Two men. One with a heart and a soul...



...and one without:

From the moment Mitt Romney stepped off stage Tuesday night, having just delivered a brief concession speech he wrote only that evening, the massive infrastructure surrounding his campaign quickly began to disassemble itself. Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked.

This should surprise no one. Willard RMoney TOLD us he likes to be able to fire people who provide services to him:



We dodged one hell of a big bullet Tuesday night.

Seamus was not an anomaly; this is how he treats everyone not named "Romney." Imagine what firing the rest of us would have looked like.

Labels: 2012 election, a real mensch, soullessness

OK, OK, I believe you.

Bill, Chris, and Sandy.

Those are the three most important names to keep in mind as we heave a collective sigh of relief this morning that we are not going to have four-to-eight years of Paul Ryan kicking old people out on the street, John Bolton as Secretary of State, more prom night dumpster babies, millions of women scratching their heads at the local Walgreen's wondering why they can't refill their Yaz prescription, and an austerity-induced second plunge into recession.

It isn't that the Republicans didn't TRY to steal it, what with possibly rigged unverifiable voting machines, last minute unverified "software patches", telling Spanish-speaking voters to vote on the wrong day, reporting of a legitimate poll observer as a member of the New Black Panthers, and long waits caused at least partially by Republican thugs "poll watchers" demanding ever-more-elaborate forms of identification.

There were other factors, of course. There was the 47% video and the Etch-a-Sketch that tried to turn Willard Rmoney from a "severe conservative" into the Defender of the Poor, which made people wonder just what they would be getting of Rmoney were elected. Then there was the increasing hysteria of the last days of the campaign, in which Rudy Giuliani, the man who set up New York City's command center in the World Trade Center, called for President Obama to resign and Paul Ryan insisted that America's "Judeo-Christian" values were threatened by Barack Obama's re-election in some mysterious way that they weren't in the last four.

But in the end, it was those three names that ultimately turned the tide in this country towards at least some semblance of sanity and toward the future.

Bill Clinton got the ball rolling at the convention, when he laid out the case for not just why it was taking so long for the economy to recover, but exactly what the obstacles were. Clinton's gift has always been in his ability to explain complex concepts in simple terms and do it with a twinkle in his eyes, and the gift he has of making you willing to follow him anywhere started to make even skeptics take another look at this young president who navigated economic waters more treacherous than anyone since FDR has had to deal with.

Then there was Hurricane Sandy.

It's one thing to talk about "smaller government" in the abstract. It's one thing to talk about "let the states handle it" when there isn't an emergency. And it's easy to talk about self-sufficiency when you're talking about poor black people taking shelter in a football stadium while their town is drowning. But when the images of devastation in the media are of white people picking through their belongings in a landscape that looks like an asteroid hit their community, it becomes far more difficult to marginalize those affected as being "the other", even if you live in Iowa or Ohio or Wisconsin. The sad fact of our society is that until misfortune happanes to white people, far too many white people can still remain detached from it and not extrapolate the possibility of disaster to themselves. No one is calling for the people of Staten Island and Lindenhurst and the Rockaways and Mantoloking and Ortley Beach to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.

The Republicans have made great hay of painting Barack Obama as a weak sister, a pussy, a girly-man. They've said he's not a leader because he doesn't beat his chest and proclaim to the world that he's the biggest, baddest dick on the block. But what Americans saw in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy was the kind of leader one wants to see in a crisis -- organized, calm, efficient, comforting; one not calculating the political points to be gained but offering both words of comfort and actions to those affected. Anyone can bluster, but a leader actually gets things done. And here Americans saw a kind of leadership that does not need to advertise itself in giant neon letters.

And finally there was Chris....Chris Christie.

Who would have believed that Chris Christie, he of the bullying bluster, would end up as arguably the statesman of the year? When the biggest test that a governor can tackle came about, Christie put the good of his state above ideology and above party and not only toured the devastated areas with the same President he had excoriated days earlier, but consistently praised the President for his leadership and cooperation -- no doubt damaging his future, perhaps fatally, in the Republican Party as a result. For those still sitting on the fence, watching a respected rising star in the Republican Party praise this Democratic President, must have been food for thought.

And so today those of us who yesterday were terrified of a nation in which women are nothing but vessels for the continued power of white Christian men; of a nation in the discredited neocons of the Bush era are allowed to start even more unnecessary wars; of a nation in which them that's got shall get and them that's not shall lose; of a cruel winner-take-all society, can breathe just a little easier, in no small part because of Bill, Chris, and Sandy.

Labels: 2012 election, Bill Clinton, Chris Christie, Hurricane Sandy 2012, President Barack Obama

Brad Friedman on the unverified "mystery software patch" installed in 39 counties in Ohio, and the last-minute lawsuit hoping to stop it.

Digby: Disenfranchisement is a feature, not a bug.

Charlie Pierce on Sandy's secondary disaster.

No surprise here: So-called "True the Vote" forged signatures on their applications to be election observers in Ohio.

SemDem at DKos: Rick Scott is in a class by himself. All he's missing is the dogs and firehoses.

TBogg. 'nuff said.

You know, my good friend and blogbuddy jurassicpork and I disagree o what to do today. JP lives in Massachusetts, so he has the luxury of a protest vote. I disagree that a vote for a Green Party candidate, even as good a candidate as Jill Stein, will send a message to the Democratic Party. If Ralph Nader 2000 didn't send a message, nothing will. Third parties have to start at the local level and work their way up, not the other way around. I respect JP's decision and even agree with his reasons, even though I disagree with it. I disagree with it if for no other reason than I look at all the young women in this country and I see America's future -- a future that a bunch of grey-faced men want to take away from them, regarding them as little more than vessels -- incubators for producing enough white people to keep people like Willard Rmoney in power forever. If you think there's no difference between the two candidates on drones, or war, or banks, or multinational corporations, fine. But in my view, a protest vote in a state that could swing either way does nothing for those being murdered overseas, but does consign the next generations of American women to less-than-human status.

And the last word (heh) on the stakes today comes from, of all people, Tweety:



Yeah. What he said.

Labels: 2012 election, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Republican men, sexism, vote suppression

Eight years ago, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris a "scrub lit" of over 170,000 alleged ex-felons (who are barred from voting in Florida) from the state's voter rolls. Problem is, many of these people were not ex-felons at all, but were simply unfortunate enough to have the same name as people who were. What's more, the alleged crimes of many of these people were committed by people with the same name who lived in TEXAS, not Florida.

Greg Palast in Salon, December 4, 2000:

Florida is the only state that pays a private company that promises to “cleanse” voter rolls.The state signed in 1998 a $4 million contract with DBT Online, since merged into ChoicePoint, of Atlanta. The creation of the scrub list, called the central voter file, was mandated by a 1998 state voter fraud law, which followed a tumultuous year that saw Miami’s mayor removed after voter fraud in the election, with dead people discovered to have cast ballots. The voter fraud law required all 67 counties to purge voter registries of duplicate registrations, deceased voters and felons, many of whom, but not all, are barred from voting in Florida.

In the process, however, the list invariably targets a minority population in Florida, where 31 percent of all black men cannot vote because of a ban on felons. In compiling a list by looking at felons from other states, Florida could, in the process, single out citizens who committed felons in other states but, after serving their time or successfully petitioning the courts, had their voting rights returned to them. According to Florida law, felons can vote once their voting rights have been reinstated.

[snip]

ChoicePoint spokesman Martin Fagan concedes his company’s error in passing on the bogus list from Texas. (“I guess that’s a little bit embarrassing in light of the election,” he says.) He defends the company’s overall performance, however, dismissing the errors in 8,000 names as “a minor glitch — less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the electorate” (though the total equals 15 times Gov. George W. Bush’s claimed lead over Gore). But he added that ChoicePoint is responsible only for turning over its raw list, which is then up to Florida officials to test and correct.

Last year, DBT Online, with which ChoicePoint would soon merge, received the unprecedented contract from the state of Florida to “cleanse” registration lists of ineligible voters — using information gathering and matching criteria it has refused to disclose, even to local election officials in Florida.

Atlanta’s ChoicePoint, a highflying dot-com specializing in sales of personal information gleaned from its database of 4 billion public and not-so-public records, has come under fire for misuse of private data from government computers. In January, the state of Pennsylvania terminated a contract with ChoicePoint after discovering the firm had sold citizens’ personal profiles to unauthorized individuals.

Fagan says many errors could have been eliminated by matching the Social Security numbers of ex-felons on DBT lists to the Social Security numbers on voter registries. However, Florida’s counties have Social Security numbers on only a fraction of their voter records. So with those two problems — Social Security numbers missing in both the DBT’s records and the counties’ records — that fail-safe check simply did not exist.

[snip]

Florida is the only state in the nation to contract the first stage of removal of voting rights to a private company. And ChoicePoint has big plans. “Given the outcome of our work in Florida,” says Fagan, “and with a new president in place, we think our services will expand across the country.”

Especially if that president is named “Bush.” ChoicePoint’s board and executive roster are packed with Republican stars, including billionaire Ken Langone, a company director who was chairman of the fund-raising committee for New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s aborted run against Hillary Rodham Clinton. Langone is joined at ChoicePoint by another Giuliani associate, former New York Police Commissioner Howard Safir. And Republican power lobbyist and former congressman Vin Weber lobbies for ChoicePoint in Washington. Just before his death in 1998, Rick Rozar, president of a Choicepoint company, CDB Infotek, donated $100,000 to the Republican Party.

In Ohio in 2004, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell and his county Orcs followed the trail blazed by Katherine Karris and upped the ante, purging 110,000 voters from the rolls in just one county, stiffing minority of precincts of sufficient voting machines, so that only in minority districts were people waiting up to ten hours in the rain just to vote. In Warren County Ohio, a nonexistent terrorist threat was invented so the votes could be counted in secret. And by 2006, in violation of federal law, Ohio's 2004 presidential election records went "accidentally" missing.

This year we have Republicans all over the country no longer even trying to hide their intentions to disenfranchise as many people that they believe will vote Democratic as they can. Since Republicans have not cared about any kind of vote integrity in the past, there's no reason to regard them as being the Keepers of Truth now, except that they have had spectacular success with preventing minorities from voting and refusing to count the votes of those who do vote.

"But what about Obama?" you might ask. "If there is some huge all-powerful Republican conspiracy to prevent Democratic victories, why was Obama allowed to win?" Forgetting for a minute the joke about hiring a black man to clean up a white man's mess, take a look at the 2008 ticket: A clearly diminished and clueless septuagenarian and a willfully ignorant, mentally unstable trainwreck. The Money Guys who always end up with the nominee they want were not about to risk leaving the devastated world economy to the tender mercies of Sarah Palin. Besides, having four years of a black peesident whom they could spend four years trying to discredit and destroy would give them cover when they decided to bar black voters again.

This year's election promises to be a nail-biter. In many states, the poll differential between Barack Obama and Willard Rmoney is two points or less. In a race margin that close, the purge of just a few thousand people with Spanish surnames, or of twenty guys who have the same name as someone who committed a crime in 1972, could very well make the difference.

Historically Democrats have ignored vote suppression. They have ignored CEOs ov voting machine companies openly expressing their intention to deliver the election to their chosen candidate (NYT). They have ignored definitive proof of how easy it is to tamper with electronic voting machines. But this year just might be different, because the Republican plot to disenfranchise millions of American citizens this year has been conducted right out in the open. NYT:

In Florida, the state’s Democratic Party filed a lawsuit on Sunday morning that would force the Republican-led government to extend early voting in South Florida after complaints that extremely long lines on Saturday had prevented some people from casting their ballots. The Republican-controlled Legislature cut back early voting, which ended Saturday, from 14 days to eight.

The lawsuit was followed by a chaotic day in the Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade County, which opened one of its election offices for two hours to accept completed absentee ballots and then shut down only to reopen again on Sunday afternoon. Three counties said they would open again on Monday, but Democratic lawyers will continue to argue in court that in-person early voting should continue through Tuesday in Broward County.

In Ohio, Republican election officials will go to court on Monday to defend an 11th-hour directive to local election officials that critics say could invalidate thousands of provisional ballots by forcing voters to attest to the type of identification they provide.

Together, the pre-election legal skirmishes were a potential preview of the clashes that could emerge in as many as a half-dozen swing states over Tuesday’s voting. The closeness of the races in those states has intensified the stakes of voter turnout, smooth operations at polling places, ballot problems and recounts.

In the battles, Republicans are mobilizing to defend against what they say is the potential for voter fraud, and Democrats are preparing to protect against what they say are efforts to suppress voting rights.

“The larger issue, in my view, is the scale of the effort that is required to have Election Day run smoothly,” said Robert Bauer, the chief counsel for Mr. Obama’s campaign. “Any number of things can go wrong, not by anybody’s fault or intention, but we are fully prepared and so, we believe, are election officials around the country.”

On the other hand, Thom Hartmann is not optimistic:

Thanks to our bizarre Electoral College voting system, if one political party wants to steal the election they don't need to deploy teams all around the country to stuff ballot boxes, intimidate voters, and rig electronic voting machines. They just need to set-up shop in one or a few of those swing states – like Florida and Ohio – kick a couple thousand voters off the rolls, disqualify a few more thousand voters on Election Day by giving them wrong information, maybe toggle a few electronic voting machines, and then "Voila!" The election is taken care of. Two out of the last three elections have been determined in this way. And it appears this election will be heavily influenced by voter purges, too.

As pollster Nate Silver with the New York Times' 538 Blog projects, there's a 50/50 chance Ohio will determine who the next president is – just like in 2004. Cue the new Republican Secretary of State, Jon Husted, who's been working hard to restrict Ohio voters' access to the polls. Hundreds of thousands of Ohioans – particularly minorities – took advantage of early voting in 2008 to elect President Obama. So, Husted cut down on those early voting hours. And now the courts have given Husted a new tool to restrict the vote. On Wednesday, a panel of three Conservative Justices (all appointed by George W. Bush or his dad) ruled in favor of Secretary of State Husted, paving the way for massive voter disenfranchisement in the key swing state.

According to the ruling, voters who are told by poll workers to vote at the wrong precinct and then do so, lose their right to have their votes counted. A previous court ruling ordered that voters who are misled by poll workers still have a right to have their vote counted, but that's now been overturned.

We already know that the Romney campaign has sent out flyers to prospective ballot watchers in Wisconsin giving them misleading information to tell voters. Now, thanks to this court ruling, the Romney campaign can legally have its poll watchers in Ohio send voters to the wrong polling places to make sure their votes aren't counted. For the second time in three elections, Ohio could be stolen right in front of all of our eyes.

Or the theft might happen in Florida again. Just like in 2000, Republican election officials are again purging tens of thousands of voters off the rolls. As the Miami Herald reported on these purge lists, "Hispanic, Democratic, and independent-minded voters are the most likely to be targeted...Whites and Republicans are disproportionately the least-likely to face the threat of removal."

On top of that, already discrepancies are being reported with early-vote tallies on Florida's electronic voting machines. In one Florida voting precinct, more than a thousand early votes were either "lost" or "miscounted." Considering that George W. Bush "officially" won the state by 538 votes, these discrepancies could mean the difference in the election.

A close national election, like everyone is expecting this year, translates to an even closer election in the states where all it will take is a few thousand voters to flip an election.

It is way too easy to steal an election in America. Our Electoral College allows just one or two states to swing a Presidential election every year. The privatization of the vote with electronic voting machines has handed over the beating heart of our democracy – the vote - to corporate interests who then handle it in secret. And the lack of an explicit federal "right to vote" for all eligible Americans has made voter suppression efforts much easier and harder to prosecute or prevent.

And if their efforts fail? Well, there's always impeachment. My guess is that the pretext will be Benghazi. We're already seeing the preparation in the Republican propaganda.

Labels: 2012 election, election theft, What The Fuck Is It With Florida

She's Lesley Gore & she approves this message.

Labels: 2012 election, Barack Obama, feminism, music, video, women, Women's bodies

Maybe it's just that I'm getting old. Or maybe I'm nothing but a hopeless corporate sellout. But for all the griping I've done about President Obama over the last four years -- his haplessness, his refusal to believe that he is not dealing with good faith operators when he attempts to appease Republicans, his appalling continuation of Bush policies on rendition and privacy, his refusal to take on Wall Street -- I'm going to be voting for him again two weeks for tomorrow. I won't be doing it with any illusions, but I'm going to do it. Because the alternative is unthinkable.

Twelve years ago, enough people were disgusted by Al Gore's then-seeming centrism and with some of the sellout of progressive values that were done during the Clinton years that they fell prey to the siren song of Ralph Nader -- a guy who made his name as an advocate for automobile safety in the early 1960's, a gadfly who has flitted from one nonprofit to another for four decades, and a pest who shows up every four years to run for president -- unwilling to do the actual work that could have made him a legitimate political force. "There's no difference," they said. Enough disillusioned voters pulled the proverbial lever for Ralph Nader in Florida in 2000 to throw that election to George W. Bush, thus setting the stage for a terrorist attack on U.S. soil that the new Bush administration did nothing to stop, two unfunded wars, the squandering of a budget surplus, and the a near-global financial collapse as the proverbial cherry on top.

No difference? Seriously?

I'm not going to say that I know everything. I supported John Edwards in the 2008 primaries, so what the hell do I know? I just knew I couldn't support Hillary Clinton for her unapologetic support for the Iraq War and for her statement at what was then "Yearly Kos" in 2007 that "lobbyists are people too." And I also felt that the charismatic first-term Senator from Illinois just hadn't seemed quite ready for prime time at that event, never mind that I just could not imagine this country electing a guy whose middle name is "Hussein." Neither of them was talking about what the Bush economy had done to the poor, and I knew that the push towards oligarchy that had been going on since the Reagan years could very well push the entire middle class into the ranks of the poor.

Then there was 2004, when GOP suppression of the vote among minorities, seniors, and the young was even more rampant than it had been in 2000, and the corrupt Ohio Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, played the role of Katherine Harris went so far as to invent a terrorist threat that forced him to have votes counted in secret.

This is going to be a close election. Why it's going to be close, I have no idea, other than that we are living in a country that is populated by idiots whose views are colored by whatever TV talking head pulling stuff out of his ass feeds the most crap into their heads the loudest and most frequently. We live in a nation of the inattentive, the uninvolved, the apathetic, and the willfully ignorant. How there can be people who are still "undecided" at this late date is a mystery to me, unless you're talking about those who have the gun pointed at their own foot and can't decide whether to pull the trigger or not.

I'm not saying that Barack Obama is anyone's dream progressive. In 2008, when many of my friends were insisting that he was and couldn't understand why I was saying that he wasn't, no pointing out of how he sat on his hands in 2004 while the late Stephanie Tubbs-Jones pleaded for a Senator to stand with her in objecting to the certification of Ohio's election results and noting that he chose Joe Lieberman as his mentor would sway them. As Mr. Brilliant put it back then, "I think Obama will sell us out one iota less than Hillary Clinton will." But I never had any illusions about him, and it's been sort of pathetic to watch progressives over the last four years insist that there is some kind of twenty-seven-dimensional chess game going on, instead of a guy unprepared for the kind of vitriol the opposition party would throw at him, unsupported by the hacks in his own party, and possessed of a case of Chronic Reasonableness.

I'm under no illusions about an Obama second term, either. A Democratic hackocracy concerned mostly with keeping its own jobs is unlikely to get the back of a lame duck president, particularly one who isn't "one of them." As bad as the Republicans have been during the first four years, they'll be even worse in a second. Obama could try to implement the Romney/Ryan agenda in a second term and the Republicans will block it. And the racism, that festering boil on the nation's buttocks that started to ooze the minute Obama took the oath of office is going to explode, and I don't even want to think about how that will manifest, not just among the talking heads of Hate Media, but among all those racist gun nuts who I fear will take the idea of "second amendment remedies" to heart.

But what's your choice, really? Do you really want to stay home and let the Republican governors who are trying to institute vote suppression tactics the likes of which we haven't seen since the Jim Crow era choose Willard Rmoney as the next president? Do you really think that Rmoney, a guy who's in the business of sucking whatever life is left in struggling companies and then leaving the carcasses to rot, can "create jobs"? Do you really want to consign this country to the kind of feudal serfdom that Rmoney and his billionaire owners have in mind? Do you really think there's no difference?

I mean, I like what Jill Stein had to say on NPR a couple of weeks ago too. But voting for her is just plain stupid -- and it isn't even like shooting yourself in the foot, it's tearing off your own head because it's a doll revolution.

Another reason to show up is down-ticket races. There are a number of decent-to-good House candidates with a very real shot at being elected -- people like Alan Grayson in Florida and Rob Zerban in Wisconsin and Tammy Duckworth in Ohio. Progressive incumbents like Sherrod Brown, also in Ohio, is fighting an onslaught of Koch brothers money and arguably the most odious Republican teabag twerp not named "Marco Rubio".

We may very well be headed off a cliff anyway, given the Democrats' haplessness and refusal to fight for anything. But I really don't want to do it yet. And if we do it, we should do it with our eyes open and recognize that to not do what little is possible to stop what the Republicans have stated quite baldly that they want to do to this country and to stop this Naderite notion that if Things Just Get Bad Enough the people will rise up and revolt. They won't. Because after all, Honey Boo Boo is on.

You may not like it, you may have to hold your nose, but you know what you have to do. Do it.

More along these lines from Daniel Ellsberg, who knows of what he speaks.

Labels: 2012 election

It has not been a good week here at Casa la Brilliant. Our hyperthyroid catbaby Maggie decided to stop eating, and my 85-year-old mother, who last Wednesday was a bit dotty but coherent at her pulmonologist's office (she has advanced COPD, congestive heart failure, and arterial stenosis), was completely out of it a week later. My sister, whose organizational and logistical work she's done in arranging for care can ever adequately rewarded, is utterly exhausted and spent, and I am here in New Jersey, able to do little more than wring my hands, take phone calls, and feel guilty that I am not doing more. Add this to a crushing workload at the office, and I'm pretty spent myself, which just makes me feel guiltier because what I'm doing is a walk in the park compared to what my sister is going through.

Yesterday I got to talk to Mom during the closing of what apparently was a 90-second window of lucidity, and she repeated a phrase of gibberish a few times, which sounded like "I ate a duck", which at one time would have been plausible, because at one time the words "Chinese" and "duck" used together were one of the few things that could make her grin broadly.

She could still bounce back; I'm told that when the hospice nurse came by for an evaluation yesterday, she said "I'm a smart person. I think I had a stroke." But she's sleeping much of the time, which is probably not a bad thing, because the last news I heard last night was that 911 had to be called to take her to the hospital because she was screaming that she was being held prisoner.

There will be much more to write about my mother at some point. But in the context of our fears this week about Maggie (still not 100% assuaged, as another vet is going to look at her X-rays to definitively rule out masses), it all makes me think that as the elephant that is my generation passes through the snake that is the health care system, the creation of ethical suicide parlors is not a bad idea. A place where we will be able to go when we become infirm and where we can be painlessly slipped away in a room with a comfy bed fitted with bedding warm from the dryer, after a nice meal, and with beautiful music playing in our ears as we exit this level of reality starts seeming like not a bad thing, certainly better than ending up pissing ourselves and having all the demons in our heads activated as the neurons start firing erratically.

But while one family's chaos swirls about, and many cans of cat food and bags of kibble are opened in the hope that one of them will tempt Miss Maggie to eat, the world goes on and it is, after all, an election year.

It's going to start being difficult for the Republicans to steal this election through voter purges, voter ID laws, and "True the Vote" intimidation tactics, as people are starting to realize that Republicans are NOT on their side.

Whenever a Republican accuses someone not of their team of doing something, look further. Because you can bet that they're the ones doing it. Like, say, registering fake voters.

Why do Republican lies keep coming faster and more furious? Because the press can't keep up with debunking them so a sizable number just sneak through.

Let's not have any "Jewish conspiracy" talk about this. I think it's just about wanting to look like a Klingon.

Willard once said that Bain Capital might take up to eight years to turn a company around. And yet he only wants to give Barack Obama four years to turn around an entire country? I'm starting to really like Sarah Silverman:



My mom let her drivers' license expire a couple of months ago and never got a replacement photo ID. Too bad she doesn't have a gun permit. If she did, she'd be able to vote. And wouldn't that gun permit have been reassuring to the EMTs that had to take her to the hospital last night.

Labels: 2012 election, families

Rick Scott had better get cracking on that disenfranchisement, because this pick may very well just have delivered Florida to Obama.

Read all about the Randian Ghoul Who Would Be VP here. Or a short summary here.

Labels: 2012 election, Greedy Republican Bastards, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, social Darwinism

It's difficult to watch Willard Rmoney's ghastly performance at the NAACP conference this week without cringing. The man is so obviously trying to twist himself into a pretzel to try to appeal to enough people outside the batshit crazy Republican base -- and it shows. There's something vaguely deranged about the man as he stomps around the country in the quadriennial ritual of kissing babies and pretending that you care about every individual that you meet. Romney isn't like the country fair attendees in the flyover states. He knows it, and on a deep level, they know it too. And he's certainly not like the rank-and-file members of the NAACP, and he knows that too. That's why he had to bus in plants to applaud him.

Now there are people sniffing around not just Romney's offshore accounts (just the thing every patriotic American who "believes in America" does, right?), but his very tenure at Bain Capital.

And now it turns out that Willard Rmoney may very well have lied about the tenure of his time at Bain Capital:

Government documents filed by Mitt Romney and Bain Capital say Romney remained chief executive and chairman of the firm three years beyond the date he said he ceded control, even creating five new investment partnerships during that time.

Romney has said he left Bain in 1999 to lead the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ending his role in the company. But public Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.”

Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.

Romney's financial disclosure report has him claiming that he left Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 and that "Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way."

There's just one problem -- those pesky SEC documents, which conflict with Rmoney's financial disclosures. So which one is true? If Rmoney lied on either one of them, that's what's called a felony.

All of which makes me wonder -- at what time do we stap talking about "misstatements" and "dissembling" and start calling Rmoney a liar?

All of which brings us to tinfoil and Rmoney at the NAACP.

This week saw an Ipsos poll showing President Obama with a six-point lead over Willard Rmoney. Obama has been going around the country pointing out the dichotomy of a presidential candidate talking about job creators and believing in America -- and then storing his money in accounts in the Cayman Islands, as if he were a Saudi king or shady underworld operative. And it's working, because people are starting to look more closely at the GOP candidate who wants to take power so he can enact policies that will screw over the middle class even more and stuff his offshore accounts with more money. Not to know Willard Rmoney might be to love him, but to know him is to realize that this is just another greedy, power-mad GOP sociopath who can't even be said to serve his multimillionaire masters, because he is one.

In order to win, the GOP must field candidates who can convincingly pretend that they care about regular people. This is why Chris Christie is so popular among the pundit class. He's every bit the corporatist scumbag that Willard is, but when angry white guys see Christie's sizable frame clutching an ice cream cone on a Jersey Shore boardwalk and emulating Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver, all that is forgotten and the reptilian brain thinks, "He's just like me." GOP voters love this sort of thing.

But I digress again.

Rmoney just isn't wearing well. The GOP can disenfranchise millions of people, and stiff minority districts on voting machines. They can even try to throw the election to the House. But that still may be too risky. Rmoney may be a reliable partner for moneyed interests, but some kind of a sham charade election still has to happen. And if Romney's unpopularity continues to grow, then the GOP has a problem.

So that's where my tinfoil comes in. I'm not at all convinced that this sudden attention to Rmoney's financial disclosures is coming from the Democrats. The party that turned the other cheek while their 2004 candidate, a decorated war hero, was branded as a traitor and coward while their guy, who spent the Vietnam era in a cushy National Guard gig for which he didn't even bother to show up, was painted as a macho Rambo tough guy, is just not smart enough to come up with something like this.

So here's my prediction: By the time of the convention, the offshore accounts and financial disclosures will become such a huge issue that Rmoney will have to withdraw. This will leave the field clear for the oligarchs to select the candidate they wanted all along. Even he has said "This was probably my time."

And it yet may still be.

Labels: 2012 election, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney Is A Sleazy Liar, tinfoil

Howie Klein introduces us to Ryan Combe, who is running for Congress in Utah's 1st District. Combe is cute as a button, has an equally adorable Utahn Mormon whiter-than-white family, the smokin-est wife in human history, and he's the real progressive deal. Here's Combe's campaign ad: It's either the best campaign ad ever, or it's simply a cute way of saying "We Suck Less."



What do YOU think?

What's interesting about Ryan Combe is that he took a very different lesson away from his teenaged mission in Argentina than Willard Rmoney took from his sojourn in the land of pastries and turtlenecks:

As a missionary in Argentina I saw a country without a stable, transparent, or inclusive government. Many times I walked the dirt roads, encountering amazing people who could not even spell their own names. Upon my return to the States, I was astonished and disheartened to see politicians mount attacks on policies and organizations that prevent our nation from resembling the conditions I saw on my mission. The most fundamental means of personal elevation are those that balance personal responsibility and community good to fuel vibrant communities. With the evaporation of America’s middle-class, we will see a loss of opportunities to improve our nation and world. Without a strong middle-class, America will no longer be a place for entrepreneurs and without a strong entrepreneurial class of Americans, our nation will weaken.

Having been raised in Northern Utah, the values of community and service are a part of my fiber and I believe that our community’s values more closely align with the Democratic Party.

Check out the number of times the words "community" and "communities" and "values" appear on his web site. Either he has great copywriters or he's one hell of a smart cookie.

And the ad? Well, maybe a tongue-in-cheek rendition of "We Suck Less" just might get some attention. Apparently it already is.

Labels: 2012 election, Better Democrats

There have always been stories of government for sale, but in the aftermath of Citizens United, it can now be done blatantly. But is it really all that simple?

Democratic Party ineptitude was on full display last night, both in Wisconsin and in the less-visible races here in New Jersey. It's tempting to attribute Scott Walker prevailing in Wisconsin just on the huge sums of money poured into his coffers from out of state, but Chris Cilizza in the Washington Post cites other reasons for the debacle in the cheese state last night:

* The Democratic primary: To hear those who worked in the trenches of the recall tell it, the fact that Democrats had a contested primary between Barrett and former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk bears considerable responsibility for Walker’s victory.

Not only did the primary take place less than a month before the general recall election but organized labor spent millions in support of Falk (and against Barrett), spending that many Democrats believe weakened the eventual nominee. Democratic pollsters insisted that Walker was languishing in the early spring but rebounded as Barrett and Falk fought amongst themselves in the primary.

* Money: As of Monday, more than $63 million has been spent on the recall fight with Walker and his conservative allies vastly outspending Barrett and other Democratic-aligned groups.

Walker himself had raised in excess of $30 million for the recall campaign while Barrett collected just under $4 million.

Being outspent 10-1 (or worse) is never a recipe for success in a race. Democrats cried foul over Walker’s exploitation of a loophole that allowed him to collect unlimited contributions prior to the official announcement of the recall in late March. Of course, Democrats also pushed the recall and Walker played by the rules of the game — making what he did strategically smart rather than underhandedly nefarious.

* 2010: There was considerable internal discussion and disagreement between Washington and Wisconsin Democrats (and organized labor) about whether to push for a recall election this summer or wait until 2014 for a chance to unseat Walker. (Washington Democrats broadly favored the latter option, Wisconsin Democrats and labor the former).

As the recall played out, two things became clear: 1) There were almost no one undecided in the race and 2) those few souls who were undecided tended to resist the recall effort on the grounds that Walker had just been elected in 2010.

There's also the fact that the President of the United States, in his continued quixotic and delusional quest to "rise above it all", refused to get his manicured hands dirty in Wisconsin, and the national party refused to put any skin in that particular game until it was already too late.

I would add to this also that Americans have really grown to dislike and distrust labor unions, especially public sector unions. The reality that without the history of labor unions, there would be no 40-hour workweek and no minimum wage and no paid vacation has been completely obscured by high-profile battles over teacher contracts and hundreds of thousands of accumulated sick time payouts. When an ever-increasing number of Americans have been bumped from the full-time-permanent-job model and into non-guaranteed contract work that offers lower pay, no paid time off, and makes them completely dispensable at a moment's notice, it's difficult to get them to put together that part of the reason for this is that we turned our back on labor unions long ago after winning many of the perks for which they fought for decades.

It doesn't help that all too often, being in a labor union is like working for two sets of management, neither of which has your best interests in mind. My two experiences with being in a labor union are not exactly the stuff of which strong support is made either. In the mid-1970's, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen had me on strike for an entire summer, lest I be blacklisted from working at the A&P the NEXT summer. And in the 1980's, the Newspaper Guild blocked my promotion into a non-union management position even though I would be replaced by a union employee. But if you want to know what a society without labor unions and the wage protections they represent looks like, you need only to look at Gilbert & O'Bryan, a Boston law firm:

The BBJ received an emailed tip this week from someone who says they’re an employed, Boston College Law School (BC Law) graduate. The tipster sent screen grabs of a job listing on BC Law’s career site. The post advertises a full-time associate position at a small Boston law firm, Gilbert & O’Bryan LLP, paying just $10,000 per year. (That's $10K, it's not a typo.)

Larry O'Bryan, one of the firm's partners, said he's received about 32 applications for the $10K per year job, since posting it one week ago. He said that while the pay is low, the lawyer who is eventually hired will gain valuable experience. "What we emphasize is that we do provide the opportunity for new associates to have their own case load right from the start," said O'Bryan. Workers working full-time with four weeks' vacation at Massachusetts' minimum wage of $8 would be paid more than $15,000. At the federal minimum wage of $7.25, a worker would earn nearly $14,000 in a year. Maybe BC Law grads should take a look at a slide show published by Boston Business Journal earlier this month: 50 Boston jobs under $50K.

The job post reads: “Compensation is mainly based on percentage of work billed and collected ... We expect an associate to earn $10,000 in compensation in the first year.”

Ouch.

Here’s what the BC grad has to say about the job post he found:

"I keep an eye on the Boston legal market for openings, because I work outside of MA, and hope to eventually return. Logging onto BC Law Symplicity today, I was shocked to see my alma mater is advertising a full-time job at a small Boston firm where the compensation is expected to be $10,000 per year. Assuming a 40 hour work week, 52 weeks per year, that’s less than $5 per hour by my calculations. To be exact, $4.81 per hour, which is a fraction of minimum wage. For a school that pays cafeteria workers a "living wage," I find it astonishing that BC Law permits a listing for such an unconscionably low salary."

Or, you could look at Wisconsin.

But as Rachel Maddow has pointed out in the past, labor unions, as diminished as they are, still provide a sizable amount of money for Democratic political races. And if all the billionaires are going to pour unlimited sums into Republican races, the funding differential, combined with a lazy and craven press, Republican candidates like Willard Rmoney who are willing to baldfacedly lie (and know they can get away with it), and an inattentive and incurious American public willing to believe anything they see in a TV ad, and you essentially sound the death knell to anything approaching elections that offer a real choice.

Another example of what happens when the public doesn't pay attention is right here in New Jersey's 5th Congressional District. This is a highly-gerrymandered district that includes some of the most affluent parts of Bergen County, some of its more blue-collar areas, and the rural areas of Sussex and Warren Counties. For 25 years, this district was represented by Marge Roukema, a moderate Republican who would probably be drummed out of the party now. Scott Garrett ran against her twice, gaining the name recognition that made him the logical heir apparent when she retired. Voters in this district are so inattentive that when an independent candidate who was known in Republican circles ran in 2006 -- four years into Garrett's tenure in Congress -- he was asked, "Why are you running against Marge?"

Over the last decade, the Democrats have run candidates of ever-decreasing credibility against Garrett. Actually, that's not entirely true, because both the national and state parties have simply given up on this district, essentially allowing Garrett to become Congressman-for-life and disenfranchising all non-Republicans in the district. This year, Steve Rothman's district was eliminated, and the party offered him $2 million to run against Garrett in the 5th. Rothman is a bulldog of a candidate, not the kind of nobodies, blind rabbis, milquetoast Rotarians, and converted Republicans that have tried for this seat during Garrett's tenure. The 5th may be Republican, but it's not batshit crazy Republican, and Rothman could have had a very real chance to win this year. But instead he decided to run a primary challenge to another Democrat, Bill Pascrell, in the 9th. Last night Pascrell supporters smacked away Rothman like the annoying little fly the latter had chosen to become. So now, instead of a real challenger in the 5th, Rothman is gone from Congress, and running against Garrett is a crony of the old, corrupt, Bergen County Democratic Organization who couldn't even be bothered to show up to a debate against his primary challengers.

Oh, I'll go through the motions of voting this fall, in the last ever U.S. election that has even the slightest resemblance to an actual election. But I'm under no illusions anymore that democracy works here anymore.

Labels: 2012 election, Democratic sellouts, R.I.P. American Middle Class, wussy-ass Democrats

As we head into this year's Memorial Day, a day when we remember those who gave their lives in the service of what this nation is supposed to stand for, the whole exercise seems somewhat hollow. Oh, there will be parades tomorrow, and veterans will march, and people will attend the parades, and my little neighbor next door, who loves all things military, will wave his flags and try to get his parents to let him sell cups of water to raise money for the soldiers. And the guy at my local post office yesterday who was in the Army band in World War II and feels terrible saying that he has no idea what we're doing in Afghanistan, and if we can't figure it out we should just leave will also attend the parade and remember all the guys he served with long ago who never came home.

But most people will skip the parades. They'll go to Best Buy and pick up a new air conditioner, or they'll pick up a new bathing suit at the mall, or get the tomatoes planted. They'll catch up on housework, or spend one last hot humid day at the beach before heading back to work. But there's one thing they won't do, and that's think about how the stage is being set for this November's election to be a sham, a banana republic election that Saddam Hussein would have been proud of, one in which everyone that Republicans can't rely on to vote for them will be prevented from voting, either by rigging the voting machines, or providing inadequate machines to precincts, or by voter ID laws, or simply by purging people from the voter rolls for no reason. This latter tactic was perfected by Republican hero Jeb Bush in Florida in 2000, and convicted criminal and now-Governor Rick Scott is continuing Jeb Bush's grand tradition of disenfranchisement:

Maureen Russo was born in Akron, Ohio. For the last 40 years she’s operated a dog boarding and grooming business — Bobbi’s World Kennels — with her husband in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Maureen is 60 years old and has been a registered voter in the state for the last four decades. She regularly votes at the church around the corner from her home.

Two weeks ago she received a letter from the State of Florida informing her that they had received information that she was not born in this country and, therefore, was ineligible to vote.

She was given an option to request “an administrative hearing to present evidence” disputing the determination of the State of Florida that she was ineligible to vote. Unless Maureen returned a form requesting such a hearing within 30 days, she was told, it would result in “the removal of your name from the voter registration rolls.”

She immediately sent off a registered letter to the State with a copy of her passport. She hasn’t heard anything back.

Florida will be stolen again through voter roll purges of anyone who is a threat to vote Democratic. And so will Pennsylvania and Virginia -- three swing states that could decide November's election. Funny how DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is utterly silent on this, as are all the other Democrats, even after Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, which leads me to ask the question: Do the Democrats WANT to lose, or they simply that fucking stupid? This is how democracy ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Labels: 2012 election, dirty tricks, election shenanigans, election theft, vote suppression

It doesn't seem like all that long ago when people wondered if John F. Kennedy would be taking his marching orders form the Pope instead of his obligation to uphold the Constitution. Most voters wouldn't have those kinds of concerns a contemporary Roman Catholic who ran for President, but Rick Santorum is no contemporary Catholic. Santorum's Catholicism has more resemblance to that of Mel Gibson than it does to that of Jack Kennedy.

The most disturbing aspect of the whole foofarah about insurance coverage of contraception is the way the right has embraced the notion that opposing the bishops is somehow a "war on religion." Note also how the framing is "war on religion", not "war on Catholicism." I always find myself wondering if Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Wicca, and worship of the Flying Spaghetti Monster are included in the Republicans' all-embracing arms (though I think we know the answer to that). We've come a long way since the days when people were concerned about a particular religion creeping into policy, and it's not a positive one. Santorum can tack the prefix "Judeo-" in front of the word "Christian" all he wants to, but you know as well as I do that "Judeo-" has nothing to do with his agenda.

But Santorum's fealty to the Vatican goes beyond social policy, as Andy Kroll reveals in Mother Jones:

The Armed Forces Retirement Home, which is run by the Department of Defense, bills itself as the "premier home for military retirees and veterans." The facility sprawls across 272 acres high on a hill in northern Washington, DC, near the Petworth neighborhood. The nearly 600 veterans who now live there enjoy panoramic views of the city—the Washington monument and US Capitol to the south, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to the east. At its peak, more than 2,000 veterans of World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War lived at the Home.

But with the rise of the smaller all-volunteer military, the Home began to run into serious financial problems. It was clear that one of its primary sources of revenue—a 50-cent deduction from the paychecks of active-duty servicemembers—wasn't enough to keep the Home operating fully. In the 1990s, the Home scrambled to find ways to avoid insolvency, trimming its staff by 24 percent and reducing its vet population by 800. Still, the money problems began to show, with its older historic facilities slipping into disrepair and decay. To grapple with its worsening shortfall, officials running the Home eyed a valuable, 49-acre piece of land worth $49 million as a potential financial lifeline.
Under one scenario, by leasing the parcel of land and letting it be developed, the Home could pocket $105 million in income over 35 years for its trust fund, David Lacy, then-chairman of the Home's board of directors, told Congress in 1999. Lacy stressed that the Home wanted to keep the property, and not offload it to a buyer. "Once land is sold," he said, "it is lost forever as an asset."

Enter Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.). At the behest of the Roman Catholic Church, and unbeknownst to the Home, Santorum slipped an amendment into the 1999 National Defense Authorization Act handcuffing how the home could cash in on those 49 acres. The amendment forced the Home to sell—and not lease—the land to its next-door neighbor, the Catholic University of America. Ultimately, the Catholic Church bought 46 acres of the tract for $22 million. The Home lost the land for good, and by its own estimates, pocketed $27 million less than the land's value and $83 million less than what it could've made under the lease plan. Santorum's amendment sparked an outcry from veterans' groups and fellow US senators, who barraged his office with complaints.

Of course none of that mattered, and if you read on in the article, the Church didn't care much about running the running the place; it was all about the land. So you have to wonder what other parcels of Federal property a President Santorum would hand over to the Vatican just because they want it.

If the money guys who run the GOP and almost always decide the nominee decide that they can live with a Santorum nomination and allow him to snag that particular prize, the GOP will turn any attack on his sleazy record in Washington as an "attack on religion." Of course the subtext of this pearl-clutching of any criticism of anyone who who self-identifies as a Christian is, of course, the idea that the incumbent President, Barack Obama, is not a Christian (another reason for Santorum's ludicrous referring to "...a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic". Santorum can use that prefix all he wants to, but it's clear that Jews have no place in his worldview, and neither does anyone else who doesn't see the world the way he does. That Obama is a member of Churh of Christ is immaterial; the subtext to Santorum's positioning of himself as representing "true" Christianity (and allowing the evangelicals to join with him because they share his obsession with gay sex and the female reproductive system), is that Obama is somehow "other" -- the Kenyan Secret Muslim Terrorist Antichrist that far too many of Santorum's frothing (sorry) minions believe he is.

And therein lies the problem for the President, should Santorum be the nominee: how to deal with some of Santorum's more lunatic beliefs, plans, and pronouncements without being branded as conducting a "war on religion", or more specifically a "war on Christianity". Santorum is, of course, allowed to practice his religion freely (despite his protestations that Christians are somehow under siege in this country). But with a history of facilitating the sale of federal property to the Catholic Church, it is a legitimate question just how much of this country he would let the Vatican have. The question is who will have the guts to ask it.

Labels: 2012 election, dangerous religious freaks, Rick Santorum

Perhaps we can stop pretending now that the reason for Newt Gingrich's support is because he's a smart fella who understands the plight of the working man and recognize that it's because he's the living, breathing talking id of the voter whose primary motivation is racial, ethnic, and religious hate.

Nate Silver notes (NYT link) that the more Newt Gingrich invokes poor {black} people with no work ethic and {black} food stamp recipients, the more support he has. And when he makes even a feeble attempt to be a "statesman", his support plummets:

At Monday’s debate in Tampa, Fla., it was Mr. Gingrich who pulled his punches, adopting a subdued approach and declining opportunities to attack the other candidates. His strategy, like Mr. Romney’s a week earlier, perhaps looked good in the playbook: the initial polls after South Carolina had shown Mr. Gingrich surging to a lead in Florida, and perhaps Mr. Gingrich thought he could look more like a front-runner by adopting a less combative and more magnanimous approach.


But Republican voters, once more, did not react well: Mr. Gingrich has since lost considerable ground in the polls and now trails Mr. Romney in Florida. It is not necessarily clear that the debate was the only cause of this. Nevertheless, Mr. Gingrich entered Thursday evening trailing Mr. Romney in the polls and needing a win in the second debate.

Instead, Mr. Gingrich seemed to be playing for a draw. He passed upon several opportunities to push back at Mr. Romney, despite being expressly presented with opportunities to do so — on health care, on Ronald Reagan’s legacy, on immigration, and on Mr. Romney’s personal finances among other issues. The only exception came when Mr. Gingrich alleged that Mr. Romney had invested in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — but this was met with a strong rebuttal by Mr. Romney, who seemed well prepared for the attack.

I strongly suspect that Mr. Gingrich will extend the losing streak for this passive debate strategy. There aren’t any post-debate polls yet, but the betting market Intrade might provide a preview of them. By the time the evening was done, Mr. Gingrich’s chances of winning Florida had plummeted to 10 percent from 25 percent in the market, and his chances of winning the Republican nomination had dropped to about 5 percent from 10 percent.

Of course there are four full days left before Tuesday's Florida primary, so Gingrich has plenty of time to toss out meat and bone and sinew to the hatemongers who are still so busy pointing down the ladder at those who are still further down than they are to notice the guys up above them hungrily eyeing the last two bucks in their pockets.

Labels: 2012 election, Newt Gingrich, right-wing hatemongers, wingnuttia

Can you imagine what these people will do if Obama gets a second term? Orly Taitz and her lunatic minions aren't giving up...and it could have repercussions in the November election:

In a decision that broke with every other judge to consider the issue, including at least one judge who effectively fined birther queen Orly Taiz $20,000 for pressing the absurd claim that President Obama is not a citizen eligible to serve as president, a Georgia administrative law judge sided Taitz and several of her clients’ in an effort to force President Obama to testify in a birther case:

In a surprising ruling Friday, a Georgia state administrative judge declined to quash a subpoena directing Obama to attend a hearing Thursday at the Fulton County courthouse on a challenge to strike him from the Georgia ballot this fall on claims he is not a U.S. citizen. [...]

Lawyers for those pursuing the challenges recently issued a subpoena for Obama to attend the upcoming hearing. Obama’s legal team filed a motion to quash the subpoena, but [Deputy Chief Judge Michael] Malihi declined. In his order, Malihi noted that Obama’s legal team had argued that no president should be compelled to attend a court hearing.

“This may be correct,” Malihi wrote. “But [Obama] has failed to enlighten the court with any legal authority.”

Obama’s court filings fail to show why his attendance would be “unreasonable or oppressive” or why his testimony would be “irrelevant, immaterial or cumulative,” the judge wrote.

The arrogance of Malihi’s decision is astounding. If he needs legal authority showing that the president cannot be simply commanded to present himself in court on a very specific date, he might start with the Supreme Court of the United States, which strongly implied in Clinton v. Jones that a court cannot “compel the attendance of the President at any specific time or place.” Likewise, if he needs proof that summoning the president of the United States to testify on a frivolous issue would be “cumulative” of existing evidence, he might consider discovering something called “Google.”

It doesn't matter if this particular case won't amount to anything. What it DOES do is put a judge on record of going along with this.

We learned in 2000 and 2004 the lengths to which the Republicans will go to "win" an election -- from mass disenfranchisement via ID laws and stiffing poor neighborhoods on voting machines, to inventing imaginary terrorist threats to justify "counting" votes in secret. Right now there are two likely Republican nominees -- a guy born on third base and thinks he hit a triple and one of the most corrupt Washington insiders of our time. And today we find out that confidence in the economy is at its highest level in nearly four years...which means that as hamstrung as the President has been by Congressions Republicans, what he HAS been able to get through has had an effect.

All this is a potential Republican nightmare, all while Callista is no doubt already formulating her plans to replace the bedding in the family quarters of the White House, lest she have to put her magic yellow helmet head on pillows that a black family used. For if economic conditions continue to improve, however slowly, Republicans may have no choice but to resort again to voter suppression, and more ominously, to "birther" lawsuits designed to keep the President off the ballot in important states, if they want to "win" in 2012. So keep your eyes open for hedging on the birther issue from both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney -- or their surrogates. Because it may end up being all they have in their arsenal.

Labels: "birthers", 2012 election, election shenanigans

Rick Santorum is all about traditionalism, from his seven children, his obsession with the womb and Teh Gays, and his sweater vest. But in yet another example of how topsy-turvy his party has become, he's running a web add titled "Rebellion". And you know what? It's awesome. Derivative of Apple's infamous "1984" ad, but still awesome:



Far too many liberals are rubbing their hands together with glee at the thought of ANY of the Final Four Clowns being the Republican nominee. I'm the least worried about Romney, because his tin ear for the real concern about income inequality and his now-demonstrated short fuse have combined to remove him from the "most electable" category. It's Gingrich and to a lesser extent Santorum that have me worried.

Remember when Al Gore debated George W. Bush? Al Gore was sober, serious, and clearly annoyed at having to debate a numbskull like Bush. And the media all decided that Bush was the winner. Now imagine a debate between Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama. Obama will be his typical cool self, and Gingrich will be up there pontificating and name-dropping and throwing red meat at the racists -- and then calling Obama out as "playing the race card" if he responds...or weak if he doesn't. Gingrich's success in South Carolina seems to have largely come because he "put Juan Williams in his place", as Dave Weigel just pointed out on Up With Chris Hayes. Yesterday on the same show, Melissa Harris-Perry pointed out how Gingrich also put both women and the media in their place with his response to John King's question about his ex-wife Marianne's interview with ABC. Compared to the robotic Mitt Romney, Gingrich seems "real" by comparison. And for some reason, his pseudo-intellectual babbling about Saul Alinsky and Kenyan anti-colonialism is the kind of "smart-guy" stuff that the drooling masses like those who just went to the polls can accept -- because it feeds their pre-conceived ideas. A Gingrich nomination falls into the Wildean notion of there being two tragedies in life -- one is not getting what one wants; the other is getting it.

Santorum, who seems unlikely to get the nomination, is probably the "realest" of the bunch. Whereas Ron Paul, who is worshipped in some circles for his "consistency" has a libertarian doctrine that stops at the womb and the bedroom, Santorum is a true believer in even his most insane notions. He's not a babbling idiot like Rick Perry, nor does he sound like a zombie channelling Aimee McSemple Pherson the way Michele Bachmann did. He's the real deal, the channeller of Father Knows Best America, right down to the dorky sweater vest. I still think that in a head-to-head matchup, Obama could beat Santorum, but I think he'd be a tougher opponent than most of us would have thought when he first decided to run.

As I write this, the scrappy New York Giants have just tied it up against the 49ers, by not letting their guard down for a minute. The outcome of this game is still up for grabs, but you can bet Eli Manning has no illusions of a cakewalk. We can only hope that Barack Obama and those around him have the same realization.

Labels: 2012 election, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum

From last night's debate:

King>> Some of the questions about when do you release your taxes, his campaign has raised them, you're right on that. So has some of your rivals up here. Governor Perry made that point as well before he left the race. Why not should the people of South Carolina before this election see last year's return?

Romney>> Because I want to make sure that I beat President Obama.

Sort of like when he said this:



Mitt Romney is starting to remind me of a Bridezilla -- you know, those women whose lifelong ambition is to get married and who get so obsessed with their weddings that they can't see beyond the party and into the actual reality of marriage.

Goddess help us if this man actually becomes president (or any of these clowns, for that matter.)

Labels: 2012 election, Greedy Republican Bastards, Mitt Romney

This is all kinds of win:

Labels: 2012 election, hack journalism, Stephen Colbert, Teh Funny

It just goes to show you, never, ever, ever bet against the money guys, because once the money guys anoint a GOP candidate, everyone else is wasting his/her time.

I sure hope that the White House is paying attention to this, instead of planning to go the John Kerry route of solemnly asserting that the process works so let's take our leftover campaign cash and go home.

The GOP's hypocrisy about who should be allowed to vote has already been conclusively demonstrated in Iowa. At the caucus, there are no rules about photo IDs, nor are there rules against same-day voter registration. But then, this is all about Republicans, and they only want to have such laws where groups such as students, people whose dermal pigmentation they regard as unseemly, and the elderly, are likely to vote for someone they haven't anointed.

But now, looking at Brad Friedman's report, it looks like even the Iowa caucus was may have fixed for Romney:

Thanks to the transparent, open counting process at Tuesday's night's Iowa GOP Caucuses, and a Ron Paul supporter who was paying close attention to the results, we may now be learning that Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney, actually won the "First-in-the-Nation" Iowa Caucuses this week.

According to a report tonight from television station KCCI NewsChannel 8 in Des Moines, Edward True, a supporter of Paul's says he participated in the counting at the Washington Wells caucus in Appanoose County and wrote down the results he witnessed there on a piece of paper which he posted to Facebook that night. Later, in comparing his totals to the precinct results made available on the Iowa GOP website [CSV version here], he noticed that Romney is shown as receiving 22 votes at that precinct, rather than the 2 that True recorded him as receiving that night at the caucus.

If True is correct, and if no other anomalies are discovered in the coming days, it would mean that Santorum will have won the Iowa Caucuses by 12 votes, rather than lost it to Romney by 8, as reported by the GOP in the early morning hours on Wednesday...

According to KCCI:

Edward True, 28, of Moulton, said he helped count the votes and jotted the results down on a piece of paper to post to his Facebook page. He said when he checked to make sure the Republican Party of Iowa got the count right, he said he was shocked to find they hadn't.

True said at his 53-person caucus at the Garrett Memorial Library, Romney received two votes. According to the Iowa Republican Party's website, True's precinct cast 22 votes for Romney.

"This is huge," True said. "It essentially changes who won."

...

True --- who said he's a Ron Paul supporter --- hopes it was a simple mistake.

"I imagine it's a good possibility that somebody instead of hitting 2 might have hit 22 by accident," True said. "I hope so."

But he said he won't stop talking about it until the state --- by his count --- gets the numbers right.

"Numbers that I personally witnessed being counted and assisted in counting and am certain are right," he said.

"The story on Romney getting extra votes as a result of a typo looks credible IMO," tweeted The New York Times' statistical wunderkind Nate Silver tonight. "Romney did very badly in other precincts in that county."

Indeed, according to the Iowa GOP's posted results, out of 13 caucuses in Appanoose County, Romney received double-digits at only one other caucus beside Washington Wells. He is said to have received 20 votes at Vermillion Douglas Sharon, but other than those two sites, Romney received just 45 at the other 11 caucus sites combined...

As the report indicates, it will be about a week and half before the results are certified. The question is this: Will anyone still remember this then, now that the "Ooh, shiny!" crowd has decamped for New Hampshire? And perhaps more importantly, will Iowa GOP voters demand that their votes be counted correctly? We already know that no one, not even the Democratic candidates, ever cares about accurate vote counts. Perhaps GOP voters in Iowa, most of whom no doubt support making it harder for people they don't like to vote, similarly don't care about accurate vote counting either.

UPDATED for clarification from Brad, received via e-mail:

In this case, we have what appears to be a misreported tally. The public hand-count of the paper ballots was done exceedingly transparently and, apparently, accurately at the polling place (or caucus site in this case).

The caucus site reported Romney's 2 votes to the GOP, as far as I can tell, but that 2 became 22 when it was put into the main GOP database. Also, from the same precinct, Buddy Roemer received 6 votes for some reason (odd, since he only received a total of 31 across the entire state, and the folks at the caucus site in question seem to confirm that he received NO VOTES at that site.

So -- until we find a broader pattern of this happening elsewhere -- this smells very much like a book-keeping error rather than either a counting error or an attempt to "fix" the results for Romney. At least at this time.

Rachel Maddow, by the way, got it similarly wrong (though much more so!) last night on her show, and I'm likely gonna have take time to take her to task today as well, as much as I hate doing that, since she's usually right on the money. In her case, she slammed the GOP for their inability to count. But that's neither accurate nor even productive here.

In this case, it was the most transparent type of election that we can have! And the fact that citizens have stepped forward to demonstrate minor book-keeping errors and those errors have been almost instantly confirmed by others who were also able to oversee the transparent public process, is a tribute to that process!

In other words, even if the GOP wants to fix the results for anybody, it will be next to impossible for them to do so, because we've got thousands of witnesses to what the real count really is, and any error (or, worse, attempt to manipulate) can and will be noticed by the public, and independently confirmed by many others who are able to verify that error. That's a great counting process! Not a bad one, or a failure, as Maddow painted it last night, unfortunately. It's the process that we should be fighting for EVERYWHERE in nation! And in favor of appears to be a fairly lazy partisan shot last night, that's the way more important picture that Rachel missed in her analysis.

Similarly, you may have misread my own in coming to your framing of it. Where that may have been my fault -- where I was unclear or misleading -- I certainly apologize! And, if you decide to clarify, please feel free to use, quote from, any of the above as helpful -- and/or let me know if you have any questions on any of this.

I stand corrected. By I'm keeping my tinfoil hat on the nightstand, just in case.

But the larger issue that affects everyone even outside of Iowa, is the double standard about the voting process and how accuracy doesn't seem to matter unless there are Democrats voting. Zandar over at Balloon Juice put it perfectly:

Republicans keep screaming how the voting process is inherently corrupt if it ever produces a Democrat as the winner because they always steal elections, therefore we must have strict voting laws in every state for every election that makes it as difficult as possible for people to vote in order to protect the integrity of the election system. We have to pass laws to immediately protect the sacred process from the evils of those people who may try to vote 4812 times. It’s the only way one of them could end up President you know, and if you don’t agree you’re evil vote-stealing scum anyway.

But that election system apparently doesn’t matter when it comes to the coronation of Mitt Romney as nominee as fast as possible. Strange how that works. Democrats aren’t even American as far as most Republicans are concerned, but it’s all good if Republicans fiddle with the election system. It’s just a caucus, right? Besides, ACORN ACORN ACORN BLAH BLOOGITY BLAH CHICAGO WAY.

Now Zandar is making the same mistake I did in seeing rigging where there may be just a typo. But to not make a correction and declare the actual winner is highly suspect, especially for a party that would rather disenfranchise a million people than allow one person to vote in error (unless that person is named "Ann Coulter" or "Newt Gingrich" or for that matter, "Rick Santorum."

Labels: 2012 election, election shenanigans, Mitt Romney

Was there ever any doubt? The minute the money guys sensed that Mittens the Chosen One might be in trouble, a no-holds-barred push in Iowa began for the "unemployed", "middle-class" quarter-billionaire.

I could only stand so much of the coverage and ended up watching an old American Masters on the Warner Brothers on WLIW instead, but my cousin says on Facebook that Rachel Maddow managed to slip in a comment that Rick Santorum "came from behind", which is of course all kinds of win and why we adore her so. Of course said cousin couldn't leave well enough alone and also snarked " Rick Santorum has come from behind, pushed past #2 and finished first with another man in the end." But that's another story, Iowa is over, and it looks like we'll have Rick Santorum to kick around for a while longer, something for which we should all thank Dan Savage every day from now until Mittens' coronation, even if Dan DOES hate fat people.

Instaputz had not just Iowa but the nomination called by 8:26 PM.

We have been badly remiss in not linking to Doghouse Riley in a long time, but yesterday he got into the Dan Savage spirit quite nicely in putting Iowa in context.

Smell the Chris-mentum!! Hopeful over at Blue Jersey notes that the good looks, charm, and charisma Blue Collar Messiah from Joisey brought Mittens six fewer votes than in 2008.

I know that Newt is blustering his way to utter irrelevance,but his golf-ball-through-a-garden-hose spouse provides so much comedy gold that Princess Sparkle Pony can't resist. (Note in particular the photo accompanying the December 29 entry. I half-expected Christian Camargo to appear in it.)

BadTux sings "Heigh-ho" about the final placement.

Not Iowa-related, but this entry by Southern Beale is so good, and we are SO going to get Sally Quinn (who was golfball-through-a-garden-hose before it was cool) all over the place today punditizing alongside the equally idiotic David Brooks, that we should remind ourselves just how awful the Villagers are.

Speaking of Callista, Ken reassures us that we're going to have her (and her husband, the Pillsbury Doughboy), around to kick around for a while longer.

Laffy on the Jon Huntsman/Ron Paul trash-talkin'.

Rick Ungar on how Frothy wants you to have your baby so it can inhale a whole bunch of mercury.

And finally...if you aren't reading Charles Pierce during this ridiculous charade of a primary season, you should be.

Labels: 2012 election, bloggers, Republican clown car