Follow the Money

President Obama spoke to a labor union audience in Toledo on Monday.  He noted how at the GOPer convention, speakers demonized union workers, and especially the unionized government workers, and even more especially, teachers.  But their opposition to unions is not about economics, he said, it's about politics.

More specifically it's about the economics of politics.  Rachel Maddow again made the case that GOPers try to destroy unions and drive down union membership because only the big labor unions can even compete with corporations and the megarich in providing financing to political campaigns.  If GOPers can destroy unions, they destroy the Democratic party.

The numbers drive the policies, but they extend beyond opposing unions.  They help explain GOP virulence against government workers, because with the decline in private sector unions, the public sector is a major source of unionized workers.  GOP governors and legislators have driven the decline in state workers that continues to drag down the employment numbers.  While private sector employment grows, it is offset every month by lost public sector jobs.

There are other ramifications that drive other policies.  Unions (far more than entrepreneurial business) have provided support for newcomers who start low in the labor market to work their way into the middle class.  Unions were crucial to the generations of immigrants who came to America in the first half of the 20th century--like the ones extolled by GOPer convention speakers.  They were Polish, Italian, Irish, etc.  They were the ones who sacrificed, who bled, in the battle to unionize major industries, and eventually they were the ones who benefited--along with their descendants now in suburbia.

GOPers continue to oppose unions even in those older industries (opposition that President Eisenhower said in the 1950s was "stupid") and even rolling back hard-won union rights and programs. 

But those industries have declined, and unions have declined for jobs now held by those former ethnics--now simply identified and self-identified as white people.  Unions have again become crucial to those comparatively fewer workers who start at the bottom, who now come from different countries, and are classified racially as African American, Latino and Asian.

There's another component to this.  While many unions championed civil rights, and equal hiring rights, it has been the public sector that has provided jobs without prejudice based on race, gender or partner preference.  That's partly because of Civil Service and other means that make qualifications strictly based on exam results or other measures of merit.  But it also because those public sector unions are the most diversified, with a higher proportion of women and racial and other minorities. 

So in attacking immigrants (meaning principally Latinos), attacking women's rights and harking back to a time when women were necessarily more dependent, and even attacking public education itself, the GOP is trying to deny the Democrats the means to sustain itself as a party, financially and otherwise, while appeasing its incredibly shrinking base.

Longterm it's a losing strategy, unless the GOP can lock up the process now, with unlimited money and official voter suppression.  In the now, it is cruel, biased, cynical and ultimately harmful not only to the people under attack, but to the country as a whole, and the country's future. 

In pursuing these policies, the GOP is helping to drive U.S. education, health care, income mobility, etc. down further and further in the ranks of the industrialized nations.  The U.S. is losing competitive ground because of this, and because the GOP privileges its fossils and their fossil fuel industries over the industries of the future that other countries are very busy developing, and creating a perhaps insurmountable lead.  By going so far as to deny the science of the climate crisis, GOPers are wounding the world's future--which they may be surprised to learn necessarily includes the U.S.--and specifically destroying this country's unique ability to lead, or even to participate.

All so some billionaires can hug their money tighter, pile it higher, and provide themselves with fancier graves.            

This Seat is Taken

Now it's his turn.

Even as the GOPer convention was ending, it was President Obama who had the most re-tweeted tweet of that convention, just after the Clint Eastwood performance: the photo above, with the caption "This seat is taken."

 Campaigning in the days leading up to the Dem convention in Charlotte, Obama's crowds are getting bigger and he's getting sharper.  On Sunday it was clear that the Dems aren't going to let Romneyryan define the Medicare debate.  VP Biden put it simply, "We're for Medicare.  They're for vouchercare."

President Obama had his own take in Boulder: "You know, he calls it Obamacare. I like the name. I do care. .... I don't know exactly what the other side is proposing; I guess you could call it 'Romney doesn't care.' But this law is here to stay."

Meanwhile, Political Wire has provided an intriguing statement from a Wall St. Journal article.  I don't know how credible it is, but...

The Wall Street Journal says President Obama "has fundamentally shifted his view of modern presidential power" and "is now convinced the most essential part of his job, given politically divided Washington, is rallying public opinion to his side. As a result, if he wins a second term, Mr. Obama plans to remain in campaign mode."

"The president views a second term in some ways as a second chance, an opportunity to approach the office differently... He would like to tackle issues such as climate change, immigration, education and filibuster reform."

The Anti-Bounce?

It's only two polls taken since the GOPer convention, and so far the traditional bounce for the candidate whose party has just finished its convention is not going real well.  Gallup sees no change in voter preference at all, with President Obama holding a one point lead.

The Ipso/Reuters poll on the other hand, shows a one point bounce...for President Obama.

NRC: Last Laughs

Jamelle Bouie tweeted of the Eastwood spectacle: This is a perfect representation of the campaign: an old white man arguing with an imaginary Barack Obama.

The Borowitz Report:

In a development that the Republican campaign is sure to find troubling, a new poll of likely voters showed nominee Mitt Romney trailing badly behind the empty chair Clint Eastwood talked to onstage at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.

When asked the question, “Who cares more about people like me?” thirty-seven per cent of voters responded, “Mitt Romney,” while fifty-two per cent said, “Chair.”

And earlier:
TAMPA (The Borowitz Report)—Coining a phrase that seems destined to become his new campaign slogan, Mitt Romney needed only three words tonight to accept the Republican Presidential nomination: “I bought it.”

Those words had a special meaning for Mr. Romney, who had to spend seventy million dollars in the G.O.P. primaries to defeat a serial adulterer, a former pizza executive, and a crackpot in a sweater-vest.

It has been an up-and-down convention for Mr. Romney, who was largely ignored at Tea Party rallies early in the week but later picked up a key endorsement from his wife.

Tonight, however, was a time to reflect, as he put it, “on money well spent.”

He made an emotional appeal to a group he called “the single-issue billionaires,” imploring them, “Let me know what you want. Eliminate the E.P.A.? Bomb Iran? Mitt Romney is open for business.” The audience roared its approval.

Ultimately, he ended his speech with a rousing call to arms that brought the Republican audience to its feet: “The road to the White House will be hard, and strewn with challenges. But together, there’s nothing we can’t buy.”

Voting Rights Strike Back

Courts have begun weighing in on GOP voter suppression efforts, and they've stopped those laws at least for now in Texas, Florida and today in Ohio.

A federal district court judge restored final weekend early voting to Ohio, per an Obama campaign suit:  “Plaintiffs will suffer irreparable injury if in-person early voting is not restored the last three days before Election Day, and there is no definitive evidence before the Court that elections boards will be tremendously burdened,” Economus wrote.

The judge even cited Bush v. Gore in his ruling, which grants a preliminary injunction.  However, Ohio's GOPer government is appealing, and the court of appeals in Ohio is very GOPer friendly.  So this one isn't over.

Nor is Pennsylvania, where the state supreme court begins reviewing that voter ID law in two weeks.

It's not quite over in Texas either.  This week the voter ID in Texas was struck down in a unanimous decision by a three judge panel in federal court, all appointed by G.W. Bush.  Notably the court used the 1965 voting act to apply the finding that the law's impact would "fall most heavily on the poor and that a disproportionately high percentage of African-Americans and Hispanics in Texas live in poverty."  The Texas GOP government is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, and this court left open the possibility that a nondiscriminatory voter ID law could be crafted.  

But registration repression by law is over in Florida. After a federal court judge said he would remove all of the harsh restrictions on registration this week, the GOPer Florida government is capitulating.

Florida appeals are done, their law is dead, but the damage may have already been done.  New Democratic voter registration in the state has so far collapsed.  Registration rates have increased in recent months but there's way too much ground to make up.  The Obama campaign has so far said they aren't worried, those voters registered in 2008 are still there.  But with Ohio looking pretty good, Florida seems to be shaping up as the biggest challenge.

In general, however, these court decisions coming one after another are a good sign.  Courts watch each other just as they rely on precedents.  The fact that these laws remain on the books and in the news so far into the campaign have already done damage, simply by confusing people about whether or not they can register or vote.  But to be ultimately successful, they must have a measurable impact on the outcome in November.

Which means it's up to voters to be determined that they aren't going to have their most fundamental self-governing right taken away by cynical totalitarian politicians.

The Great Condescender

Reaction to Mitt Romney's acceptance speech has been mixed, to say the least.  Somebody tweeted: If 90% of life is showing up, I give him a 90.  (Photo: that's somebody he's supervising to adjust his teleprompter earlier in the day.)

He may have convinced some people he isn't a robot with his sad eyes and anecdotes about his parents.  But to me he mostly looked like someone suffering from gastric distress, and his tone was incredibly condescending.

For those who tuned in hoping to hear answers, to hear solutions, there were none. And I don't believe the optics worked for him.  His warmongering towards the end did bring us back to the rich guy who likes to fire people. He talked tough, but he didn't look or sound strong. But I'll stick with that one word: condescending. I doubt that is a winning image.

Romney seemed to be trying to give the GOPers in the room just enough of what they needed to hear while the spine of his speech was reaching voters disappointed with President Obama.

More in sorrow than anger he seemed to be saying, President Obama wasn't up to the job. To make this case he had to lie, as usual. Otherwise he was simply condescending.  What this country needs is a real American to lead it, he said.  Condescension depends on implication, but that one was hardly subtle.

But then, I'm not his audience because I am not so disappointed in President Obama, and even if his election was an emotional landmark--how could it not be?--I'm not confusing that with disappointment in what he did: pulling us back from the brink of a second Great Depression, healing our relationships with other countries and the world, ending the war in Iraq, effectively making Al Queda much much less of a threat, passing inclusive health care reform after 75 years of presidents who tried and couldn't do it--reform that not only reflects America's compassionate best but will help the economy and the federal budget for the future.  And so on.


Most people tomorrow will probably be talking about Clint Eastwood, whose bizarre rambling appearance was the first thing that viewers saw who tuned in for the speech on the broadcast networks.  And I assume they'll be asking the question, if Romney can't organize his biggest night, how can he organize a presidency?  A question that's been recurring for awhile.

On the whole, when America was tuning in--which apparently wasn't often--the images I doubt were helpful. Keynoter Chris Christie looked mean and angry.  Commentators agree that most prominent speakers talked more about themselves than Romney and Ryan, or why they should be elected.

Meanwhile, the New York Times fact checkers have already added Romney's speech to Ryan's as depending on lies.  And in a sentence that by now is perfect Timesean understatement, they conclude:

"The two speeches — peppered with statements that were incorrect or incomplete — seemed to signal the arrival of a new kind of presidential campaign, one in which concerns about fact-checking have been largely set aside."

Introducing Mitt Romney

"And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist," a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth."

The above is from a blistering expose in Rolling Stone


"But competence is worthless without direction and, frankly, character. Would that Candidate Romney had indeed presented himself as a solid chief executive who got things done. Instead he has appeared as a fawning PR man, apparently willing to do or say just about anything to get elected. In some areas, notably social policy and foreign affairs, the result is that he is now committed to needlessly extreme or dangerous courses that he may not actually believe in but will find hard to drop; in others, especially to do with the economy, the lack of details means that some attractive-sounding headline policies prove meaningless (and possibly dangerous) on closer inspection. Behind all this sits the worrying idea of a man who does not really know his own mind. America won’t vote for that man; nor would this newspaper."

the above is from The Economist, not exactly a left wing newspaper.

A second Rolling Stone article shows that Mitt Romney drove Bain into the ground until rescued by a federal loan that he engineered:

"The federal records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Romney's initial rescue attempt at Bain & Company was actually a disaster – leaving the firm so financially strapped that it had "no value as a going concern." Even worse, the federal bailout ultimately engineered by Romney screwed the FDIC – the bank insurance system backed by taxpayers – out of at least $10 million. And in an added insult, Romney rewarded top executives at Bain with hefty bonuses at the very moment that he was demanding his handout from the feds."

Mittdacity Jr.

Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein on vp candidate Paul Ryan's acceptance speech to the GOP convention:

 But really, the proper response to a speech like this isn’t to carefully analyze the logic, or to find instances of hypocracy; it’s to call the speaker out for telling flat-out lies to the American people. Paul Ryan has had what I’ve long thought was an undeserved good reputation among many in the press and in Washington. It shouldn’t survive tonight’s speech.


The media response Josh Marshall alluded to may be something like this: Call out the lies right in your headlines.

Update: The Most Dishonest Convention Speech Ever?

Media Backlash Against Ryan Acceptance Speech Continues

The Lies and Lies and Lies of Paul Ryan cont.

Lyin Ryan: The Media Pushback

Paul Ryan=Eddie Haskell

Doubling Down as the Party of Racism

Earlier today a clearly disgusted Josh Marshall posted this at TPM:

"No question. The Romney campaign has doubled down. All in on the race/lazy/dependency groove from here on out. No going back.
 
In private they’re all but bragging about it — specifically their run of welfare-centric commercials which they’re running at a red hot clip in swing states all across the country. It’s working, they say. The fact-checkers can go screw themselves. "

In a later post he added that the Romney campaign could still drop this line of attack but must do so soon because "for all intents and purposes the political press has placed the Romney campaign at a crossroads."  Which seems to mean that they won't get away with doing it covertly, they'll continue to get sharp questions, and the media will continue to point out the lies and racist appeal.  That of course may not mean anything to the GOPers at this desperate point.  For as one of their own said recently, the demographic trends being what they are, this is probably the last national election where something like this might work.

What that might look like--and why the Romney campaign is likely to ignore it--is implied in these quotes assembled by Andrew Sullivan's blog.  Kevin Drum is the latest journalist to note that, when it comes to being called on a lie,  "The Romney campaign just doesn't seem to care. If it works, they use it. It's like the campaign is being run by cyborgs."

Jonathan Chiat says this isn't entirely new: it was the way that the Bush administration governed: without any regard to the truth, to verifiable fact, to anything but conservative and neocon dogma.  Will voters notice this, and remember what it got us?

Meanwhile, there is concerted effort to suppress the story--by the GOP and apparently even CNN--of the  confirmed incident of someone at the Tampa convention--now reported as involving two people--who threw nuts at a female African American camera operator and cried, "This is how we feed animals" inside the convention hall.  The two people were said to be expelled immediately, but TPM reporters are getting stonewalled on details.

The Dream and the Reality of 2012

Ezra Klein in the Washington Post today on the Romney ads accusing President Obama of ending the work requirement for welfare in some states--a charge that Romney is making on the stump, and that reportedly will be the substance of Rick Santorum's speech to the GOPer convention today:

Beyond being flatly false, Romney’s ads are puzzlingly anachronistic. Welfare is a shrunken program...Meanwhile, few think the problem in this country is that the poor don’t want to work...

In modern politics, however, when a campaign begins doubling and tripling down on an unusual line of attack, it’s because it has reams of data showing the attack is working. What’s worrying is why this ad might be working.

 

Political scientist Michael Tesler partnered with the YouGov online polling service to test the question on 1,000 respondents... reports Tesler, “racial resentment affected whether people thought Romney will help the poor, the middle class and African Americans. Moreover, seeing the ad did not activate other attitudes, such as party or ideological self-identification. It only primed racial resentment.”

This is where things get tricky. Romney’s welfare ads are not racist. But the evidence suggests that they work particularly well if the viewer is racist, or at least racially resentful. And these are the ads that are working so unexpectedly well that welfare is now the spine of Romney’s 2012 on-air message in the battleground states."

Andrew Sullivan on his Daily Beast blog:

I try not to jump to conclusions about racial appeals - but the two-pronged campaign assault by Romney, on Medicare and welfare, does not rise to the level, in my view, of plausible deniability.
The key to both is the classic notion that unworthy blacks are taking from worthy whites. And so the Medicare ad uses white old faces expressing shock at the notion that Obama would transfer money from their retirement healthcare for health insurance for those without, i.e. the poor, who tend to be more minority than the rich. It's basically a lie - Ryan would cut the same from Medicare as Obama would, and there is no direct quid pro quo between the two policies. It's also dishonest: Ryan and Romney are promising to cut Medicare spending and yet are running against Obama for doing exactly that.

Then there's the simple bald lie that Obama is allowing welfare recipients to escape work requirements. I don't remember a campaign in my lifetime which based an entire line of attack on a total fabrication, in fact a reverse of the truth. The welfare waivers are designed exclusively to experiment with how to increase the effectiveness of the work requirement for welfare, and waivers have been granted to Republican governors as well. And yet we get this from the Romney campaign:

"Our most effective ad is our welfare ad," a top television advertising strategist for Romney, Ashley O'Connor, said at a forum Tuesday hosted by ABCNews and Yahoo! News. "It's new information."

It's not. It's new disinformation. It's Orwellian propaganda.

 The simple assumption of racial politics as the driver of campaigns is what's striking. Karl Rove became what he is - a persistent whitehead on the face of American politics - because he learned the art of race-baiting politics in the South. Romney - having given up on Latinos and blacks and gays - is now betting the bank on the white resentment that has been fast losing potency since the 1990s. "

Martin Luther King at the Lincoln Memoral in Washington, 49 years ago today:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Reporter David Schuster reported that a GOP convention attendee was ejected for throwing nuts at an African American camerawoman for CNN and shouting, "This is how we feed animals." CNN confirmed to TPM.

Update: The chief difference between this year's race baiting by the GOP and past examples, cf. 1988 is that some of the media reporters are calling them on it, to their faces.  Josh Marshall at TMP quotes another example.

New Circus News

The circus tents are going up in Tampa.  Rumors of a circular firing squad attraction in the center ring are probably exaggerated, but... On Monday, a GOPer U.S. Senator suggested that unless the party fixes its problems with women in the next several weeks, Romney will lose.  A story circulated that Chris Christie turned down the v.p. because he believes Romney will lose.

One indication that last week's fracus over rape and abortion and the image of extremism in general are having an impact: a Pew poll found more people interested in the GOPer platform than in either Romney or Ryan's convention speeches.  Interest in economic news however was substantially higher than in the Akin story.

A big uncertainty continues to be the track and impact of a tropical storm which is expected to become a hurricane and make landfall on Tuesday.  Concern over the storm's impact on Tampa led to Monday's convention events being cancelled--and to what has to be the most revealing and the craziest Rush Limbaugh conspiracy theory ever:  that the Obama administration manipulated the storm track prediction to subvert the GOPer convention.  Really:

  "The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department. It’s the government. It’s Obama,” said Limbaugh.

Meanwhile, several outlets were chortling over the apparent Romney campaign goof of giving away hardback copies of Romney's book to convention delegates which contains his suggestion that Romneycare should be expanded nationally, instead of the paperback edition which says more or less the opposite.  Goof-up it is but also totally in character.  Giving the hardbacks away tells me that Romney had a lot of unsold books in storage--why not give them away, save on warehouse costs and probably get a tax deduction to boot!   Makes perfect Romneysense.

Race and Class

I am a white person, a white male, an old white male.  What constitutes racism in a person's psyche is complicated and in some ways unknowable.  I do believe that we all carry some unconscious racial prejudices that we absorb culturally, and that we as white people in a traditionally white dominated society possess beneath the surface. That includes white people who marched on Washington with Martin Luther King (as I did) 49 years ago today.  That commitment didn't automatically eradicate all racial prejudice or bias. It takes a different perspective brought to our attention to reveal these into our consciousness.  That in part was what "consciousness-raising" was about, not only in terms of gender but also in terms of race and class.

Racist behavior however can be determined more easily, though it too can be complicated.  Racist policy is easier to determine objectively: results and consequences count, not intention.  That's why under certain sections of the Voting Rights Act, it is the effect of laws and policies on racial minorities, not the intentions of the lawmakers and rule makers, that is the determining factor.

The current attempts by the Romney campaign to appeal to racial stereotypes in their lying ads about welfare, among other overt and covert tactics, is racist by definition, for it is designed to exploit conscious and unconscious racism in white voters; moreover it is doing so by attempting to link racist implications with the intentions of a black President. 

Unconscious racism, by the way, can be really unconscious.  It is very often supported by an apparently rational, allegedly fact-based allegation or theory about what's really happening in the real world.  And suggestions or allegations of unconscious racism typically are met with outraged denial.  That's why some political observers suggest that part of the intent of the current Romney strategy is to get "liberals" to charge white working class voters with racism, which will motivate them to repudiate it by voting against "liberals," and President Obama.

Class on the other hand is working against the multimillionaire Romney, with his multiple homes and dancing horse, Swiss bank account and Cayman Island tax shelters.  It's a problem not only of image and unconscious bias but of fairness.  All the taxes that rich businessman Romney avoids are paid by the rest of us and our descendants. 

The class divide is immense, and voters are only starting to learn how immense.  For example, Think Progress visualized a fact about the wealth of GOPer moneyman Sheldon Adelson, who recently pledged half a million bucks to a congressional campaign.  With a fortune estimated at $25 billion, Adelson could give half a million to each and every GOPer running for Congress-for the next 128 years.

The Romney-Ryan program is transparently a huge power grab for the very wealthy, at the expense of everyone else, first and foremost the poor and the sick.  Unless you are very wealthy, being sick for very long still leads to being poor, and with Ryan hacks to Medicaid, to being poor and without medical treatment.

The only way to get this program enacted, the only way to get elected for the GOPer ticket, is to get a high proportion of the white vote.  The estimate being bandied about today was 61%.  Combine that with a fact that even I found startling.  I've been calling the GOP the White People's Party for awhile, because that's the effect of their policies and their pronouncements, and the majority of their membership.  I figured it would be as high as 75% of the party.  But I was wrong.  According to Pew, the proportion of GOPers who are white is 89%.  In 2012 we have one of two major political parties that is composed of almost 90% white people.

The GOPer combination of race and class was exposed in a heated response to GOP chair Reince Priebus by MSNBC's Chris Matthews.  By my lights, Matthews can be way off base at times, but this time he's not only nailed it but did so with electrifying eloquence:

“I have to call you on this, Mr. Chairman,” Matthews said in an appearance with Priebus on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” as he responded to Republicans’ criticism that Obama is running a very negative campaign. “But they’ve both negative. That cheap shot about ‘I don’t have a problem with my birth certificate’ was awful. It is an embarrassment to your party to play that card.”

“You can play your games and giggle about it but the fact is your side playing that card. When you start talking about work requirements, you know what game you’re playing and everybody knows what game you’re playing. It’s a race card and yeah, if your name’s Romney, yeah you were well born, you went to prep school, yeah, brag about it. This guy has an African name and he’s got to live with it. Look who’s gone further in their life. Who was born on third base? Making fun of the guy’s birth certificate issue when it was never a real issue except for the right wing.”

Matthews exposed the sense of class privilege that lurks behind the coded racism of the Romney campaign.  When Romney and Ryan say they didn't need government help to succeed (which by the way is a lie to begin with) it may sound good to lower middle class people for whom applying for welfare would mean a devastating loss of self-status, but only if they forget that Romney and Ryan came from wealthy families, and could buy their way into the best schools and the networks of class success. 

The Obamas freely admit that their success depended not only on their own hard work and determination, not only on their parents' dedication and sacrifice, but on help from government and other institutions in the form of school scholarships and loans, etc.  They celebrate this as an American thing, and see it as a key to expanding the middle class.  They want it for others.  They want it for all others.  Without that kind of help, lower middle class white kids like me never would have gone to college.  I don't think that's changed.  We're still all in this together.  And that the definition of "all" has expanded is really to the greater good of us all, and the future.
        

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“We have destroyed the forest, our rivers run dry, our wildlife is all but extinct, our climate ruined...but I pass by the woods I’ve saved from the ax. I hear the forest sighing...I planted that forest. And I think: perhaps things may be in our power. Perhaps the climate itself is in our control.”

Anton Chekhov: Uncle Vanya (1897), as adapted in English by David Mamet from a literal translation (1989.)

Storms

Having already cancelled the first day of their convention (but it wasn't going to be on TV anyway, so what was this point?  The mega-billionaires will just have more time to party) GOPers in Tampa await the uncertain effects of a tropical storm/maybe hurricane.

But the news contains seeds of other storms: GOPer presidential candidate Ron Paul is refusing to endorse Mitt Romney, former Florida governor GOPer Charlie Crist endorsed President Obama for reelection ( "I'm confident that President Barack Obama is the right leader for our state and the nation. I applaud and share his vision of a future built by a strong and confident middle class in an economy that gives us the opportunity to reap prosperity through hard work and personal responsibility. It is a vision of the future proven right by our history.") and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee promises "fire from heaven" on behalf of disgraced senatorial candidate Paul Akin.

Meanwhile I've discovered the political dispatches of Andy Borowitz in the New Yorker.  In his post on the oncoming storm he writes that Mitt Romney has called on the federal government to respond to the danger with tax cuts for the wealthy.  "If this hurricane is as powerful as predicted, it could destroy many people’s second and third homes,” Mr. Romney said. “In that worst-case scenario, it would be inhumane to ask them to pay more than thirteen per cent.”  His running mate Paul Ryan warns against Washington intrusion.“If the federal government got involved with this hurricane, they’d make the usual mistake of sending food, water, and medical supplies,” he said. “Clearly, what this situation calls for is vouchers.”

GOP War on...American Indians?

A war on women.  A war on Latinos.  A war on gay and lesbian Americans.  A war on African Americans. War on seniors. War on students.  A war on young, old and non-white voters. War on the poor.  War on the middle class. War on the Earth. War on the truth. Not to mention wars on Iran, Russia and China. Aside from the super rich, is there anybody the GOP has not declared war on?

How about war on the Indians?  After all, isn't how it all started?

Republican National Committee leader Pat Rogers wrote emails to New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez’s staff asserting that attending the tribal summit of  the state's Native American tribes “dishonored” Gen. George Armstrong Custer.

"The state is going to hell," Rogers wrote.

GOPers are finding ways every day to add new meaning to the term "reactionary."  Rogers manages to return to those thrilling days of the 19th century--actually the 18th and 17th as well. 

Here in Humboldt the wounds of Indian massacres are still healing.  This won't help.


Sadly, this is not new.  GOPers criticized President Obama for convening a national tribal summit. Though it was GOPer Senator Brownback in 2005 who first sponsored a congressional resolution to apologize to the Cherokee and Native Americans for the Trail of Tears, it didn't pass until 2009.  When President Obama signed it, Bryan Fischer of the Rabid Right American Family Association objected that the US had nothing to apologize for.  (The above watercolor, Shadow of the Owl commemorating the Trail of Tears is from the Guthrie Studios.  Below is the Wiyot Tribe Sacred Sites logo by tribal member Leona Wilkinson, commemorating the massacre on Indian Island in Eureka, CA in 1860.)

Not that the American Indians are a big voting block.  But this tidbit is sure to make the rounds.  Another 0% group for the GOP?

 

Is there a form of racism they aren't ready to embrace?  Look out, Asian Americans.  You may well be next.

Unmasked

With his remarks in Michigan, Mitt Romney unmasked the GOP campaign racism referred to in the post below, and made it top of the ticket official.

The Obama campaign responded that Romney made the “decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement.”   The remark may seem like a joke but it sure wasn't delivered that way.  It sounded like a "patriotic" assertion.  Here's a link to the video of the moment.

The Big Lie(s) 2012

Yes, it does seem that the circus is coming back to town.  The GOP convention set to begin on Monday, to be greeted by a tropical storm [update: likely hurricane] with an embarrassingly Biblical name (but it's no real threat, says David Letterman, because David Akin says that no legitimate hurricane ever does real damage in Florida.)  Akin is himself gathering steam, money and support, the most vocal of which so far comes from Mike Huckabee.  His statement ends: "He made his mistake, but was man enough to admit it and apologize. I'm waiting for the apology from whoever the genius was on the high pedestals of our party who thought it wise to not only shoot our wounded, but run over him with tanks and trucks and then feed his body to the liberal wolves....Now is the time to focus on electing a conservative Senate Majority. And if the NRSC and RNC and the money-rich PACS won't help Todd Akin get us to the majority, then we'll do it without them."

Them's fighting words from the Rabid Right leader who is scheduled to speak at the GOPer convention.

Meanwhile some of the media dunderheads express disbelief that President Obama could be at least a little ahead in the polls when Americans say the country is on the wrong track.  (Morning Joe throws up a graphic that says 36% believe the U.S. is on the right track, and then he refers to "under a third of people" believe this, which certainly challenges my arithmetic.)  How could Obama survive that, they wonder.  Well, consider that there is something called Congress, dominated by GOPers who've made a mockery of it, and it is polling around 12% or even 10% approval.  Could that possibly have something to do with the feeling that the country is on the wrong track?  Huh??

There's a certain tension release to the humor but it's black humor, maybe gallows humor, because the situation is pretty grim.  Women in particular are expressing real distress and anger over the Akin-Ryan tyranny that threatens them.  And it was only a short step from criminalizing abortion and even some birth control to a candidate for sheriff who claimed he would have authority to kill doctors and women violating such laws.

It's crazy and it's not funny.  Even this premature glee by Democrats and tv commentators on the Missouri race--which Frank Rich agrees with me is not necessarily a foregone conclusion--when what the RomneyRyan campaign is actually doing, and how effective it might be, is being drowned out.  One of which is characteristically taking an old tendency to a classic extreme with the Big Lie.

The concept of The Big Lie has quite a history. Hitler ascribed it to Jews, Goebbels pinned it on the English, but it's become famous as a technique that Hitler and Goebbels employed in Germany. The U.S. Office of Strategic Services officially thought so, describing Hitler's core rules that included "people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

The Romney campaign itself as well as the Rovian money machine are beginning to spend their hundreds of millions on several Big Lies. Two stand out for being (1) factually disproven by neutral observers (2) repeated anyway, in campaign commercials and stump speeches.

Lie #1 is that it is Obama and not Romney-Ryan that is cutting Medicare.  The Obama cuts to Medicare costs do not cut benefits, now or in the future.  The RR plan shortens the life of Medicare even in the short run, and threatens its existence in their ten year plan. The Obama cuts to waste in the program will extend its life by eight years.  But since most people understand that the Ryan budget turns Medicare into a voucher program that will mean seniors won't be able to afford medical care, the Rove doctrine of attack your opponent's strengths is combined with the Big Lie. 

Lie #2--and the one that seems to have the most money behind it at the moment--is that the Obama administration has cut work requirements from welfare.  This is a complete lie, as every neutral observer and even some GOPers say.  But repeating it over and over can make it true--especially if its intended audience wants to believe it.

And that's the other key element of the Big Lie: it confirms an existing prejudice or worldview based on biased beliefs.  It's why it worked when applied to the Jews.  And it's why it may be working with the white (male) voters being targeted, because it is a barely coded correspondence: welfare recipients=black people and Latinos, but mostly black people.

Even that is a Big Lie, because most welfare recipients in the U.S. are white.  But it is a stereotype that a certain strain within the white population wants to embrace.  What makes it most toxic and disgusting this time is the implication that the first African American President is doing this.

The idea that the 2008 election proved that the U.S. truly has become post-racial was always dubious, and the years since then have proven this wishful thinking utterly false. Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about this in the Atlantic: "Barack Obama governs a nation enlightened enough to send an African American to the White House, but not enlightened enough to accept a black man as its president."

At least one observer believes this Big Lie may be working in the swing states, while everybody's attention is diverted elsewhere.  These Big Lies don't have to be motivating to everyone.  The Medicare lie is basically to muddy the waters and blunt the issue's effect on RomneyRyan.  So far the polls don't show this but they've just started to tell it.  The welfare lie is designed to increase RRs white male vote, to compensate for all the voters in other categories they are losing big time.

Nice white people don't want to hear that racism is a motivation for some voters, nor that nice white people like RomneyRyan might be using racism as they deny it, and accuse their accusers of it, and of fomenting hate.  But non-white people see it pretty clearly.  That could be why in the latest NBC poll, Romney Ryan is getting 0% of the African American vote.  That's way less than a third, ain't it, Joe?

This is where the Big Lie works best--to seemingly justify and further feed unacknowledged prejudices.  Those prejudices make it sound true even when everybody else agrees that it is not true.  We've seen this before.  The Big Lie works best when it exploits the unacknowledged and perhaps unconscious racism of nice people, of good Americans.

Speaking of Fascist Techniques...

Another technique that's a favorite of political entities transitioning into totalitarian rule, not to mention totalitarian rulers themselves, is intimidation.  Sometimes it's by thugs in uniforms, sometimes it's just by thugs, and sometimes it's by prim white people acting like thugs.

Especially when you're black or Latino, and they're in your voting place while you're voting, harrassing you and other voters as well as election officials.

As an amateur stormtrooper adjunct to official voter suppression, that's the intimidation technique practiced by a right wing group called True the Vote, that pioneered its intimidation efforts in Texas and notably in Wisconsin, where it happily bragged that it helped Scott Walker avoid being recalled in that election.  Now they're training a million fascist army to hover over the wrong color voters in every precinct they can manage to barge into.

That's in this eye-opening nine minutes by Rachel Maddow.  Otherwise it's a vastly undercovered situation--perfect for the intimidators.

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.