The Party's Over

The party that denies science and even near-unanimous scientific findings because scientists are politically motivated and don't have the right religious beliefs, but instead this party coalesces around a few paranoid beliefs that it continues to hold despite all evidence that they are not true.  The party that says that education and public information media are in the hands of the wrong people and therefore nothing they say can ever be trusted--only the party and its related institutions can be trusted. 

The party that says it is for the people, but works hard to deny people it doesn't like any vote or influence.  The party that says it is for restricted government but zealously supports and--when in power--enacts laws that extend government power into the private lives of citizens.  The party that uses extreme rhetoric and glorifies violence.  The party that mutters darkly about certain minorities and proposes laws to control, marginalize or just get rid of them.  The party that lies as a matter of course and policy, and its adherents believe the ends justify any means, because it alone follows divine will, it alone is patriotic, it alone is in the Right.  

While many in the country failed to take this party seriously, or to believe it meant what it said, and therefore didn't feel the need to oppose it, it gained in strength until it took complete power.

What party would this be?  And in what country?  What year?

We're witnessing an amazing moment in American politics.  The Rabid Right which has taken over the Republican Party with the cooperation of its power structure, now threatens to topple that structure as well.  The signal event of course is Todd Akin's refusal to kowtow to the GOPer power structure and drop out of the race for the U.S. Senate from Missouri.  Nobody outside Missouri even knew his name a few days ago, but his remarks on "legitimate rape" etc. created a media and political firestorm.  Every establishment GOPer imaginable condemned his remarks and called on him to drop out.  His establishment money has dried up, at least for now.  But the Rabid Religious Right leaders came to his rescue, and evidently he's raking in enough contributions to feel he can defy them.  Besides, he's reportedly the latest GOP politician to believe that God told him to run.

What is temporarily important here is that the GOPer establishment went on the record, and he is defying them. They've lost control of their own party.  If he stays in and especially if he wins that seat, there will be no stopping the Rabid Right.  Their influence on  Romney, which has already proven to be decisive, would itself grow to become uncontrollable. 

  Also important--and we'll see if it is temporary--is that the Akin affair has shone a searchlight on the GOP platform and its support for a personhood amendment--like the one that vp candidate Paul Ryan supported, cosponsored with Aikin--that would criminalize all abortions in all situations, as well as some common forms of birth control and even in vitro fertilization, which would make three of Romney's sons criminals.  Democrats are busy publicizing the real links between Paul Ryan, Akin and support for these laws.

Democrats, say some stories, can't believe their luck.  It brings back memories of what we used to call the "lunatic fringe," who were always good for a few laughs.  But there is no luck here, and no laughs.  With all the money the Romney campaign is amassing, they can say anything they want to and turn that money into the biggest media megaphone the world has ever seen.  They've already used it to try to turn the tables on Medicare, and by some accounts they've managed to convince people that Obama threatens Medicare but they don't.   Remember that their 2010 victories were largely fueled by just these same baldfaced lies and false claims.

Their totalitarian tendencies are clear in the states where they continue to do everything in their considerable power to deny people their right to vote.  Local election officials in both Ohio and Florida who have legally defied their dictates are being threatened by the GOPer governors with being fired.  In Pennsylvania, they are merely trying to manipulate their supreme court into deciding the fate of that voter ID law after the election.

The GOPers are now far, far to the right of what is generally believed to be the views of the American majority.  Certainly they threaten the rights and the interests of almost every conceivable category apart from fossil fuel billionaires and other wealthy predators--women, Latinos, African Americans, students, the middle class, the poor--and still the polls nationally and in key states are close. 

At this point however there are only two ways that President Obama and most Democrats lose in 2012: that just enough people believe the billion dollar lies, and that just enough people don't vote.  Those who are prevented from voting constitute a deep danger.  But those who simply choose not to vote are the worst.       

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Don't confuse wealth with money."

Print Ritter
(Robert Duvall)
Broken Trail
painting: The Sower by Van Gogh

Don't Give Up

A federal court ruled that Florida's plan to shorten early voting hours discriminates against black citizens.  Under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, five Florida counties are ordered to restore early voting hours.

Though the court could restore hours only in the five counties specifically covered by that section, which applies to areas where discrimination was practiced before, it's clear that asserting that the new restrictions discriminate against minority voters applies generally.  This might make precedent for other cases, even the Pennsylvania ID law, in federal court.  Whether such a case can be brought and decided in time to affect the November election is unclear but doubtful.

The appeal in Commonwealth court to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was filed on Friday. It may be the last chance for timely legal remedy. Also Friday, its most visible plaintiff, 93 year old Viviette Applewhite, finally obtained her temporary ID card which should enable her to vote in November.

Rabid Right sites immediately chortled at the apparent evidence that the case has no merit, but of course they draw exactly the wrong conclusion.  It was only through an arduous, time-consuming process, with plenty of aid from others and likely some bending of the rules that less publicized cases won't get, that resulted in this outcome.  The photo above shows one early step--obtaining a birth certificate.  The Washington Post describes the last steps:

 Applewhite received her identification card after riding two public-transit buses to a Department of Transportation licensing office and presenting a clerk with her Medicare card from the 1990s, a state document listing her name and Social Security number in her own handwriting, and proof of her Philadelphia address, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
None of the documents, however, linked her birth certificate name of Viviette Virene Brooks to Viviette Applewhite. PennDOT’s licensing bureau director Janet Dolan said Friday that clerks are able to make exceptions to the document requirements and work with applicants.

The Pennsylvania ID law is a blatant effort to take away the voting rights of  minority, student and elderly citizens who are likely to vote for Democrats and President Obama.  But until that obvious violation of a basic American right can be remedied in court or by legislation, people need to look at what this 93 year old woman did to defy the intent of this law and vote anyway.  And they need to do  whatever it takes to make their vote count.

It took her not just weeks or even months but years.  Her message: "You just have to keep trying,” Applewhite said. “Don’t give up.”

Re-Running the Nightmare

The polls are going to be pretty useless for the next month.  The next poll that will say something about the state of the presidential race will be in September, a week after the Democratic convention.  Although of course we will be watching the size of the expected bumps after each convention.

The fact that it's August also leads me to not be so concerned with the "enthusiasm" numbers--which purport to measure how many people of each party say they are engaged in the election.  People who have pretty much made up their mind are unlikely to express a lot of interest in the campaign.  Plus people who don't focus until the fall.

But there are some other indications that do trouble me, especially in relation to GOPer voter suppression laws and their likely effect of preventing people who want to vote from doing so, or at least making it harder.

One is a poll finding I saw sweep by on TV--I don't know how credible it is, but it said that of the people who said they do NOT plan to vote, nearly 50% would vote for Obama, and 20% for Romney.

The other is this Boston Globe story which shows that new Democratic registration in swing states is way behind the 2008 pace, despite vigorous efforts by the Obama campaign, and that Republicans and Independents are registering in greater numbers.  The Obama campaign points out that partly because of those huge gains in 2008, there are fewer unregistered Dems and their overall numbers are good, a point that the Globe story concedes to some extent.  But it is troubling nonetheless.

The nightmare I am starting to relive is 2000.  I remember how a lot of voters, including progressives, entirely spoiled by the Clinton years, felt it wasn't all that important who won the presidency, Al Gore or George W. Bush.  It was ok to make a statement for Nader.  It was ok to not bother to follow the campaign, and especially to not bother to vote. 

We all know how that turned out, and believe me, it turned out only a little worse than I believed it would during that summer and fall leading up to the campaign.  Maybe the emotional tide, fed by extraordinary events and creative outpouring, isn't there this year to propel the Obama campaign.  But there should be one motivating emotion, and that's fear. 

The rights and protections that could dissipate and disappear are staggering--there's been nothing like this threat in my lifetime.  A Romney Ryan presidency would be a greater disaster than eight years of Bush, and on top of those, will weaken this country's ability to respond to future dangers and opportunities to a truly scary degree.

This is a big, diverse country with lots of crosscurrents.  But sometimes, as in 2000, a mood takes over and its like watching the last act of a tragedy.  I don't like that feeling.

There's another motivation to consider as well: that this election more than any in my lifetime, the very act of voting is a powerful statement.  It is a powerful statement not only on behalf of candidates, but on behalf of the right to vote itself.  It is the only weapon we all have equally to defend our rights and our lives, and to promote what we believe is essential for the future.  We are always voting for imperfect people in a pretty corrupt system.  But we can help limit the damage and improve the chances for positive change.  We do this one by one, vote by vote.  But if enough of us do so, we get the better outcome.

To not exercise that right and that power is--this year more than ever--to invite losing that right and that power.  To not do everything in your power to vote this year is to cede the future to oligarchs and fascists, without a fight, and quite possibly, weakening or taking away this potent weapon from future generations.

What few policies and positions the Romney Ryan ticket are taking--those that are not outright lies--are so extreme and destructive that some analysts predict a landslide against them.  Women, Latinos, African Americans, seniors, students, the poor, the middle class--virtually everybody but a small number of rich white men and deranged members of the Rabid Right would pay an enormous price if the policies they advocate were put in place, even partially.   Both men are singularly unprepared to be president and vice-president by any standard of any election in generations.  Their domestic policies are oppressive and destructive, their foreign and military policies are all dangerous bluster and aggressive ignorance.  Yet such is the nature of politics in 2012 that complacency by Democratic voters could hand them the reigns of power.

So this is my nightmare that I am now reliving.  I really don't want this nightmare to be rerunning in 2012.

Democracy's Daylight Robbery

A scene in the Hill District of Pittsburgh in 2008 that totalitarian Republicans
 want to make sure doesn't happen in 2012

Some attempted power grabs are subtle.  Some are audacious but obscured--maybe the method is too new to be recognized, or nobody's watching, or everybody is too scared to call it.  But this one is out in the open now, clear as day.

How clear.  Follow the Q & A...

Q
Are any of the new voter ID laws, the new limits on voting times, the attempted purges of registrations, happening in states with Democratic governors and legislatures?

A
No.  None.

Q
When outside groups who study such things have examined the likely impact of these laws, is there even one case where they say the party more likely to benefit is the Democrats?

A
No.  None.

Q
What are three crucial states that the Republican presidential ticket must win in order to win the presidency?

A
Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania.

Q
Did these states go Republican in 2008?

A
No.

Q
Are there new laws suppressing the votes of likely Democratic voters in all three states, estimated by outside groups to be enough to turn the presidential vote to Republican?

A
Yes.  Even in Pennsylvania, where President Obama won by 750.000 votes and leads in the polls by high single or double digits.  That's because the voter ID is expected to disenfranchise upwards of 15% of the voters in Philadelphia, with the bulk of the state's Democratic votes, and where a lot of people don't need to drive and don't have driver's licenses,  particularly if they are poor or simply can't afford the time and money to go through the process of getting birth certificates etc. and applying for these IDs, in time for the November election.  Disenfranchising this many people in the same city, mostly black and Latino, elderly and young voters, is unprecedented in American history.

Q
Are voter ID laws and these other new laws needed to stop rampant voting fraud?

A
No. 
So contemptuous of its own argument was the PA government that they didn't bother offering evidence of in-person voter fraud in PA, because there isn't any.  The only two cases of voting fraud nationally in the news this year are by Republican officials cheating in other ways.  In-person fraud is rare--only 10 documented cases in the last decade, and several of these were dumb mistakes rather than intended to defraud.

Q
Where in Ohio have there been problems with too few voting machines for the number of people who want to vote, resulting in lines so long that it takes upwards of four hours to vote, and so people who can't devote that much time are effectively disenfranchised?

A.
Cities.  Where there are lots of people. Where there are lots of black, Latino, older and younger voters.   And lots of Democrats.

Q
Where did the Republican administration of Ohio target restrictions on voting hours?

A.  Cities.  Where there are lots of people. Where there are lots of black, Latino, older and younger voters.  And lots of Democrats.

Q If these laws were sincere attempts to limit voter fraud while making sure that people have enough time to learn about the law (which changes how they have voted their entire lives) and to acquire the necessary IDs, especially when the places where they can obtain them have very limited hours and staff, why didn't legislators give reasonable time for all of this and mandate that the law takes effect in 2014 or 2016?

A.  Do I really need to answer that?

 Need I go on?  It could not be clearer what the intent is.  It goes way beyond standard politics to attack the one right all Americans have equally, the most fundamental right in a representative democracy.

Two news notes on this topic.  As I predicted, the Ohio sec of state has mandated uniform voting hours throughout the state--everywhere will have restricted hours, virtually guaranteeing the long lines that threw voting into chaos in 2004 but that did not recur in 2008 because of extended hours and more opportunities for early voting.

Early commentary on the PA case faults the judge's legal theory and the precedent he chose. However the judge made some highly questionable judgments on matters of fact.  He rejected the studies that showed that the law disenfranchises up to 9% of PA voters, and apparently also its disproportionate effect on Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.  Why? On what basis?  He ruled that PA has plenty of time to inform voters of the law (when the PA sec of state testified that she herself did not know what the law says) and voters have plenty of time to get the IDs before the November election, less than three months from now.  Again, on what basis?  Nobody but the Republicans believe this.   The decision isn't just wrong.  It's shameful.

The Siege of Pennsylvania

The worst possible news on the voter ID law in Pennsylvania--the state judge who heard a strong case to invalidate or even simply stay the law for the 2012 election because it cannot be fairly administered, has upheld the law for November.

This will be appealed to the state supreme court but at least one legal observer believes that this decision will stand.  The PA supreme court has six judges, divided evenly between Dems and Rs. (Think Progress is hopefully noncommittal.)

That this law was upheld is likely now to have a domino effect that allows all such efforts to disenfranchise and limit voting for partisan political purposes to go forward.  This monied party takeover that decides who can vote and who can't--which in effect this law does--is a basic threat to American representative democracy.  It's frightening.  It's clearly a step toward dictatorship by the oligarchy, to American fascism.  Pennsylvania gets a taste of it now. 

But though democracy in Pennsylvania is now wounded it is not dead.  A concerted effort must be made to defy the intent of this law by registering the voters it is supposed to disenfranchise, and delivering the votes it is intended to suppress.  It's time for those billionaires and millionaires out there who actually care more about democracy and their country than they do their fortunes to pony up the money necessary to really see to it that all these people get what they need to be able to vote, and get to the polls.  Because make no mistake about it--democracy is under siege in Pennsylvania, and now the only way to break it is to make this attempt to take over the U.S. government futile.

Ironic that this decision comes on a day in which the Romney campaign is trying to inflame political and racial feelings further by concentrating on a Joe Biden line noting that to unchain the banks again would be to put the people back in chains.  It's a metaphor that applies to all.  But go ahead and apply it to people of color who were enslaved--their chains were finally broken when they got the right to vote.  Now look what's happening.  

Media Climate

There are blogs and sites for everything else but when it comes to the transcendent problem of our age, I have yet to find a really good site for climate information.

Some environmental sites include climate but don't follow the topic exclusively or closely.  Enviro organization sites each have their own issues, and rarely follow what other organizations are doing.  The climate advocacy sites are at best action oriented, or so totally into the social media/twittering world that the information content is low.  High content sites tend to be by scientists and for other scientists.

The Think Progress site, Climate Progress, used to be the closest to a first-read if not must-read for news, information and analysis, but increasingly it's becoming an ego trip and vanity site for its manager, Joe Romm.  It used to feature his likeness at the top, the only Think Progress site to do so, but at least that's gone now.  But at the moment the site is so clotted with fawning posts for his new book that it's embarrassing to even visit.  We're used to cable news hosts and bloggers using their shows and blogs to promote their books, but even by today's weak standards, this site is a scandal.  Even worse, it's not surprising.  The site has been trending this way for some time.  It's too bad.  The topic deserves better. 

Poliquips Tuesday

What Romney advisors said to each other in choosing Paul Ryan, according to Lawrence O'Donnell: "Let's grab somebody who stands for something, because we don't."

But Tuesday's goldmine for poliquips came from the Politico piece about how GOPer operatives are near suicidal about the Ryan pick:

"The most cutting criticism of Ryan, shared only by a handful of strategists, is that Ryan isn’t ready to be president — or doesn’t come across as ready. A youthful man who looks even younger than his 42 years, Ryan could end up labeled as Sarah Palin with a PowerPoint presentation, several operatives said."

"Another strategist emailed midway through Romney and Ryan’s first joint event Saturday: “The good news is that this ticket now has a vision. The bad news is that vision is basically just a chart of numbers used to justify policies that are extremely unpopular.”

"This is the day the music died,” one Republican operative involved in 2012 races said after the rollout.

Stop the Attempts to Stop the Vote

Crucial to GOPer election strategy in 2012 is stopping people from voting--mostly minorities and others who usually vote Democratic, but they're willing to lose a few of their own (seniors for instance) as collateral damage.

These efforts were coodinated in states where GOPers had the entire state government, but they are most crucial in the two states where they stole the 2000 and 2004 elections respectively: Florida and Ohio.

And that doesn't even count possible chicanery in vote counting. In Florida in 2000 they purged the registration rolls of thousands of eligible voters and they're trying it again in 2012.  This is not a theory anymore--the former state chairman of the Republican party is saying so in court: GOPers actively sought ways to keep minority citizens from voting.  The U.S. Justice Department has also gone to court with others to challenge Florida voter purges.

The 2004 election turned on Ohio, where on election day lines were several hours long in minority voting districts in the big cities because of not enough voting machines or staff--so long that many left before voting.  That was remedied in 2008 by spreading out the voting over weeks instead of hours.  This year, the Ohio GOPer government wants to roll back early voting, taking away the last weekend before election day.  In 2008, members of black churches went to vote together after services on that Sunday.  The Obama campaign is going to court to restore the full early voting.

But in an even more transparently GOPer political ploy, voting hours have been extended in counties that usually vote GOPer but not in counties with the largest populations, that usually vote Democratic.  The Ohio system has voting hours regulated by county boards comprised of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans.  In all counties, Democrats voted to extend voting hours.  But Republicans as a bloc voted for it in all GOPer counties (where it therefore passed unanimously) and against it in all Democratic counties, which resulted in tie votes.  And that tie was broken by Ohio's GOPer secretary of state (the state official in charge of elections) who in every case voted with the local GOPers to restrict hours in Democratic counties--which happen to be the ones with the largest populations, and therefore most in need of extended hours.  

Most of the national attention to this issue so far has been on the many voter ID laws, most recently in the commonwealth of Pennysylvania where the estimated number of voters without the kind of IDs required by the new law is large enough to turn this back into a swing state.  The head GOPer legislator is on record bragging that this law is intended to give the state to Romney.  (And other GOPers are admitting that the very idea of voter ID laws--to allegedly combat the kind of fraud that almost never happens--avoids dealing with the kind that more often does result in fraud, voting by mail--because that's supposed to be how more conservatives vote.)

The Justice Department is investigating whether this law is discriminatory under a seldom used section of the Voting Rights act.  If it proceeds and is successful, it would seemingly apply to other states.  But already the PA law has gone on trial based on the Commonwealth's own constitution, with the state government offering a pitiable defense.  A decision is expected this week. If the PA law is voided or stayed, as it clearly should be, it will send a strong message to other states and other courts that this fundamental American right must be defended.

Already the Ohio secretary of state is feeling heat from his own state's media, and is talking about uniform hours throughout the state (however my bet is that this means no expanded hours anywhere.)  This is a time for courts, the media and the public to step up, to understand that this is a fundamental threat, and stop politicians from stopping the vote simply because they are afraid of the result if they allow free elections in America.

The Bain Drain

"It's the Brain Drain.  His brain's draining."

Help!
A film by Richard Lester, starring the Beatles

There's the complaint--and there's probably a book about it--that the U.S. lost at least a generation of the best and brightest to Wall Street, the big banks and other financial manipulators, because that's where all the action and the big money was.

Back in the 60s, something like this was called the Brain Drain.  I first heard it in connection with European and especially British scientists drawn to America (and so the above quote is appropriately from a British movie directed by an expat American.) Such a brain drain from, say, the higher reaches of politics to more sumptuous occupations might help explain the otherwise baffling ineptitude of the Romney campaign. 

We don't have to reprise the devastating last few months but just the past day or two.  Romney picks Ryan, with more than two weeks until the GOPer convention, which gives the media and the Democrats all that time to dissect and define Ryan with no other distractions.  They make a joint appearance--i.e. photo op--in which Ryan is introduced to the American public wearing a suit coat at least a size too large for him, which appears to be Romney's.  These two guys, with no military service or foreign policy experience, use a decommissioned Navy ship as their backdrop in Virginia, where neither is from (though it is at least a swing state.) 

Then Ryan goes off to an Iowa state fair where he's hit immediately with a question from the crowd on what he's going to do about Medicare, his greatest vulnerability, and he simply refuses to answer.  Meanwhile Romney waffles on his support for the Ryan budget.  But in the dumbest move and the easiest to have anticipated and avoided was Romney's next stop: Florida.  If there is any state of the union where Ryan's attack on the existence of Medicare is going to be a huge issue, it's Florida--and most of the newspapers there immediately headlined that problem.  Just as Romney was in the state.

But that's where Romney went--and wound up cancelling his appearance in Orlando, which should be good territory for him.  With a lame excuse, on which his staff flipflopped.  Then he goes off to Miami for an appearance hosted by a felon convicted of cocaine trafficking--who under Florida law, can't lawfully vote.

Karl Rove, aka Bush's Brain, may still be the evil genius of GOPer politics, but there doesn't seem to be much beyond that.  But the theory that the GOPer brain drain is really a Bain Drain runs up against the fact that the candidate himself is a money guy, and he doesn't seem to be any better or smarter at this than his staff.

On the other hand, there is a large lump of evidence that the Bain Drain is what it's all about.  As the latest fundraising letter from Jim Messina of the Obama campaign says: "Here's the calculation: Mitt Romney doesn't need or expect Paul Ryan to convince even one undecided voter to cast their ballot for him. That's not what he's on the ticket for. He's there to reassure and inspire ultraconservative ideologues and corporate interests that they will have one of their own a heartbeat from the presidency.

That means tens or even hundreds of millions more dollars for the Romney campaign and the array of outside groups supporting him -- and if current trends hold, more than 90 percent of that money will be spent on TV ads -- lying, distorting and trashing Barack Obama. Those ads will have more impact on undecided voters than anything Paul Ryan himself does or says.

Mitt Romney is convinced that picking Paul Ryan is a great investment for him. "

Apart from the obvious utility of this theory in getting Obama donors to give more, it is almost the only theory that makes sense. (Reuters sort of thinks so too.)  Because it suggests that Romney's strategy has not changed.  The only thing he's done well in this campaign so far (as I've pointed out ) is raise tons of money.  He may have begun to feel that as the polls showed him in free-fall,  the well was going to dry up, and the Ryan pick was the pick-me-up his fundraising needed.  That's the investment guy--the Bain Brain's thinking.

So the strategy may remain the same. If it is intact we can expect a nondescript convention speech, a soundbite or two for the debates, and more inept campaigning.  But a thermonuclear onslaught of negative ads that Romney is banking on to make enormous changes at the last minute.

Update: The New York Times and several other news outlets noted that Ryan is particularly well connected to big conservative donors--and to make that point himself, Ryan paid court in Las Vegas Tuesday to crypto-billionaire Sheldon Addledson.

Poliquips Monday

With the selection of Paul Ryan, quipped Howard Fineman on msnbc, "Romney uploaded an identity."

Max Fisher: "Articles about Paul Ryan's foreign policy experience tend to be short..."

Jonathan Bernstein: "...basically I'm not sure how you get less foreign policy and national security experience than Romney/Ryan."

Of Paul Ryan, Rachel Maddow said: "This is not the guy you pick to win Florida.  This is the guy you pick to win Fox & Friends."

Blue Monday

The painting is by Kandinsky, who formed or was part of various groups, several of which had "Blue" in the name.

It's Monday morning and difficult to greet with hysterical laughter, but this may help: I remember reading some of this when it first surfaced in the 80s but somehow it's much funnier now.  In fact I had to stop reading it because I was in danger of laughing myself sick.  Really, it's the funniest thing I've read, line for line, in a long time, maybe ever.  It's a compilation from college freshman essays on history.  It reeks with joy.

The Ryan Choice

Once JFK decided he would name his brother Robert as Attorney-General, clearly the most controversial appointment he would make, he joked that he'd better announce it by appearing on the porch of his house in the middle of the night and whispering, "It's Bobby."

In the middle of a Friday night, the news was leaked that Romney would announce Paul Ryan as his running mate on Saturday morning.  The late Friday leak might mean that the Rabid Right will get a few hours to go crazy with joy before the reporters and the Obama campaign has much to say, since most of the East Coast and Midwest are asleep at this point.  But it's in time for the Sunday shows.

What Dems are paying attention--mostly over at the West Coast-based Daily Kos--are also going crazy with joy.  The chance to definitively pin the Ryan budget and its provisions that would end Medicare on Romney seem to them a magical gift.  I'm not so sure.  The sports press was similarly of one mind about the Dwight Howard trade to the Lakers, which was the week's big personnel move until this.  But Howard--or the other Laker trades of this off-season-- don't seem to address the Lakers' greatest weakness against young teams like the Thunder: speed, that is, the Lakers lack of it.  Howard may be a great defender and an offensive monster down low, but he has to get under the basket first, before the other guys.

That the Ryan pick ensures them victory may be an early Dem chorus, but that outcome alas may not be a guaranteed championship either.  Romney's choice of Ryan addresses two key weaknesses, and maybe three, that are clearly hurting him.  The first, most glaring and most obvious this week is his weakness with the Rabid Right Republican base.  They will be ecstatic, and highly motivated to vote and to seek every partisan advantage until then, including active voter suppression.  It could get--probably will get--very ugly.

Second, Romney has a big problem with specifics--that is, he has no specific proposals, and is incapable of explaining anything.  He's likely to let Ryan explain his "vision for America" and to talk policy details, especially on health care and the deficit.  Ryan will likely offer a healthcare plan that sounds good but isn't Romneycare/Obamacare.  Similarly, he will explain his Medicare proposals in a way that sounds responsible and reassuring.  Or at least he will try. 


He will try to make the deficit a major issue.  It's the one issue that Rs have gotten traction on with Independents in the past.  Implicit in this second weakness is Romey's inability to express policy ideas, which by contrast Ryan does have.

Third, he's likeable, young, and on the national stage he's new.  Dems won't have the same time and money to define him as they did to define Romney.  This is where the Romney money machine goes into overdrive, to control the airwaves.

It is true that this pick shows that Romney is not operating from a position of strength.  But this could be that "game changer," and Dems should not be so confident that this is a gift.  They will have to handle this right.  And they'll have to weather what is likely now to be a bump in the polls for Romney--if not immediately, then after the R convention--which was not likely before this pick.

"Romney-Ryan" has an adman's music to it, as does the sight of the trim darkhaired and totally white twosome, animatronic Batman and Robin-like, on the stage together. Still, Romney may essentially cede the campaign stage to Ryan, much as McCain did to Palin.  And experience has shown that the farther Romney is from the stage, the better it is for him.  The only audience he's been comfortable and successful with is other very rich people.

 But hiding behind Ryan doesn't change his strategy really.  Before this, he was trying to back into the presidency by being the mostly blank alternative to the dread pirate Obama.  Now he's doubled down on that strategy by trying to back into the presidency behind his v.p.

It is true that if the Dems handle this right, they can reach Independents and older voters that may have seemed a stretch before.  And it's also true as some are saying at Kos that this is the clear choice election that the Obama campaign says it is--and that it is the Showdown of the parties.  If Dems are successful, they could be very successful up and down the ticket--and this will mean in particular than congressional Dems and the presidential campaign are tied together as never before. 

In terms of early media response, some of it is apparently going overboard the other way.  I don't see the Ryan pick meaning anything at this point for the states in play--his presence on the ticket means nothing for Wisconsin or Ohio or anywhere.  Its effect won't be known for months.  So I am not by any means saying that this makes Romney the favorite.
 
It probably does mean that what was shaping up to be a very bitter and contentious campaign is going to be even more bitter and contentious.  The Rabid Right knows no bounds, and this is only going to make them more reckless.  My worry is that it ups the possibility of serious violence.  In any case it's going to be a very bumpy ride to November.

The Romney Quandary

Update Friday pm PST: According to NBC News and now the AP, Romney's vp pick is Paul Ryan.  So the answer is, yes, the Romney campaign is in panic mode about getting out the Rabid Right base.


Is the Romney campaign in panic mode? Update Thurs aft.: If so, with good reason.  Three new polls say he's down by 7 to 9 points, and in one only a third believe he'll win.  They seem to be unleashing their random attack ads sooner than expected, although they are fully in character with the Romney campaign so far, being composed of lies and racism.  They are now trying to counter the Obama ad fingering Romney for paying a lower tax rate than most Americans and proposing tax policies to give himself an even bigger break--an ad that got the unusual Washington Post rating of being completely true--with an ad supposedly on Obama's policy on welfare that "takes a shameless distortion and turns it into an outright falsehood"--in other words is a complete lie.   And it is the most overt play yet of the race card--the "food stamp president" dog whistle linking Obama to "his base" (Romney's words) of shiftless black people who he is favoring with free government money.

Romney's next political play is his v.p. pick, and as far away as I'd like to stay from this moronic topic, it almost got interesting this week.  Last week the media Conventional Wisdom was that Romney was going to pick somebody bland and safe, Tim Polenta or more likely Rob Portman, a budget director under Bush (drawback) who is now a Senator from Ohio (a plus supposedly.)  But early in the week there was a flurry of speculation and winger wish fulfillment about bolder if crazier choices.  And the C.W. makes a strong argument for why.

Romney has probably two chances left to reverse the image that the Obama campaign has given him.  The v.p. pick is first, his convention acceptance speech is second.  If he doesn't do something to change the narrative with those, the debates may not matter (and since he can't talk substantively about anything, it's hard to see how he impresses anyone in the debates.)  In his convention speech he has to open up, i.e. create a Romney character, and maybe even make some actual specific proposals.  But his v.p. pick is also a statement.  There are two ways he can possibly help himself, though both are risky.

He could go bold.  On Tuesday at least there was something going on in GOPer circles either to promote Chris Christie or to reflect the possibility that he's actually being considered at this point.  I happened to see Morning Joe on msnbc and somebody on Fox talking about Christie and the very same speech and signal achievement of his term in New Jersey--at virtually the same moment.  It could be coincidence.  But anything to do with GOPers suggests there's a real if invisible hand monkeying with the puppet strings.

But is this just Beltway GOPer desperation?  Drudge floated Gen. David Petraeus, who himself quickly shot down the "rumor."  The suggestion though is that Romney needs somebody with establishment foreign policy/military policy cred.  Unfortunately for them, this country is not in a warmongering mood.

If not bold, he could go harder right.  The theory here is that he's doing so badly that he absolutely needs to be able to depend on the Rabid Right base, a group that doesn't really trust him.  That would mean Paul Ryan.  And the boomlet on Wednesday was for Ryan. Update Thurs aft.: The Ryan boomlet continues, bolstered by a Wall St. Journal editorial. Meanwhile Portman depresses speculation that he'll be the v.p. nominee. Romney says his v.p. will have 'a vision for the country,' which sounds like Ryan but could be budget hawk Portman. What makes this more of a temptation for Romney was the violent and dare we say rapidly rabid response by Rabid Right leaders (Ann Coulter prominently among them) over a single comment by the Romney spokesperson who cited Romneycare in MA in a positive way.  There's some question whether this was "misspoken" (it certainly was awkward in terms of Romney's past position and disdain for Obamacare as it implied that the MA system ought to be available elsewhere, which is the effect of Obamacare) or an Etch-a-Sketch moment as Romney tacks towards the Independent center.  Update Thurs.: the campaign goes silent as attacks continue on this.

And this is Romney's political quandary at the moment. As evidenced by this furor, Romney does not have the loyalty of the Rabid Right base, who appear to be on hair-trigger response for abandoning him.  He can't win without this base voting in great number. But he can't win without Independents and disillusioned Dems either.  Ryan helps with the base, but Ryan cements Romney to the kill Medicare budget, which is not attractive beyond the base.  That's worse than Portman nailing him to Bush.

Does the v.p. matter?  Nate Silver crunches the numbers and says the only possible positive of any of these is Portman perhaps--and it's a big perhaps--getting Romney another 1% in Ohio.  There are few if any ways Romney wins without winning Ohio.  If Romney is confident about his strategy he'd most likely go with Portman for the boring white guys ticket of the century. If he goes bold or hard right, he's gambling for a "game changer" as McCain did in 2008.

So the real effect of the v.p. pick--which is the main reason to pay attention to it--is in what it says about the presidential candidate.  In 2008 Obama impressed people by picking Biden, and McCain picking Palin, eventually not so much.  In 2012 we get some insight into Romney's thinking, though perhaps only of his thinking about this campaign and what his strategy is.

3 Stories of Today and the Future

Three important news stories of today illustrate likely features of the future as well as the present.

Two of these stories were widely reported.  The one that wasn't will likely be the most important, at least for what it portends.

That story was the release of a new study conducted by James Hansen, the most respected scientist in the world on the subject of the climate crisis.  It is a statistical study of recent summer heat waves.  Hansen previewed the findings in a Washington Post oped on Sunday: "Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change."

"Our new peer-reviewed study, published by the National Academy of Sciences, makes clear that while average global temperature has been steadily rising due to a warming climate (up about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century), the extremes are actually becoming much more frequent and more intense worldwide. When we plotted the world’s changing temperatures on a bell curve, the extremes of unusually cool and, even more, the extremes of unusually hot are being altered so they are becoming both more common and more severe."

Hansen begins the oped with a confession: "When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 , I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind’s use of fossil fuels. But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic." 

"My projections about increasing global temperature have been proved true. But I failed to fully explore how quickly that average rise would drive an increase in extreme weather."

Other climate scientists responded to the study Monday.  According to the AP story: The science in Hansen's study is excellent "and reframes the question," said Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia who was a member of the Nobel Prize-winning international panel of climate scientists that issued a series of reports on global warming.

"Rather than say, 'Is this because of climate change?' That's the wrong question. What you can say is, 'How likely is this to have occurred with the absence of global warming?' It's so extraordinarily unlikely that it has to be due to global warming," Weaver said. 

Hansen ended his oped discussing the new present his research suggests, and the future:

 "This is the world we have changed, and now we have to live in it — the world that caused the 2003 heat wave in Europe that killed more than 50,000 people and the 2011 drought in Texas that caused more than $5 billion in damage. Such events, our data show, will become even more frequent and more severe.
There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate, but we are wasting precious time. We can solve the challenge of climate change with a gradually rising fee on carbon collected from fossil-fuel companies, with 100 percent of the money rebated to all legal residents on a per capita basis. This would stimulate innovations and create a robust clean-energy economy with millions of new jobs. It is a simple, honest and effective solution."

So this is the story that was ignored: a story about how a new reality has begun and human civilization is threatened.  It got more attention in 1988 when it was a dire warning that it does in 2012 when it is a dire description of the future's leading edge cutting into the present. This new normal of climate cataclysm will mean that life is going to change as it takes hold, and eventually change almost completely.  So it is too big, too complicated and in some ways too familiar to take in, even though a lot of  thoughtful action is required.

Instead the news media paid attention to other stories, because there are always other stories.  There's the latest outrages of the presidential campaign, and the latest Olympic winners, both surprises and coronations.  But mostly there were these two stories, and in their own way, they bear upon the climate crisis future.

The first was the successful landing of the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars.  Ironically, Hansen is a scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and it was this amazing triumph of NASA that competed successfully with his study for media attention.  NASA has borne the brunt of criticism lately, for a lack of innovation, for an obsolete Shuttle fleet and nothing to replace it.  But this mission, in the works for a decade, engineered and deployed cutting edge technology in creatively designed and very daring combination to do something that has never been done--send a complex spacecraft to Mars and land a complex piece of engineering the size of a car on the Martian surface, exactly where it was supposed to land.  It is the greatest space achievement of the decade, perhaps longer.  No private corporation could have afforded to devote the manpower, the expertise and the time as well as the resources to such a feat.

As the climate crisis worsens and deepens, technology to fix the effects and stop the causes from wreaking fatal damage will become vital, essential.  And by sometime in the next century, even that may not be enough.  It may be then, or sooner, that humans look a great deal harder at the possibilities of survival in space.

But long before that, the climate crisis is likely to cause disruptions of a frequency and magnitude to challenge the social fabric, even in the U.S. which may well not bear the brunt of the physical changes, at least at first.  That's where the third story comes in.

The story about the attack of (apparently) a lone gunman on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, where he killed 6 people and then died himself in an exchange of gun fire with police.  The apparent shooter was a white separatist, and the FBI is treating the attack as domestic terrorism.

This act of violence would be more shocking had it not been preceded by a lot of racist and xenophobic talk in the political world, including by candidates and elected officials.  Indeed, the very little made of this connection in the aftermath testifies to its pervasiveness in establishment politics.

 This dark trend in America right now is happening when the economy is weak and when a lot of society is changing, including demographically.  Even this level of disquiet is roiling up violence, and there are plenty of guns and bullets out there to create havoc.  Yet today's dislocations--and today's tragedies-- may be minor compared to what is ahead due to the climate crisis.

So this is not a happy trend.  It suggests the apocalyptic visions of the future all too common in movies and novels these days--of social breakdown, violent gangs, a blasted landscape ruled by medieval warlords.  But there is more to this story in Wisconsin.

Because it is also the story of heroes, of ordinary people who sacrificed themselves automatically for others.  The story now is of Sikh Temple of Wisconsin president Satwant Singh Kaleka, who fought off the gunman to protect others, and paid with his life.  And of  Oak Creek Police Lt. Brian Murphy, critically wounded as he came to the aid of wounded victims.

There were similar stories told about the all-too-recent rampage in the Aurora, Colorado movie theatre, when ordinary people--who seconds before were just there to watch a movie--sacrificed themselves to protect others, and endangered themselves to help others.  Like Kaleka and Murphy, they have little in common but their humanity, and the sense that helping others is just something you do.  Maybe it is their version of the American way, or it's just the human way--the simple conviction that "you'd do the same for me."

That's the humanity that is our best hope in the times to come, when because of the failures of many politicians, the insidious blind selfishness of certain corporate leaders,  and the exploitable weaknesses of the rest of us, we have not addressed the climate crisis in time to stop it from causing severe consequences.  Ordinary people will have to deal with those consequences.  Some will go crazy with blame, some will go crazy with fear and the impulse of violence.  But some will do the right thing.  Many will depend on them to right the balance--will depend on their intelligence, competence and their commitment.

For I don't agree with James Hansen that we can "solve" the challenge, nor do I agree with Al Gore that we can "solve" the climate crisis.  You can't solve a challenge, or a crisis.  You can meet a challenge, you can address the causes and effects of a crisis.  There will be no complete solution.  There will just be lots of attempts to deal with the crisis, to meet the challenges, and those efforts will go on for decades.  They will be the substance of people's lives.  If things go well enough, they will be their careers--very exciting careers.  Or they will be their jobs--relentless jobs.  Nobody will be untouched by what's got its foot in the door.

Because this is Hansen's message.  It's human nature perhaps--or at least the media attention span--that when a warning has been issued since 1988, it isn't noticed when the warning starts to come true.  In effect, it's the boy crying wolf.  When the wolf isn't at the door immediately, the next warning gets discounted.  But people forget what happened in that story, what that story is about.  It's not about a boy who was prone to panic, who rushed to judgment when his data suggested something really bad might happen.  It's equally about the people who didn't listen.  Because the wolf came, and they weren't ready.

That's what Hansen is saying.  The wolf is here a little early.  But the wolf is here.      

Curiosity Has Landed

The Curiosity Rover--the size of a car--is safely on the surface of Mars, getting ready to begin two years of scientific research that may bring us closer to knowing whether there is or was life on Mars.  That's one of the first photos it sent back moments after landing--seeing its own shadow on the Martian surface.  

It was amazing to watch the Jet Propulsion Lab--"mission control"--while the spacecraft was making its complicated approach and landing.  On a day when life on Earth is not going so well, there really is something exciting and transcendent about feats like this, and the reality of such a venture on the surface of another world.      

Golden Gabby

I haven't been following the Olympics, but the triumph of Gabby Douglas reminds me that what first fascinated me about the Olympic games were the women gymnasts, beginning in the 1976 Olympics and the young Russian Nadia.  Now Gabby Douglas, a member of the U.S. team that won the Gold Medal, has won her individual Gold Medal.   "Douglas is the first African-American and first woman of color in Olympic history to become the individual all-around champion, and the first American gymnast to win gold in both the individual all-around and team competitions at the same Olympics."  Congratulations! 

The Persuadables

Polarization is the rule in 2012 it seems, and the conventional wisdom is that relatively few voters in Ohio, Florida and Virginia are likely to decide the presidential election.  Several billion dollars will be spent trying to persuade voters, one way or another.  All that is certain about this process is that if you own a media company, your ad revenue this fall is going to be very, very good.

But I believe there are persuadable voters, and they can best be persuaded by information provided by their friends.

Political arguments over hot button ideologically- defined issues are fruitless, as are most arguments over the relative merits of a party or a candidate.  But polls typically show that most political information (the facts as well as the lies and effluvia) is just being ignored.  This provides an opening into which information can be received from an informal source, especially on a few key topics that concern everyone.

Greg Sargent in the Washington Post writes about a Hofstra University poll which supports what other polls have shown: a lot of people who take different positions on general issues and propositions wind up agreeing on specifics important to their lives.  In this case, the study was of suburban voters:
 
"* More than seven in 10 suburban residents say they favor cutting federal spending in general. But when you get specific, 87 percent oppose cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits. And 65 percent support increasing government spending on infrastructure and public works projects.

* A majority, 51 percent, says government regulation of business usually “does more harm than good.” But when you get specific, nearly two thirds of them say the environment should be protected by doing ”whatever it takes.” Even when you add into the equation that regulation might cost jobs, a bare majority still says strict environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost."

These seem to me to be persuadable voters.  They probably do not know that the Ryan plan that Romney promises to follow will turn Medicare into a voucher program and end Medicare as Americans have known it, used it and liked it.  They probably don't know that the Ryan budget also threatens the integrity of Social Security.

They probably don't know that the Ryan plan and Romney himself promise to cut vital environmental regulations that safeguard communities and resources from predatory corporations.

And by the way, they probably don't know that the Obama administration has cut their taxes, or that Obamacare is responsible for the check they might be getting next month from their health insurance company, compensating them for the money the company spent on p.r. instead of providing care.

But it may not be necessary to go beyond Medicare and Social Security.  These are such vital programs and of such non-controversial longstanding that people simply assume them.  It should be remembered that an early Tea Party demonstration featured the sign "Keep government out of my Social Security."  People don't necessarily relate the program with the government, or with the political danger it is in.

There are some people who honestly believe that voucher programs, stock investments and other forms of privatization are not just methods for corporations to make easy and huge profits but as the only way these programs can be saved.  But even without getting into the details, it may be something of a revelation to many people that these programs may be threatened if Romney is elected.  Even Tea Party people get sick, and there's no ideological qualification for getting old. 

By the way, the Hofstra poll shows that President Obama has made up 8 points among suburban voters and is now essentially tied.  Another story quotes "Roslyn political consultant Brad Gerstman, who has worked with both major political parties, said swing voters "do not want to see fringe ideology on either side. They want to see pragmatic ideas that move the country forward."

Why the RomneyRove Carpet Bombing May Not Work

It's August, and the decisive phase of the presidential campaign begins: the conventions, the debates, the last few days when the last undecideds decide.  Sometimes it doesn't matter how things look at this point--but sometimes it does.  So while President Obama's lead (10 points nationally in the Pew poll, and ahead in most of the swing states, with the top vote nerd giving him a 70% chance of reelection) could change, there are a couple of possibilities for why July may have been more decisive than usual.

First is the possibility that Romney has been defined, definitely.  His record of sending jobs overseas, his evading releasing his taxes while his tax plan is shown to benefit the rich at the literal expense of everyone else, etc. are showing up in strong negatives--the lowest favorability rating of any presidential candidate in recent decades.  His negatives increased in the past month, according to Pew and other polls.

I've suggested here that the only way Romney's seeming indifference to his image, the need to disclose his taxes, the call for more specifics on the issues, etc. as well as the unforced dumbness of a host of decisions large and small, makes any sense (like his handling of the appearance of the Romney horse in dressage competition in the Olympics--instead of putting those who criticize it on the defensive, he's expressed complete disinterest, says it's his wife's thing, he won't watch the competition--making his sound like an idiotic husband as well as a rich elitist)--is because he's relying on a strategy of carpet bombing the airwaves with a billion dollars or so of strident anti-Obama ads in the last two months.

But that leads to the second possibility: it may be too late already for that to work.  Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein is among those who suggest that President Obama has already taken most of the hit he's going to take on the state of the economy, and unless the economy changes dramatically one way or another, voters have already factored in this weak economy in their assessment.  Bernstein writes: "We all know what we're looking at by now: an economy which is far too weak to assure Obama of an easy re-election, but strong enough that it doesn't make him a sure loser."  He is specifically arguing that the monthly jobs reports--like the one coming today--aren't going to matter much, absent a big change.  But the larger point may also pertain.

Of course, the RomneyRove carpet bombing is still going to happen, and indeed is happening now.The Romney forces have outspent the Obamas 2-1 in the last week.  By the third week in July, GOPer outside groups had spent $188 million but Obama groups "only" $20 million.  But the Obama forces are aware of the coming deluge and are preparing for it--with $30 million in reserved time in swing states for the last two months of the campaign. 

That's still far less than the Romney forces will likely spend but so far, the Obama candidacy is clearly winning on effectiveness of their ads.  They are defining Romney and perhaps making people more receptive to what President Obama has to say about what he wants to do in a second term.

It may be that by now, voters know the incumbent President and they've heard every negative thing about him and his administration.  They don't know Romney as well, so they are paying attention to what he says and what's being said about him.  So RomneyRove's negative barrage may fall on deaf ears.  And if Romney was himself defined in July, anything that supports that narrative will solidify that identity.    

Happy birthday to Mike! He's the one in the cap.  This photo taken by his lovely (and much younger) wife Alice on their recent cross-country trip.













Here's an even more recent photo, with our mutual friend Clayton.  He's the youngest of the three of us (but not by much.)

Free Advice to the Obama Campaign

Hello Chicago!  You're doing a great job and you certainly don't need my two cents, but --hey, I've got a blog!  So here are a couple of ideas (and excuse my ignorance if you're already doing this stuff...)

1. Make the economic argument for the Affordable Care Act.  Romneyoids like to say President Obama didn't concentrate on jobs and the economy and instead wasted a year on health care.  But apart from the benefits for health in general and specifically for those who couldn't afford insurance, health insurance reform was an economic program.  Health insurance is a huge burden on businesses, especially small businesses.  It's a huge burden on middle class paychecks.  By controlling costs, reforming the system and making long-term health better through preventive care, lots of money is saved in the economy and in particular by state and federal governments.  It's a big help for deficit reduction.  And so on.

2.  President Obama makes the case that the Romney economic plan is the same prescription for economic growth that the Republicans preached and tried, and which failed--spectacularly.  Elaborate that argument with video of key Bush administration Republicans making exactly the same argument as Romney, and tie their words to what actually happened.  Somebody like Rob Portman would be a real plus.  But show it---this can't be taken out of context, because it's their faces.  

3. Brag on the Obama tax cuts.  Don't describe each kind, just the amount that the non-rich are saving every year.  You might start out with some Romneyoid talking about President Obama having raised taxes, and then hit the numbers, in a half dozen different ways.  That approach does double duty: points up the lack of credibility of the Romneyoids, and brags on lower taxes.

So that's my three cents, in addition to the real money I sent you last month (and the month before...and..)

P.S. Oh, and one more thing: you're doing a great job nailing Romney on his tax plan.  The import of it for the future of the campaign is that the middle class (broadly speaking) includes most Republicans, most of all demographics that currently aren't polling predominantly for Obama.  So this is an opportunity to dramatize the breadth of the impact of a lot of policies Romney favors.

Here's what I mean: beginning with his 2004 convention speech, Barack Obama made a name for himself talking about how we're not blue states or red states but the United States.  This theme can be fleshed out to talk about how these policies affect everyone.  Because Polish American workers in Pennsylvania get sick and need medical care they can afford.  Tea Party activists get old and need Social Security and Medicare they can count on.  Farmers in Iowa who have voted Republican all their lives still need dependable power and jobs, and they can see wind energy is helping.  And so on.  

Happy Women's Health Day

It's not an official day of celebration yet, but maybe soon it will be, because today--August 1, 2012--eight different provisions of the Affordable Care Act go into effect that benefit women's health, including a range of preventive services that insurers must now offer, for free.  These "Obamacare" provisions immediately affect some 47 million women.   

Kiss My Ass, America

"Let's face it, Romney can't win, but Obama can lose."
That's not just the opinion of GOP consultant Ed Rodgers.  That's the Romney campaign strategy.

Maybe lost in the gaffe-fest of Romney's overseas trip is what he actually did and didn't do.  What he did was raise money from billionaires at fundraisers with bankers in London and very wealthy American Jews in Israel, including Sheldon Adelson.  I don't recall this being on the itinerary for previous presidential candidates or certainly Presidents when overseas.

What he didn't do was answer questions from the media.  In Poland, his press aide told clamoring reporters very simply, "Kiss my ass," and that's a quote.

With his priorities on this trip, Romney's intentions are very clear: he's going to stonewall and otherwise just survive this period until he can unleash the many millions he's collected to carpet bomb President Obama with scurrilous negative ads in the last month or months before the election, with some cash also devoted to voter suppression and bullying voters on election day.

Still the real Romney comes through.  His arrogance in stonewalling, in refusing to release his tax returns, his and his campaign's persistent lying.  His campaign's xenophobia and racism became more obvious on this trip right at the start, when an aide was quoted as saying that President Obama doesn't understand the Anglo-Saxon connection between the UK and the US.  But the candidate himself revealed his own racism (in the words of a Palestinian spokesperson) when he repeated (from remarks in one of his own books) that Palestinians are poorer than Israelis because of their inferior culture.  He said the same is true of Mexico.

It's more than a strategy to link unfettered capitalism and white cultures, and socialist cultures to non-white cultures (even though it's highly inaccurate--witness the "socialized medicine" of the UK and Israel)--it is a belief within the Romney campaign.

As less than dogmatic wild-eyed GOPers drop away and say their party is too extreme to govern, while the most extreme GOPers (backed by Club for Growth and other billionaire money) take over, the country is in peril of careening quickly to a new Dark Age.  But Romney and his ilk will do their best to obscure what will happen if they take over.  Romney will hide behind his lies and racist dog whistle campaign against Obama, without ever saying what he actually will do if elected.  Because you peons exist only to be manipulated by money.  Because according to Romney, America you can kiss my multimillionaire ass.