Posts Tagged Rick Santorum

Free Wood Post – GOP Votes Down U.N. Disabilities Measure, Rolls Former Senator Bob Dole Out Back Near Dumpsters

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Free Wood Post, Humor/Parody on December 9, 2012


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GOP Votes Down U.N. Disabilities Measure, Rolls Former Senator Bob Dole Out Back Near Dumpsters

December 7, 2012

By Eric Hetvile

From a wheelchair, former Republican Senator Bob Dole made a courageous and spirited defense of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, but his fellow Republicans defeated its ratification and rolled the honorable Senator out back of the Capitol and left him near the dumpsters. He was discovered 3 hours later and Congressional staffers claimed a simple oversight.

The measure would not require any additional laws and would instead simply put pressure on other countries to abide by terms already laid out in the groundbreaking Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, which was championed by Dole, an injured veteran, and signed by President George H. W. Bush.

Republican opposition claimed that such a United Nations mandate would force the United States to declare that all citizens, regardless of ability, deserve to live in dignity, safety and equality under the law. “This interferes with the sovereignty of the United States, ” said Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), “What if we decided later that we wanted to change our mind on that? What then?”

Former Republican Senator Rick Santorum said that language in the treaty would mandate abortions for anyone who might possibly become disabled. He went on to say that ratification would also mean that people in wheelchairs would be allowed to use birth control, homeschooled children would be forced to watch Sesame Street, and it would violate religious freedoms because in the best religions God gives dignity to the disabled if he chooses to heal them. He maintained that if the government gives dignity to all disabled persons right away without having to pray and wait to be healed, that undermines God’s power.

A flustered Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) asked, “Have you people lost your minds? Because if you have, ratification of this convention could help protect your disability under the law.”

 Free Wood Post.

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10 Conservatives Who Have Praised American Slavery | Alternet

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in WTF on October 12, 2012


10 Conservatives Who Have Praised American Slavery

Republican Rep. Jon Hubbard has deemed slavery a blessing. His position is not as uncommon as you’d think.

October 10, 2012 

 

 

For obvious reasons, the American conservative movement has long been dogged by accusations of racism and racial insensitivity. From their famed Southern strategy to their determined efforts to suppress minority voting via phony voter ID initiatives to their race-baiting Obama attacks, conservatives have made clear their opposition to a tolerant, multicultural America. In fact, much of their electoral strategy relies on scaring older, white voters about blacks and Hispanics taking over “their” country. 

So it’s not uncommon to hear a prominant conservative, even one who holds elected office, make patently offensive remarks. Yet some occasionally hit an unimaginable low. This week, it was revealed that Republican Rep. Jon Hubbard has published a book in which he wrote that “[T]he institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. He defended his book on Wednesday,telling the Jonesboro Sun that he still believed slavery to be a blessing because it helped blacks come to America. Yes, he praised slavery. And when given the opportunity to backpedal, he doubled down. 

You may think that this does not occur often. You would be wrong. Here are a few other prominent conservatives who have suggested slavery was not all that bad.

1. Pat Buchanan. In his essay “A Brief for Whitey,” Buchanan suggested that slavery was a net positive, saying that,“America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.”

2. & 3. Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum. Bob Vander Plaats, the leader of the arch-conservative Family Leader, a religious organization that opposes same-sex marriage, got GOP presidential candidates Bachmann and Santorum to sign his pledge asserting that life for African Americans was better during the era of slavery: “A child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”

4. Art Robinson. Robinson was a publisher and a GOP candidate for congress in Oregon. One of the books he published included this evaluation of life under slavery: “The negroes on a well-ordered estate, under kind masters, were probably a happier class of people than the laborers upon any estate in Europe.”

5. Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson. Peterson is a conservative preacher who articulated this bit of gratitude: “Thank God for slavery, because if not, the blacks who are here would have been stuck in Africa.”

6. David Horowitz. Horowitz is the president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and edits the ultra-conservative FrontPage magazine. In a diatribe against reparations for slavery, Horowitz thought this argument celebrating the luxurious life of blacks in America would bolster his case: “If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves.”

7. Wes Riddle. Riddle was a GOP congressional candidate in Texas with some peculiar conspiracy theories on a variety of subjects. His appreciation for what slavery did for African Americans was captured in this comment: “Are the descendants of slaves really worse off? Would Jesse Jackson be better off living in Uganda?”

8. Trent Franks. Franks is the sitting congressman for the second congressional district in Arizona. As shown here, he believes that a comparison of the tribulations of African Americans today to those of their ancestors in the Confederacy would favor a life in bondage: “Far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery.”

9. Ann Coulter. Known for her incendiary rhetoric and hate speech, Coulter was right in character telling Megyn Kelly of Fox News that, “The worst thing that was done to black people since slavery was the great society programs.”

10. Rep. Loy Mauch. This Arkansas GOP state legislator has found biblical support for his pro-slavery position. He wrote to the Democrat-Gazette to inquire, “If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn’t there a war before 1861?”

There is an almost palpable nostalgia among some conservatives for a bygone era wherein they could sip mint juleps under the magnolias while the fields were tended to by unpaid lackeys. And it isn’t a vague insinuation. Mitt Romney supporter Ted Nugent declared, “I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War.” No one should regard it as a coincidence that so much of this racist animus has surfaced during the term of the first African-American president of the United States. It’s one thing to harbor such offensive racial prejudices privately, but when people in public life are comfortable enough to openly express opinions like these, it reveals something of the character of their movement. And what’s worse is that conservative and Republican leaders, given the opportunity, refuse to repudiate the remarks. Mitt Romney has stated that all he’s concerned about is getting 50.1% of the vote, and if that means tolerating appeals to racist voters in order to attain his goal, then it’s just a part of the process.

 10 Conservatives Who Have Praised American Slavery | Alternet.

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Free Wood Post – Santorum: Republicans ‘not after smart people,’ have dumbass, idiot, racist vote locked up

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Free Wood Post, Humor/Parody on September 22, 2012


 

Santorum: Republicans ‘not after smart people,’ have dumbass, idiot, racist vote locked up

September 16, 2012

By Jeff Musall

"santorum" "values" "voter" "summit" "free" "wood" "post" "smart" "dumb"

Addressing the Values Voters Summit, former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Republicans will never have “smart people on our side.” While most objective observers will wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Santorum, he wasn’t finished describing today’s conservative demographic.

“The smart people aren’t with us, but we need to remember who is,” Santorum added. “We have almost all of the idiots, 93 percent of the racists, 91 percent of the homophobes, and pardon my language, but nearly all of the dumb asses out there. What we need to do is to acknowledge where our strengths are and exploit them.”

The revelations appear to be somewhat shocking, as much for their candor as their veracity. Santorum acknowledged what critics of the modern conservative movement have  been saying for quite some time. His clarity and forthright speech might be seen by some as a mistake, until you take into account the target audience.

The Values Voters Summit has been a haven for the uneducated and the educated but misinformed since its inception. More than a few attendees have reported being disappointed in the values presented, apparently hoping for a great price on a microwave. Santorum publicly admitted that the candidates are trying to lower the bar for the lowest common denominator when it comes to the American electorate on the conservative side of the spectrum. He explained that encouraging idiocy is the best hope the Republican Party has for the future.

“We cannot win on our policy, we cannot win on our initiatives or the values we hold so dear. What we must do is continue dumbing down the average voter so that a majority of them will vote in ways that are absolutely against their interests. We love idiots, and we pray for more dumb asses. We all know how to blow our racist dog whistles,” Santorum lectured.

Polling by Fox News points to early data indicating the disclosure has helped conservatives.

“I like that they’um ain’t to highfalutin to speak to us all on ‘er own level,” said Bubba-Dean Marteen, a self-described conservative from Tulsa. He isn’t the only voter reveling in the sheer bliss of utter ignorance and thanks to decades of attacks on education by Republicans, the ranks are indeed growing.

“If we can keep making stupid not only acceptable but favorable, we can’t be stopped,” Santorum said in closing. If one doubts if the strategy is sound, just look at the polls. If a pair like Romney and Ryan can garner enough support to have them in the running, the idiocracy is upon us.

 Free Wood Post.

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His Original Sin – NationalJournal.com

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in GOP, Mitt Romney on September 22, 2012


 

POLITICAL CONNECTIONS

His Original Sin

Mitt Romney’s problems can be traced to the choices he made earlier this year during the Republican primaries.

Updated: September 21, 2012 | 11:54 a.m.
September 20, 2012 | 3:00 p.m.

AP PHOTO/JAE C. HONG

Pulled right: Mitt Romney with Rick Santorum.

Except for the occasional tie, by definition one presidential contender always trails the other in mid-September. At that point, in a reliable rite of autumn, the lagging candidate is inevitably subjected to media stories documenting disarray in his team and despair in his party.

Politico fulfilled that venerable tradition this week with a detailed account of the slipshod decision-making that produced Mitt Romney’s instantly forgettable acceptance speech (although a presumably more orderly process didn’t yield an address any more memorable from President Obama). Adding to Boston’s headaches, this revelation of private strain came amid a swarm of public trials, from widespread criticism of Romney’s response to the violence in the Middle East to the furor over his secretly recorded remarks about dependency on the government.

But if Romney loses in November, the primary cause won’t be the tactical missteps and backbiting thatPolitico chronicled, or even the past two weeks’ rapid-fire controversies. The much larger problem will be fundamental strategic choices the candidate made during the Republican primary, including several that placed him in conflict with long-term demographic trends reshaping the electorate.

Romney’s biggest general-election problem is that he did not believe he could beat a GOP primary field with no competitor more formidable than Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, or Newt Gingrich without tacking sharply right on key issues. Romney repeatedly took policy positions that minimized his risks during the spring but have multiplied his challenges in the fall. His fate isn’t sealed, but the choices he made in the primaries have left him with a path to victory so narrow that it might daunt IndianaJones. “To secure the nomination, they made … decisions about immigration, tax cuts, and a whole host of other issues that had no strategic vision,” said John Weaver, a senior strategist for John McCain’s 2008 campaign. “So he’s now trapped demographically and doesn’t even seem to understand it.”

Of all Romney’s primary-season decisions, the most damaging was his choice to repel the challenges from Perry and Gingrich by attacking them from the right—and using immigration as his cudgel. That process led Romney to embrace a succession of edgy, conservative positions anathema to many Hispanics, including denouncing Texas for providing in-state tuition to the children of illegal immigrants; praising Arizona’s immigration-enforcement law; and, above all, promising to make life so difficult for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants that they would “self-deport.” Although Romney this week tried to soften his tone, polls show Obama attracting at least the 67 percent of Latinos that he attracted in 2008, despite Hispanics’ double-digit unemployment. Weaver, like other GOP strategists, worries that Romney has placed the GOP “on the precipice” of losing Hispanics for a generation.

Romney’s inability to dent Obama’s support among Hispanics (or other minorities) means the GOP nominee probably can’t win without attracting at least 61 percent of white voters. Yet a second early decision has greatly compounded that challenge. Through the primaries, Romney embraced an unreservedly conservative social agenda (such as defunding Planned Parenthood and allowing employers to deny contraception coverage in health insurance plans), especially after Santorum emerged as his principal rival. That positioning helps explain why polls consistently show Obama drawing a majority of college-educated white women—not only the most socially liberal sector of the white electorate but also the fastest-growing. If Obama can hold a majority of those women and match his 80 percent with all minorities in 2008, Romney would have to carry two-thirds of all other whites to win—as much as Ronald Reagan won among those remaining voters in his 1984 landslide.

Two other earlier choices also loom over Romney’s hopes now. His decision, when the nomination was almost sealed, to embrace a 20 percent cut in marginal tax rates has provided Obama’s team invaluable ammunition to paint him as favoring the rich over the middle class. Romney also fatefully dismissed criticism from other Republicans about his experience at Bain Capital as an attack on free enterprise rather than develop a more specific response to the allegations about his business record. That worked with ideologically sympathetic GOP primary voters, but left Romney astonishingly unprepared to persuade the broader electorate when Obama’s team redoubled that critique with biting ads.

Simon Rosenberg, president of the Democratic advocacy group NDN, says that the common theme in Romney’s primary-period choices was overconfidence that economic dissatisfaction would doom Obama and underestimation of the president’s campaign skills. “That contributed to a sense that they could say whatever they wanted to in the primaries and then Etch A Sketch it in the general,” he said.

But Romney’s decisions during the primaries also reflected a conspicuous lack of confidence that he could impose his will on his party. Instead, he serially accommodated himself to the cresting demands of a GOP base that emerged from the 2010 election excessively confident that the country was ready for the most conservative agenda since at least Reagan in 1980. If Obama wins a second term despite all his vulnerabilities, that ideological hubris will loom larger than any of Romney’s flubs and stumbles now. 

His Original Sin – NationalJournal.com.

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GOP activists to nominee Mitt Romney: Why aren’t you beating President Obama? – The Washington Post

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in GOP on September 16, 2012


 

GOP activists to nominee Mitt Romney: Why aren’t you beating President Obama?

 

WASHINGTON — Republican activists are incredulous: Why can’t Republican Mitt Romney seem to break open a tight race with President Barack Obama given the nation’s sluggish economy and conservative enthusiasm to beat the Democrat?

“He ought to be killing Obama, and he’s clearly not doing that,” said 32-year-old R.J. Robinson, one of the thousands of activists attending the annual Values Voters Summit this weekend. “He should be doing better.”

Added Mike Garner, a 27-year-old hawking “Reagan was right” buttons at the meeting: “If Romney loses this election, the party really needs to do some soul-searching.”

Their sentiments were echoed in interviews with more than a dozen GOP activists and social conservative leaders who attended the annual gathering focused on social and cultural issues and sponsored by the Family Research Council. The summit was filled with rhetoric meant to fire up the party’s base voters. Romney needs them to turn out in force at the polls in November and, between now and then, to convince others to do the same through extensive get-out-the-vote grassroots canvassing in swing-voting states. To energize them, dozens of high-profile conservatives — including former presidential candidate Rick Santorum and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor — used their speeches to paint the 2012 race as a transformational moment in the country’s history and insist that the president is turning the nation into a place its founders wouldn’t recognize.

Energy was high inside the hotel ballroom where the luminaries spoke.

But frustration with Romney coursed through the hallways, where groups like the National Organization for Marriage and Americans United for Life promoted their policy positions and conservative pundits hawked their books.

These so-called values voters are a core part of the Republican base. They have never fully warmed to the former Massachusetts governor, who previously supported abortion rights and is a Mormon, a faith many evangelicals view skeptically. Even so, many said they were cheered by Romney’s selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, a social and fiscal conservative hero to many in this group, as a running mate. They said they were rallying behind the Republican ticket, though mostly because of a desire to beat a Democratic president they like less than the Republican nominee. These activists said they’re launching bus tours, signing up voters and offering to organize in their churches to help the GOP win.

But they worry that the candidate himself isn’t doing enough to gain ground on Obama, who polls show has a slight edge nationally and in key states just seven weeks before the election. And they offered plenty of advice to Romney for changing the trajectory of the race in the coming weeks — echoing Republican presidential campaign veterans who over the past week have raised concerns about the state of the GOP nominee’s run and whether he was letting the race slip away from him.

“He needs to be more visible,” said Dawn Hawkins, who works for the anti-pornography group Morality In Media. Even though Romney and his allies outspent Obama and his backers for months on TV in battleground states, Hawkins said: “He’s not up on TV very often. He has very few ads running on TV and radio. Obama has ads everywhere.”

Tammy Baker, a military spouse originally from Texas, said she thinks Romney should sit down for “fireside chats” with the American people so they can get to know him better. “I’m not talking boxers and briefs here, you know. I’m not interested in that,” she said. “But I do feel that he’s pretty rigid, and because of that we don’t get a chance to really get to know that person.”

Baker’s other piece of advice: “Let Paul Ryan out of the box.”

Bryan Fischer, an official with the American Family Association, went even further, accusing Romney’s campaign of putting “a bag over Paul Ryan’s head.”

Like others here, he warned that if Romney loses, the Republican Party is certain to undergo a tough period. “Soul-searching,” ‘’self-reflection” and “tumult” were the words others used.

“If the Republican Party loses this election, conservatives will have had it,” Fischer said. “They will be done, finished.”

Romney did not appear in person at the Values Voters gathering this year, instead appearing via video. His campaign clearly understands the nervousness among a group that’s not Romney’s natural constituency; it sent their favorite son — Ryan — to reassure them.

“I’m not the only one who has told Mitt that maybe he needs to talk more about himself and his life,” Ryan told the group Friday morning, to scattered laughter from the crowd. “It wouldn’t hurt if voters knew more of those little things that reveal a man’s heart and his character.”

Conference organizers said Romney himself has made personal overtures to evangelicals recently.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said that he met with Romney one-on-one about two months ago, and he told the Republican nominee he was prepared to tap a network of pastors and travel the country campaigning for the nominee.

“When it comes to evangelicals and Mormons, we have theological differences, and they’re significant, and we’re not going to gloss over those,” Perkins said. “But we have a shared concern for this country. And we have a shared set of values that can help get the nation back on track. And that’s what he is emphasizing and that’s what I think he needs to continue to emphasize to draw social conservatives into his campaign.”

 GOP activists to nominee Mitt Romney: Why aren’t you beating President Obama? – The Washington Post.

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Gay Marine Beaten To Bloody Pulp To Fire Up RNC Crowd | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Humor/Parody, The Onion on September 3, 2012


 

Gay Marine Beaten To Bloody Pulp To Fire Up RNC Crowd

AUGUST 28, 2012

TAMPA, FL—Excitement on the floor of the Republican National Convention reached a fever pitch Tuesday, as attendees were treated to a rally at the Tampa Bay Times Forum featuring the savage beating of an openly gay Marine.

Amidst the deafening roar of applause and anti-gay slurs, the highly decorated veteran, who had just returned from his third tour of duty in Afghanistan, was dragged around the stage in a blindfold and flexicuffs while party leaders took turns pummeling his body into a near-lifeless pile of mangled flesh.

“Who’s ready to get this convention started? I said, who’s ready to get this convention started?!” shouted former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, one hand clutching the gay Marine’s bloodstained fatigues and the other cocked toward his face. “I want to hear some noise if you think it’s time for a change in Washington—if you think this administration is out of touch with America’s problems.”

“Out of touch,” he repeated, drilling a fist into the combat veteran’s kidneys with each syllable. “Let’s give it up for Romney-Ryan 2012!”

As the frothing crowd of more than 5,000 delegates, alternate delegates, and volunteers leapt to their feet, Sens. Marco Rubio and Rand Paul charged out onto the stage with baseball bats. According to sources, Rubio went to work on the gay man’s legs while Paul concentrated on his back and abdomen, sending attendees seated in the front row into fits of delight each time they were splattered with blood.

Chris Christie, the brash New Jersey governor and rising GOP star followed close behind, ratcheting up the crowd’s enthusiasm by laying into the Marine’s shaved head with a sock full of quarters, leaving his broken body crumpled up beneath a giant banner reading “We Can Do Better,” one of the convention’s themes.

Witnesses said the dazed veteran—who recently married his longtime partner—fought back fiercely and did make an attempt to escape. It was rebuffed, however, when presidential nominee Mitt Romney suddenly emerged from backstage, motioning for party members to back away and give him space.

“Before I accept this nomination, I just want to thank you all for your continued support and let you know how much it means to Ann and I and the rest of our family,” Romney told the hushed crowd, rolling up his sleeves and removing a pair of brass knuckles from his jacket pocket. “So please join me in harnessing the amazing energy in this room tonight, and let’s take it with us on the difficult road ahead.”

“All the way to the White House!” he added to a rapturous swell of applause before bashing the gay husband and father’s face toothless and tossing his limp frame into the crowd.

As frenzied convention-goers bandied the Marine’s body around the arena like a beach ball, the show continued on stage with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) invoking scripture to scare a pregnant teenager out of having an abortion while a scale model of a Planned Parenthood clinic burned in the background.

Eliciting one of the biggest cheers of the night, House Speaker John Boehner then hog-tied an inner-city welfare recipient and backhanded him over and over until he promised to work harder and provide for his family instead of relying on government handouts.

“That was exactly what the party needed,” Jimmy Prudhoe, a delegate from Colorado, told reporters later. “We got the convention off to a rousing start that somehow managed to reaffirm who we are as Republicans and what we truly believe in. And boy, was it a heck of a lot of fun to watch, too!”

Prudhoe added that he couldn’t wait until the next day of the convention, when vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan was scheduled to personally prevent a laid-off factory worker from receiving dialysis until he finds the money to pay for it.

 Gay Marine Beaten To Bloody Pulp To Fire Up RNC Crowd | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.

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Romney’s fact-checking flip-flop – Salon.com

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in GOP on August 30, 2012


 

TUESDAY, AUG 28, 2012

Romney’s fact-checking flip-flop

Romney hits Obama for disregarding fact checkers, then disregards fact checkers

BY ALEX SEITZ-WALD

 

Romney's fact-checking flip-flop

(Credit: Associated Press)

 

TAMPA — Two weeks ago, Mitt Romney said that fact checkers should dictate which ads the Obama campaign airs or does not. “You know, in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad,” Romney said. “You know, the various fact checkers look at some of these charges in the Obama ads and they say that they’re wrong, and inaccurate, and yet he just keeps on running them.”

Now, the Romney campaign is going all in on welfare reform and their accusation that President Obama has dismantled its work provisions, despite the fact that it’s not at all true. Rick Santorum will deliver a major speech at the Republican National Convention here today that the Romney campaign has touted, noting that the former senator was an author of the 1996 welfare reform bill signed by Bill Clinton. And at a forum hosted by ABC and Yahoo! yesterday, Romney strategist Ashley O’Connor said a recent ad on welfare was the campaign’s “most effective” one yet.

Aside from the racial complications of attacks on welfare, the ad has also been determined by independent media fact checkers to be patently false. The Washington Post’s fact checker awarded Romney’s ad “four Pinocchios,” PolitiFact gave it a “pants on fire,” and the AP called it “factually inaccurate.” But the Romney camp dismissed all this. “Fact checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers,” O’Connor told BuzzFeed.

Here’s a helpful flow chart to determine if fact checkers should be heeded or not: Does the ad come from the Obama campaign? Then yes. Does the ad come from the Romney campaign? In that case, certainly not.

 Romney’s fact-checking flip-flop – Salon.com.

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Things That Shouldn’t Be Said In Modern Society To Be Said At Least 1,400 Times At RNC | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Humor/Parody, The Onion on August 27, 2012


 

Things That Shouldn’t Be Said In Modern Society To Be Said At Least 1,400 Times At RNC

AUGUST 27, 2012  

TAMPA, FL—According to numerous sociologists and political experts, things that should never under any circumstance be spoken aloud in modern society will be said no fewer than 1,400 times this week at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL.

Throughout the three-day event, as the GOP unveils its 2012 platform and formally nominates its presidential ticket, experts predict words and phrases pertaining to science, health, and justice that are entirely unbefitting 21st-century human civilization will, on average, be voiced every 40 seconds from the podium at the Tampa Bay Times Forum.

According to alarming projections, the number of jarringly anachronistic remarks about gender alone will easily number in the hundreds.

“As the convention kicks off Tuesday with speeches from the likes of Rick Santorum and Nikki Haley, we should prepare ourselves to hear a more-or-less unending stream of ideas that should never even enter one’s mind, let alone be verbalized, in this day and age,” said Elizabeth Unger, a political scientist at Georgetown University. “It’s difficult to comprehend, but dozens of comments on such topics as human relationships and the physical world itself—which will seem as if they were crafted by some primitive unthinking civilization that existed centuries ago—will actually be emphasized, repeated, and used to punctuate key points in every single speech.”

“And what’s more baffling is that speakers will receive legitimate applause for saying things in public that no reasonable, informed member of society would ever willingly say in private,” she continued. “In fact, the more monstrous and archaic the thing sounds, the more ardent the ovation will be.”

Unger said the broad range of antiquated and inappropriate things that will be articulated each night on live television will not, as one might suspect, be blurted out by accident, as an involuntary reflex, or from momentary lack of forethought. While she acknowledged that such remarks would defy all contemporary definitions of logic and propriety, Unger confirmed they would actually be written down, organized, and rehearsed in advance, as if they in fact represented the speakers’ fully formed opinions and deeply held convictions on those particular issues.

“What’s fascinating is that these things, which will be spoken against all sense of contemporary decency and rational judgment, will not be the rantings of degenerates or imbeciles,” said Erik Olin Wright, president of the American Sociological Association. “Rather, they’ll be voiced by well-known political figures, distinguished business leaders, and top minds of national conservative movements—dozens of outwardly functional, ordinary people who for some reason appear eager to vocalize bizarrely backward-looking ideologies that no right-thinking modern human being would ever fathom giving voice to.”

“It’s almost as if these people are unaware that the Enlightenment, the scientific revolution, various civil rights movements, and the entirety of social progress over the previous several centuries even occurred,” Wright added.

Scholars also affirmed that sentiments relating to economic opportunity, natural resources, and human culture that should never exit a person’s mouth would in fact be chanted in unison throughout the convention, easily bringing the total count of grossly inappropriate utterances into the hundreds of thousands.

According to the vast majority of experts contacted, such bizarrely out-of-date concepts, if ever fully acted upon, would nullify scores of generations of human advancement.

“If this gathering were held in the 1700s or 1800s, a certain fraction of the comments they will make on issues like religion and commerce might be considered somewhat appropriate by people of the time,” anthropologist Gregory Switzer said. “But much of what is said at the RNC about fairness and the treatment of fellow human beings in need, for example, is far more consistent with the very beginnings of rudimentary social empathy in our species dating back to the earliest emergence of human civilization some 10,000 years ago, when our barely developed ancient ancestors would literally smash each other’s skulls in with large rocks without a care or second thought.”

In stark contrast, scholars noted, several hundred things that desperately needed to be said in modern society would be uttered throughout next week’s Democratic National Convention by gutless speakers who would not possess anything remotely close to the strength or resolve needed to act on them.

 Things That Shouldn’t Be Said In Modern Society To Be Said At Least 1,400 Times At RNC | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.

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SARAH PALIN HAS A SERPENTS HEART: The truth on Mitt Romneys Olympic Leadership

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in GOP on August 25, 2012


The truth on Mitt Romney’s Olympic Leadership

From Sodahead

 

You might wonder why the Romney people haven’t made more of a public cause celebreout of his stewardship of this highly successful event featuring 2,400 athletes from 77 countries. I think they’re probably waiting for the London Summer Olympics scheduled to open July 27 and close August 12th. 
You’ll probably see a bunch of 2002 hyperbole, again characterizing Mitt as an indispensable leader made of stern presidential stuff. 

Besides the 2002 Winter games, Mitt also headed the summer companion competition, the Paralympic Games; another 416 athletes from 36 countries. Let’s first take a quick look at the Paralympic games and 
Mitt so you’ll get an idea of where I’m going here. Paralympic athletes can have any number of physical ‘disabilities’, including cerebral palsy, blindness, amputation, degrees of intellectual impairment and 
ironically multiple sclerosis, a condition that Mitt’s wife Ann was diagnosed with 14 years ago. It’s currently in remission. 

The committee was some $379 million shy of revenue projections with 700 employees to pay and a Winter Olympics to mount. Man, where are you going to come up with $379 million? Romeny could open a barbershop franchise for gays or maybe sell star-maps to offshore tax avoidance havens…naw, not enough time. Then it came to him. He’d flood the halls of congress with lobbyists in search of scads of discretionary 
taxpayer-funded earmarks for the games. He came away with $382 million. There were also additional fed funds for security in the wake of the horrific 9/11 attacks, but well over a billion went to the games, themselves. Fellow homophobe and chaser after the republican presidential nomination, Rick Santorum was livid. The flaming heterosexual told a Columbus, Ohio Tea Party crowd that “He (referring to Romney) heroically bailed out the Salt Lake City Olympics by heroically going to Congress and asking them for tens of millions (it was far more) to bail out the Salt Lake City Olympic games, in an earmark.” “Does the word hypocrisy come to mind?” 

Before it was all over the 2002 Romney-run Salt Lake City Winter Olympics had sucked up roughly $1.3 BILLION in fed dollars according to the General Accounting Office. More than the government had awarded to all previous U.S. Olympic venues combined. That included some highly questionable expenditures for the owner of Sinclair Oil, Earl Holding. Holding also owned Snowbasin ski resort. Earl sat on the SLOC committee that Romney headed. The committee awarded him $14 million for hosting 3 
men’s and 3 women’s ski races. The old boy was worth in the billions at the time and roughly $3.1 billion as of last year. But we’re just getting started. Congress approved a deal that added 1,300 acres of 
pristine national forest land to his resort. AND…Uncle Sam built him a neat old road from the resort to the Salt Lake City airport. There were other rich-guy raids on the fed money as well, a private little 
piggy-bank as it were. Did Mitt partake? Almost impossible to tell with his secret accounts around the world. 

Many media claimed the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics were fraught with so many sleazy deals that, had all been properly investigated it would have made the original bribery scandal look like a 5-year-old breaking into a cookie jar. 

And what did the fabulous leadership of Romney accomplish for Salt Lake City? According to a study by the University of Utah, very little once Michelle Kwan had landed her last triple axel. Sure there were jobs 
and money pouring in for the duration of the competition and a trust fund has been set aside to preserve some venues. But after that the study was hard pressed to find any positive consequences on a 
Macroeconomic scale and even during the halcyon days of the competition, the games constituted but a tiny fraction of the state’s economic gains. 

Let the record show, however, that Romney was elected governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and took office despite some residency challenges. All that out-state Olympic campaigning can pay dividends.

 SARAH PALIN HAS A SERPENTS HEART: The truth on Mitt Romneys Olympic Leadership.

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In Tight Iowa Race, Romney Struggles to Excite G.O.P. Base – NYTimes.com

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in GOP, Opinion, Politics on August 3, 2012


In Tight Iowa Race, Romney Struggles to Excite G.O.P. Base

Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Michael Joe Crandell sat down to eat a pecan roll at the Jaarsma Bakery in Oskaloosa, Iowa.

 

By TRIP GABRIEL

Published: August 3, 2012

OSKALOOSA, Iowa — Presidential candidates are again marshaling their forces in Iowa, which is up for grabs in November.  Mitt Romney, eager to capture a state President Obama carried four years ago, is planning another visit on Tuesday as he bulks up his existing 11 field offices to compete with Mr. Obama’s 17.

 

But as he strides toward the traditional show of party unity at the Republican convention this month, Mr. Romney faces a worrisome undercurrent here: that the grass-roots elements who animated the Iowa caucuses — including evangelical Christians, Ron Paul supporters and Tea Party members — are not fully behind his candidacy in a battle that will be determined partly on who turns out his party’s base.

“He just doesn’t seem to connect well, and I’m not sure he’s a strong enough candidate, to be very, very honest,” said Steve Boender, a farmer here in southeast Iowa, who supported Rick Santorum in the state caucus. “I’m probably going to hold my nose and vote for him,” Mr. Boender added, “but I’m afraid there are a fair amount of people that will” sit on their hands.

Prominent conservatives have called on Mr. Romney to make bolder efforts to rally the Republican base, including Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Sarah Palin, who pleaded with him last month to “light our hair on fire.”

And Tuesday’s victory of Ted Cruz, an insurgent with Tea Party support who vanquished Texas’s lieutenant governor in a Senate primary, raised new questions about whether a Republican Party deeply split over its future direction and leadership can fully unite in November behind an establishment politician.

There is little doubt that conservatives want to drive Mr. Obama from office. But whether Mr. Romney — who once backed universal health care and supported abortion rights — can generate the excitement needed to draw these voters to the polls is a question that worries some Republicans.

“Cruz won because he was viewed as the change agent,” said Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Iowa Republican Party. He faulted the Romney campaign for playing small ball for much of July by focusing on a statement the president made about who deserves credit for a business’s success.

“While Boston is busy attacking President Obama for the remarks he made in Roanoke a few weeks ago, the electorate is clamoring for a candidate who will attack and reform the federal government,” Mr. Robinson said, alluding to the headquarters of the Romney campaign.

Many Republican strategists, including in the Romney campaign, insist that opposition to President Obama alone will rally the base. But with fewer than 100 days before the election, some voter surveys highlight an enthusiasm gap Mr. Romney faces. A Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll this week of likely voters in three swing states — Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania — found supporters who “strongly favored” Mr. Romney trailing Obama supporters who “strongly favored” the president by double digits.

The Romney campaign disputes the significance of such findings, arguing that dislike for Mr. Obama is most intense among conservatives, who are most likely to vote.  

“Intensity drives turnout,” said Neil Newhouse, Mr. Romney’s pollster. “Every measure shows Republicans and conservatives are more intense in their opposition to President Obama than Democrats are in support of him. They will be there in November.”  He said Mr. Romney is “extremely popular” among the Republican rank and file in Iowa.

Mr. Romney and his top strategists are running a textbook general-election campaign, in which the candidate tacks away from the base to appeal to undecided voters in the middle.

Some conservative leaders echoed the warnings of Mr. Santorum and Newt Gingrich from the nominating fight that when Republicans choose an establishment figure, recent history has not been kind.

“There’s no doubt the Tea Party groups, the social conservatives, evangelicals, fiscal conservatives — they’re all interested in getting rid of Obama,” said Bob Vander Plaats, a leader of social conservatives in Iowa. “And yet there is a reluctance to wholly embrace Romney at this point. That’s a concern, and it’s a concern of a high enough magnitude that all you have to do is ask John McCain and Bob Dole, how did that turn out for you?”

Although Mr. Romney came within a whisker of winning the Iowa caucuses in January, he was not nearly as competitive in rural regions of the state like the southeast.

Mr. Romney “should be leading by a lot at this point in the game,” said Mark Doland, a member of the Iowa Republican Party’s central committee from Oskaloosa. Mr. Romney, he said, has failed to excite conservatives by speaking out on issues like same-sex marriageand slashing the federal government.

Christopher Huston, an optometrist in nearby Pella, said patients tell him they prefer Mr. Romney to the president but without enthusiasm. “A lot will vote for Romney by default,” he said. “Whether he can get people excited enough to get in their vehicles and come up and vote is the story.”

Some Republicans who participated in the caucuses, which featured half a dozen candidates running against the party establishment, are distressed that the presumed nominee is a former Northeastern governor and member of the financial elite.

“That is what is so disappointing about the whole process — we ended up with the establishment candidate,” Robert Maurer, an accounting and finance professor at Central College in Pella, said after a Rotary meeting this week. He voted for Ron Paul in the caucuses; come November, he said, “I’m not sure who I’m going to hold my nose for.”

Mr. Paul had one of his deepest and strongest organizations in Iowa, which continues to be influential. A.J Spiker, the chairman of the state Republican Party, is a former vice-chairman of Mr. Paul’s campaign. The 28-member delegation the party is sending to the convention has been infiltrated by a majority of Paul supporters, who are not bound to vote for a particular candidate in Tampa, Fla.

Mr. Boender, the Oskaloosa farmer, works with five adult sons planting parcels of corn and soybeans spread over half a dozen counties. At 7:30 one morning this week, he and family members sipped coffee and cut apart a gooey monkey bread baked by Mr. Boender’s wife, Jan, before beginning work.

All vehemently disliked President Obama. Their level of enthusiasm for Mr. Romney, however, was low.

“There’s not a lot of rah rah for Mitt Romney, I’ll guarantee you that,” said Mr. Boender (pronounced “BOON-der”).

“When he does come to Iowa and puts on a pair of blue jeans and flannel shirt, the poor guy looks as stiff as a hedge post.”

One of his sons, Kurt, 23, said he might choose a third-party candidate. He disliked Mr. Romney’s “liberal past” when he favored abortion rights and signed an assault weapons ban as Massachusetts governor, positions Mr. Romney repudiated long ago.

“I don’t see a major change unless it’s convenient for him,” Kurt Boender said.

His sister, Becky Boender Ochsner, 29, who is married to a pastor, said that despite Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama’s vast differences on most issues, she saw little to distinguish them. It is “an East Coast person’s” view that a candidate is the sum of his policy positions, she said.

“I think there’s more to a person and their leadership abilities, such as character,” she said. “Romney and Obama are both very arrogant and represent the political class. I think they would make similar decisions on the same things.”

 In Tight Iowa Race, Romney Struggles to Excite G.O.P. Base – NYTimes.com.

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