affairs are incredibly complex, that human behavior is difficult to control and that unpredictable events will disrupt even our best-laid plans. The politician tells us instead that he or she has a clear plan for success and confident knowledge of the situation. And we are glad to believe. We desire certainty in an uncertain world.

Psychological well-being may hinge upon our ability to deceive ourselves in the face of uncertainty and failure. When you make a mistake, suffer rejection, or embarrass yourself, you have to find ways to downplay and ignore the truth so you can move forward. Self-doubt and self-recrimination can be paralyzing. It is useful to fudge the truth about yourself and your own abilities.

There may be an evolutionary explanation of our ability to deceive and dissimulate. The struggle for prestige involves a large dose of bluff and bluster. Outright deception is useful in struggles for scarce resources and in battles for territory and mates.

Mating rituals are obviously colored by deception. We fix our hair, our faces, our clothes - putting on a show for potential mates. These embellishments work, even though we know that beauty is only skin deep. Our tendency to fall in love with images and appearances might explain our tendency to believe political bunkum.

In an interesting recent book, "The Folly of Fools," Robert Trivers explains that you will be more effective at lying to others if you are able to believe the lies you tell. The best liars sincerely commit themselves to what they are saying, somehow concealing the truth, even from themselves. Trivers suggests that the ability to believe your own lies provides an evolutionary advantage. He even argues that good health involves the ability to deceive yourself about your own well-being. Self-doubters will not do very well in the struggle for existence. Confident fakers will tend to succeed in battle, in the bedroom and in the ballot box.

Of course, this raises another question: Is it really a "lie" if you sincerely believe it is true? Lying is usually thought to involve a deliberate intention to deceive. But the best liars are those who are so sure of themselves that they don't even know they are lying.

This brings us back to the political echo chamber. The more a lie is repeated, the easier it is to believe. It is possible, then, that politicians don't deliberately lie. They may believe the tales they tell, supported in this belief by the reverberations of partisan advisors and supporters. We have an instinctive need to believe our own stories and the stories of those like us. Although they may appear to be cunning foxes, politicians may in fact be like the rest of us, herd animals who can't help believing what they hear and what they say.

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Where does this disdain for workers come from?

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Disdain for Workers
By Paul Krugman, September 20, 2012

By now everyone knows how Mitt Romney, speaking to donors in Boca Raton, washed his hands of almost half the country — the 47 percent who don’t pay income taxes — declaring, “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” By now, also, many people are aware that the great bulk of the 47 percent are hardly moochers; most are working families who pay payroll taxes, and elderly or disabled Americans make up a majority of the rest.

But here’s the question: Should we imagine that Mr. Romney and his party would think better of the 47 percent on learning that the great majority of them actually are or were hard workers, who very much have taken personal responsibility for their lives? And the answer is no.

For the fact is that the modern Republican Party just doesn’t have much respect for people who work for other people, no matter how faithfully and well they do their jobs. All the party’s affection is reserved for “job creators,” a k a employers and investors. Leading figures in the party find it hard even to pretend to have any regard for ordinary working families — who, it goes without saying, make up the vast majority of Americans.

Am I exaggerating? Consider the Twitter message sent out by Eric Cantor, the Republican House majority leader, on Labor Day — a holiday that specifically celebrates America’s workers. Here’s what it said, in its entirety: “Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.” Yes, on a day set aside to honor workers, all Mr. Cantor could bring himself to do was praise their bosses.

Lest you think that this was just a personal slip, consider Mr. Romney’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. What did he have to say about American workers? Actually, nothing: the words “worker” or “workers” never passed his lips. This was in strong contrast to President Obama’s convention speech a week later, which put a lot of emphasis on workers — especially, of course, but not only, workers who benefited from the auto bailout.

And when Mr. Romney waxed rhapsodic about the opportunities America offered to immigrants, he declared that they came in pursuit of “freedom to build a business.” What about those who came here not to found businesses, but simply to make an honest living? Not worth mentioning.

Needless to say, the G.O.P.’s disdain for workers goes deeper than rhetoric. It’s deeply embedded in the party’s policy priorities. Mr. Romney’s remarks spoke to a widespread belief on the right that taxes on working Americans are, if anything, too low. Indeed, The Wall Street Journal famously described low-income workers whose wages fall below the income-tax threshold as “lucky duckies.”

What really needs cutting, the right believes, are taxes on corporate profits, capital gains, dividends, and very high salaries — that is, taxes that fall on investors and executives, not ordinary workers. This despite the fact that people who derive their income from investments, not wages — people like, say, Willard Mitt Romney — already pay remarkably little in taxes.

Where does this disdain for workers come from? Some of it, obviously, reflects the influence of money in politics: big-money donors, like the ones Mr. Romney was speaking to when he went off on half the nation, don’t live paycheck to paycheck. But it also reflects the extent to which the G.O.P. has been taken over by an Ayn Rand-type vision of society, in which a handful of heroic businessmen are responsible for all economic good, while the rest of us are just along for the ride.

In the eyes of those who share this vision, the wealthy deserve special treatment, and not just in the form of low taxes. They must also receive respect, indeed deference, at all times. That’s why even the slightest hint from the president that the rich might not be all that — that, say, some bankers may have behaved badly, or that even “job creators” depend on government-built infrastructure — elicits frantic cries that Mr. Obama is a socialist.

Now, such sentiments aren’t new; “Atlas Shrugged” was, after all, published in 1957. In the past, however, even Republican politicians who privately shared the elite’s contempt for the masses knew enough to keep it to themselves and managed to fake some appreciation for ordinary workers. At this point, however, the party’s contempt for the working class is apparently too complete, too pervasive to hide.

The point is that what people are now calling the Boca Moment wasn’t some trivial gaffe. It was a window into the true attitudes of what has become a party of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy, a party that considers the rest of us unworthy of even a pretense of respect.

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Looking for enough justification to pick a side

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Who are those undecided voters?
By Joe Tarica, September 23, 2012

Who are this year’s undecided voters and why haven’t they made up their minds yet?

Those were the questions I posed in last week’s highly unscientific exercise, and it seems the answers may be as simple as they seemed.

If my small sample is any evidence, either the great majority of people actually aren’t undecided and have made up their minds or they’re just playing coy and chose not to answer.

Of the handful of responses I did receive, the predominant theme suggested voters are truly waiting to gather all the facts before making a final choice.

Their reasoning reflected the outlook of moderate folks who hang in the middle looking for enough justification to pick a side.

Said Barry Rands of San Luis Obispo, a registered Democrat who voted for Bush in 2000 and Obama in 2008: “I am one of those voters who does not always vote the party line. … This year, I think the major issue for me is what you describe so well as the ‘polarized political landscape.’ It is frustrating efforts to get us back on track. I will be looking for the candidate who has the willingness, ability and experience to work on both sides of the aisle.”

Rands is waiting for the debates to provide a clearer understanding of his choices.

Jim Schwartz, also of San Luis Obispo, had a similar outlook:

“As an informed, independent undecided voter, I have three reasons to be this way, seven weeks before the election: 1. It’s seven weeks before the election! Why decide before all the facts are in? 2. There are four debates coming; let’s see what happens in them. 3. California is already in the ‘decided’ column; again, no rush to either add another vote for the president or make a ‘protest’ vote for his opponent.”

Obviously, these two represent only a segment of the potential undecided population, and surely there are others who are just now starting to pay attention or who are well-informed but unsatisfied to the point they may not vote at all.

Whatever their motivations, however, uncommitted voters appear to be a sparsely populated group.

Coincidentally, Los Angeles Times columnist Doyle McManus addressed this same question in an op-ed piece this past week. And he came to the same conclusion: “For all we’re hearing about the importance of undecided voters, there aren’t many of them left.”

McManus pointed to an ABC News/Washington Post poll last week that found only 2 percent of respondents unable to say how they would vote on Election Day.

While that may be on the extreme end, he said, no surveys found this group at any larger share than 10 percent.

Despite that reality, the dollars and headlines continue to pursue this dwindling herd in the hopes that swaying enough of them might make the critical difference in the right place.

McManus talked to a political scientist from Vanderbilt University, John G. Geer, who distilled it well: “A billion dollars is chasing 5 percent of the vote in 20 percent of the states.”

That’s a whole lot of money for such a small portion of the electorate, but I guess they have to spend it somehow, what with both sides topping $110 million in August fundraising.

In the meantime, these voters will continue to wait and watch, looking for tidbits of new information that will help frame a portrait of the candidates. Eventually they’ll make a choice, and we’ll see, come Nov. 6, whether it makes a difference or not.
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