Romney's image problem

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Three in four Americans feel little or no personal connection to Romney, Esquire/Yahoo poll finds
By Brendan James, September 19, 2012

Three in four Americans feel they have little or nothing in common with Mitt Romney, while nearly 60 percent feel the same way about President Barack Obama, according to an Esquire/Yahoo! News poll.

In the wake of Romney's remarks dismissing nearly half of Americans as self-identified victims who are dependent on government—videotaped at a donor event earlier this year and posted online this week by Mother Jones magazine—these new numbers are more bad news for a candidate struggling to connect with ordinary Americans. The margin of error for the survey, conducted shortly after the two national political conventions, is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Further complicating the Republican ticket's image problem is that a Romney presidency is viewed as significantly more beneficial to wealthy Americans than a second Obama term would be. Sixty-two percent of those surveyed said the wealthy would be better off under Romney than Obama. That split reverses when Americans were asked who would benefit the poor: 57 percent say Obama, 30 percent say Romney.

Obama leads Romney by 10 points on the question of whose presidency would be more beneficial to the middle class, 48 percent to 38 percent.

To top things off, 44 percent think that taxes are too low on those earning over $250,000 a year—a core tenet of Obama’s campaign. Another 12 percent said taxes on high earners are too high, and 28 percent said the tax rate was about right.

Meanwhile, with chaos in the Middle East throwing attention back to foreign policy this election, it appears that Obama holds a slight edge over Romney on a crucial foreign policy issue: more Americans trust Obama to lead the armed forces in the event of a war (46 percent) than trust Romney to do so (37 percent), with 5 percent trusting neither man.

Yet, despite the administration's frequent touting of the death of Osama bin Laden, when Americans were asked which candidate instills more fear in al Qaeda, the President emerged with no advantage over Romney.

"It seems that, as effective as Democrats have been in neutralizing the Republicans’ historic advantage in the matter of national security, there remains a core group of Americans who still believe the GOP is the party of big sticks," writes Esquire in its analysis of the poll. Head over to Esquire's The Politics Blog for their complete analysis.

The poll was conducted among a random national sample of 1,002 adults from Sept. 7 to Sept. 10. The respondents were contacted by landline and cellular telephone.
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Fox News in a nutshell

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Romney displayed raw opportunism

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Is Libya Mitt Romney’s Waterloo?
By Cliff Schecter, September 15, 2012

Now and again, I walk into the sunroom of our house, and there is my cute little fur-ball of a cat lying prone next to the window, taking in every ultraviolet ray, rolling back and forth in delight. In mere seconds, however, my fuzzy little friend can transform into a tormented sociopath.

When she spots a rabbit, chipmunk or squirrel in the backyard or up in a tree, the simple existence of the fluffy little trespasser on her turf is enough. She’ll start clawing at the window, meowing with gusto, and let’s face it, dreaming of dinner—with the look of a compassion-free hunter on her face.

Think Chris Christie with his nose pressed up against the window-pane of a Krispy Kreme.

I’m reminded of this during trying times, like the ones we’ve witnessed over the past couple of days. Namely, that we—Homo sapiens—are not as far removed from starring in “Animal Planet” as we like to think. We’re really not all that many generations past the days when we were swinging from trees ourselves.

The lack of humanity has been evident clear across the world this week, from the con-man in California who produced a bigoted anti-Muslim film, to some crackpot, cracker of a preacher who promoted it, to a bunch of zealots in Libya who murdered innocents, people performing public service whose only crime was to be from the country from which the film hailed.

Then there was the American presidential candidate—Mitt Romney—who grinned like the Cheshire cat as he politicized the death of innocent Americans, including our Ambassador to Libya. All of this occurred, mind you, within on or within 24 hours of 9/11, when an act of unspeakable inhumanity led to mass death and suffering in the United States.

Not a good few days for the human species, I’d venture to say.

What does this all tell us? Mostly, it reminds us of some sad realities with which we’re already all too acquainted. That while religion and ideology can lead to spirituality and righteous passion (think the civil rights movement), they can also lead to the suppression of women’s rights, the justification of economic subjugation, and when it comes right down to it, hatred for one’s fellow man (and woman) for no other reason than they are “different.”

The very same Christian Right politicians in places like Oklahoma, who are just shocked (shocked, I tell you!) by Islam’s “barbarity” and worry that along with the wind, Sharia law, at any moment, will come sweeping down the plains (yes, they have proposed laws to address this), do their best cowboy-boot-clad impression of an American Taliban.

They are the first in line to curtail women’s reproductive and economic rights, and would probably reinstitute color-coded terrors alerts to prevent “rampant lesbianism” in high school bathrooms, given the chance (yeah, I’m looking at you Senator Coburn).

Ideology, meanwhile, is the religion of political power. When you look back at this presidential election in the future, this moment will likely be Mitt Romney’s Waterloo. To be so crass, so power-hungry, so tin-eared as to attack the President as your fellow countryman are being killed, and to do it with a perma-smirk on your face, that takes some serious “brass” as Bill Clinton might say.

But if Romney has done anything this campaign—besides embarrassing himself and bringing the car elevator back into vogue—it is display raw opportunism.  Backed up by an ideological inflexibility so fanciful that it is reminiscent of the Communists that Republicans used to obsess over, mock and denigrate, when not too busy acting out scenes from Red Dawn in front of the long mirror in the basement.

Romney has now likely lost the press for good (1,2, 3, all together now, “liberal bias!”), as the American media stops playing neutral when it comes to foreign policy. As (ostensible) human beings, the stench of a Joker-faced plutocrat almost relishing the death of other Americans just so he could stick it to the Commander-in-Chief, is not what most in the press—even in the cliquish and snob-filled world of Washington DC media—would consider  “likeable,” or perhaps even stable.

Yet, the sickness of right-wing extremism will continue to rear it’s [sic] ugly head in the Republican Party, just as it will in the most cultish precincts of Islam, Christianity, Judaism and every other major world religion. Understanding this is the first step towards any plan to try and evolve beyond our most animalistic impulses.
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Romney blew it

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Mitt Romney Nicks Leadership Cred With Unforced Errors
By Jon Ward, September 16, 2012

Mitt Romney faces challenges in convincing undecided voters that his policies would help the middle class, and that he can relate to the common man, but he has not often needed to persuade Americans that he is a leader.

Yet the Republican nominee's response to cascading events in the Middle East last week damaged him in an area where he should be strong.

The moment of maximum negative impact, however, has been largely missed. Much of the conservative punditry is still raging at the mainstream press for hitting Romney for "jumping the gun" on Tuesday night, when he issued a statement tying the White House to a statement from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

Romney's campaign did not know, however, when they sent out their statement Tuesday night, that the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, had been killed. And the point Romney was making at the time -- that President Barack Obama's foreign policy stance of greater engagement has failed to make the rest of the world appreciate the U.S. any more than before -- has been embraced by conservatives who have rushed to Romney's defense.

So while the left may dislike Romney's critique, and while it was a bit of a reach for the Romney campaign to say that a tweet from an embassy official under siege in Cairo was tantamount to an Obama administration policy, that was not the moment when Romney hurt his image as a strong leader.

Rather, it was on Wednesday morning, a few hours after Stevens' death had been announced, that Romney demonstrated a lapse in political judgment.

Once Stevens' death became known, the significance of what was happening overseas ratcheted up and the political context shifted. What was demanded of Romney was sobriety and a recognition that the United States had absorbed a psychic blow.

But Romney appeared clueless.

He was, no matter what, going to get questions that morning about his statement the night before. He could have had a leadership moment by forcefully dismissing those questions and stressing that it was a time for grieving and reflection.

But the Romney campaign was concerned that if their candidate tried to move past his Tuesday night statement, he would be pilloried by the press. And Romney has always shown a tendency to want to explain himself.

So as the nation reeled from first death of an ambassador abroad since 1988, Romney said a few words in his prepared remarks about grieving for the dead, and then engaged with reporters' questions about his criticism of the president's foreign policy. As the country mourned, the already image-challenged Republican was seen by millions launching partisan attacks.

[snipped]

In Fairfax, Romney also allowed a heckler to rattle him. He told the crowd that he wanted to have a moment of silence for Stevens and the three other slain Americans, "but one gentleman doesn't want to be silent so we're going to keep on going."

Many politicians, and certainly those with presidential-level political instincts, would have known that few people would interrupt a moment of silence, and that if they did, it would give Romney all the upper hand he needed to dismiss the heckler. Romney consistently fails to capitalize on moments like this that require improvisation.

This isn't a decisive issue. It does, however, complicate his already steep challenge in communicating with and persuading undecided voters.

[snipped]

The irony of Romney's missteps is that the 65-year old former Massachusetts governor and private equity executive has led a career marked by leadership successes.

[snipped]

But the measure of a political candidate is the degree to which he or she convinces voters of their qualifications. And Romney did not help himself last week.

[snipped]

Fair or not, this past week was a defining episode in the campaign. The Romney campaign is hoping, nonetheless, that its impact will be negligible.

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Gee, Romney isn't the only Repuglican with his foot in his mouth

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Rick Santorum: smart people got no reason to vote conservative
By Paul Harris and Matt Williams, September 15, 2012

"Smart people" in America will never back conservative Republicans, or so says Rick Santorum – a conservative Republican whose verbal missteps are becoming as well-known as his hardline posturing on social issues.

Santorum, who ended up being Mitt Romney's closest rival for the 2012 Republican nomination, made the comment at the conservative Value Voters Summit in Washington.

"We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side," Santorum said in a speech to the gathering of conservative activists at a Washington hotel.

Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, entered the Republican primary race as a little-known outsider.

But he ran a dogged and hardworking campaign based on his appeal to social conservatives and eventually emerged as a serious threat to the more establishment Romney.

Though Romney eventually triumphed, Santorum's success ensured the nomination process was longer than many had expected and he emerged with a much higher profile.

But Santorum also made several notable gaffes along the way. At one campaign stop where he talked about welfare, he appeared to say that he didn't "want to make black people lives better by giving them somebody else's money". He later claimed he had simply garbled his words, and didn't say "black" people, just something that sounded like "black".

He also once suggested people should vote for Obama over Romney in order to experience how radical a president the Democrat would be.

And, in discussing gay issues, he compared gay people getting married to napkins, saying: "I can call this napkin a paper towel. But it is a napkin. And why? Because it is what it is."

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Yep... "foreign policy" is foreign to Mitt

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Foreign policy at forefront is a Romney hurdle
By THOMAS BEAUMONT and STEVE PEOPLES, published September 14, 2012

With protests at U.S. embassies and four Americans dead, Mitt Romney is suddenly facing a presidential election focused on a foreign policy crisis he gambled wouldn't happen.

It did - and at a bad time for the GOP hopeful. Momentum in the race is on President Barack Obama's side and Republicans are fretting over the state of their nominee's campaign.

To shift the trajectory, Romney's plan boils down to this: Spend big money on TV and work harder.

It's unclear how long this round of Middle East unrest will last, and Romney's aides concede the former businessman may struggle to gain a political advantage should anti-American violence continue deep into the fall.

[snipped]
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Mitt Romney's missteps are getting scary
By ANN McFEATTERS, published September 14, 2012

The prospect of Mitt Romney as president is becoming a scary prospect as he works to convince us he'd be a disaster. The question is why? Having had one of the worst GOP conventions ever, Romney still careens from one misstep to another.

Eager to be commander in chief, he failed in his acceptance speech to mention the war in Afghanistan or pay homage to our troops, the first time a GOP presidential nominee has failed to salute the military in half a century.

As this egregious error forced conservatives and liberals to criticize Romney, he petulantly complained about being picked on for his choice of words. Actually, he forgot about Afghanistan and the military. (Perhaps because neither he nor his five healthy sons served?) Problem One: Romney is unable to admit he made a mistake.

[snipped]

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Mitt Romney's Worst Week Ever: Three Explanations
By Francis Wilkinson Sep 14, 2012

Mitt Romney has been under siege this week, not just from reporters but from some fellow Republicans. His troubles have three main sources.

First, the candidate himself. One example suffices here: his perplexing failure, many years ago when he first decided to run for president, to move his fortune out of Switzerland and the Caribbean, two places synonymous with financial subterfuge, and invest it in Treasury bonds. Had he done so, Romney would have subsequently released to the world the most boring tax returns of the 2012 presidential field.

Henceforth, U.S. politics should have what we might call the Romney Rule: If you want high returns on your capital more than you want to be president, you'll probably end up working closer to Wall Street than Pennsylvania Avenue.

Second, the campaign itself. It has made some odd mistakes, including this week's hapless attack on President Barack Obama over violence in Egypt and Libya. The attack was bad form, displaying a naked opportunism. It was worse politics. As Foreign Policy blogger Dan Drezner tweeted Sept. 12:

What's so stupid about Romney's overeager response to Cairo/Benghazi is that had he held back, the press would have done his work for him.

In other words, without Romney going off half-cocked, focusing attention on his own mistakes, the news media would've instead been asking pointed questions of the Obama administration.

[snipped]

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Republicans Troubled by Romney Remarks on Embassy Attacks
By Jack Kenny, published September 14, 2012

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney left some of his fellow Republicans and media allies troubled by his eagerness to condemn the Obama administration's response to Tuesday's anti-American demonstration in Egypt and the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. diplomats. Romney described an earlier statement issued by the U.S. embassy in Cairo as the administration's "first response" to the attack, characterizing the statement as "akin to an apology" for an anti-Muslim film that allegedly sparked the riots and an attempt to "sympathize" with the attackers.    

[snipped]
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Romney Struggles To Find Foreign Policy Footing
By Alan Greenblatt, published September 14, 2012

Mitt Romney has sought to distinguish his views on foreign policy and the world from positions held by President Obama. So far, it hasn't gained him much traction.

The Republican presidential nominee has insisted that Obama has not done enough to promote America's values and interests, instead "apologizing" and appeasing the nation's enemies.

[snipped]

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Mitt-- how could you stoop so low?

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Many cartoons make you stop to figure out the references/nuances,
but this one is flat out right on and right in Mitt's face!
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How true!

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Too Many People Make Up Facts To Win Arguments
By Ted Kaufman, September 12, 2012

I have cited it before, but one of the great quotes of the last century can’t be repeated often enough. “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion,” U.S. Sen. Patrick Moynihan famously said, “but not his own facts.”

The ability of any society to organize and govern itself depends to a large degree on the general acceptance of Moynihan’s argument. How can you have an honest debate about anything if there is not some agreement by all sides on basic facts? The dictionary definitions of “fact” include “something that actually exists,” “something known to have happened,” and “a truth known by actual experience or observation.” Incredibly enough, we are having trouble today in our political discourse with all of those definitions, but the third – relying on scientific observation – seems to be the most threatened.

Two things happened in the last couple of weeks that made me think about our problems with scientific facts.

The first was the long and completely persuasive series in The News Journal about climate change. I wrote a column a couple of months ago citing “actual observations” by every major scientific organization in this country. Climate change is real, they all agreed. It is to some degree caused by human activity. It is happening. It is a threat.

Certainly, there is a wide range of differing opinions within the scientific community about timing, severity, etc. But on the basic fact that global warming exists, and that it poses a real threat, there is an overwhelming consensus of our scientific organizations. Despite this, we are doing very little to deal with or reverse its potentially catastrophic consequences.

Our elected officials are forever talking about the world they want to pass on to their grandchildren. It is way past time for them to accept the facts about climate change that the scientific community has presented and take action to protect those grandchildren and future generations.

The science of climate change is at least complex, although basic scientific facts are indisputable. The second recent example that shocked me, of our astonishing capacity to ignore science was something simpler – the controversy surrounding comments made by Todd Akin the Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Missouri.

When he used the term “legitimate rape,” just about every public figure in both parties denounced him and called on him to step aside.

But Mr. Akin is not giving up his United States Senate campaign. In fact, even after all of this, it is clear that he still has a great deal of support in Missouri and around the country from people who agree that women who are raped have some kind of physiological reaction that makes it less likely they will become pregnant.

The original source of Mr. Akin’s startling theory was a book written in 1999 by Dr. John C. Willkie, the founder of the National Right to Life Committee. The “rare pregnancy of rape victims” theory was and is unsupported by any scientific evidence. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists flatly says the theory is “medically inaccurate” and “contradicts basic biological truths.”

In addition, the Center for Disease Control reports that “more than 32,000 pregnancies result from rape every year.” But Dr. Willkie has refused to back down. So do his supporters, including the speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, who invited Dr. Willkie to address that legislature a few months ago.

The abortion debate is difficult enough for reasonable people on both sides. To use an argument that has no basis in scientific fact demeans those who use it and makes an honest debate impossible.

This country has succeeded economically in large part because of science and scientific advancement. We must make sure that our children are given the best educations possible in science and math. We must train them in the scientific method and ensure they understand and respect it. In the meanwhile, we must begin to insist that all of our political leaders pay attention to science and facts when making policy decisions.
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"At least he [Obama] wasn't brought up filthy rich."

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Southern bigotry against the rich, Mormons could hurt Romney

By James Rainey

September 11, 2012, 12:18 p.m.

Conventional wisdom would have it that some middle- and lower-income whites in the South might be prejudiced against voting for a black man for president. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll confirms that is true.

But in a perverse kind of good fortune for the nation’s first African American president, the survey shows that this group of Southern whites has an even bigger block against voting for a candidate who is Mormon or who they consider “very wealthy.”

Polling on these sorts of issues is, of course, a fraught proposition, with most voters unwilling to be completely honest (if they even understand the inner workings of their own brains) about how they feel about groups of people and individuals not like themselves. With the election of an African American president and the prominence of blacks in many other prominent roles in society, it has become socially unacceptable to admit (including to a polling organization) that one refuses to accept African Americans as equals.

In any event, the Reuters survey makes clear that Mitt Romney—who is very wealthy and Mormon—has to contend with other forms of prejudice. The Republican’s advantage across most of the South is so large that anti-Mormon and class bias won’t prevent him from winning easy victories over President Obama in most states. But in North Carolina and, particularly, Virginia, the hesitance of some Caucasian voters to choose a rich man who is also a Mormon could hurt Romney.

Reuters data gathered over several months showed that 38% of middle- to lower-income whites across the Bible Belt said they would be less likely to vote for a “very wealthy” politician running against one who isn’t. The same survey showed 20% less likely to vote for an African American.

Exemplifying the odd constellation of prejudice for some in the region, Reuters reporter Margot Roosevelt told the story of a 52-year-old white woman from Lynchburgwho — after voting twice for George W. Bush — is ready to support President Obama this fall.

Sheryl Harris believes Obama is a Muslim, but also thinks Democrats are more in touch with those who have less. She said she will vote for Obama, adding: "At least he wasn't brought up filthy rich."

While other polls have shown that nationally bigotry against Romney’s Mormon faith is not substantial, Reuters found it could not be dismissed as a factor in the 11 states stretching from Virginia to the Deep South and Texas. The poll found that 35% of voters overall, and the same proportion of lower- and middle-income whites in the region, said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is Mormon.

Reporter Roosevelt interviewed voters convinced that mainstream Mormons continue the practice of multiple marriages that the church outlawed decades ago.

"Mormons don't believe like we believe," said Dianna McCullough, a retired factory worker, working in a soup kitchen. "Like the wives -- Romney's probably got more than one."

The survey showed that white Bible Belt voters are slightly less likely than other voters to cast a ballot this fall. Though the gap was only four percentage points—21% potentially not voting compared with 17% of the voting population as a whole, with a margin of error of 3.2%—that lack of enthusiasm could hurt Romney in a tight contest.

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More vapid idiocy from She-Who

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Well, it appears that She-Who has successfully collaborated yet again with similar commenters (her avatars??) in causing the closing down of commenting on another Olympian LTE: Pro-choice is the only choice by Elizabeth Eichler, Olympia, published September 10, 2012.  Approximately 200 comments were deleted.  It's really too bad that She-Who can't keep herself under control.

Also, more than 250 comments were lost from another LTE: Abortion issue still a major one by Dana Woodley, Lacey, published September 6, 2012.  I wasn't following that LTE as closely so I can't say for sure that She-Who was involved in this one, but fire usually follows smoke.  

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2012/09/06/2239278/abortion-issue-still-a-major-one.html#storylink=cpy

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Unfortunately, this is kind of true

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Mitt schmoozes the evangelicals

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God and Mitt at the Start of the Fall Campaign

ABC News’ Michael Falcone reports:

With the party conventions in the rearview mirror and Election Day less than two months away, Mitt Romney has found God once again.

At a campaign rally in Mansfield, Ohio on Monday Romney pledged that, if elected, “I will not take God out of my heart, I will not take God out of the public square and I will not take it out of the platform of my party.”

His promise in Ohio on Monday echoed his remarks in Virginia on Saturday when Romney led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance.

“That pledge says ‘under God,’ and I will not take God out of our platform,” Romney told a Virginia Beach crowd. “I will not take God off our coins, and I will not take God out of my heart.”

This relatively new line in Romney’s stump speech is partly a reaction to the Democratic Party’s platform debacle at their convention in Charlotte, N.C. last week. Democrats initially removed the phrase “God-given” from the platform, but at President Obama’s urging, the language was later added back — and approved.

On Monday, Romney omitted his assurance not to “take God off our coins” from his speech in Ohio. But over the weekend, that line sparked a feisty response from Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith who said that Romney’s implication that Democrats ever suggested removing religious references from the currency was ”extreme and untrue.”

It was not the first time Romney used the line, but it appears to be the first time in a while.

In a Feb. 2007 interview, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Romney about his views on the separation of church and state.

“Well, we have a separation of church and state in this country, and we should and it’s served us well,” Romney told Stephanopoulos at the time. “I don’t believe, for instance, we should take ‘Under God’ out of the Pledge of Allegiance. I don’t think we should take ‘In God We Trust’ off of our coins. There’s a point at which we take something which is a good principle to an extreme.”

More recently, in a questionnaire Romney filled out for “Cathedral Age,”a magazine produced by the Washington National Cathedral, he pledged to “acknowledge the Creator, as did the Founders — in ceremony and word.”

“In recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning,” Romney wrote. “They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God.”

But Romney’s new emphasis on God in his stump speech likely goes beyond the controversy over the Democratic Party platform.

Republican strategist and former communications director to Rick Santorum, Hogan Gidley, said Romney was smart to include the religious reference for two reasons: “So that voters realize he’s focused on the economy — and not going to waste his time trying to take God out of our lives and so that the vast majority of people who believe in that God know that he’s talking to them.”

Another GOP strategist noted that the new lines “allow Romney to make the sale with evangelicals — who, despite what they say, are still unsure about electing a Mormon to office.”

According to a July Pew Research Center poll, among the 66 percent of white evangelicals who know that Romney is Mormon, 23 percent said his faith makes them “uncomfortable.” However, as the survey points out: “Overwhelming majorities of Republican and Republican-leaning voters who know Romney is Mormon support him, whether they are comfortable with his religion or not.”

One more reason for Romney to highlight “God” in his stump speech, this GOP strategist said: “It allows him to drive Catholic votes out of working-class states like Ohio. Between the contraception issue, the convention debacle, there is a mounting argument to be made to voters of traditional faiths that the president and his party are anti-God. It’s an effective cudgel if you’re trying to drive turnout and convince uncertain evangelicals.”

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The Devil (if you believe in him) votes

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Romney's past

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"Mitt Romney has a history problem.

It's not only that past events and stances—say, his implementation of an Obamacare-like reform in Massachusetts, or his 1994 call for "full equality" for gay and lesbians—undermine his current efforts by calling into question his political integrity. Romney often distorts—or is detached from—significant realities of his personal past. ..."

[snipped]

-- By David Corn in A Case of Romnesia
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The "system is rigged" against the middle class

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"In her speech to the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren said that the American system of government is "rigged" against the middle class.

"People feel like the system is rigged against them. And here's the painful part: they're right," Warren said in her first address to a party convention. "The system is rigged. Look around. Oil companies guzzle down billions in subsidies. Billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries. Wall Street CEOs—the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs—still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them. Anyone here have a problem with that? Well I do." ..." 

[snipped]

-- Elizabeth Warren in Elizabeth Warren to DNC: The ‘system is rigged’ against you

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This 'n' that

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"... I think it’s fair to conclude the GOP’s emphasis is on “Defeat Barack Obama,” rather than on “Elect Mitt Romney.” And many of the party’s rising stars, judging by their convention speeches, seem to believe it’s likely that Romney will lose. ..." -- Eugene Robinson in The tale of two conventions favors Obama
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"... The middle class is not in free-fall, as some Republicans argued. And the middle class is not the country's sole economic engine, as Democrats suggested. Overall, the American middle class today is struggling to surmount torpid wages, global competition for jobs, low home values and spiraling healthcare and education costs. The middle class is stagnant. ... 
In the end, both candidates stayed disappointingly true to form. Romney was cautious and vague. Obama was cautions and incremental. The middle class heard some debate, but mostly got pandering." -- David Rohde in Parsing Romney's and Obama's middle-class pablum
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"... Republicans have hated President Obama since his original nomination. The day he was elected their role in Congress was his removal. The passion is visceral and to all but Americans, perhaps, inexplicable. Some suggest, quietly, the hate is racism in disguise. Others shrug and say it is some American thing that nobody, least of all Americans themselves, can understand. ..." -- Tom Koch, Toronto in What’s behind hatred of Obama?
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"The political conventions behind them and three debates ahead, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney now race against the calendar toward Nov. 6.
They have two months to deploy millions of dollars in ads, catch those voters who cast ballots weeks before Election Day, and log umpteen miles in a handful of crucial states — all while worrying what surprising news or candidate slip-up might set the whole enterprise on its ear.

Obama and Romney have huge staffs to help keep it all straight, of course. But you don't. So here, for the rest of us, is a user's guide to the last leg of the 2012 presidential campaign: ..." -- Connie Cass in What to watch for: A user's guide to Campaign 2012
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"... "If you want every American to vote and you think it is wrong to change voting procedures, just to reduce the turnout of younger, poorer, minority and disabled voters, you should support Barack Obama," former President Bill Clinton said in his convention speech. ..." -- Courtney Gross in Decision 2012: Voter ID Laws Could Impact Election
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Not a very nice track record

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What core convictions?

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The Stealth Convention
Raging Moderate, by Will Durst, Sept. 3, 2012

And now a few words about the Republican National Convention. AKA: Women with Big Hair and the Men in White Shoes Who Love Them. And white certainly was the operative word in Tampa. Mashed potatoes on paper plates with a side of leeks white.

Had to feel bad for the one black guy the networks kept cutting to during the speeches. They tried everything to make him look like a crowd. Different camera angles. Probably had his own wardrobe assistant. “Now put on the cowboy hat. Okay. Okay. Let’s try a handlebar mustache.” Must have been someone’s driver.

The first day of this GOP quadrennial confab got canceled for the second consecutive conference due to a hurricane bearing down on the city of New Orleans. The only two tropical storms to threaten the Crescent City since Katrina. Hey, guys, want some crow sprinkles on that karma cone?

But any worry about the optics of unrestrained celebration while parts of the country drowned faded fairly quickly. “Oh, quit your belly aching. At least your pesky drought is over.” And with that, the convention shifted into stealth mode.

The festive conservatives were so successful at concealing their core convictions, that at times it was difficult to discern which party was nominating whom. “We’re saving Medicare.” “The Party of Diversity.” “Our Platform May Say No Abortions, No Exceptions, But We Haven’t Even Read It.” “Dubyah Who?” “Mitt What?”

The only speaker to mention Mitt’s name out loud on purpose was Ann Romney in a gracious and endearing turn. Facing the tall task of climbing the plateau of humanizing her spousal cyborg, this mother of five boys constructed an entire flight of stairs by herself. But with a husband stiffer than Rick Santorum on a gay pride parade float, it was the basement stairwell of what needs to be skyscraper scaffolding. Baby steps.

Paul Ryan growled the requisite Veep Nominee pit-bull snarl. Then gave 40 minutes worth of credence to the Romney pollster who proclaimed earlier in the week, “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” The Janesville Congressman trotted out more bad lies than Employees Day at St. Andrews. The Old Course.

Chris Christie solidly wedged himself into a fail-safe slot for the next round in the event of a Romney/ Ryan November stumble. As did Condoleezza Rice, albeit more elegantly. But Marco Rubio stole the show, positioning himself as a possible impediment to Christie and Condi’s scramble for 2016′s money. If there is any money by then.

Normally these gatherings are to spontaneity what Richard Simmons is to mule skinning. Lots of shiny, smooth seamless spandex. A three-day holiday in a hall full of Ken dolls. But in a dubious celebrity stretch, some soon-to-be ex-staffer woke Clint Eastwood from a nap to upstage the nominee’s acceptance speech by losing an argument with an empty chair.

Following Dirty Harry speaking to an imaginary president, Romney spoke of his phantom agenda. The general consensus was he needed to give the “Speech of His Life,” and the good news is, he did. The bad news: that was it. Great for the base. “Meh” for everybody else.

So now it’s on to Charlotte where the Democrats will throw a counter spin to their mirror image of this carefully orchestrated boogie-down. Charlotte and Tampa in the dead of summer. And these are our great political minds at work? Something indeed is horribly awry.
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Lyin' Ryan

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Empty chair.... empty minds

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Spinnaker Sailing In

The Spinmeister has been in touch and is working his way across country to Thurston County.

Is this time for another ThurstonBloggersBite?

Off with their heads, wallets, etc.

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The BIG LIE

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Trickle Down Economics is a Pyramid Scheme
By Tina Dupuy, August 31, 2012

A few years ago, I had a friend who didn’t want anyone to know she was going to therapy. Instead, she would announce at her place of business she was leaving to attend her Amway meeting. At one point I had to inform her, “You know that doesn’t make you look any less crazy, right?”

The classic multi-level marketing or pyramid scheme is where one guy at the top convinces people at the bottom to give the top money. The hope is the guys in the middle will recruit enough people under them to move from the middle to the top—hence the pyramid shape. The model is, clearly, and provably unsustainable. Only a couple of people (those at the top) do well. Everyone else gets ripped off.

In fairness, Amway, has massaged its methods enough to not qualify as the illegal type of pyramid scheme. It’s now the more legal type of pyramid scheme.

But the model—the idea of those at the bottom sacrificing their retirement benefits (pensions, social security, Medicare etc.) so that the top tier can pay even less in taxes is what Romney/Ryan are peddling. Mitt Romney wants to cut taxes for the wealthy. Paul Ryan’s budget would shrink benefits to give the savings in the form of a tax cut to the highest brackets. What didn’t work in the Bush years to strengthen the middle-class (evident by their Lost Decade), they tell us will work this time! Or as veep-pick also-ran, Senator (R-FL) Marco Rubio put it, “We have never been a nation of haves and have-nots. We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.”

No, actually, we are a nation of haves and have-nots. We have the worst wealth inequality of all industrialized nations. Our poverty rate is the highest in more than 50 years at 15.7 percent. Contrast that with the top 1 percent of Americans who own nearly half—42 percent of the nations wealth. Also that same top 1 percent only has 5 percent of the nation’s debt. So 99 percent of Americans own 58 percent of the pie and have 95 percent of the debt. We’re fatter, sicker, further in debt and using the most illegal drugs in the world—all signs Americans have become overspent from bad economic policies.

But the haves—these demigods of capitalism—won’t trickle their wealth down to us because of “uncertainty in the market” according to Republicans. Therefore we bribe them with an even lower tax rate!

Instead of calling it “trickle down” which has been largely panned for decades—the new term is “not punishing success.”

“If your priority in this country is to punish success vote for President Obama,” said the offshore account holder, Mitt Romeny [sic].

If the rich get richer—we’re not getting thinner, healthier, solvent and off the crack needle. If the rich get richer, the middle-class doesn’t get more stable.

If the rich get richer, the working poor don’t get pulled out of poverty. If the rich get richer—they just get richer and park their money in Luxembourg (where at least their money will be near universal health care).

We’re actually not a nation of haves at all. Not if you go by a simple majority—or even a super majority—we’re a nation of have-nots. Have-nots being sold on a fantasy of wealth trickling down if we’re nice enough to the haves.

Trickle down economics is a pyramid scheme: It’s the rich telling us if we just recruit others to believe in the con then we will become the rich too.

It’s a lie.
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GOP: "a mixture of 16th Century voodoo, repressed sexuality and Ted Nugent songs"

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Looking Back at the GOP Convention: Forced Birth & Birthers
By Cliff Schecter, August 31, 2012

This past week, the once great Republican Party, whose belief-system can now pretty much be described as a mixture of 16th Century voodoo, repressed sexuality and Ted Nugent songs, arrived in Tampa Bay for its big shindig—to nominate Mitt Romney as President of the United States. The excitement in the thick Florida air was palpable, even as a passing hurricane en route to New Orleans served as a reminder of the last time we gave Republicans the keys to the kingdom.

But the story, of course, was not outside the convention center, but inside, where a collection of oft-angry and very white (89 percent of the party, according to Gallup) Republicans got together for one last Council of Conservative Citizens hurrah, to yuk it up about welfare cheats (wink, wink) and slutty women on birth control who are destroying America.

Emmy-Award-winning broadcast journalist David Shuster first reported on an incident, which was later confirmed by many sources, where a couple of delegates threw peanuts at an African-American camera woman with CNN, telling her that “this is how we feed the animals.

Meanwhile, the first night saw a number of women speak, all presumably to tell other women watching, “who cares if Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan approved a platform that would force women who are raped (or at least those legitimately raped) to carry their rapist’s child to term, because they’re just a couple of wild and crazy guys!”

Yet, most of these female officeholders—as women’s politics expert Nancy L. Cohen, author of “Delirium: The Politics of Sex in America,” pointed out to me—were “as extreme on this issue as the now-infamous Todd Akin—the logical culmination of the sexual counterrevolution, a forty-year long political campaign to roll back women’s rights.” Whether it was Governor Mary Fallin of Oklahoma or Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, they all think that women earning 70 percent of what men do is rockin’ good news and birth control is yucky.

If only women could tap into that fallopian force field that prevents rape-induced pregnancy all the time!
Of course the figurative birtherism was the real star at this convention. Truth giving way to blatant dishonesty so obvious, that it was shocking even by previous campaign standards.

Former Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice [sic]—who seemingly arrived late because she finally got around to reading warnings that Al Qaeda’s would be a threat in September 2001—spoke about how she became Secretary of State after growing up in Jim Crow Alabama. No acknowledgment that Civil Rights started as a Democratic plank with President Truman in 1948, and became a reality because of John Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan’s speech was a masterpiece of mendacity. He blamed President Obama for a GM plant that closed in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, even though it closed December 23rd, 2008, when some guy named Bush was still president. Ryan attacked President Obama for the downgrading of our credit rating, which really occurred because House Republicans (like Paul Ryan) refused to raise the debt ceiling.

But perhaps Paul Ryan’s most brazen metaphorical birtherism arrived when he denigrated government as what his idol Ayn Rand called “central planning.” Ryan himself didn’t need the help of big government to succeed, as long as you don’t count the millions his family pocketed via government contracts to build roads. And the government jobs he’s had his entire adult life.

There’s even the sad and untimely death of his father. Ryan talked a lot about it in his speech in a very moving way, but somehow forgot to mention those Social Security survivor’s benefits he received to go to college. He remembered that his mom, upon the death of his dad, took a bus to her business classes so she could start her own small business. But apparently it skipped his mind that she did it by riding a publicly funded bus to a publicly-funded state school.

Mitt Romney’s speech continued this trend, lacking any specifics (we’ll replace Obamacare…with what, we’re not telling you!). He even mocked President Obama for trying to deal with global warming and brought us back from metaphorical to literal birtherism, implying Obama was not American.

In other words, the most honest gesture of the convention might have been when Clint Eastwood conversed with an empty chair from which an imaginary Obama was swearing at him.
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It's time for a new constitutional amendment

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Obama suggests constitutional amendment in Reddit chat
Posted by Rachel Weiner on August 29, 2012

In a chat with the web community Reddit, a question-and-answer session so popular it briefly crashed the site, President Obama suggested a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. the FEC. 

“Over the longer term, I think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t revisit it),” he wrote. “Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight of the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change.”

While Obama’s campaign manager signaled earlier this year that the president was open to such a move, a direct stamp of approval from the man himself carries a lot more weight. 

Liberal-leaning activist groups have been pushing for an amendment to overturn the decision, which paved the way for super PACs that can raise and spend unlimited funds.

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