;)
The Commentariat -- Nov. 1, 2012
Scott Keyes of Think Progress has a follow-up to his story (linked on yesterday's Commentariat) about the Romney campaign's training poll-watchers to give disinformation to would-be voters in Wisconsin and to hide their affiliation with the Romney campaign. The Obama campaign has written a letter of complaint to Wisconsin's secretary of state, & a spokesman for Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board spoke to the Washington Post, essentially collaborating Keyes' assertions that the Romney campaign was teaching its secret poll watchers to mislead the public. The Post story, by Bill Turque, is here. ...
... Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "Stephen Einhorn -- a Wisconsin venture capital fund manager and major GOP donor -- acknowledged Monday that he and his wife Nancy paid for dozens of anonymous billboards in and around Milwaukee and two Ohio cities warning residents of the penalties for committing voter fraud. Democrats and civil rights groups complained that the signs - which were taken down last week - were concentrated in minority neighborhoods and intended to suppress the election turnout, though some were posted as far out as Waukesha and Washington counties." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...
... Gail Collins: "P.G. Sittenfeld ... is a member of the Cincinnati City Council who went to battle recently over a series of billboards that popped up in minority neighborhoods announcing 'VOTER FRAUD IS A FELONY!' with a picture of a gavel banging down. The ads ... were paid for by a foundation led by a big Republican donor from Wisconsin. Now they're down, and thanks in part to Sittenfeld's yelps, there are new billboards in the same neighborhoods saying, 'Hey, Cincinnati: Voting Is a Right, Not a Crime.' So there's a happy ending. Although, in an ideal world, we probably wouldn't be required to remind folks that voting for president is not against the law."
Presidential Race
Dashiel Bennett of the Atlantic: "Political polling guru Nate Silver is so confident in his statistical models that he just offered to bet MSNBC's Joe Scarborough $1,000 that Barack Obama will win re-election. Scarborough ... criticized Silver's math earlier this week, saying that 'Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue ... they're jokes.' He was specifically talking about Silver's FiveThirtyEight website, which shows Mitt Romney with just a 1-in-4 chance of becoming president." ...
... Missed this one (& evidently so did Scarborough), but it's helpful. Statistician Andrew Gelman in a New York Times op-ed on "what 'too close to call' really means.... I can simultaneously (a) accept that Obama has a 72 percent chance of winning and (b) say the election is too close to call. What if the weatherman told you there was a 30 percent chance of rain -- would you be shocked if it rained that day? No. To put it another way, suppose Mitt Romney pulls out 51 percent of the popular vote and wins the election. That doesn't mean that Nate Silver skews the polls (as is suggested by this repulsive article at Examiner.com, which, among other things, criticizes Silver for being thin and having a soft voice). Romney winning the election with 51 percent of the vote is well within the margin of error, as Silver clearly indicates. That's what too close to call is all about."
Here's Gov. Christie (R-NJ) running up President Obama's numbers:
... Reid Epstein & Josh Gerstein of Politico have the story. ...
... More from Mark Landler & Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "The president placed a hand on Mr. Christie's back, guided him to Marine One, where the two men shared a grim flight over shattered sea walls, burning houses and a submerged roller coaster."
... In this world all things are possible. Here's Mark Halperin, in a video he uploaded of himself (natch!), wherein he makes a cogent point: "The coverage of the storm is going to carry all the way through the election ... and the President has hit every mark on substance and on stage craft.... So, he's going to blot out a lot of the effort of Republicans to message. The other thing is, what was Mitt Romney's closing argument? "I can work across the aisle. This President has a four year record of failure, doesn't know how to work with the other side." The symbolism of, with Chris Christie, working across the aisle, getting things done, it goes right to the heart of how Mitt Romney wanted to close this election."
Chris McGreal of the Guardian: "Mitt Romney sidestepped a controversy over whether he plans to shut down the federal emergency response agency at an election rally in Florida where he is struggling to hold onto a once commanding lead in the opinion polls.... [Romney] avoided praise for the government's relief response and did not touch on questions dogging him about a statement he made last year saying he would scrap Fema, which has led the post-Sandy recovery efforts.... [Florida] polls put [Romney] up to seven percentage points ahead a month ago, but a New York Times survey on Wednesday has the president back in front, even if only by one point. If Romney fails to take Florida, he stands little chance of winning the election."
If all the reporters in all the world were only as tenacious as Akhilleus, they would have unearthed the Romney-Ryan Emergency Management Plan. Thanks to Akhilleus for breaking the story. I feel safer already. Mmm Mmm Good:
... By the way, the Romney campaign purchased that Campbell's soup at an Ohio Wal-Mart. McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed: the campaign decided to turn a planned Ohio rally into a "storm relief event." "But the last-minute nature of the call for donations left some in the campaign concerned that they would end up with an empty truck. So the night before the event, campaign aides went to a local Wal-Mart and spent $5,000 on granola bars, canned food, and diapers to put on display while they waited for donations to come in, according to one staffer. (The campaign confirmed that it 'did donate supplies to the relief effort,' but would not specify how much it spent.)" Coppins' whole story is a hoot. ...
... Kevin Drum with a brief recent history of FEMA: "At a deep ideological level, Republicans believe that federal bureaucracies are inherently inept, so when Republicans occupy the White House they have no interest in making the federal bureaucracy work. And it doesn't. Democrats, by contrast, take government services seriously and appoint people whose job is to make sure the federal bureaucracy does work. And it does." ...
... Paul Krugman: "George Bush the elder turned the agency into a dumping ground for hacks, with bad results; Clinton revived the agency; Bush the younger ruined it again; Obama revived it again; and Romney -- with everyone still remembering Brownie and Katrina! -- said that he wants to block-grant and privatize it. (And as far as I can tell, even TV news isn't letting him Etch-A-Sketch the comment away)."
Nicholas Kristof: Time to talk not just about the weather but about climate change. "The Times has reported that three of the 10 biggest floods in Lower Manhattan since 1900 have occurred in the last three years.... 'Of the 10 warmest summers on record for the contiguous United States, seven have occurred since 2000,' notes Jake Crouch of the National Climatic Data Center.... Politicians have dropped the ball, but so have those of us in the news business. The number of articles about climate change fell by 41 percent from 2009 to 2011.... We'll also need a stronger FEMA -- which makes Romney's past suggestions that FEMA be privatized particularly myopic." ...
... Bill Clinton on Obama v. Romney re: climate change, in Minneapolis Tuesday:
... David Edwards of Raw Story: "In fact, Romney's joke about climate change had come during the Republican National Convention, not the first debate, but that doesn't change the point that Clinton was making. 'President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet,' Romney had said. 'My promise is to help you and your family.' As Grist's Philip Bump pointed out, Obama's 2008 remarks about climate change have been used over and over again by conservatives to portray him "as an effete other." ... What Romney argues is a classic false choice: the idea that we must either choose to save the environment or put people to work.'"
Here's the end of "The Conversation" between David F. Brooks & Gail Collins: "David: 'As Sandy reminds us, there are many other things in most people's lives that are much more important than politics.' Gail: 'Politics is about everything! How we organize our society. What responsibilities we have to our fellow citizens. I wish it could hold back the tide, but at least politics lets us figure out how we'll prepare for the cleanup.'"
** Patricia Mazzel of the Miami Herald: "Yesterday ... Mitt Romney was onstage in Miami talking about the need to unite the country and to stop all the attacks. On Spanish-language TV, though..., his campaign has begun heavily running [an] ad that links President Barack Obama with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro's niece and communist revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. The campaign, despite repeated requests, didn't furnish the ad." Read the whole post. Includes iPhone video copy of ad & English-language script. CW: ¿Como se dice "slimeball" en español? Via Greg Sargent.
Sarah Jones of PoliticusUSA has a rundown of what newspapers are saying about Romney's Jeep lie. And she makes this point: "The press has finally caught Romney in a lie that can't be explained away. And why is that? Because this lie impacts corporations.... When workers came forward to tell of how Romney decimated their jobs they were dismissed as sore losers. When women came forward to tell of how Romney tried to force them to give up their child for adoption or not have a life-saving abortion, they are ignored and the press gives Romney a pass on his extremist views on women's freedom. But when Mitt Romney started lying about corporations, that was too much." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...
... The Cleveland Leader was particularly scathing: "We all know that lying and politics go hand-in-hand, but Mitt Romney is really taking the cake this year.... After being blasted by the auto industry for making false claims at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, last week that Chrysler was going to move jobs from their Jeep plant in Ohio to China, Romney's campaign decided to solidify the blatant lies in a television ad suggesting the exact same thing. Despite the claims be called outright lies by Chrysler itself, which has invested over $500 million into the Jeep factory in Ohio, Romney's campaign is not backing down. Instead, they've opted to triple down on the assertion that Chrysler is moving Ohio jobs to China in a new radio ad that began running in Ohio on Tuesday." ...
... New York Times Editors: "Mitt Romney can't admit that the auto bailout helped Detroit and America, so instead he invents problems with it.... In a flailing, last-minute grab for Ohio, Mr. Romney is providing a grim preview of what kind of president he would be."
Igor Volsky of Think Progress: during an appearance on MSNBC, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) "accused the Obama administration of promulgating regulations that are undermining job creation at [American Motors,] an auto manufacturer [once run by George Romney] that has been defunct since 1988. CW: after dodging a question "about Mitt Romney's dishonest claims regarding Jeep," Blackburn, who is from the 1950s, putt-putted away in her Nash Rambler, her perfect pageboy still perfect & her copious crinolines nearly filling the cab of the tiny AMC vehicle. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link.
Greg Palast of the Nation in Truthout: in Toledo, Ohio, today, "Bob King, President of the United Automobile Workers, will announce that his union and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have filed a formal complaint with the US Office of Government Ethics ... stating that Gov. Romney improperly hid a profit of $15.3 million to $115.0 million in Ann Romney's so-called 'blind' trust. The union chief says, 'The American people have a right to know about Gov. Romney's potential conflicts of interest, such as the profits his family made from the auto rescue. It's time for Gov. Romney to disclose or divest.'" The issue revolves around Ann Romney's investment in Delphi Corp. auto parts, where she made about a 4,000 percent profit, partly as a result of Delphi's holding bailout negotiations hostage. Palast has the details here (in a story I linked some while back). Thanks to reader Janet L. for the link.
CW: This is not Charles Pierce's most compelling essay, but for those of you considering voting for the Green party's Jill Stein, Pierce's unenthusiastic endorsement of Barack Obama might help dissuade you.
Jed Lewison of Daily Kos has produced an Obama ad of the sort Romney's staff would make if they were in charge of Obama's campaign:
AND this little girl is fed up with both of them. Thanks to contributor Mushiba for the link. In the "Why Didn't I Think of That? Department," let us be grateful to a little child for bringing us "Bronco Bamma":
Congressional Races
"The Rape Thing." Aviva Shen of Think Progress: "John Koster, a Republican running for Congress in Washington [state]..., said he would support abortion only if the woman's life is in danger, but would not extend the same right to women who are survivors of incest or 'the rape thing,' as he casually termed it. To justify his opposition, Koster insisted that incest is rare and argued that abortion would only further hurt rape survivors." CW: A reader, who lives in Koster's Congressional district, says this bozo has a chance of winning against a good Democratic candidate: "Even in this blue state, we have a lot of Tea Party nuts," she writes.
Kevin Robillard of Politico: "Former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel will cross party lines on Thursday and endorse Democrat Bob Kerrey in his effort to return to the U.S. Senate, according to a report. The Omaha World-Herald reports Hagel will back Kerrey, a fellow Vietnam War veteran whom he served with in the Senate. Kerrey is running against State Sen. Deb Fischer, and a World-Herald poll released last week showed Fischer's lead shrinking to just three points after she held a double-digit lead for months." CW: Kerrey may be a putz, but he's our putz. So rah, rah, etc., etc.
Something Else
Matt Miller, in the Washington Post: "I’ve always felt that a deeper appreciation of the role that luck plays in life could form the basis of a consensus for bolder measures to get serious about equal opportunity, economic security and a minimally decent life in America. For the truth is it's not just poor kids nowadays who are buffeted by forces outside their control. When it comes to the fate of the middle class in an era of globalization and rapid technological change, the waters are rising all around us." ...
... Here's the post by Richard Posner which Miller cites.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Widespread gas shortages stirred fears among residents and disrupted some rescue and emergency services on Thursday as the New York region struggled to return to a semblance of normalcy after being ravaged by Hurricane Sandy. Tiny increments of progress -- some subway and bus lines were back in service -- were overshadowed by new estimates of the storm's financial cost, struggles to restore power, and by the discovery of more bodies in flooded communities."
New York Times: "The soggy marshes and still-damp ruins of homes on Staten Island yielded a grim postscript to the toll from Hurricane Sandy on Thursday, as search teams discovered more bodies where the storm's giant wall of water had smashed its way through.... In all, the death toll from the storm in the United States and Canada reached 95, with 48 deaths in New York State, 40 of them in the city. Twelve deaths have been reported in New Jersey and four in Connecticut. The storm also killed at least 69 people in the Caribbean before it whipped toward the Northeast, including at least 54 in Haiti and 11 in Cuba."
AP: "A senior Secret Service agent who was being investigated by the government for failing to disclose a long-standing relationship with a foreign citizen killed himself last week in Washington.... Rafael Prieto, a married father assigned to the security detail for President Barack Obama, had acknowledged to U.S. investigators that he had been having an affair for years with a woman from Mexico...."
New York Times: "A new video from the Syria conflict that circulated via the Internet on Thursday showed antigovernment fighters armed with rifles kicking and summarily executing a group of prisoners, apparently soldiers or militiamen, in what human rights activists called evidence of a war crime and another indication that both sides were increasingly committing atrocities."
New York Times: "Amid intensifying criticism, New York Road Runners continued Thursday to prepare for the New York City Marathon with an abbreviated schedule of events leading to the race. With the death count from Hurricane Sandy growing, hundreds of thousands still without power, and air, rail and ferry service struggling to resume, some runners and elected officials have called for Sunday's marathon to be canceled or postponed. Police, fire and other essential public services, they said, should be focused on helping those most in need. Nevertheless, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, aware that the marathon generates hundreds of millions of dollars for the city, repeated Thursday that the race would go on."
Reuters: "New Jersey natives Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi will join Sting and other top music stars on Friday for a special television benefit concert NBC to aid victims of Sandy, the giant storm that killed scores and devastated large sections of the U.S. Northeast."
AP: Rezwan Ferdaus, "a Massachusetts man, was sentenced Thursday to 17 years in prison in a plot to fly remote-controlled model planes packed with explosives into the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol."
Sorry, Mitt. Reuters: "Companies added 158,000 jobs in October in the biggest gain in eight months, data from a payrolls processor showed on Thursday in a revamped report on the private sector labor market."
Gallup: "U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, fell to 7.0% for the month of October, down significantly from the 7.9% measured at the end of September. Gallup's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is 7.4%, improved more than a half a point from September."
AP: "Weekly applications for unemployment benefits dropped 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 363,000 last week, a level consistent with modest hiring."
Bloomberg News: "Confidence among American consumers climbed in October to a more than four-year high, which may help drive bigger gains in the largest part of the economy."
AP: "People along the battered U.S. East Coast slowly began reclaiming their daily routines Thursday, even as crews searched for victims and tens of thousands remained without power after superstorm Sandy claimed more than 70 lives."
New York Times: "Subways and buses started to roll again in some sections of New York City on Thursday, promising a morning commute at least slightly more fluid than Wednesday's gridlock brought on by Hurricane Sandy."
New York Times: "Though the storm raged up the East Coast, it has become increasingly apparent that New Jersey took the brunt of it. Officials estimated that the state suffered many billions of dollars in property damage. About a quarter of the state's population -- more than two million people -- remained without power on Wednesday, and more than 6,000 were still in shelters, state emergency officials said. At least eight people died, and officials expressed deep concerns that the toll would rise as more searches of homes were carried out."
Washington Post: "The Obama administration has spent the past several months in secret diplomatic negotiations aimed at building a new Syrian opposition leadership structure that it hopes can win the support of minority groups still backing President Bashar al-Assad. The strategy, to be unveiled at a Syrian opposition meeting next week in Qatar, amounts to a last-ditch effort to prevent extremists from gaining the upper hand within the opposition and to stop the Syrian crisis from boiling over into the greater Middle East." ...
... Washington Post: "Nearly a week of fighting between Kurds and Arab rebels in northern Syria risks opening a new front in the already bloody battle for control of the country, underscoring the complexity of a conflict that threatens to ignite sectarian and ethnic tensions across the region. Efforts were underway Wednesday between the leadership of the rebel Free Syrian Army and Kurdish representatives in Turkey to negotiate an end to the clashes, in which scores of hostages have been seized and more than 40 fighters on both sides killed."
Bloomberg Business Week: "U.S. regulators proposed a record $469.9 million in penalties against Barclays Plc (BARC), and an additional $18 million on four of its former traders, as part of stepped up enforcement against energy-market manipulation."
New York Times: "A British bank says it has frozen the estate of the disgraced television host Jimmy Savile because of possible claims for damages arising from accusations of sexual abuse that include misconduct on the premises of the British Broadcasting Corporation and at hospitals where he pursued charitable projects."
AP: "China has test flown a second model of a prototype stealth fighter, aviation experts said Thursday, in a sign of its aircraft industry's growing sophistication."
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Pennsylvania "State Attorney General Linda Kelly is expected to announce today that former Penn State University President Graham Spanier has been charged in relation to the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, according to sources close to the investigation. The sources, who requested anonymity, said Mr. Spanier is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice." ...
... USA Today Update: "Former Penn State president Graham Spanier and two other former administrators were charged Thursday with perjury, obstruction of justice and endangering children in an alleged coverup of sexual abuse of children by assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky." The Philadelphia Inquirer story is here.
Reuters: "The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will investigate Lance Armstrong's 2000 Olympics bronze medal after the American was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles in the biggest doping scandal to hit the sport."
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Reader Comments (27)
The WaPo has an interactive feature that allows one to attempt to balance Mitt's $5,000,000,000 tax cut. I don't like to call Democrats liars, but I ended up with a $4,300,000,000 surplus. It wasn't difficult.
Cowichan,
So let's see: you killed Medicare, Medicaid, the mortgage deduction, drop kicked the ACA, shuttered the Pentagon, and had Big Bird stuffed. Either that or you simply closed all the loopholes for The Rat and all his billionaire buddies.
Ackhilleus,
And of course, get rid of FEMA.
The ACA, on the other hand, will not be a net drain on the budget, but the opposite.
It's so funny that Zomney who is supposed to be such a financial whiz thinks the best way to raise money is by lowering taxes. Since they are at historic lows for recent times, it seems a half baked plan to be sure.
The real issue is what would ROMNEY cut to pay for his revenue reductions?
I pray we'll never know!
Just listened to the Obama-Christie presser. I was aghast the entire time Christie was speaking. I thought he was going to drop to his knees in front of the President and become a graphic endorsement for gay rights while wearing a "4 more years" T-shirt. There is no possibility that Christie will be speaking on behalf of Lord SB in the remainder of time before the election. The President was complimentary to Christie but in a much more paternal way. He even mentioned Christie's "leadership". During Obama's remarks, Christie stood behind his shoulder acting like a bobble-head in affirmation to most everything the President said.
A faint glimmer of hope that the media has finally realized that Lord SB is stranded on a bridge too far over a roiling cesspool. Can't see how he gets himself in the playing field with Obama at this point, what with the endorsement of Obama from his campaign chair Christie, the Chrysler shit, the FEMA shit and the skeazy photo-op. Bully your way out of that asswipe. The last viable argument is he's black and I'm not.
Isn't it delicious that Christie has turned the tables on Lord SB who doesn't have a loyal bone in his body. And better yet, the repugnant and ooogly Ryan can't escape the taint of having had the Lord rub his small balls all over him.
Marie: Can we then assume that you voted without incident or long lines?
On another matter, it appears that there is a good chance both Mack and Bono-Mack will be in the unemployment queue come January; a nice twofer.
Victoria,
If we think about this problem in another way, it slides down the precipitous slope of Mt. Moot. Anyone hanging their chapeau on any guarantee of Willard's will be picking it up off the floor and brushing it clean of all the bullshit. And, brothers and sisters, the amount of bullshit emanating from the smelly environs of Mondo Ratto is fucking prodigious.
This pig is so soul-less, obfuscatory, and sleazily mendacious as to shame career criminals who would lie to their mother on the verge of death about curtailing their drinking but pound down a four finger shot just around the corner from her deathbed.
I believe that even a lying pig like Nixon would stand in stupefied awe at the way Romney treats truth as if it were toilet paper.
A bigger liar this nation has never seen , so trying to do the Romney Gazintas, as Jethro Clampitt used to call them, attempting to divine The Rat's tax math is an exercise in Ratility.
@James Singer. I had to stand in line about half-an-hour to 40 minutes, which isn't too bad. The poll workers seemed frazzled and confused, but that's par for the course. We vote with paper ballots in Lee County -- a reassuring thing -- and the ballot was 9 pages long, largely because of 11 state constitutional amendments which the low-lifes in our state legislature put on the ballot. The League of Women Voters, which usually just provides nonpartisan voter information, said vote against 'em all, so I did. I also voted to retain all the judges & justices, so Rick Scott -- America's Worst Governor -- wouldn't get to appoint their replacements.
The workers put the multi-page ballots in a plastic sleeve so no one can see your totally secret votes. I was happy to have a binder full of ballots, especially knowing Mitt was right up the road, asking for my vote. Somehow my husband -- a registered Democrat -- got on Willard's list of potential donors, so he gets mail asking for money all the time. The first letter was very nice and said don't send anything less than $75,000. I told my husband to stuff all the papers in the return envelope & said it back. He didn't. It turns out for $75,000+, you don't even get a postage stamp.
As for the Bono-Macks, they can always get jobs at Hooters, though Mrs. Bono-Mack is looking a little long in the tooth (meow!) so I'm not sure how she'd, ah, stack up.
Marie
@Marie
When I read and hear about the long lines to vote - and yours is shorter than some - I really have to treasure that Washinton and Oregon have all mail -in ballots.
Works great!
The part of my brain that is not hopelessly cynical thinks that Chris Christie woke up Monday morning--realized he had been in a complete fugue state--and had taken the wrong train, over the bridge to nowhere. Also, that his ambivalent lover, Mitty, was a promiscuous whore who secretly calls him "Fatty." Bet if he has not already voted, Christie will vote for O'Bama!
I am no longer worried about the election. I think Obama has it in the bag. I would not be at all surprised if he gets Wisconsin, Colorado, Ohio, Florida and Virginia--or 3 out of the 5.
I just talked to a friend in NoVa, who is canvassing for Obama. She went to my old neighborhood and knocked at a door--which was answered by Frank Luntz. Yikes! He was in the midst of getting ready for a fundraiser for Lord SB and told my friend she could save some time by "going home and putting on a pot of soup," HUH? Little woman back to the kitchen? What an asswiper--as Diane would say.
As ambivalent as I have been about Obama, I am so pleased he has taken up the Democratic mantle of "being our brother's keeper," and returned FEMA into a sound, competent agency of the government. Old Michael (Arabian Horse Up His Ass) Brown is reduced to whining about how Obama mishandled the Benghazi incident. This guy is so brain-dead, he does not even remember that he let die (YES, LET DIE) so many innocent (poor) people during Katrina.
Remember the Supremes!
Here is a 22 second YouTube that expresses the sentiments of many: "Tired of Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OjrthOPLAKM
Re: Maureen Dowd video; I'm from a small town on the left coast so I don't know much about the Beltway. When did Ms. Dowd start calling Obama "Bronco"? Should she not be wearing a black 'Hello Kitty' raincoat?
Friend of mine came up with reason for why people might vote for Mitt. He said here in America we have the right to be stupid.
We were discussing one issue voters; three guys we know of; completely different in all matters except one: guns, guns and guns. The right to bear arms and be stupid. Exceptionally stupid.
When I clicked on the video of that little girl crying, my ten year old grandson, who was at the next desk doing his homework, perked up and said, "Why is she crying?" I played it again while he watched. He laughed at the "Bronco Bamma" and then said, "I bet she's crying because of all the arguments she hears." Out of the mouths of... And yesterday he mentioned how many "Linda" signs he had seen on people's lawns and said "Looks like a lot of Republicans around here." Future politician, fer sure.
Journalists of late must have heard Kate Madison's cries of the Supreme Court reminder because there are now quite a few articles about the importance of whom we elect and how that would affect the court. And now that Sandy has paid us a visit, Global warming is back on the docket–––so predicable, isn't it? Too bad it doesn't seem to work with gun control. Too bad it doesn't work with all of Romney's other lies––he has yet to divulge his tax past and this seems to have been forgotten––among the other thousand and ones.
The more you know about the Koster story, the more interesting (read: sadly Rightwing) and illustrative it becomes.
Koster is one of two perennial Congressional candidates from my home town, one river valley south of where I now live. Koster presents himself as a dairy farmer, when in fact he has for years made his living as a county councilman, replete with all the taxpayer funded benefits that thereto accrue. That's the backdrop for his political career, which he has made by decrying government's reach (except when it contradicts his evangelical Christian morality) and power to tax. Of course, he sees no irony here. As a righty, he's inoculated against it; if you can't reason in the first place, you certainly can't perceive reason turned on its head to make a point.
The last two election cycles Koster ran against Rick Larson, U.S. representative who grew up in the same town. Two years ago, in the Republican surge Koster came within a few hundred votes of winning. Then population growth gave us a new district, the one in which Koster is now running. It extends from the Seattle area north to the border on the east side of I-5 to the spine of the Cascades. As the new district wends north, it has bunched more rural, up-river as they are locally termed, folks, those more likely to support Koster's no-tax, don't bother me, stance in one voting bloc. While this new district's demographics are more suburban and wealthier toward its south end, we won't know how its conflicting impulses will all sort out until next week. In any case I'm sure our representative, Mr. Larsen, is happy Mr. Koster is out of his hair.
In the meantime I see the new district as an interesting north-south rendition of the more common east-west, up-river and down-river political split that divides most of the territory fronting the east side of Puget Sound, the urban/suburban/rural divide that has always been with us. In the western half of our blue state, it's still easy to locate and to predict where we will find the pockets of red. Mr. Koster hopes they are large enough to carry him to Congress, where he can make a fool of himself on a larger stage.
I am pleased to report that last night we had many many trick or treaters, all little kids, and not one of them wore anything that was election-related or at all political -- not even a Washington or Lincoln. There's hope.
@KenWinkes
We must be neighbors as I am in Larsen's district, too. I am just furious that a know-nothing like Koster might get to represent our great state in Congress. Polls show his race with DelBene to be close, so I just donated more money to her; she is very intelligent and well qualified. But the fact that Koster is doing as well as he is reflects the ideological extremism of the Tea Party folks on the east side of the spiny new 1st District. Your point is so well taken - it is like a microcosm of the east west split that is our state.
The many, many logical fallacies of the Rat.
Marie today pointed out one of the routine logical fallacies employed by the Rat and the Fraud and, across a much broader landscape, the charred earth darkened by the rest of the GOP, ground from which not a blade of truth will likely ever spring again.
Marie mentioned the way the Rat uses false choices or false dichotomies to frame an issue. This is a standard ploy often used by politicians of both sides to create the impression that voters can either side with them and save America or sprout horns and snuggle up to satan.
It’s a highly effective scam with low information voters and those who know far more about the vicissitudes of life as a Kardashian than they do about climate change, something not nearly as important to most of them compared to Kim Kardashian’s weekly boinking schedule.
It’s especially useful because it doesn’t require much effort in making a case for your argument. You simply say, you either agree with me or tomorrow morning we’ll all be speaking Arabic and obeying Sharia Law. In this particular case, the Rat is trying to denigrate the idea of addressing climate change by stating that it’s either the environment or jobs. Which do you want? Left unanswered is his argument’s hanging chad which asks what kind of jobs will be available when we’re all underwater? Stand-in work for Sponge Bob Square Pants?
Okay, so that’s one. Another link provided here on RC this morning takes us to the pages of the WaPo (which I don’t visit nearly as often as I used to since they summarily dismissed Dan Froomkin—a real reporter—and opened a side industry serving as a vacation spot for former Bush lie-writers and out of work neo-con hacks) and a story about how the Rat and other Modern GOP functionaries are spreading a thick veneer of human waste over the voting process in Wisconsin. The fact that Republicans are trying to steal the election and/or deny or impede legal voters from exercising their franchise is not news. Any time there’s an important election the GOP will sneak in the back door and attack democracy with pick axes and pry bars. What interested me was the response of the Romney campaign:
”It’s obvious Democrats are losing when they start peddling the same tired and false attacks they use every election cycle,” said spokesman Ryan Williams. “Our campaign is seeking open and fair elections where every legal vote counts and desperate claims otherwise are offensive and wrong.”
Sound familiar?
This is the famous Argumentum ad Fatigum. The idea is to defuse your opponents point by simply stating something along the lines of “What, this old thing? We’ve been over this ground many times before. No need to do it any longer.” Most famously, it was employed by Saint Ronald of Reagan when confronted by Jimmy Carter about his stance on Medicare. Reagan’s answer was no answer at all, but a slap across the face in the form of an argument from fatigue: “There you go again.” For the record, Carter was entirely correct. Reagan hated Medicare. He once described it as “socialized medicine”. But ask anyone if they can remember what Reagan’s mocking answer was in response to. The smarmy line is memorable but it never answered the question.
The argumentum ad fatigum was employed to great advantage by lying cocksuckers Bush and Cheney during the run-up to their “war as a first option” reaction to 9/11. By whining about “how many times do we have to go over this with you people?”, they effectively convinced low information voters and other incurious Georges that there must be something to what they say. The AAF is also effective when trying to belittle excellent arguments. By screaming over and over again about death panels and socialism in medicine and death panels, again, Republicans never needed any serious rebuttals to why we shouldn’t have a decent health care system, they only needed to wear everyone down. The Argumentum ad Fatigum is designed to grind down opposition when you have no answer and no real ideas.
The larger problem, of course, is that there is so little critical thinking in play during elections that candidates like the Rat and the Fraud can pile up logical fallacies faster than Donald Trump can say something else stupid. If we had a much more attuned and interested electorate, red flags like false choices and arguments from fatigue would elicit more questions than fewer.
But we don’t live in that country, do we?
As Ken says, if one can't reason, one will be unable to see that reason has been upended.
Oh well, onward. I’m sure there’ll be plenty more instances of rape of logic and reason from the Rat and the GOP today. They being so enamored of rape, and all…
Ken and Victoria,
I read that this Koster person is yet another GOP moron who has weighed in on "the rape thing", concluding that a woman impregnated from a rape should not be allowed to terminate this pregnancy since that would be more violence perpetrated on her. The fact that one act is inflicted by force and the other a willful choice seems to escape this moron. Good luck to all in that district. Sheesh. Where do these people come from?
Ken and Victoria,
I read that this Koster person has also deemed it his responsibility, as a representative of GOP morality, to lecture women on how they should react to "the rape thing" as he calls it. His decision is that allowing a woman to terminate a pregnancy resulting from a rape would be wrong because it would be additional violence she would have to endure.
The fact that the first act was inflicted on her through force while the second would be one of willful choice seems to escape this idiot.
Seriously, where do they find these people?
Good luck to residents of that district if this guy wins.
One more reason for right-wingers to do the victim tango.
Conservative research hack-attack organization, Center for Media and Public Affairs (wonder how they ever got that name okayed without some reference to America or Freedom in the title), has issued a breathless report that late night comedians make more fun of Romney than ALL DEMOCRATS COMBINED!!!!
No, really?
Maybe it's because a) they're in the business of being funny, and b) the Republican Party and Mittens, in particular, are fucking clowns.
Also, most comedians complain bitterly that Obama just doesn't offer them much raw material, whereas Romney and Ryan (not to mention Trump, Gingrich, Bachmann, Perry, Akin, and on and on...) pretty much run around with "Kick me" signs pinned to their pants (the front, too).
It's like being outraged that investigators pursuing studies of mentally disturbed patients go to institutions where such individuals are treated or housed.
But it ain't a good day without screams of outrage and cries of victimization from the right. Right?
Oh, by the by, this thing, whachamacallit, the CMPA is run by hacks formerly employed by the American Enterprise Institute (talk about institutions for the mentally disturbed!) and now supported by grants from the Scaifes, with seed money coming from Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan. Some non-partisan operation. The head of the CMPA is also a paid "analyst" for Fox Television. Oh yeah, that reminds me. They released a report last year that declared Fox the most unbiased and most reliable TV network. EVER.
Yawn.
Akhilleus, You ask" where do you find these people". I live in a rural area 'these people' are everywhere like horse apples on a country road in an Amish neighborhood. They get together at their church socials, Legion meetings, sportsman's dinners and kid's football money raisers and reenforce each others mindless prejudices. They have a tad more money than their neighbors they call 'trailer trash' and thus believe what is good for billionaires is good for them. They don't realize their place at the table is on the menu of the billionares.
More good news from the great state of Ohio. This just in: voters who are given wrong information by poll workers in "special" neighborhoods (wink, wink), will have their votes tossed out by Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, who took his case to a panel of three Bush appointed judges who all agreed that he should continue disenfranchising Democratic voters all, you know, on the up and up, and not, as usual, by just tossing out ballots or using hackers to change votes (although that shit will still go on anyway).
The most important thing about this, aside from its rank duplicity and immorality, is that, according to Firedoglake, Ohio Republicans had tens of thousands of votes killed in past elections using similar tactics. If this race really does come down to a few hundred thousand votes, 20,000 votes tossed here, 50,000 votes tossed there, pretty soon you're talking a Rat infested White House.
It's funny that Republicans, who are always screaming about (non-existent) voter fraud and mischief at the polls, are the only ones who ever do this kind of nasty shit.
Maybe there's a "special" ring of hell for these fuckers. I'll have to ask Dante if I ever get to meet him.
I'm somewhat bolstered by the fact that Nate Silver is willing to bet loudmouth scumbag Joe Scarborough a thousand bucks that the president will be re-elected, and by Kate's assessment of the race as a closed case. Bolstered but not entirely free from concern.
There's always the chance that all these hustles, large and small, being run down on the American public by Republican con men and gangsters may add up to quite a fiasco when the votes are counted. There is talk now that the GOP has several contingency plans in place if the cheese stands alone next Tuesday night. First, scream Fraud at the Polls. Then try to get members of the Electoral College to declare themselves "faithless electors" and vote for Romney instead. I wouldn't put anything past these assholes.
So RTFS. And, if you don't live there, be thankful you don't have to vote in Ohio.
I just heard that Obama plans to spend the night before the campaign at a rally in Madison, Wisconsin--which will be raucous and enthusiastic. Smart on so many levels--that "energy thing" for openers. This will, for sure, get lots of coverage and the students and town folk will be out in throngs. And no Tea Partiers with racist signs or Lord SB supporters. If those cretins show up, the citizens will throw him/her/them off a pier into Lake Mendota!
Several of you who live in Washington State talked about the Blue/Red split. It is exactly the same in Oregon. Portland, Corvallis, Eugene, Ashland and the Central Coast (where I live) are bright blue. The entire western part is bright red, and that is a much larger area. To look on an electoral map which has been broken down into counties, Oregon looks like one of the reddest of states. But no--it is the much higher population the much smaller western part of the state. But, there is even a small exurb of Portland that is red. Poor, uneducated, religious, Tea Party types. They must have a sad life--living in the midst of all that blue weirdness.
Re: slimeball in any language: se dice "sin verguanza". Loosely, "without honor". "Cajodo" works too.
@ Akhilleus: I eliminated the mortgage interest deduction, health care exemption, carried interest loophole, tax preference for investment income, private jet credit, coal, oil, and gas subsidies, sugar subsidies, and limited charitable deductions to $5000. All this raises just $350,000,000 while Mitt cuts $455,000,000
So I acted politically and raised taxes again. Adding a carbon tax raised the $105 million. Balance accomplished but why stop there? Adding a narrow value added tax,reinstating Clinton era estate taxes, increasing social security payroll taxes to $170,000, a gasoline tax of 25 cents per gallon and cutting the military by $300,000,000 raised another $628,800,000.
All this and all I've accomplished is to reach a balanced budget. I'll leave it up to you to raise the money to pay down the $16 trillion of debt.
Hello all. Life has partly returned. An hour after my last post on Monday, the big bang (transformer) popped and the power was gone.
Just came back. It is still total chaos in NJ. Biggest problem is most gas stations have no power so there is very little gas available unless you want to wait in line 2-3 hours. Many people couldn't get to work even if there was work. I did catch a little TV yesterday and managed to see that Chris Christie is an Obama fan.
The good news is I have not seen Mitt for three days!
I believe this may be the worst natural disaster in US history. We will see how the Feds and the State respond.
@Marvin Schwalb. Welcome back. I'm so glad you're okay.
Doesn't do much good to have a generator if you can't get gas. We had that problem in the severe hurricanes here, which were more than a few years ago. The state has since required gas stations to run their pumps on generators. Maybe more states will start doing that now that everybody everywhere is experiencing long power outages from climate-changed-induced storms.
Haven't heard from Mitt? That's funny. He said he was sending you a can of tomato soup.
Marie
@The Constant Weader: Better a can of soup than the diapers. There isn't enough katsup in the world.