Gerrymandering

Every decade, following the decennial census, the state legislatures of the United States are told how many representatives their state will send to the United States House of Representatives. Representation in the House is based on state population and there are a total of 435 representatives, so some states may gain representatives while others lose them. It is the responsibility of each state legislature to redistrict their state into the appropriate numbers of congressional districts.

-- Rosenberg

The epidemic of gerrymandering poses a growing threat to our democracy. The completion of the 2010 Census and start of the 2011 redistricting cycle makes this an especially important time for the Brennan Center's advocacy and public education efforts on redistricting and reapportionment. 

It's an open secret: more and more legislative districts reflect calculations by those in power about how they can best preserve that power, while fewer and fewer give meaningful representation to communities of voters. Incumbents carve the citizens of their state into districts for maximum personal and partisan advantage, and democracy suffers: neighborhoods are split, competing candidates are drawn out of contention, groups of voters are ‘cracked' or ‘packed' to manipulate their voting power. We like to think that voters choose their politicians-but in the redistricting process, politicians choose their voters.

Well-designed redistricting systems, in contrast, can help ensure that elected public servants actually serve their public. Moreover, they can inspire public confidence in both a process and an outcome recognized as fair.

-- Brennan Center for Justice

Gerrymandering, or redistricting, is the movement of political boundaries for the advantage of a political party. District borders are redrawn to maximize the chances of incumbents or the party's showing in future elections; sometimes it has been used to disempower particular population demographics based on race, religion, or other characteristics.

First printed in March 1812, this political cartoon was drawn in reaction to the state senate electoral districts drawn by the Massachusetts legislature to favour the Democratic-Republican Party candidates of Governor Elbridge Gerry over the Federalists. The caricature satirizes the bizarre shape of a district in Essex County, Massachusetts as a dragon-like "monster.

The word gerrymander (originally written Gerry-mander) was used for the first time in the Boston Gazette on March 26, 1812. The word was created in reaction to a redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts under the then-governor Elbridge Gerry (pronounced /ˈɡɛri/; 1744–1814). In 1812, Governor Gerry signed a bill that redistricted Massachusetts to benefit his Democratic-Republican Party. When mapped, one of the contorted districts in the Boston area was said to resemble the shape of a salamander. The term was a portmanteau of the governor's last name and the word salamander.

-- Wikipedia, Gerrymander 

Gerrymandering can be designed to carve more voters into a district that is assured of a win-- just rending their votes moot-- a process known as packing. Voters who would tend to vote for the opposition are packed into far fewer districts, meaning more districts will go to the gerrymandering party.

Gerrymandering can also carve out districts that follow demographics favorable to the gerrymandering party; this is known as cracking. Both types can lead to bizarre shapes on the map, as in both illustrations above-- or they can split districts, as with the map of Congressional District 4, below.

In 1985 the U.S. Supreme court ruled that manipulation of political borders to give advantage to one political party was unconstitutional. Earlier, in 1962, the Court ruled districts

In 1842 Congress passed the Reapportionment Act: districts must be contiguous, unlike Congressional District 4, above.

Nope, I take it back. Upon closer inspection, there's a tiny line at the left, connecting the two otherwise separate land masses. It's the median strip of an interstate highway.

Unlike in-person voter fraud, gerrymandering is a systematic way of affecting elections-- and an effective one, at that, which explains its long history. For more than 200 years, gerrymandering has been an assault on American voters by rendering their votes ineffective. The Supreme Court has declared it illegal-- wouldn't it be nice if those who do it were punished?

Sources

Redistricting. Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Read it here.

Rosenberg, Mark. Gerrymandering: How states create congressional districts based on census data. About.com. Read it here.

Systematic Election Fraud

Two posts back I wrote about in-person voter fraud-- how it exists, and how it is rare, how suspected cases turn out in most cases to be untrue, and how those that aren't are often due to confusion on the part of ages voters.

In an extreme case an election in a small town could be swayed by this type of election fraud, but it in no way has much of an impact on the outcomes of elections. It's not as if a number of voters independently wake up one day and decide hey, let's throw an election. It's just not happening.

This means the purported panic on the part of the Republican party about voter fraud is a red herring. It's meant to distract while they engage in massive election fraud on a grand scale-- something that has changed and is changing the outcomes of levels at every election.

In future posts I'll be talking about systematic election fraud. Hang on to your hats.

Karl Rove's Unique Take on Voter Suppression

I'd hoped I'd have are rest before some political type somewhere opened his big mouth, making me feel the need to write. Come on, guys, can't you give a girl some rest?

Karl Rove isn't a politician; he's one up on that. He's a kingmaker. And while Speaker of the House John Boehner was saying, "Uh, maybe Obamacare isn't as bad as we made it out to be," Rove was accusing Obama of suppressing the vote.

Say what?

So how is Obama suppressing the vote? According to Rove, by talking stuff about Mitt Romney during the election campaign. It was all true, of course, but in the Rovian mind, Obama was suppressing the vote by persuading the people to vote for him. True story!

I'm in the middle of an arc about election fraud and voter suppression, and believe me, Barack Obama is not one of the players. Rove, on the other hand, is. He's one of the cynical masterminds of the Republican Party, and amazing things come out of his mouth. Not long ago his group Crossroads GPS declared President Obama had declared a war on women ("Watch the left hand, don't watch the right!"). Of course we know which party has passed hundreds of bills to deprive women of the right to health care, reproductive choice, and equal employment, right?

What's particularly reprehensible about Rove's remark about Obama is he makes it at a time when state-controlled Republican legislaturs have taken extraordinary measures to remove peoples' right to vote.

You should be scared, and as soon as everyone stops misbehaving I'll resume my series on electron fraud and tell you why.

Sources

Parkinson, John. (2012, 8 November). Boehner exclusive: Raising taxes "unacceptable," but will put new revenue on table. ABC News. Read and watch video here.

Siddiqui, Sabrina, & Stein, Sam. (2012, 8 November). Boehner says Obamacare is the law of the land, but still favors repealing legislation. Huffington Post. Read it here.

Terkel, Amanda. (2012, 8 November. Obama won "by suppressing the vote." Huffington Post. Read and watch video here.

Election Fraud is Rampant, and It's Not What You Think

Republicans have been screaming about voter fraud and have been using this almost-nonexistent crime to systematically disenfranchise millions of registered voters 

They'd like you to think (and many people do think) in-person voter fraud is rampant. And yet fraud by voters is not only rare, it's exceedingly rare.

In this and following posts, I'll talk about four types of election fraud: in-person voter fraud, petition fraud, irregularities at the polling place, and voter repression; that is, systematic attempts to disenfranchise legitimate voters and prevent registered voters from voting.

In-Person Voter Fraud

In-person voter fraud occurs when a voter intentionally casts a fraudulent vote in an election-- by voting twice, by voting in more than one location, or by impersonation another voter, alive or dead.

I'll hit you with some numbers in a moment, but first, when voter fraud does occur, it's typically something like this:

Last year, the Richland County Prosecutor’s Office received a report of voter fraud from the local board of elections. A man had voted twice: once with an absentee ballot and again on Election Day. 

Further investigation revealed the man was elderly and suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, and he simply forgot about his first vote. Richland County First Assistant Prosecutor Brent Robinson said it would have been illogical and nearly impossible to prosecute the man for violating Ohio’s law against voting twice. 

Most allegations of double voting in Ohio end in a similar way. Local prosecutors said they rarely convict offenders of trying to rig elections. 

“It’s not that it never happens, but proven instances are quite rare,” said Daniel Tokaji, an election law professor at Ohio State University.

-- Balmert, 2012

There are lots of reports like this one-- just Google "voter fraud."

So, is in-person voter fraud a problem?

Here's what the Brennan Center for Justice has to say:

* Fraud by individual voters is both irrational and extremely rare. 

* Many vivid anecdotes of purported voter fraud have been proven false or do not demonstrate fraud. 

* Voter fraud is often conflated with other forms of election misconduct. 

* Raising the unsubstantiated specter of mass voter fraud suits a particular policy agenda. 

* Claims of voter fraud should be carefully tested before they become the basis for action.

Efforts to measure the extent of voter fraud by compiling criminal cases have indicated that the problem isn’t particularly widespread. One study last month, conducted by a group of journalism students through a project called News21, found 2,068 cases of alleged voter fraud in the U.S. since 2000, including 10 cases of voter impersonation.

-- Blalik, 2012

The most extensive study of  in-person voter fraud in the United States was conducted by News21, a Carnegie-Knight investigative reporting project.

To get the data, News21 reporters sent records requests to elections officers in all 50 states seeking every case of fraudulent elections activity, including registration fraud, absentee ballot fraud, voter impersonation fraud and casting an ineligible vote. News21 said it received no useful responses from several states. With some states, including Massachusetts, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota, the cases included in the database came from a survey of alleged election fraud conducted by the Republican National Lawyers Association. And in some states, some but not all local jurisdictions responded, and some responses were missing important details about each case. Despite those issues, News21 defends its work as "substantially complete" as the largest collection of election fraud cases gathered by anyone in the country.

-- Carson, 2012

News21 found 2068 cases of alleged election fraud in the United States between 2000 and 2112. That's election fraud, now, not voter fraud. Just under 31% of reported cases were suspected voter fraud-- that's 67 cases in 13 years or five cases per year. Most of those 67 cases were due to confusion, as with the Ohio man with Alzheimer's Syndrome described above.

In short, in-person voter fraud, while certain wrong, and while it should certainly be prosecuted when it occurs, is not much worth worrying about.

The right-wing nonprofit True the Vote is scrambling to find cases of voter fraud, but their case is built primarily on the twin pillars on voters registered in more than one state and deceased voters who remain on the rolls. They act as if every American who has moved to another state and registered to vote without deactivating their registration in their former state is a felon, or at least likely to become one.

Citing the federal requirement that citizens must cast ballots at their permanent residences, True the vote has alerted authorities about several hundred cases of what they consider interstate voting fraud and almost certainly isn't.

Certainly states are lax about removing the names of deceased voters from their records and certainly there's no bureaucratic mechanism for tracking people who move from state to state, but that doesn't correspond to widespread voter fraud. Conservative group Election Integrity Maryland, after an review of % of Maryland records, found (unsurprisingly) some 1500 deceased  people still on the rolls and just under 700 duplicate registrations-- most of people who had moved out of state. They discovered two people who became registered after they died-- probably because their paperwork was processed after their deaths; neither of them voted. Two dead voters showed up to cast ballots (unless the zombie apocalypse is upon us, this was certainly fraudulent), and one elderly woman had voted twice.

So yes, in-person voter fraud happens, and yes, it should be dealt with, but it's no cause for hysteria and it's certainly no cause for disenfranchizing legitimate voters-- both of which have occurred and are occurring.

Bottom Line-- in person voter fraud is not the widespread menace Republican fearmongers would have the populace believe.

Sources

Balmert, Jessie.  (2012, 4 November). Voter fraud: Prosecution of double voting rare. Coshocton (Ohio) Tribune. Read it here.

Blalik, Carl. (2012, 1 September). Counting voter fraud. Wall Street Journal. Read it here.

Carson, Corbit. (2012, 12 August). Exhaustive database of voter fraud cases turns up scant evidence that it happens. News21. Read it here.

Gazanijan, Glynis. (2012, 30 September). Dead people voted and registered to vote, watchdog group finds; hundreds of deceased still on rolls. MarylandReporter.com. Read it here.

Policy brief on the truth about voter fraud. Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Read it here.

PolitFact Georgia. In-person voter fraud "a very rare phenomenon." Read it here.

Your Rights as a Voter are Rapidly Disappearing

On this eve of a national Presidential election, I'd like to say please vote. Vote your conscience, but please vote.

Our rights as American voters is under attack. Many of us have been threatened, intimidated, removed without cause from registration rolls, forced to show identification despite our already having done so when we registered, and the hours during which we vote have come under attack. If we work for certain right-wing-managed companies, we are told how to vote. And if we do manage to vote, we are surrounded at the polls by "observers" who do far more than observe. We vote on electronic voting machines that don't provide paper records and were made by companies with extreme partisan leanings and which may well be selectively counting ballots. Ballot workers are often unabashedly partisan.

A number of states have been taking and will continue to take extreme measures to prevent you from voting. The purported cause is widespread voter fraud-- which absolutely is not happening. In-person voter fraud is almost nonexistent.

I'll be writing about all this over the next couple of weeks.

Why Are There No Democrats in This Blog?

The reason so many Republicans are featured in this blog has nothing to do with my politics. While my politics might color what I have to say about them, inclusion here has everything to do with how badly a politicians behaves-- and for a long time now Republicans have been trying to outcompete one another in bad behavior.

Be it ridiculous, racist, sexist, anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-immigrant, anti-government, or just anti to be anti, this blog has been a parade of Republicans-- and deservedly so. And yet I've been able to cover so very little of this bad behavior!

I'm aware of some misbehavior on the part of Democrats, but it's just not been bad enough to see here-- not with we're in the midst of such a circus of buffoonery (although if Anthony Weiner's private part flashing had occurred during my watch I would have taken a poke at him if only because of his last name).

I recently had some correspondence with an old acquaintance. He was on about how bad a president Obama had been, accusing him of selling out Israel (big for him because of his Christian fate), ass-kissing and apologizing to other nations, not having fixed the economy, running up the national bedt, and being soft on terrorism, and being a deceitful liar.

I asked him to provide examples about the lying, and the best he could come up was that Obama was running again despite promising not to unless he brought the unemployment rate below 7%.

What??

Just because Romney Romney says something doesn't mean it's true. In fact, if Romney says it, it's assuredly not true!

And Romney didn't say it. What he said in his 47% speech was that Obama had promised unemployment wouldn't exceed 8%-- which it certainly.

And Obama said no such thing.

Romney told donors he would win over waving voters by reminding them that Obama said "he'd keep employment below 8 percent." 

Obama didn't say that. Rather, his Council of Economic Adversers predicted that the stimulus would hold it to that level. Their report included heavy disclaimers that the projections had "significant margins of errors" and a high degree of uncertainty due to a recession that is "unusual both in its fundamental causes and its severity."

-- Politifact, 2012

And what if he had? How could that possibly make him duplicitious compared to the constellation of falsehoods that has come out of Mitt Romney's mouth during this campaign (and probably throughout his entire life)?

The reason it's impolitic to talk about religion and politics is that people tend to operate on the basis of their beliefs and to ignore facts. My friend will undoubtedly vote for Romney, but he should admit to himself it's on the basis of unfounded allegations about Obama and untested testimonials to Romney's character, history, and performance.

Me, I'll continue to trust, but verify.

Source

Romney Says President Obama promised "he'd keep unemployment below 8%" if the stimulus passed. PolitiFact. Read it here.

Major Newspapers, Politicians, Endorse Obama

General Colin Powell Endorses Obama for President, Uncomfortable with Romney 

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg Endorses Obama for President

Read Bloomberg's endorsement here.

Colin Powell. Michael Bloomberg. The editors at The Economist magazine. What do all these three have in common? They are all harbour Republican sympathies, yet they are all endorsing Barack Obama for a second term. 

For Mitt Romney these are dangerously sensible people to be throwing their lot in with Mr Obama, and he doesn’t have anyone on the other side to match them with. The Economist endorsement (courageous, given their readership) is also a terrible sign for Mitt. If the magazine of free-markets and the ‘one per cent’ can’t bring themselves to hold their noses and endorse Mr Romney, who can?

-- Stuttaford, 2012 

New York Times endorses Obama for second term: Read here.

Washington Post endorses Obama for second term: Read here.

Other key newspaper endorsements for Obama include the Tampa Bay Times, the Denver Post, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Philadelphia Inquirer. See here for a list of newspaper endorsements for both candidates.


Source

Stuttaford, Andrew. (2012, 2 November). Powell, Bloomberg, & The Economist (endorse Obama). National Review Online. Read here.

Mitt Makes Millions In Detroit Bailout

The November 5th issue of The Nation features an article by Greg Palast titled "Mitt Romney's Bailout Bonanza."

Palast points out that Romney has to date successfully concealed the fact that he and his wife Ann made at least $15.3 million on the offshoring of GM parts manufacturer Delphi Automotive-- and more than four billion dollars for his friends and fellow investors.

Delphi, an American operation, was closed by hedge funds which had gained control and shipped entirely offseas. There is no more Delphi Automotive in the United States of America.

Delphi Automotive was once part of General Motors. It was spun off in 1999 as a separate entity and continued to provide GM with critical parts. Without Delphi, General Motors could build no cars.

Delphi did not do well on its own, and in 2005 declared bankruptcy. Vulture hedge funds, led by Silver Point Capital, began buying Delphi's debt for pennies on the dollar. Paul Singer of Elliott Management was one of the flock. Another was John Paulson & Co.

It all starts with Delphi Automotive, a former General Motors subsidiary whose auto parts remain essential to GM’s production lines. No bailout of GM—or Chrysler, for that matter—could have been successful without saving Delphi. So, in addition to making massive loans to automakers in 2009, the federal government sent, directly or indirectly, more than $12.9 billion to Delphi—and to the hedge funds that had gained control over it.
One of the hedge funds profiting from that bailout—
$1.28 billion so far—is Elliott Management, directed by 
Paul Singer. According to The Wall Street Journal, Singer has given more to support GOP candidates—$2.3 million—than anyone else on Wall Street this election season. His personal giving is matched by that of his colleagues at Elliott; collectively, they have donated $3.4 million to help elect Republicans this season, while giving only $1,650 to Democrats. And Singer is influential with the GOP presidential candidate; he’s not only an informal adviser but, according to the Journal, his support was critical in helping push Representative Paul Ryan onto the ticket.

Singer, whom Fortune magazine calls a “passionate defender of the 1%,” has carved out a specialty investing in distressed firms and distressed nations, which he does by buying up their debt for pennies on the dollar and then demanding payment in full. This so-called “vulture investor” received $58 million on Peruvian debt that he snapped up for $11.4 million, and $90 million on Congolese debt that he bought for a mere $20 million. In the process, he’s built one of the largest private equity firms in the nation, and over decades he’s racked up an unusually high average return on investments of 14 percent.

Other GOP presidential hopefuls chased Singer’s endorsement, but Mitt chased Singer with his own checkbook, investing at least $1 million with Elliott through Ann Romney’s blind trust (it could be far more, but the Romneys have declined to disclose exactly how much). Along the way, Singer gained a reputation, according to Fortune, “for strong-arming his way to profit.” That is certainly what happened at Delphi.

-- Palast

Knowing the importance of keeping Delphi operational, General Motors and the U.S. Treasury proposed a bailout deal they had hammered out with the help of the United Auto Workers union. Knowing this, the hedge funds accelerated their purchases of Delphi debt, deliberately torpedoing the GM/government deal.

In June 2009 the hedge funds used their combined bonds to buy enough Delphi stock to control the company. Two years later they took Delphi public, with stock opening at $22 per share, a profit of 3000%-- and that was before the stock began to rise in price. Thanks to U.S. taxpayers ( for the U.S. had loaned the troubled Delphi $12.9 billion), Elliott Management's investors made $904 million, Third Point $390 million, and Silver Point $890 million. and Paulson (which has sold only half it's stock) $2.6 billion. And the Romneys? They made millions.

Altogether, in direct and indirect payouts, the government padded these investors’ profits handsomely. The Treasury allowed GM to give Delphi at least $2.8 billion of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to keep Delphi in business. GM also forgave $2.5 billion in debt owed to it by Delphi, and $2 billion due from Singer and company upon Delphi’s exit from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The money GM forgave was effectively owed to the Treasury, which had by then become the majority owner of GM as a result of the bailout. Then there was the big one: the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation took over paying all of Delphi’s retiree pensions. The cost to the taxpayer: $5.6 billion. The bottom line: the hedge funds’ paydays were made possible by a generous donation of $12.9 billion from US taxpayers.

-- Palast

The hedge fund controllers of Dephi then held GM and Chrysler hostage, threatening to withhold critical components unless they were paid $350 million immediate ("Or we'll shut you down").

Without the Delphi parts, the auto bailout would have utterly failed. GM and Chrysler had no choice but to comply.

Now in control, the hedge funds slashed benefits for workers, stripping them of their pensions. Retirees were stripped of their health fund, saving the hedge funds only $70 million, but devastating millions of retired workers; the latter happened in February, 2009, before the hedge funds gained control, but apparently upon their assistance).

Then the hedge funds fired 25,000 American workers and shipped the entire Delphi operation overseas to China. Today they brag:

Third Point’s Daniel Loeb, whose net worth of $1.3 billion owes much to his share in the Delphi windfall, told his fund’s backers this past July that Delphi remains an excellent investment because it has “virtually no North American unionized labor” and, thanks to US taxpayers, “significantly smaller pension liabilities than almost all of its peers.”

-- Palast

Having made billions of dollars by conniving against American business and the American people, there was only one thing left to do beside count their money-- blame Barack Obama. And that's just what they did.

But there was still a bit of unfinished business: President Obama needed to be blamed for the pension disaster. In a television ad airing in swing states since September, one retired Delphi manager says, “The Obama administration decided to terminate my pension, and I took a 40 percent reduction in my pension.” 

Another retiree, Mary Miller, says, “I really struggle to pay for the basics…. I would ask President Obama why I had no rights, and he had all the rights to take my pension away—and never ever look back and say, ‘Not only did I take it from Mary Miller, I took it from 20,000 other people.’” 

These people are real. But it’s clear that these former workers, now struggling to scrape by, were hardly in the position to put together $7 million in ad buys to publicize their plight. The ads were paid for by Let Freedom Ring, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit advocacy organization partially funded by Jack Templeton Jr., a billionaire evangelical whose foundation has sponsored lectures at the Manhattan Institute (the anti-union think tank whose board of directors includes not only Singer but Loeb). The ads also conveniently leave out the fact that the law sets specific ceilings on what the PBGC is allowed to pay retirees—regardless of what they were originally owed.

-- Palast

I'm infuriated by that those bastards have done-- they should be in prison, in my book-- and aghast that this has until now gone unreported by the media. As Palast says:

So, where is the New York "Paper of Record?" Or, for that matter, MSNBC?
Bill Press explained it to me when I was on his show this morning: "Sorry, Greg. There's no more investigative reporting in America. No reporters, just repeaters."
That's why I fear Jimmy Carter's statement that, "The American people deserve a president as good as they are." Now I'm afraid that's exactly what we'll get.

I'll soon talk more about Mitt and Ann Romney's involvement in all this.

Greg Palast's book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps is free with a donation of $35 to the nonprofit Truthout and at booksellers.

Sources

Palast, Greg. (2012, 23 October). Romney & Co. shopped every single Delphi UAW job to China. Huffington Post. Read it here.

Palast, Greg. (2012, 5 November. Mitt Romney's bailout bonanza. The Nation. Read it here.

US Unemployment Rate Under Clinton, Bush, Obama

Here's an interesting chart of the country's unemploymenet rate since 1993. Notice any trends?

Source

Barack Obama or Mitt Romney: Who Will Win The 2012 U.S. Presidential Election?
Read more at http://marketdailynews.com/2012/11/01/barack-obama-or-mitt-romney-who-will-win-the-2012-u-s-presidential-election/#Zlll8hOriuVUekVv.99 

Bust-Out!

Bust-out. Here's how it works if you're Tony Soprano.

One of your friends owns a sporting goods store. He's done well with the business but has had a lot of expenses lately-- sending kids to college, this and that. And he has a gambling problem-- a bad one. He gets in deeper and deeper and finally he comes to you for help. He needs $50,000 to pay the bookie so his legs won't get broken.

Before you hand him the money you put him on notice-- he is a friend after all-- telling him if he takes the money whatever ensues will be business. He of course takes the money.

You put Paulie in charge. Before your friend knows it Paulie is ordering expensive sporting goods you can't hope to sell-- who can get rid of so many Igloo Coolers?-- and things not even remotely related to sporting goods, like Cutty Sark.

The bills pile up and pile up-- as Tony and his pals sell off everything, including the shelves, until finally the utility companies turn off the lights and the bank seizes your building. You're left with no business and a huge debt which only you are responsible for. Meanwhile, Tony and his crew are casting about, looking for a new victim.

That's exactly what Bain Capital did-- bust-outs-- but on a much higher level and with no armed goons.

And that's why Mitt isn't a businessman-- he's an anti-businessman. He dismantled American companies, sent American jobs overseas, and left American workers without jobs, without pensions, and without hope.

Mitt should have gone to prison for that. Unfortunately, it's not illegal (merely immoral), and now he gets to run for President.

Read more here.

Romney's Secrecy

Click here for Alex MacGilli's New Republic well-documented and thought-provoking discussion of Mitt Romney's secrecy in regard to his personal and campaign finances.

Romney vs. Obama Around the World

Looks like respondents in all but one of these countries polled by the BBC prefer Obama over Romney as the next US President.

The only country that doesn't? Unsurprisingly, Pakistan, which is sore because Obama took out Osama Bin Laden at his hideout in Islamabad.

Source

BBC Poll: Rest of world favours Obama. BNC News. Read here.

New Yorker Romney Cover

Romney's Fake Disaster Response Trumps Ryan's Fake Photo Op

A couple of weeks ago Paul Ryan showed up unannounced at a soup kitchen in Youngstown, Ohio for a photo op. In a suit and tie, he pretended to wash pots and pans (most were already clean). Note the spotless apron. I once worked as a dishwasher. I did NOT have a spotless apron. Ever. Nor would I have worn a wristwatch, as it would have immediately gotten soaked. I pronounce this picture a fakerooni.

And so did Bryan J. Antal, President of the Mahoning County St. Vincent de Paul Society:

The head of a northeast Ohio charity says that the Romney campaign last week “ramrodded their way” into the group’s Youngstown soup kitchen so that GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan could get his picture taken washing dishes in the dining hall. 

Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, said that he was not contacted by the Romney campaign ahead of the Saturday morning visit by Ryan, who stopped by the soup kitchen after a town hall at Youngstown State University. 

“We’re a faith-based organization; we are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations,” Antal said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there, and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.” 

I thought Ryan had trumped his running mate, but Romney one-upped him with a fake response to Hurricane Sandy.

Both events were pulled off with calculated cynicism.

Yesterday, Romney's campaign – facing the challenge of a president in command of natural disaster relief – converted an Ohio political rally into a political rally disguised as providing voluntary charitable contributions to help hurricane victims on the East Coast. The problem was that collecting canned goods and other items is not what agencies such as the Red Cross want. In fact, attempting to process such relatively small donations hinders massive assistance efforts, according to non-governmental organizations.

Loading donated cans of Campbell's Soup and jars of peanuts into a rental truck makes for a nice photo-op, but it won't help any hurricane victims. Nine will get you ten that the donations will be dropped off at some pantry in Ohio, far away from the damage from Sandy.

On top of that, BuzzFeed reports that allegedly $5,000 was spent at Walmart by the Romney campaign so that Mitt could be photographed amidst an abundant supply of granola bars and diapers.

This last-minute "relief effort," of course, is consistent with the Romney/Ryan belief that individual charitable contributions can somehow take care of areas with billions of dollars in damage. Did anyone bring a house, bridge or subway to the Romney "compassion" charade? Doubt it, wouldn't fit in the rental truck.

Romney's notion of non-governmental resolution of natural disasters is as fecklessly quaint as his "horses and bayonets" notion of our military needs. Since Romney refuses to repeat his promise to dismantle FEMA since Hurricane Sandy struck, he can only offer a feeble photo showing him accepting a six pack of Gatorade. It was so Disneyesque!

The Ohio stunt provides a one-two punch of opportunistic displays of ambition disguised as compassion. Just last week Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, practically broke into a soup kitchen in Youngstown in order to get a photo of him washing pans with his wife. But don't think the Ayn Rand acolyte was going soft. It was all for show.

-- Karlin, 2012 

Sources

Karlin, Mark. (2012, 31 October). Romney's hurricane "relief effort" was as fake as Paul Ryan's soup kitchen photo op. Buzzflash. Read it here.

Philip, Abby. (2012, 31 October). Aid organizations prefer cash to canned food. ABC News. Read it here.

Sonmez, Felicia. (2012, 15 October). Charity president unhappy about Paul Ryan soup kitchen "photo op." Washington Post. Read it here.

Why Republicans Say You Shouldn't Vote for Romney

Romney on FEMA

Before the Hurricane Sandy Disaster

During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA's cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.

"Absolutely," he said. "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?"

"Including disaster relief, though?" debate moderator John King asked Romney.

"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all."

-- Grim, 2012 

There’s another nugget here worth highlighting, though. In that appearance, Romney also suggested it would be “even better” to send any and all responsibilities of the federal government “to the private sector,” disaster response included. So: Romney essentially favored privatizing disaster response.

-- Sargent, 2011 

During the Hurricane Sandy Disaster

Watch From 57 Seconds

The Romney campaign stressed Monday that states should take the lead in responding to emergencies like hurricanes. But the campaign said Romney would not abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

-- Restucca, 2012

After the Hurricane Sandy Disaster

Sources

Grim, Ryan. (2012, 28 October). Mitt Romey in GOP debate: Shut down federal disaster agency, send relief to the states. Huffington Post. Read it here.

Restucca, Andrew. (2012, 29 October). Romney would give more power to the states, would not abolish FEMA. Politico. Read it here.

Sargent, Greg. (2012, 29 October). The morning plum. On the auto bailout, Mitt has run out of answers. Washington Post. Read it here.

Whitney Tilson Lays it Out

Tilson's Graph of the Dow is Better Than the One I Used On 10/28

A year-and-a-half ago investor and philanthropist Whitney Tilson gave his reasons for supporting a second term for President Obama.

Read it here.

Today Tilson updated his piece. In it, he goes point by point through a plethora of issues, explaining why he believes Obama is a more viable choice for President than Mitt Romney.

All of his arguments are good, but I really like what he had to say about Romney's lack of veracity.

I also have grave concerns about both the integrity and core beliefs on someone who, depending on the voters he was trying to appeal to, has espoused vastly different views on countless issues: taxes, women's rights, abortion, the invasion of Iraq, the role of the federal government in education, campaign spending limits, immigration reform, gay rights, global warming, environmental protection, gun control, even whether he wanted to serve in Vietnan... The list goes on and on, to the point where I can't tell whether the real Romney is the pragmatic centrist who was the governor of Massachusetts (and who showed up on the debates) or the "severe conservative" he played for years as he campaigned for President-- or whether there is any real Mitt Romney at all.
Even if Romney is a pragmatic centrist, I question his ability to act independently of a party that I fear has become beholden to people I view as extremists-- anti-intellectuals who are hostile to women, minorities, the poor, immigrants, and gays, and who don't believe in evolution, diplomacy, protecting the environment, equality for women, global warming, and gun control.

In his discussion of the economy Tilson uses graphs to show the deterioration and improvement of the economy over time and says:

Nobody disputes three things:

1) Things were terrible when Obama took office: major parts of the economy, especially banking, autos, and housing, had collapsed, and the country was on its way to losing more than eight million jobs and the stock market declining more than 50% – both the biggest declines since the Great Depression;

2) Things are much better now: we've had 13 consecutive quarters of GDP growth, 31 consecutive months of job creation, and the S&P 500 has risen 75% since Obama took office. In addition, the unemployment rate has fallen to 7.8%, a 45-month low (down from a peak of 10.1%), consumer confidence is at a five-year high, and the housing market is at a post-crisis high. These charts show GDP growth, monthly job creation, and the stock market since the beginning of 2007;

3) The recovery that began shortly after Obama took office has been tepid.

The main questions in dispute are: a) Could/should Obama have done more?; and b) Will we be better off going forward with Romney as president?

He argues we wouldn't.

It's a good read, and it's here as a PDF.

Frankenstorm

As I write, parts of New York City are underwater. Hundreds of thousands of residents have been evacuated and city, county, and state shelters are filled. Although Hurricane Jessie, with 90+ mile per hour winds, is still some 200 miles away, the city and coastal New Jersey is already hard hit. State officials and FEMA officials and are working together to keep Americans safe and save as much property as possible.

No one knows what will happen when Jessie collides with the storm front moving in from the west and the Alberta clipper heading south from Canada, but everyone knows it won't be pretty.

About 50% of the American population is threatened by this huge storm, which is affecting the entire Eastern seaboard from Florida to Maine, and some inland states, like West Virginia. Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic took heavy damage days ago.

President Obama spoke to the nation earlier today, saying the storm will be big, but all preparations have been made. "The most important message that I have for the public right now is, 'Please listen to what your state and local officials are saying.'" Just before his briefing, he was in a meeting with Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano, FEMA administrator Craig Fugate, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, and National Hurricane Center Richard Knabb.

"The president emphasized that he has been working with state and local officials to ensure everybody has the resources they need, including food, water and electricity generators" (Bendery, 2012).

A massive storm like this requires coordination at state and federal levels so people can be saved from high waters and food, water, and supplies can be brought in. Sometimes it fails, as happened during 2005 with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Sometimes it works, as seems to be happening with Sandy.

Coordinating rescue and relief among a dozen or more states is a huge effort and requires some sort of overarching support. That's exactly what the Federal government provides in disasters like this, when we are threatened by hostiles as happened on 9/11, and when disease strikes. Without a federal government we would be screwed. With a federal government, we cope.

During the not-long-ago GOP run-up debates, presidential candidate Mitt Romney was asked whether FEMA should be closed.

"Absolutely," he said. "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?"

"Including disaster relief, though?" debate moderator John King asked Romney.

"We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids..."

-- Grim, 2012

Guess what? The states are doing all they can. Right now. This very minute. And when the states get overhwhelmed, the Federal government is there to help.

It's popular among Republicans to cry for the shuttering of virtually the entire national government, but of course it would be a disaster. We need our federal highways. We need the Centers for Disease Control to respond to contagion. We need uniformity and good standards for food and water quality. We need a FAA to ensure safe airways. We need courts to protect our constitutional rights. We need social welfare programs like Social Security and Medicare. And we need a military to protect us (the Republicans argue the other way on that one).

Sure, there's inefficiency in our government. Barack Obama has done a lot to reduce that, and there's a lot yet to be done. Sure, some agencies should be closed-- but we need a strong and lean federal government so states are's overwhelmed when the next 9/11 or Hurricane Sandy shows up.

As Sandy approaches and the winds outside begin to weave in the gale, I'm really happy for our federal government.


Sources

Bendery, Jennifer. (2012, 29 October). Obama: Hurricane Sandy will be "big and powerful," but we're ready. Huffington Post. Read it here.

Grim, Ryan. (2012, 28 October). Mitt Romney in GOP Debate: Shut down federal disaster agency, send responsibility to states. Huffington Post. Read it here.

12,000,000 New Jobs-- No Matter Who Wins

"Most forecasts for employment growth are very close to 12 million over the next four years regardless of who wins the presidency," Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody's Analytics, told The Hill.

 --Needham, 2012

I've got a policy for the future and agenda for the future. And when it comes to our economy here at home, I know what it takes to create 12 million new jobs and rising take-home pay. And what we've seen over the last four years is something I don't want to see over the next four years.

 -- Mitt Romney in Third Presidential Debate, 2012

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney claimed twice in the third presidential debate (and elsewhere) that he will  create 12,00,00 jobs if elected president. He conveniently doesn't say how, but he does say he knows what it takes.

He does know what it will take-- a four-year wait.

Romney knows (but isn't telling the American public) that Moody's and other economic forecasters have predicted the addition of 12,000,000 new jobs in the next four years regardless of who is elected President.

So Romney's big promise to America that he'll create jobs? Smoke and mirrors.

Romney wants the American people to believe he knows how to create jobs. The truth is, he does't. What he does have experience with is the acquisition and exploitation of companies-- sometimes by hostile takeover-- and the maximization of profit for himself and his buddies at Bain Capitol with absolute disinterest in what happens to the workers, the company's products, and the companies themselves. Sometimes Bain's control of companies created jobs, and sometimes it caused massive job losses-- think thousands of people-- and those who were lucky enough to keep jobs were stripped of their benefits and pensions and their salaries were reduced-- but that's fodder for another post. I digress. But read here for the fates of workers at four Bain-controlled companies.

What I do want to talk about is the amazing turnaround of an economy that was absolutely going down the toilet.

Romney says he doesn't want what happened over the last four years to happen in the next four-- but what happened was a dramatic rescue of the American economy.

When Barack Obama began his term the U.S. was losing more than 600,000 jobs PER MONTH. Check out this chart:

The chart comes from CRGraphs, a respected blog about finances and economics.

Here's another chart, this one from Penisto Review. Looks familiar, doesn't it?

And here are the data turned upside down by The Sagamore Journal.

These data are a bit different because they show only job losses and not new jobs. But the stories told by the dozens of graphs I found on the internet are the same: every one shows precipitous and increasing losses during the second Bush administration and a rapid stop to those losses shortly after Barack Obama became President.

Has the American economy completely recovered? No, of course not-- it's going to be a long grind no matter who is President. But to blame President Obama for going from a loss of 500,000 jobs per month to a net job gain is madness. Nevertheless, Republicans, including Romney, are hammering him for not doing better. That is, not to put too fine a point on it, just shitty.

I should probably add that the New York Stock Exchange has made a dramatic recovery since Obama took office.

I was unable to find a Dow Jones chart that covered more recent years. It was difficult to draw the black line exactly on January 2009, but it's clear the Dow, which had dropped precipitiously during the last year of George W. Bush's presidency and was still plummeting, began a recovery shortly after Barack Obama's inauguration. The Dow fell from more than 14,000 in late 2006 to less than 7000 in late 2007, where it stood when Obama came into office. On Friday the Dow stood at 13,107.

And they say Obama's bad for business?

Let's not forget why the economy was losing those jobs in the first place. The crash came about because of an unregulated housing market that was wildly loaning money to unqualified home buyers and then spinning the mortages off as derivatives. And which party has been against and continues to argue against regulation of banks?

You guessed it.

Sources

Needham, Vicki. (2012, 2 September). Experts say economy should grow no matter who wins White House in Nov. On the Money: The Hill's Finance & Economy Blog. Read it here.

Transcript: Third presidential debate. (2012, 22 October). CNNPolitics. Read it here.

Romney: No Increase in Taxes... Ha! Gotcha!

Thanks to Cristan Williams for this.

She writes:

You know how Romney said that he didn't raise taxes? He told the truth. He didn't. Instead, he tacked on new fees (see, a fee isn't a tax) to every-damn-thing from cremation to breast exams. Here's a few of his taxes... erm... I mean... "fees."

Go here to download the entire list of more than 1000 increased fees-- or continue reading for a sampling.

The Obama Administration's Actions on Behalf of LGBT Americans

Without a doubt, President Barack Obama has been this country's most GLBT-friendly President. His opponent, Willard Mitt Romney, would most definitely not be so friendly.

Before you make your choice in the November 6 election please take a look at this article by Dana Beyer and this timeline.

Following are just a few of the LGBT-affirmative things done during Obama's first administration:

• Hosted the first-ever LGBT Pride White House reception (2009) 
• Ordered the federal government to extend key benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees (2009) 
• Awarded the Medal of Freedom (the nation's highest civilian honor) to Billie Jean King and Harvey Milk (2009) 
• Signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009) 
• Created a national resource center for LGBT elders (2009) 
• Banned discrimination based on gender identity in federal workplaces (2010) 
• Clarified the Family and Medical Leave Act to ensure family leave for LGBT employees (2010) 
• Allowed transgendered Americans to receive passports in true gender without having had surgery (2010) 
• Awarded a grant to the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center to work with LGBT foster youth (2010) 
• Recorded the "It Gets Better" video and hosted first-ever White House conference on prevention of bullying (2010) 
• Declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional and announced the federal government would no longer enforce it (2010) 
• Signed repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (2011) 
• Completion of Institute of Medicine study on LBGT Health, the first of its kind (2011) 
• Issued guidelines to ensure safer working conditions for transgendered federal employees (2011) 
• Ended the Social Security Administration's "gender no-match" letters (2011) 
• Clarified the meaning of "family" to include LGBT relationships (2011) 
• Permitted military chaplains to perform same-sex marriages where legal (2011) 
• Called for equal treatment of same-sex adoptive parents (2011) 
• Announced HUD's new role protecting against housing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (2012) 
• Enables searches for same-sex partner benefits on www.healthcare.gov (2012) 
• Ensured transgender Americans receive respectful care in gender of identity at Veteran's Administration facilities (2012) 
• Announced support for same-sex marriage (2012) (This also legitimizes transgender marriages) 
• Pentagon celebrates LGBT Pride for first time (2012)

One of the Presidential Candidates is a Homophobe

Mitt Romney Being a Homphobe

President Obama Addresses Human Rights Campaign Fund Members at October 2011 Dinner

An Obama administration official on Saturday confirmed the president's support for legislation that prevents the federal government from denying same-sex couples the same protections received by their straight counterparts. The same official also repeated that the president supports three ballot initiatives in separate states legalizing gay marriage, and opposes a constitutional amendment in Minnesota that would ban it.

The reiteration of the president's gay marriage plank comes at a time when neither campaign is actually litigating the issue (at least not publicly). But on Friday, the president was pressed on the matter during an interview with MTV. According to ABC News, he "demurred" when pressed as to whether he saw a federal role in advancing gay marriage during his second term. 

The full transcript of the MTV interview tells a somewhat different story. While the president did say that to "try to legislate federally in this area is probably the wrong way to go," he also noted his opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act, federal legislation that defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman.

-- Stein, 2012

Mitt Romney: Homophobic Since the '60s

It seemed like a minor adjustment. To comply with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in 2003, the state Registry of Vital Records and Statistics said it needed to revise its birth certificate forms for babies born to same-sex couples. The box for “father” would be relabeled “father or second parent,’’ reflecting the new law.

But to then-Governor Mitt Romney, who opposed child-rearing by gay couples, the proposal symbolized unacceptable changes in traditional family structures.

He rejected the Registry of Vital Records plan and insisted that his top legal staff individually review the circumstances of every birth to same-sex parents. Only after winning approval from Romney’s lawyers could hospital officials and town clerks across the state be permitted to cross out by hand the word “father’’ on individual birth certificates, and then write in “second parent,’’ in ink.

Divisions between the governor’s office and state bureaucrats over the language on the forms and details about the extraordinary effort by the Republican governor to prevent routine recording of births to gay parents are contained in state records obtained by the Globe this month.

Deliberations about the policies, including dozens of exchanges about the marriages and births of individual families, are recounted in e-mails and legal memos sent between the governor’s office and lawyers at the Department of Public Health, which oversees the Registry of Vital Records.

Romney’s insistence on scrutiny harmed the ‘integrity of the vital record-keeping system,’ one official said.

The practice of requiring high-level legal review continued for the rest of Romney’s term, despite a warning from a Department of Public Health lawyer who said such a system placed the children of same-sex parents at an unfair disadvantage.

-- Waas, 2012 

Those children would then go through life with birth certificates that marked them as strange, abnormal, less than everyone else, punished because Romney didn't approve of their parents. As a Department of Health attorney warned Romney, the children would be disadvantaged and would have trouble applying to school or getting drivers licenses as adults, particularly in a post-9/11 world where they might be considered security risks, having birth certificates that appeared altered. It was a "violation of existing statutes," the attorney warned Romney. But Romney waved off the warnings, not caring about the the legal, psychological or personal ramifications. 

-- Signorile, 2012

Boston Spirit magazine reported last month that when gay activists met with him in his office in 2004, as Romney was backing a failed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in the state, Romney remarked, "I didn't know you had families." Julie Goodridge, lead plaintiff in the landmark case that won marriage rights for gays and lesbians before the Supreme Judicial Court, asked what she should tell her 8-year-old daughter about why the governor would block the marriage of her parents. According to Goodridge, Romney responded,"I don't really care what you tell your adopted daughter. Why don't you just tell her the same thing you've been telling her the last eight years." 

-- Signorile, 2012

Not only is Romney homophobic-- his actions in Massachusetts were vicious and directed toward innocent children!

Sources

Mapes, Jeff. (2012, 26 October). Obama endorses gay marriage push in Washington, Maine. The Washington Post. Read here.

Signorile, Michael. (2012, 26 October). Romney: "Some gays are actually having children. It's not right on paper. It's not right in fact." Huffington Post. Read here.

Stein, Sam. (2012, 27 October). Obama reaffirms same-sex marriage platform as election closes. Huffington Post. Read here.

Waas, Murray. (2012, 25 October). Mitt Romney overruled new birth certificates for gay parents. Boston Globe. Read here.

People Will Look It Up

PRESIDENT OBAMA: You’ve held the floor for a while. The — look, I think anybody out there can check the record. Governor Romney, you keep on trying to, you know, airbrush history here. 

You were very clear that you would not provide government assistance to the U.S. auto companies even if they went through bankruptcy. You said that they could get it in the private marketplace. That wasn’t true. They would have gone through a — 

MR. ROMNEY: You’re wrong. You’re wrong, Mr. President. 

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I — no, I am not wrong. 

MR. ROMNEY: You’re wrong. 

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I am not wrong. And — 

MR. ROMNEY: People can look it up. You’re right. 

PRESIDENT OBAMA: People will look it up. 

MR. ROMNEY: Good.

If you read Romney's 2998 New York Times article carefully, you'll see he would use the government only to provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy private financing and to assure car buyers their investment is not at risk. So Obama's was right last night and Mitt, as usual, was wrong, and pigheaded about it.

It takes a lot of chutzpah for a man who wrote an editorial called "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" to claim he wouldn't let Detroit go bankrupt!

Mr. Romney, people are indeed "looking it up." If there is any justice in this world, you're screwed.


Sources

Dwyer, Sam. (2012, 23 October). Romney's "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" op-ed on the auto industry goes viral. BostInno. Read it here.

Romney, Mitt. (2008, 18 November). Let Detroit go bankrupt. New York Times. Read it here.

Mitt Romney Disagrees With an Auto Bailout. (2008, 20 November). KKCO 11 News. Watch here.

Romney adamantly against auto industry bailout. (2008, 20 November). Associated Press.Read here.

Stein, Sam. (2012, 23 October). Romney on auto bailout in 2008: "If you write a check, they're going to go out of business." Huffington Post. Read here.

Oh, Snap!

But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn't spent enough time looking at how our military works.

 You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.

And so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we're counting ships. It's what are our capabilities. And so when I sit down with the Secretary of the Navy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we determine how are we going to be best able to meet all of our defense needs in a way that also keeps faith with our troops, that also makes sure that our veterans have the kind of support that they need when they come home. 

And that is not reflected in the kind of budget that you're putting forward because it just doesn't work.

 -- President Barack Obama, responding to Romney's claim at last night's Presidential debate that the U.S. Navy needs more ships.

Iran's Route to the Sea

Mitt Romney, in last night's Presidential Debate:

Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world. It's their route to the sea.

Erm, Mitt, they call it the Persian Gulf for a reason!

As you can see from the map above, Iran's 800-long southern border lines on the Persian Gulf, which is part of the Indian Ocean.  And as you can see, Syria and Iran aren't contiguous. Iraq lies between the two countries.

That doesn't phase Mr. Romney, though. He's made the erroneous claim many times. He stands by it.

I love Bob Cesca's Goddamn Awesome Blog. He no longer calls it that, but it certainly is. He's a talented writer and has a devastating wit.

His recent assessment of Mitt Romney is spot-on:

As I’ve been writing for weeks now, Who is this guy? He has no core values, no plan, no opinions that last any longer than two or three minutes, and he’s running the most cynical presidential campaign in modern history, banking on the fact that many voters don’t follow these statements closely enough to track the flip-flops and pandering, while also assuming that all politicians are slippery liars anyway, so why not vote for the one who looks like a Sears mannequin candidate direct from central casting. 

He’s a corporate raider with a record of shady investments and outsourcing overseas and is currently surrounded by neocon war-mongers. Worse, like Bush, he’s an empty suit who will be controlled by his advisers — capable of doing whatever they suggest for the sake of political expedience and re-election. Devoid of personal conviction, he possesses a CEO’s sociopathic ability to separate conscience from business and make decision without the pesky fog of morality. Whatever it takes — right or wrong — to make it through the day and to profit at any cost. Is this a safe bet for the presidency of the United States? Not a chance in hell.

Go Bob Cesca!

"I Was Too Important to Go to Vietnam"

You gotta love this interchange between Mitt Romney and a Vietnam Veteran:

"Governor Romney, it is true, is it not, that you had four deferments from the Vietnam War… You have said before that you support war and the efforts of US military involvement overseas at all costs, yet you made sure you would never go to war yourself. What makes you think that veterans and those currently serving in the military think that you have their best interests at heart when you yourself weren't even interested in sacrificing your time, energy, or life for your nation at a time when it seemed most crucial?"

Romney responded:

"That’s a good question, young man, and I would be happy to answer it. The Vietnam War came at a time in my life when I had other plans. I knew in my heart of hearts that I would one day serve my nation. That I would one day hold an office that would help not only our nation, but also the world. So I did what I could to make sure that I would be around to serve my nation, as well as serving God by teaching very important religious principles to a broader audience overseas. My father did not want me serving, and he convinced me that yes, I was too important to go to Vietnam. I had a greater purpose in life. I wasn't neglecting my nation, but rather preparing myself for a future of service."

An onlooker that seemingly was a Vietnam veteran shouted, "Fuck you, Romney! You wouldn't know service if it bit you on your well-manicured ass." To which Romney responded, "Please don't be testy, my friend. I did what I did for you, and I thank you for your service as well." That same veteran responded, "You only served yourself, you jackass. You could've served your nation even if your draft number wasn't called… but you didn't… you chose to serve yourself instead. Thanks for revealing your true colors."

-- Janek

Romney's dressing-down occurred at a press event in California in June.

Work Cited

Janek, Anna. (2012, 21 August). Mitt Romney: "I was too important to go to Viet Nam." Project NSearch. Read it here.