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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:25:36 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....The voice of today's GOP: Allen West says Democrats are commiesBy DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Thursday, April 12, 2012REPRESENTATIVE ALLEN WEST, one of the loosest cannons in the Republican arsenal, believes there are about 80 members of the Communist Party in the United States Congress.
Tuesday night at a town hall meeting in Jensen Beach, Florida, one of West’s constituents asked him how many “card-carrying Marxists or international socialists” there were in Congress. Without hesitation, Allen responded, “I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party.”
He went on to identify them as the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group within the Democratic caucus that wants to end corporate welfare for oil, gas and coal companies, rebuild the country’s infrastructure, expedite an end to the war in Afghanistan and eliminate tax cuts for the top 2% of Americans while extending tax relief for the middle class. Now, that may not sound like communism to you, but to West, such scary ideas apparently reek of Bolshevism. (Note to Representative West: solid majorities of voters tell pollsters they support every one of those proposals — the commies have already won!)
Democrats are a wee bit offended. They say West’s remarks are reminiscent of Republican Senator Joe McCarthy’s anticommunist witch-hunt in the 1950s. Well, yeah. But I think we are a long way from another Red Scare. Compared with the powerful McCarthy, the first-term congressman from Florida’s balmy beaches is a pipsqueak.
What makes West’s comment notable is how it is only a tiny stretch beyond the rhetoric being employed by many more prominent Republicans. Policy proposals like healthcare mandates, cap-and-trade and immigration reform that were once being touted by Republicans — radical lefties such as Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush — are now branded as treacherous schemes to create a godless, socialist America. Throughout the primary campaign, GOP presidential candidates from Michele Bachmann to Rick Santorum have talked as if the 2012 election is the nation’s last chance to save the United States from becoming a clone of the Soviet Union.
These days, Republican town hall meetings often take on the tone of John Birch Society gatherings. Alarmed citizens stand up to speak of dark conspiracies and Democratic Party schemes to destroy the Constitution. Apparently, the meeting where West made his remarks ran along those lines. And, when the man stood up to ask about the percentage of card-carrying commies in the Congress, West first said, “That’s a good question.”
No it wasn’t. It was a crazy, paranoid question. Four years ago, when a woman at one of his rallies began to rant about Barack Obama being an anti-American Muslim, presidential candidate John McCain took the microphone away and said she was wrong. Obama was a good American and a good family man with whom he simply disagreed, McCain said.
This time around, no one is as brave as McCain. In a similar campaign setting with a similar comment from the crowd about “Muslim” Obama, Santorum just played along. Romney has masked his natural moderation with constant panders to the paranoids. It is hard to imagine Romney, Santorum or any Republican leader calling out Allen West for saying progressive Democrats are Communist Party members.
John McCain would, but then he’s a war hero who learned the hard way what real communists are like. These new would-be party leaders are no heroes. In fact, they are not so much leaders as they are cheerleaders turning cartwheels to please the most bellicose voices in the crowd.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-democrats-are-commies-20120411,0,1232324.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:26:08 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney: All the mendacity money can buyBy DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Monday, April 23, 2012This updated Horsey cartoon anticipates the role attack ads and “super PACs” will play in the 2012 election. — David Horsey/Los Angeles Times/April 23, 2012.THE neck-and-neck race between President Obama and the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, will be the most expensive campaign in American history. It will be a battle between two robust political organizations. And it is a good bet things are going to get really nasty.
There are genuine differences between the two candidates — one is a classic liberal, the other a classic conservative — but neither is a renegade and, despite what the partisan bombast may allege, neither man is anything close to a radical.
Arguably, Obama and Romney each carry as many liabilities as assets. For Obama, the economy continues to be the biggest drag on his prospects. Though things are better now than they have been in several years, and though the Obama camp can correctly argue that the president came into office facing the worst economic conditions in 80 years, many people still expected better.
Obama has accomplished many goals liberals longed to see achieved — a national healthcare program, gays serving openly in the military, the Iraq war brought to an end — but he has fallen short of the sky-high hopes many had in 2008. For Democrats four years ago, Obama was a transformational candidate; now very little feels transformed.
Romney never had the love to start with. He did not win the nomination in a euphoric gush of voter enthusiasm; he captured it with superior organization and lots of money. Many Republicans do not especially like him nor trust him; he seems too much a political chameleon for a party that has come to value ideological purity almost above all else. And his congenial, rich financier demeanor does not exactly fit the angry, anti-Wall Street mood of the GOP's tea party faction.
With excitement about both candidates dampened, the election will be more of a tactical endeavor. Victory will be won in a dozen swing states among the 10% to 15% of the electorate who are not already solidly on one side or the other. Those few voters will be targeted, researched, analyzed and manipulated by two highly sophisticated campaign operations.
The Obama campaign has been amassing money and information and building a national organization without the distraction of a primary race. At the end of March, Obama's team reported contributions totaling nearly $197 million. The Romney campaign reported contributions of more than $87 million. Romney has, of course, been forced to spend heavily to fend off rival after rival and, currently, Obama has 10 times the amount of cash on hand. But, according to Bloomberg News, that advantage slips to a less impressive 2-to-1 when money raised by the Romney "super PAC" and other independent Republican groups is taken into account. Ultimately, the total expenditures to elect Romney could match what is spent to keep Obama in the White House.
The primary campaign may have been long and tough, but it proved the Romney forces had the depth and skill to crush the opposition at key junctures in the primary season and has what it takes for a serious challenge to Obama’s powerful operation. During the New Hampshire primary, Romney voter research was able to predict voter behavior based on such things as the kind of car a voter owned or where his kids went to school. That level of pinpoint marketing could be a potent tool in winnowing the ranks of undecided voters in the swing states.
With stakes this high, money so available, organizations so nimble and polling so evenly split, it is impossible to imagine either side holding back from using every weapon in their arsenals. The heaviest guns are attack ads. Expect them to become more vicious and more distorted with each passing day.
By the end of October, if you are not sickened by the tone of the election, it will mean either that you do not own a television or you are a political consultant for one side or the other who is making a ton of money trying to mix cheap shots and big fibs into a winning formula, however poisonous it may be to American political life.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-obama-vs-romney-20120423,0,5590081.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:26:35 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Attacking Mitt Romney's Mormonism would be political idiocyBy DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Thursday, April 26, 2012No religion has a monopoly on ideas that seem odd to outsiders, as this Horsey cartoon from 2011 shows. — Cartoon: David Horsey/Los Angeles Times/April 25, 2012.JOKES ABOUT polygamy and funny long underwear aside, Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith has not been, and will not become, a factor in the presidential campaign of 2012.
I have a friend who wishes that were not so. She thinks it’s creepy that Mormons comb genealogical records to find people to retroactively baptize into the church — people who were not Mormons when they were alive and probably would not want to be Mormons if they still were. Knowing that the one constant in Romney’s otherwise malleable set of beliefs is his religion, my friend cannot understand why the Obama campaign has not raised the oddities of Mormonism as an issue.
It is not going to happen. The Obama campaign gurus are wise enough to know there is nothing to gain by opening up the can of very fat worms that is religion.
I thought about this last week as I was driving down Kamehameha Highway on Oahu after sunset. As I approached the small town of Laie, I noticed a bright glow in the darkness off to the right. When I got close enough, I could see where the light was coming from: the illuminated Mormon temple. It was like finding the Lincoln Memorial in the middle of a jungle; that is how out of context it seemed.
Yet, in Laie, the temple is the center of the community. Nearby is the Hawaii campus of Brigham Young University and the sprawling Polynesian Cultural Center — a Disney-quality re-creation of traditional life in the Pacific Islands run by the Mormon church.
In Laie, it is not easy to locate a shot of booze or even espresso; Mormons frown on stimulants like alcohol and caffeine. But just down the road is a Catholic church where sips of alcohol are served for free in the most holy rite of the faith. In one religion wine is frowned upon, in another it is a sacrament.
Of course, there are folks who think the whole concept of bread and wine magically being transformed into the literal body and blood of Christ is an archaic superstition. There was a time, not so long ago, that someone who subscribed to such an idea had a tough time running for high federal office. Now we’ve had a Catholic president and a majority of the Supreme Court belongs to the pope’s flock. Somehow, the republic has survived.
Follow the road from Laie to Waimea Bay and, on a hillside overlooking the Pacific, you will find an ancient Hawaiian heiau, a temple where human sacrifices were performed. These days, we tend to romanticize native religions, but when this particular cult was broken up in 1819, the Hawaiians who toppled the old superstitions were happy to be rid of an oppressive system. When the Protestant, Catholic and Mormon missionaries showed up soon thereafter, other problems arose, but at least no one was pushing human sacrifice.
The point is, what is sacred to one person is silly — or even deadly — to another. In this country, we are proud of allowing our citizens to believe any sacred silliness they choose. And Mormons have no monopoly on unusual beliefs.
Those who are concerned about Romney’s Mormonism generally fall into two camps: those on the secular left, like my friend, who are a bit suspicious of any religion, except maybe Unitarianism; or those on the religious right who consider Mormonism to be a perversion of true Christianity. Those on the left are already in President Obama’s camp, so there would be no advantage in placating them with attacks on Romney’s faith. Those on the right? Well, they will hold their nose and vote for the Republican candidate because, for them, having a Mormon in the White House is not nearly as bad as giving that Muslim guy four more years to ruin the country.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-attacking-mormonism-20120425,0,5614140.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:26:59 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....GOP's silly slam of President Obama for ‘spiking the ball’By DAVID HORSEY | 5:11AM - Thursday, 03 May 2012Obama celebrates Osama's demise while Mitt has a fit. — David Horsey/Los Angeles Times/May 03, 2012.THIS WEEK, Republicans have been criticizing President Obama for his surprise trip to Afghanistan marking the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden. By accusing the president of hyping the commemoration, they apparently hope to undercut the political potency of his biggest foreign policy coup. Instead, the GOP critics may merely make themselves look a bit silly.
They must think Americans are suffering from amnesia and cannot recall President George W. Bush and his "Top Gun" moment in 2003. Just in case anyone really has forgotten, allow me to recap: Bush tucked himself into a flight suit emblazoned with the words "commander-in-chief," climbed into a Lockheed S-3 Viking fixed-wing aircraft and helped fly and land it on the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, just off the California coast. There, under a huge banner declaring "Mission Accomplished" (a banner White House officials initially denied, but finally admitted, was their creation), the president said, "In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
Though years premature in claiming victory, Bush and his team were clearly staging an event they thought would provide great images for future campaign ads. Bush's spectacle makes Obama's brief round of handshaking with troops in Afghanistan look pretty lame by comparison.
Nevertheless, Fox News commentators, Romney campaign spokesmen and congressional Republicans have all taken shots at Obama. Interestingly, quite a few of them have taken exactly the same shot. Over and over again, the same image was invoked: Obama was “spiking the ball” like a boastful wide receiver in the end zone.
Whoever the geniuses may be behind these coordinated political attacks, they need to get a little more creative. When everyone from a first-term Kansas congressman to a Fox TV talking head to Rush Limbaugh employs the same sound bite, it is not hard to guess they are reciting from the same Republican National Committee talking points. Perhaps such repetition pumps up the conservative faithful, but it looks pretty ridiculous when Jon Stewart pulls together a string of video clips showing the entire Republican sales team squawking away like a flock of parrots.
"Spiking the ball" may not be the most politically savvy jibe anyway. After all, the guy who is spiking the ball is the guy who just made the touchdown. That sort of reinforces the image the Obama folks want lodged in the minds of voters: Obama as the captain of the team that brought down the country's most notorious adversary.
Spiking the ball may make grumpy referees mad, but the crowd loves a winner.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-spiking-the-ball-20120502,0,4401194.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:27:28 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Mitt Romney lets the religious right call the shots on gaysBy DAID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Friday, May 04, 2012RICHARD GRENELL had the right resume to be Mitt Romney’s spokesman on foreign policy — a stint as communications director for four of the George W. Bush administration’s U.N. ambassadors, a degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, his own international PR firm and frequent stints on TV as an expert on international issues. Too bad for him he has a boyfriend.
Grenell was the first openly gay spokesman for a presidential candidate, but he never got to speak. Before he even officially started the job, enraged homophobes in the so-called pro-family community spooked Romney’s campaign staff. The campaign aides tried to stuff Grenell into a metaphorical closet until things blew over. During a major conference call with reporters in which President Obama’s national security policies were dissected, Grenell was forced to sit in silence.
On May 01, Grenell quit his job.
The Romney campaign folks say they tried hard to persuade Grenell to stay. But they were too timid and too cowed by the religious right to do what he asked them to do: let him do his job.
From the perspective of the campaign, it seemed like a good idea to wait until the controversy faded and not let Grenell become the focus of attention instead of their candidate. But no matter how long they kept him in the background, the day would come when Grenell would end up on TV delivering Romney’s foreign policy message. As soon as that happened, the wing nuts, snake handlers and talk-radio gas-bags would pounce.
The problem is not Grenell’s views on international affairs, which are pure Republican; it is his outspoken support of gay marriage. Bryan Fischer, the American Family Association’s tweeting Savonarola, told his Twitter followers that, by hiring Grenell, Romney was telling pro-family conservatives to “drop dead.” A National Review columnist predicted that Grenell would quickly switch sides and support President Obama if the incumbent came out in favor of same-sex marriage. The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins raised the fear that Grenell would use his position to establish “sexual orientation” as a basic human right. (As opposed to what, a capital crime?)
As Americans become more accepting of homosexuality, the literalist wing of Christianity becomes more freaked out. Sean Harris, pastor of the Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, recently got himself media attention when he said to the men in his congregation, “Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch.”
As far as I know, Richard Grenell’s wrists are firm. I can’t say the same about Romney and his team. Romney is about to become the leader of his party and, perhaps, leader of the Free World. It would be nice to see him man up and tell the medieval wing of his party that it will not dictate to him about whom he hires to run his foreign policy. Instead, as he has for months on the campaign trail, Romney continues to suck up to the anti-gay religious activists, most of whom find his Mormon beliefs repugnant.
Barry Goldwater would not have dumped Ric Grenell; he would have told the carping Bible-thumpers to go to hell.
The man who was once the voice of American conservatives slammed Pat Robertson for “trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it.” When Jerry Falwell opposed the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court, Goldwater said, “Every good Christian should kick Falwell" right where it counts. And, of gays in the military, Goldwater said, “everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.”
After his retirement from the Senate, Goldwater warned that his party was being taken over by a “bunch of kooks.” Well, the kooks are in charge now, and, apparently, Mitt Romney knows who is boss.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-religious-right-gays-20120503,0,1873930.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:28:04 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Ron Paul continues to complicate Mitt Romney's coronationBy DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Tuesday, May 08, 2012TROUGH MOST of the primary season, Ron Paul was overlooked, underestimated and laughed off. There was no scenario by which this ideological renegade could become the nominee of the ideologically dogmatic Republican Party. Yet as the last candidate standing in the way of Mitt Romney's smooth slide to the nomination, he is proving himself capable of ingenious mischief.
Over the weekend, Paul supporters in Maine and Nevada used the Byzantine rules that govern the nominating process to pirate delegates from the inevitable nominee. The caucuses in both those states were won by Romney, but the state party conventions, where the real allocation of delegates takes place, produced a different result. In Maine, Paul walked away with 21 of the state's 24 delegates. In Nevada, Paul supporters will fill 22 of the 25 seats the state will have on the convention floor, although, because of the rules, 20 of those delegates are required to vote for Romney on the first ballot.
Remember when Rick Santorum won his first victory by squeaking by Romney in the Iowa caucuses way back in January? Well, again this weekend, Iowa Republicans continued that process by choosing 13 of the state's 28 delegates. Surprise! Ten of those 13 are Ron Paul backers.
In Idaho's May 15 primary, the Paulistas aim to win enough precinct races to have a majority of delegates to the subsequent state party convention. If they are able to pull that off, they can suspend the rules and take away some or all of the 32 delegates Romney thought he won in Idaho's March 06 caucuses.
If this sounds a bit crazy, it is. Many states employ combinations of caucuses, primaries and conventions to eventually come up with their lists of delegates. The rules are different in each state, and it takes a dedicated cadre of political geeks to keep track of them all.
Paul certainly has the geek vote. His appeal is not to conventional Republicans. He is a libertarian who favors tiny government, a small defense establishment, marijuana legalization and no entangling military adventures in foreign lands. His backers include peaceniks, pot smokers, students, tea party types and a host of others who just want government to leave them alone with their money or their stash of weed.
Conventional politics is not what drives this crew. They are not inclined to fall in line behind Romney for the sake of the party. They actually do not care about the party; they care about Paul's ideas.
They know they cannot win the nomination, but even the Paul supporters from Nevada who will be forced to vote for Romney in the first round do not actually care about that little detail. They and quite a few of their compatriots will be on the convention floor where they can demand a voice in the party platform and a prominent speaking slot on the program for their candidate.
Beyond convention maneuvers, two Paul backers in Nevada were elected to the Republican National Committee, beating out a pair of Romney's people. That gives Paul — or his ideas, at least — a place in the party's highest council for the next four years.
Will all this actually achieve anything lasting? Perhaps not, since the party's real agenda will be set in Congress or in the White House, if Romney wins. Still, the mere fact that Paul's motley rebels are able to pull off these stunts in state after state may indicate a problem in the Republican ranks. Is it just that their nominating process is an incoherent jumble of arcane rules? Is it that even active Republicans have lost interest now that the nomination fight is over and only the fervent Paul backers are showing up to finish the work of selecting delegates? Or is it a disturbing lack of enthusiasm for the man who will lead the party into battle against President Obama?
We will see. If nothing else, this round of delegate stealing by a candidate who everyone counted as inconsequential brings a fitting close to a primary season that has brought us one crazy thing after another.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-ron-paul-20120507,0,1815576.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:28:58 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Obama champions gay marriage; the culture war is onBy DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Thursday, May 10, 2012PRESIDENT OBAMA has crossed the Rubicon and come to the defense of same-sex marriage. For him, it was a small step, since his is already the most pro-gay rights presidency in history, but it will have big political ramifications.
The war is on. The line is drawn. Mitt Romney — who, in another incarnation as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, said he stood to the left of Teddy Kennedy on gay rights issues — now is opposed, not only to gay marriage, but to civil unions. Any trace of limp-wristed accommodation with homosexuals is being drummed out of the Republican Party, and Romney wants to prove himself a good drum major.
In state after state, Republicans are backing bills and ballot measures that push back against the rapid advance of “the gay agenda.” On Tuesday, voters in North Carolina approved an amendment to the state constitution that not only bans gay marriage but also makes civil unions and domestic partnerships illegal. This is no mere “defense of marriage,” it is a judgment about what kinds of relationships should benefit from government policies.
It is not about politics, it is about sin. Many religious Americans fervently believe homosexuality is a moral abomination. They also believe heterosexuals living together without the benefit of marriage are breaking God’s law. The only sanctified model for human partnership is a man and a woman joined together in matrimony, they insist, and that model should be favored by government while other pairings are discouraged.
This is a traditional view that, only a few years ago, was utterly conventional and largely unchallenged. But an alternative way of seeing things has emerged and has, in recent polls, won the approval of a majority of Americans. Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Cory Booker summed up this alternative principle on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show" on Wednesday evening: “This is not about gay rights; this is about equal rights.”
This too is a traditional ideal and has the added force of being imbedded in our Constitution: No citizen can claim more rights than another; all people are created equal. So, if state or federal governments offer tax advantages, legal protections or special privileges to married people, then every citizen should be allowed to marry. The U.S. Constitution does not pass judgment. It is not the Bible. There is no exception based on what a citizen does in the bedroom or with whom he or she does it. Equal protection under the law is the right of every American.
So, now, an election that was supposed to be about “the economy, stupid,” will also be about which tradition should prevail. Romney and the Republicans have made it perfectly clear they are the party of the religious view. All sinners may find forgiveness, but not all of them have the right to marry. They cannot even establish a household with a person they love and receive the same state-sanctioned benefits enjoyed by married citizens.
The Democrats are the party of equal rights. This is hardly new, but the president’s statement of support moves the party to an unambiguous endorsement of same-sex marriage as part of that egalitarian guarantee. At the Democratic convention in September, there will be no attempts to fuzz up the language on this issue in the party platform as there would have been if Obama were still playing it safe. His position is no longer evolving. He has chosen sides.
Now, we will see if he pays a price. Certainly, this will intensify support for him among liberals and in the gay and lesbian community, but there are more evangelicals than homosexuals in America. There are a lot of blue-collar swing voters with conventional views of sexuality. There are plenty of conservative Catholics among the Latino voters the Democrats need to win. Yes, 53% of Americans say they favor gay marriage, but a big share of them are young people who are the laziest voters.
The president probably lost votes by speaking up for gay marriage, but, at least with half the country, he won new respect. Obama came into office with expectations he would be a transformational president. On this issue, at least, that is what he is becoming.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-obama-gay-marriage-20120509,0,5472740.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:29:29 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Does Mitt Romney still have a high school bully inside?By DAVID HORSEY | 11:36PM - Thursday, May 10, 2012SURE, you may know which man — Mitt Romney or Barack Obama — you want to see running the country, but which one would you have wanted to know in high school?
We learned four years ago that young Barack was a laid-back, not overly studious kid who loved basketball and occasionally smoked a little weed. The kids at Punahou, the prestigious Honolulu prep school Obama attended, never expected their amiable but seemingly unmotivated classmate to one day become the most powerful man on the planet.
At Cranbrook, the Michigan boarding school Romney attended, there could well have been those who thought young Mitt might amount to something someday. His dad, after all, was governor and was being touted as a candidate for president. But if you were a certain type of student at Cranbrook back in 1965, the idea of Mitt Romney getting any kind of power over people would have been frightening.
A story in the Washington Post based on interviews with several of Romney’s fellow students alleges that young Mitt was a bullying rich kid who had it in for boys who were too different.
One boy, in particular, caught Romney’s attention — a shy, new kid at the school named John Lauber who had bleached blond bangs that dipped across one eye. According to those interviewed, young Mitt was bugged by Lauber's hair. "He can’t look like that," Romney reportedly told one of his friends. "That’s wrong. Just look at him!"
Romney pulled together a pack of boys and went to Lauber's room, where they tackled him and pinned him down. As Lauber, with tears streaming down his cheeks, screamed for help, Romney pulled out scissors and chopped away at the kid’s hair.
That was the worst, but not the only of Romney's bullying high school pranks, according to the Post. At least one person suggested young Romney had it in for boys he suspected of being gay.
After Romney’s campaign spokesperson initially denied the story, Romney went on Fox Radio to say he did not remember the incident but that he was sorry about it anyway. "I’m a very different person than I was in high school, of course, but I’m glad I learned as much as I did during those high school years," he said in the radio interview.
Well, I assume he is different, just as Obama is different from the kid he was. Still, Romney could not seem to suppress a nervous chuckle as he talked about the bullying episode, just as the same chuckle erupts when he talks about firing people. It makes a person wonder if the guy has empathy for people who are different from him, who have not lived the privileged life he has enjoyed.
The rap on Obama has been that he is a little too cool and aloof. The rap on Romney may be that he is just plain callous.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-romney-bully-20120510,0,6110988.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:29:58 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Republican Party suckles at the breast of Big BusinessBy DAVID HORSEY | 10:00PM - Monday, May 14, 2012IF MONEY is the mother’s milk of politics, then America’s big corporations are Big Mama and Big Baby is the Republican Party suckling at the enormous bosom of business. Democrats, meanwhile, are abandoned brats scrounging for nourishment wherever they can find it.
During the long decades the Democrats held a solid majority in Congress, campaign donations from the corporate world were spread around among incumbents in both parties — not evenly, but at least the D's got their share. Since the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994, however, corporate dollars have increasingly flowed in one direction.
This happened, in part, because Republican leaders like Tom “The Hammer” DeLay instituted a program to punish corporate lobbyists who were too bipartisan with their donations. Even more significantly, the evolution of the GOP into a militantly anti-tax and anti-regulation party has made Republican policy goals and the political aims of big corporations indistinguishable.
Now, in 2012, the discrepancy in campaign contributions is stark. Where once big business favored the GOP by 2 to 1, a survey by the Center for Responsive Politics has found Republicans enjoying a 7-1 advantage in some sectors. Energy companies, in particular, are giving heavily to Republican candidates, but so are financial institutions, insurance companies, real estate firms and agribusiness.
In addition to direct contributions, corporate givers — unleashed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling allowing unlimited contributions to independent political action committees — are dumping massive amounts of money into conservative "super PACs." And those super PACs are certainly not coming to the aid of any Democrats.
Even as an incumbent, President Obama is having a tough time attracting corporate dollars. Hedge fund managers who gave big to his campaign in 2008 are putting their political investments elsewhere in 2012. He may have saved Wall Street from its own excesses and provided the bailouts that allowed the financial moguls to hold on to their fortunes, but they are not showing Obama any gratitude. They would prefer to have one of their own, Mitt Romney, in the White House.
The president is the one Democrat in the country who will be able to come up with all the money he needs to run an effective campaign. Democratic candidates for the Senate and House will not be so lucky. Already, underfunded incumbents like Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri are being pummeled by a tornado of attack ads coming from corporate-funded super PACs.
Corporate America has always gotten a good return on its investment in politics. Business interests hold inordinate sway over the legislation that affects them (Heck, their lobbyists write most of the bills). Now, though, with the Republican Party as their wholly owned subsidiary, the titans of industry apparently feel no need to hedge their bets by helping out a few Democrats.
The corporations no longer pretend they do not have a favorite child. They have picked their favorite and, like a doting mother, they will hold him close, they will baby him, they will keep him fat and happy, and they will ask for only one thing in return: obedience.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-big-business-20120514,0,5684411.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:31:04 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Tea party insurgents are rattling and energizing the GOPBy DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Wednesday, May 16, 2012IF IT has accomplished nothing else, the tea party insurgency has made Republicans vastly more newsworthy than Democrats. While the party of the left plods along performing the boring old tasks of governing, the party of the right is engaged in high drama worthy of Shakespeare.
The latest plot twist comes from Nebraska, where three conservatives have been vying to be the GOP's nominee for the U.S. Senate. The "establishment" candidate, state Attorney General Jon Bruning is, by traditional measures, a conservative. But apparently back in college he was a bit of a liberal and that youthful apostasy made him unacceptable to the hyper-conservative Club for Growth and the tea party.
The official tea party favorite, state Treasurer Don Stenberg, was backed by a combined $2 million from the Club for Growth and from South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund. Stenberg is just the kind of uncompromising conservative DeMint is trying to pack into the Senate Republican caucus.
But when Nebraska Republicans voted on Tuesday, they chose a third candidate, state Sen. Deb Fischer, who was endorsed by the tea party's favorite celebrity, Sarah Palin, and by ex-pizza executive and former presidential candidate Herman Cain. Now Fischer, a rancher from one of the most sparsely populated corners of the state, will go up against Democrat Bob Kerrey, Nebraska's former governor and U.S. senator.
This kerfuffle among conservatives follows by a week the dramatic upset of Indiana's veteran senator, Richard Lugar. Deemed too willing to work with Democrats, Luger was dumped in favor of tea party darling Richard Mourdock, who speaks of political compromise with the kind of disgust most people would save for pedophiles or ax murderers.
Taking down Lugar was a mighty blow against traditional Republicanism, and it put all other GOP incumbents on notice that any deviation from militant obstructionism could bring out the knives. Like the climax of Hamlet, there may soon be bodies strewn all over the Republican stage.
Democrats are delighted by all of this. They think the purge of establishment Republicans in Nebraska and Indiana has improved the Democrats' chances of taking two Senate seats in very conservative states. But they might want to think again.
Right now, Republicans have the drama, the enthusiasm and the attention of the news media. Sure, the right-wing revolt is dispiriting to the men in cuff links and wingtips at the Republican Capitol Hill Club, but out in the hinterlands a very committed political force is being energized by the battle.
And energy wins elections.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-tea-party-insurgents-20120515,0,7593992.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:32:18 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....How will voters react to Romney's Mormon faith?By MITCHELL LANDSBERG | 3:40PM - Wednesday, May 16, 2012A survey suggests that Mitt Romney's Mormon faith may not hurt him among evangelical Christian voters. — Charles Krupa/Associated Press/December 22, 2011.IT IS the X factor in Mitt Romney's candidacy, unpredictable because it is unprecedented: How will voters react to his Mormon faith?
Never before has a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints been a major party nominee for president, and surveys have shown that as many as one-fifth of Americans would be reluctant to entrust a Mormon with the highest office in the land. White evangelicals — a key Republican constituency — have been especially skeptical.
Romney's own actions suggest that he may believe it is a political liability. He virtually never mentions his faith by name, and has reacted sharply in the past to suggestions that he talk about it. About as close as he's come lately was on Saturday, at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he spoke to evangelical Christian students about finding common ground among people "of different faiths, like yours and mine."
But a study done for the Brookings Institution suggests that Romney may have little to fear. In a paper published Wednesday, Matthew Chingos and Michael Henderson say Romney's religious background probably won't hurt him and may even help.
Chingos, a Brookings fellow, and Henderson, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Mississippi, conducted an online survey in which people were questioned about Romney in one of four ways.
In one, they were asked about him without any mention of his religion. In the second, they were told he is a Mormon. In the third, they were given background about the Latter-day Saints in ways that emphasized their similarities to mainstream Christians. A fourth question emphasized differences by briefly discussing the Book of Mormon and its history.
Result: Political conservatives were actually more likely to support Romney when they learned he was a Mormon, and hearing about the differences between his faith and more traditional Christianity made little difference. The boost was surprising: 54% of conservatives supported him when they were told nothing about his faith, but that jumped to 73% when they were told he is Mormon.
The information about his religion made no difference to liberals, who aren't likely to vote for Romney anyway.
"Our results should not be taken as definitive, particularly because they are not based on a nationally representative sample," wrote the authors, who surveyed 2,084 people online. "But they do suggest that concerns over Mitt Romney’s `religion problem' have been overblown and quite possibly miss a compelling counter-narrative. Romney’s religion does not seem to reduce his support among white evangelicals. ... At the end of the day, it appears that voters’ long-term political preferences matter more for their general election choice than the religious identity of the Republican nominee."
There was just one lingering puzzle. Why, the authors wondered, would Romney’s Mormon faith make conservatives more likely to support him? They offered no conclusive theory, but said that “one compelling idea is that Romney’s religion gives voters a clue about how the candidates differ ideologically.” Since most Mormons are political conservatives, voters “may transfer this conservatism to a particular Mormon candidate” — i.e., Romney.www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-how-will-voters-react-to-romneys-mormon-faith-20120516,0,1120654.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:33:35 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Greek debt crisis proves Obama is not master of his own fateBy DAVID HORSEY | 3:47PM - Wednesday, May 16, 2012AMERICANS like to believe they are masters of their own destiny. The ancient Greeks had a different understanding. They thought the fate of humanity was in the hands of temperamental gods. Modern Greeks are demonstrating how their ancestors, not Americans, were closer to the truth.
After years of profligate government spending that has brought the country to the edge of bankruptcy, Greece has had a strict austerity regime imposed on it by Germany and the European Central Bank. Sky-high unemployment, curtailed social benefits and a moribund economy have been the result. Not surprisingly, Greek citizens have rebelled. They blame politicians and bankers for getting them into this mess and resent outsiders telling them to feel guilty and suffer quietly.
Trying to take their fate into their own hands, the Greeks held an election a few days ago in which a wide spectrum of political parties — from neo-Nazis to neo-Marxists — got shares of the vote. But no one got enough seats in parliament to form a government. So, they will vote again next month hoping for a more coherent result.
One very possible outcome of the next election could be a push for Greece to withdraw from the European monetary union and replace the euro with the drachma. Such a restoration of the national currency might give the Greek government more control over the nation's economic future — or it may guarantee a dismal drop deeper into poverty.
No one really knows exactly what would happen if Greece left the euro zone, but few seem to think it would be good. Other heavily indebted members of the European Union, such as Spain, Portugal and Italy, could feel heightened pressure from panicked bankers. Bankruptcy in one of those countries could tip the European economy into a steep dive.
With the European crisis as a backdrop, Americans are in the midst of a presidential election in which the economy is by far the biggest issue. Voters will be asking themselves if the modest economic revival in the U.S. is enough to justify rewarding Barack Obama with another four years in office or if Mitt Romney could do better. As is the case in every election, the sitting president will get credit or blame for what happens on his watch. If the economic numbers are being dragged down by events in Europe and the resentful rebellion of the Greeks, voters will punish the man in the White House.
Obama came into office facing the worst financial crisis in 80 years. The opposition party in Congress blocked or watered down nearly all of his proposed remedies. And now, a bunch of unruly, angry people protesting in the streets of Athens may have more effect on the state of the economy than anything he does.
Obama is learning the hard lesson the ancients knew well but that modern people ignore: Our fate is seldom in our own hands. Our best laid plans fall before the whims of the gods — or the inescapable chaos of human folly.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-greek-crisis-20120516,0,6662849.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:34:10 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Karl Rove spends $10 million on a smart, mendacious attack adBy DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Friday, May 25, 2012Attack ads slam President Obama with mendacity, not facts. — Cartoon: David Horsey/Los Angeles Times/May 24, 2012.THERE'S A REASON George W. Bush called Karl Rove “Boy Genius.” When it comes to attack ads, no one is smarter.
Bush also had another nickname for his chief political guru, “Turd Blossom.” Given the high level of BULLSH*T in Rove’s ads, that moniker is well earned. Then again, truth is never the point in any political ad; effectiveness is everything.
There has probably never been a completely honest advertisement done for any candidate. Way back in the presidential campaign of 1840, William Henry Harrison was sold to the public as a humble frontiersman. The log cabin and hard cider were his campaign symbols. In reality, he was born into a wealthy, slave-owning, plantation family in Virginia.
If creating positive spin about a candidate has been around for a long time, negative campaigning has been part of the political process for just as long. The presidential election of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson remains one of the nastiest on record. But the gargantuan amount of money available in modern campaigns promises to produce a quantum leap in meanness.
Currently, the Obama campaign is circulating tough attack videos that claim to expose the truth about Mitt Romney’s time as a venture capitalist. The ads feature beleaguered workers who lost their jobs when Romney’s firm, Bain Capital, came in to restructure the companies they worked for. Several Democrats, including Newark Mayor Cory Booker and former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, have criticized this line of attack, saying it goes too far in condemning a perfectly reasonable type of business practice, but the Obama campaign is not relenting.
Republicans, meanwhile, got into their own internal spat when one conservative ad shop proposed revisiting President Obama’s long relationship with firebrand Chicago pastor Jeremiah Wright. Sarah Palin was all for it, but Romney nipped the idea in the bud.
Rove agreed with Romney. Replaying the Wright debate would be "stupid,” he said. Instead, his "super PAC," Crossroads GPS, is spending $10 million to broadcast a video that hits the president on economic issues and makes its appeal to middle-of-the-road women who may have voted for Obama in 2008. It is the biggest ad buy so far in the 2012 campaign.
In the video, a mom worries about the national debt and her kids’ future. There is a visual reference to burdensome student loans, a verbal assertion that federal spending has skyrocketed during the Obama years, a plea to cut the deficit and a warning that Obama wants to raise taxes. This heavily focus-group-tested package ends with a plea to join a grass-roots effort to tell the president he must change his profligate ways. It is expertly executed and, of course, it is also hugely misleading.
On student loans, Obama doubled Pell Grants and eliminated banking fees from the student loan equation, while Romney and the Republicans are all for cutting federal student aid. Skyrocketing federal spending? More deception. It is a plain fact that spending has flattened out during Obama’s time in office. Deficit reduction? Obama’s present plan is projected to cut the deficit by $2 trillion over the next 10 years while the scheme proposed by Romney would increase the deficit by $5 trillion over the same period, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. And raising taxes? The president is pushing higher taxes for the rich, not for any struggling, middle-class moms.
Oh, and that grass-roots effort? That’s really Karl Rove and the millionaires and billionaires who pay for his ads.
What makes Rove brilliant? He knows better than to waste time with silly issues, like the president’s birth certificate. He knows the economy is the biggest concern of most voters. And he knows that the average Jane or Joe does not have a command of the economic facts and so will not question the false assertions Rove’s team has injected into a heartstrings-tugging scenario.
Election campaigns are not about facts and truth, they are about images and myths. Karl Rove is a master of myths; the boy genius of the old boys club.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-karl-rove--20120524,0,2192559.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:35:42 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....The wealthy 1% would be well served by Mitt RomneyBy DAVID HORSEY | 10:16PM - Thursday, July 05, 2012MITT ROMNEY has a great deal of empathy for people like himself — rich guys — and he would serve them well as president. Of course, the wealthy have seldom not been served well by our commander-in-chief. Father and son Bush came from among the affluent, too, while Bill Clinton aspired to join their ranks and has defended Romney-style venture capitalism. Even Barack Obama bailed out Wall Street in 2009.
Yet, of late, rich folks have been getting picked on by protesters and threatened with higher taxes by Democrats. A big majority of Americans think that, given the big bills that have been racked up by congressmen and presidents over the last 12 years, the wealthy need to chip in more to dig everyone out of the hole.
So, maybe they deserve a little sympathy and understanding. It's not easy rolling in green.
Imagine living in a house so big you need to hire a staff to keep it up. Downton Abbey may look attractive, but would you truly want all those minions hovering around, day and night? And what if half of them didn't even speak English? Multiply that by a summer house in Florida and a ski lodge in Aspen, plus the yacht, and that's a lot of people intruding on your privacy.
Sure, everyone thinks having tons of money would be great, but we all know that possessions just weigh a person down. Imagine having lots and lots of very expensive possessions — the weight would be unbearable!
And then imagine being a rich person and having to deal with Bill Gates. Here he is, one of the richest guys in the world and what does he do with his stunningly huge fortune? He pledges to spend it all curing every disease in Africa, from malaria to mumps and probably acne too. How would that make you feel if you had a crummy few million dollars and everyone was staring at you, expecting you to sell your Ferrari and chip in to save some mosquito-infested village in Bongoland?
Honestly, in a roller-coaster economy like ours, fortunes come and go with a quick turn of an automated stock trade. A fellow who has come into a lot of money through hard work, inheritance, sheer luck or good old piracy can never feel perfectly secure. It comes, it goes and, while you have it, you want to have some fun with it. Why be pressured to live up to Bill Gates? Why not emulate the man with whom Gates founded Microsoft, Paul Allen?
When Allen became a billionaire, he did the normal thing. He quit his job, bought a basketball team, bought a football team, bought a yacht the size of a battleship, built a rock 'n' roll museum, started thinking about sending rockets into space and got together with his friends to play guitars. Isn't that what most guys would do if they hit the jackpot?
Yes, the rich have it tough. They have pressures the rest of us with our simple little lives cannot appreciate. They deserve a break. And Mitt Romney would give it to them.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-wealthy-one-percent-20120705,0,6957011.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:36:38 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Hot weather, ornery cows and an inane presidential campaignBy DAVID HORSEY - reporting from Havre, Montana | 5:00AM - Wednesday, July 18, 2012AT THE end of a scorching 100-degree day last week, I sat in a circle of horsemen in a camp near Beaver Creek in the Bear Paw Mountains. Perched at a picnic table across from me, rancher Larry Kinsella was relating a story about the vicissitudes of ranching life.
Kinsella said he had been trying to herd on horseback a troublesome cow one day recently, but the belligerent bovine kept eluding him. Up and down hills, in and out of the trees and thicket, the chase went on for hours. Finally, with the help of his wife, Judy, he cornered the elusive critter and got her tied to his pickup by two or three ropes. Before he could load the cow into a trailer, though, she rammed the side of the truck.
The $900 cow had caused about $2,000 of damage to the vehicle, thereby turning a profitable retrieval of livestock into a serious loss on machinery. Such are the economics of ranching.
Kinsella said he was done battling with the cantankerous cow and would haul her off to the sale barn in Chinook on Friday to get whatever he could from the beef buyers. But when Friday came, the weekly livestock sale was a forlorn sight. Only three or four buyers were on hand, and only a few bulls, cows and calves were put up for auction. The whole thing was over in an hour. Kinsella’s cow was not among those sold. His brother and ranching partner, Ron, had persuaded him to skip the sale and tolerate the obnoxious cow for a while longer in hope of getting a better price down the road.
In this well-moistened stretch of hills and prairies near the Canadian border, ranchers can afford to wait. Farther south, though, in Wyoming, Nebraska and east to Kansas and Arkansas, ranchers are being forced to sell off livestock prematurely. The summer’s intense heat and the extended drought have dried up water supplies and broiled the grass. With no way to sustain their herds, the ranchers are selling early, losing $200 to $400 on each head of cattle.
Beef production this year is expected to drop by a billion pounds, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates, and will continue to fall next year. That means consumers will be paying more for their steaks and hamburgers, even as many ranchers lose their livelihood. This comes on top of the wildfires, killer storms and crop failures resulting from extreme weather, so you would think it might be a serious issue that the candidates for president would want to address. If you were to think that, though, you’d be wrong.
Political campaigns are not geared to tackle daunting problems in rational ways. Manufactured issues rise up, only to be replaced in the next news cycle by another trumped-up outrage. Right now, Mitt Romney and President Obama are engaged in a contest to define the other guy as negatively as possible. Romney’s career with Bain Capital and Obama’s alleged cronyism are prime lines of attack. Beef prices, wildfires, weird weather and the climate change that may be causing it are nowhere on their list of talking points.
It is no wonder that many — maybe most — Americans tune out the irrelevant campaign noise. During a week of riding horses and moving cattle with Montana ranchers, I heard politics mentioned only twice. The first time was when I was asked which of the candidates was ahead and I had nothing to offer but the conventional wisdom that it is a darned close race. The second time was when a rancher made a disparaging remark about Al Gore and his crazy environmentalist ideas.
But it just may be that Gore’s warnings about global warming are coming true. Plenty of climate scientists believe we have reached a tipping point and, within a generation or two, new weather patterns will make ranching and farming impossible in many states.
That dire possibility is surely something worthy of reasoned discussion. Yet, with American politics in its current polarized and frivolous state, it would be easier to corral a renegade cow than to make a presidential candidate talk straight about issues that really matter.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-inane-campaign-20120717,0,6170721.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:37:05 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Mitt Romney's secrets are not all in his tax returnsBy DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Thursday, July 19, 2012MITT ROMNEY's income tax returns may contain some surprises that he does not want the world to know about, but they are hardly his only secrets. His biggest secret, the question he has not answered through the entire campaign, the one that bothers conservatives even more than it irks liberals, is this: Does he believe in anything besides Mormonism and money?
He won in the Republican primaries because he did not hesitate to do whatever it took to destroy his opponents. Now, his campaign aides are saying, off the record, there is no limit to what they will do to beat Barack Obama. The Romney campaign will attack him for the shady friends he may have kept back in Chicago. They will ding him for smoking pot in high school. And, as demonstrated this week by one of Romney’s surrogates, former New Hampshire Governor John H. Sununu, they will try to cast doubt on whether the president is a true American.
The one thing Romney did not do in the primaries and is not doing now is reveal what sort of president he wants to be. Oh, sure, he has put out position papers. Every day on the campaign trail he speaks in generalities about getting government out of the way of business. He is against apologizing for the USA in foreign affairs. But does anyone really know what his economic policy would be or how he would conduct himself as commander-in-chief?
Romney is an enigma. He has reversed the positions he took as governor of Massachusetts on gay rights, abortion, healthcare and immigration, yet his reversals are squishy enough to make many conservatives doubt the sincerity of his new convictions.
The one thing upon which he has stood firm is his refusal to let people paw through his tax records. He has released documents covering the last two years but resists releasing more because, he says, the Obama campaign will simply use the information against him. Yet, it is not just Obama partisans and the media demanding full disclosure, it is the National Review, Texas Governor Rick Perry, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and a long list of other Republican officeholders and conservative commentators. One of the few prominent figures on the right who is urging him to stand his ground is Rush Limbaugh (the same guy, by the way, who urged him to go after Obama’s youthful indulgence in marijuana and supposed tenuous identity as an American).
The longer Romney keeps his tax forms secret, the more intense is the speculation about what he is hiding. Is he really richer than he has let on — a billionaire, perhaps? Are there years in which he paid no taxes? Is there something so damning in the documents that he is willing to sustain the damage to his campaign caused by his failure to disclose?
The liberal activist group, MoveOn.org, has put up an attack ad in Ohio that compares Romney to Tricky Dick Nixon and uses the term “crook” in speculation about what nefarious activities might be recorded in Mitt’s tax forms. That attack goes too far. In the same way, several liberal commentators went over the top by slamming Romney for saying the word “Obamacare” in a speech to the NAACP. The lefties insisted the use of the word in that venue was a coded appeal to white racists. That is a real stretch. Romney says “Obamacare” 20 times a day and it would have been strangely calculating for him not to say it in front of a black audience.
No, there is no need to imagine Romney as a crook or a race baiter. That is not the secret he is hiding. It is likely something far simpler.
Mitt Romney is a very wealthy man with a family legacy in politics who thinks it would be nice to fulfill his father’s dream of living in the White House. Perhaps, that is all there is to his candidacy. That is a secret he would want to keep.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-romneys-secrets-20120718,0,1392391.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:38:03 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Michele Bachmann tops a team of conspiracy-crazed clownsBy DAVID HORSEY | 11:43PM - Thursday, July 19, 2012THIS HAS been a week in which someone at the Republican National Committee must have said, "Send in the clowns!" Michele Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh and lesser jesters in the GOP circus were just a few fake noses and a seltzer bottle short of performances worthy of Ringling Bros.
Bachmann was the premier buffoon. The Minnesota congresswoman alleged that a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Huma Abedin, may be a spy for the Muslim Brotherhood. Savvy readers will recall that Abedin is the wife of ex-New York Congressman Anthony Weiner, the twit who got caught tweeting photos of his nether regions. Abedin may have shown bad judgment in choosing a mate, but there is no evidence she is a radical Islamist.
On Wednesday, Senator John McCain rose to Abedin's defense on the floor of the Senate, not naming Bachmann, but clearly aiming fire in her direction. "When anyone, not least a member of Congress, launches specious and degrading attacks against fellow Americans on the basis of nothing more than fear of who they are and ignorance of what they stand for, it defames the spirit of our nation, and we all grow poorer because of it," McCain said.
Bachmann’s former campaign manager, Ed Rollins, was just as scathing. "Having worked for Congressman Bachmann's campaign for president," he said, "I am fully aware that she sometimes has difficulty with her facts, but this is downright vicious and reaches the late Senator Joe McCarthy level."
Bachmann is unrepentant, as usual. Her information on Abedin came from a couple of right-wing, anti-Islamist conspiracy mongers. One is Frank Gaffney, a columnist for the conservative Washington Times; the other is retired General William Boykin, who, in 2003, famously said the war on terror is a spiritual battle between Muslims and "Christian America."
Boykin and Gaffney have advanced another fanciful story that Bachmann has taken up as her own. They contend that the Obama administration somehow engineered the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate in the recent Egyptian presidential election. Visiting Egypt this week, Clinton’s motorcade was assaulted by an angry crowd throwing tomatoes and shoes. The Internet-savvy mob had picked up on the wild speculation of Bachmann, Gaffney and Boykin.
When pressed by American reporters about the questionable source of their information, the protesters refused to believe that a former general, a member of Congress and a pundit would just dream this stuff up. They do not understand that it happens every day in the "land of the free." Heck, on Tuesday, Limbaugh said godless liberals had something to do with the fact that the evil villain in the new Batman movie is named Bane — you know, like Mitt Romney’s company, Bain Capital — even though the Bane character was invented by a comic book artist 20 years ago.
American conservatism has come to be dominated by conspiracy-crazed clowns. This presents a problem for members of the Romney team as they schedule speakers for the upcoming Republican National Convention. How can they keep from giving a few of these cranks a speaking role? Bachmann, after all, was a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination at one point. Another firebrand who adopts the conspiratorial tone with regularity is Sarah Palin. She holds no office and was not a candidate this year, but she is hugely popular in the party. Can she be denied a prime-time rant?
The quandary Romney faces and has faced throughout the campaign is that the conspiracy clowns include not just a few members of Congress and a bunch of conservative pundits and celebrities. Their ranks extend to all the folks who believe the same crazy stuff as Bachmann — a broad segment of voters that just happens to be the base of the party Romney is trying to lead.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-clowns-20120719,0,6516965.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:38:54 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Despite Colorado theater massacre, a discussion of guns is off limitsBy DAVID HORSEY | 6:38AM - Tuesday, July 24, 2012The NRA cares about guns, not Colorado massacre victims. — Cartoon: David Horsey/Los Angeles Times/July 24, 2012.JAMES HOLMES, the alleged shooter in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater massacre, was lucky to be living in the U.S.A. People who want to kill people find guns are very handy and, thanks to America's gun lobby, they can buy them easily in this country, along with all the ammunition needed to get the job done.
If the alleged gunman had been living in Norway, a place with much stricter gun regulations, he would have had to work harder to amass an arsenal. Still, there is the inconvenient fact for liberals that Norway's tougher laws did not deter right-wing racist Anders Breivik from gunning down 69 young people at a leftist youth camp last summer.
So, as much as I am variously amused and appalled by paranoid gun enthusiasts who see black helicopters and totalitarian oppression in even the most modest efforts to regulate guns and ammo, they are probably right to argue that tough gun laws will not stop these aberrant killings that emerge from a darkness no one can penetrate. As former FBI agent Peter Ahearn said to the Associated Press, "There's no way you can prevent it. There's absolutely no way."
Authorities have indicated that Holmes gave no clue to anyone about what he was planning. When he bought his guns and ammunition, a background check would have indicated that he had no criminal record, no history of mental illness. He may have been socially awkward, but he was not a weirdo outcast. Until very recently, he was a reasonably successful student on course to a graduate degree. Yes, his academic career suddenly stalled, but dropping out of grad school does not raise suspicions that a person is planning a horrific slaughter.
"It was random; it happened," Ahearn said. “There was nothing that could have prevented that unless someone saw him loading his car with guns."
Sure, an assault weapons ban might have kept the gunman from procuring an assault rifle, and some limit on buying ammunition online might have restricted his capacity to kill. But there is really no combination of laws and regulations that can prevent these outliers in our communities from going off the rails and finding a way to kill innocent people. That is the dismal truth.
Yet, though there may be no defense against the terror of the killer who comes out of nowhere, that does not mean that, as some conservatives are arguing, "this is not the time to have a discussion about guns." After all, many gun-rights supporters say there is an answer to random killers and that is to arm everybody. If someone in that Aurora theater crowd had been packing a weapon, they argue, that person might have stopped the gunman (that is, if the full body armor the shooter was wearing had somehow failed to work).
So, let's talk about it. Let's look at how many times crimes have been prevented by honest citizens bearing arms. Let's also consider the statistics that show deaths caused by guns, including suicides, are more common in regions of the country where gun laws are the most lax. Let's have a reasoned discussion that acknowledges the right to bear arms and also recognizes that every one of our liberties has a limit. Let's try to craft sensible gun regulations that promote public safety in circumstances we can predict, even if they cannot stop the unpredictable, random horror of a gunman who has slipped past the boundaries of civilized life.
Why do conservatives not want to have that discussion now? I'll tell you why: Because they have let the most extreme elements of the gun-rights community dictate gun policy for the entire country and now they are afraid to cross them. For conservatives, this is not the time for a discussion about guns because, no matter how much blood is spilled, even in preventable circumstances, it is a discussion they never plan to have.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-theater-massacre-20120724,0,6143128.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:39:40 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Romney's hollow campaign and retrograde party give Obama an edgeBy DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Wednesday, July 25, 2012THE CHARISMA, sense of history and giddy hope that propelled Barack Obama’s run in 2008 seem long gone, but even the faded memory of those days still has more dazzle than Mitt Romney’s dull campaign of pandering and negativity. The fact that the president seems to be holding a narrow lead in the presidential race is testimony to the stilted shallowness of Romney’s candidacy.
Obama really should be in big trouble. The economy continues to limp along with more gloom than sunshine on the horizon. His landmark legislative achievement, the healthcare act, is misunderstood and controversial. His foreign policy successes do not count for much in a time when Americans are looking inward. His greatest accomplishment — keeping the American economy from going over a cliff back in 2009 — cannot be easily appreciated, since, when calamity is avoided, it is hard to explain to restive voters just how much worse it could have been.
The most passionate voters are on the Republican side among the tea party activists and social issues voters. And Republicans have a cadre of billionaire donors with bottomless resources who are funding the Romney campaign and an array of conservative super PACs. They have effectively negated the incumbent president’s traditional advantage in fundraising.
Clearly, Obama would be doing much worse if he faced a more appealing opponent. No one but Romney's loyal wife is all that crazy about poor Mitt, while Obama is still well liked by a majority of voters. That gives Obama a small advantage. Ironically, though, it may be the folks who detest him and invest in him all their fears who actually are giving him even more of a boost. When middle-of-the-road voters hear the right-wing, paranoid talk about a president they have gotten to know as, if nothing else, a calm, decent family man, they may be inclined to put aside their disappointments with Obama’s first term and give him another four years rather than reward Romney who continues to cater to the crazies.
Despite what swing voters might glean from the histrionics of Rick Santorum and the vicious mendacity of Rush Limbaugh, they know America will not become an oppressive socialist nanny state if Barack Obama wins reelection. The fact is, rather than being a radical, most of Obama’s policies are squarely in the Republican tradition of Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford. Obama is more Nelson Rockefeller than Nelson Mandela.
Not so long ago, several of the political positions Obama now holds were part of the platform of a certain Massachusetts politician named Mitt Romney. Romney may now refute those ideas, but before he changed his mind on healthcare, abortion, gay rights and immigration, no one called Romney a socialist; they called him a moderate.
The president looks far left to conservative Republicans only because they have moved so far right — or, more precisely, so far back in time. They have reverted to an older GOP philosophy — the slavish devotion to wealthy business interests of William McKinley and Warren G. Harding. They have paired that with a fundamentalist religious outlook that used to be found more commonly in backwoods tent revivals and the musty corners of pre-Vatican II Catholicism.
So far, Obama’s campaign has been all big-spending political hardball and very little inspiration. In that, it is a mirror image of Romney’s campaign. Sadly, the presidential race may not get much more edifying in the three months remaining. As a result, if Obama wins this, it will not be because voters endorse or even understand his vision of the future. Rather, it will be because they do not want to revisit the past with Mitt Romney and his backward-looking party.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-obama-edge-20120724,0,2131628.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:40:56 GMT 10
Mitt Romney aide in new ‘kiss my ass’ gaffeMitt Romney's international tour was again hit by a gaffe after his spokesman told journalists to “kiss my ass” after being quizzed over a series of blunders by the Republican presidential candidate.The Telegraph | 3:16PM BST - Tuesday, 31 July 2012Mitt Romney on tour in Poland.RICK GORKA, Mr Romney’s press aide, added a fresh incident to the White House contender's growing list of diplomatic gaffes during his tour to Britain, Israel and Poland.
Mr Gorka also told reporters to “shove it” after losing his cool when Mr Romney was pressed, while visiting a war memorial in Warsaw on Tuesday, over the slip-ups.
"Kiss my ass. This is a holy site for the Polish people,” he said. “Show some respect."
He later called journalists to personally apologise for the outbursts.A trail of diplomatic blunders has damaged Mr Romney’s stature on a tour that was designed to showcase his foreign policy credentials ahead of November’s US presidential election.
In Britain, Mr Romney, who ran the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ruffled feathers by questioning London’s security readiness for the Games.
In Israel, comments made about the differences between the Israeli and Palestinian economies led to allegations of racism from Palestinian officials.www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/mitt-romney/9441636/Mitt-Romney-aide-in-new-kiss-my-ass-gaffe.html
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:41:39 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Mitt Romney's straight talk insults Brits and PalestiniansBy DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Wednesday, August 01, 2012I AM starting to feel sorry for Mitt Romney. On an international tour of three countries, he made news in two of them by dissing the London Olympics and infuriating the Palestinians. The poor guy — for months, people have complained that he never says what he really believes. Now he’s in trouble for too boldly saying what he actually thinks.
First, during an interview with NBC News anchorman Brian Williams, Romney had this to say about prospects of success for the London Games: “It’s hard to know just how well it will turn out. There are a few things that were disconcerting: the stories about the private security firm not having enough people, supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials — that obviously is not something which is encouraging.”
Well, the queen’s government was disconcerted enough about the failure of the security contractor to provide enough guards that an extra 1,200 British troops were called in to help. Nevertheless, Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a return slap at Romney, the former boss of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. “We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world,” Cameron said. “Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere.”
Take that, Mormon Country.
The British press tore into Romney. “Who invited him?” asked a big headline in the Daily Mail Online. Of course, this is the same British press that has been finding fault with the Olympics for months, saying the Games have drained national finances and turned London into a police state.
Abandoning irate England, Romney scurried off to Israel (after telling everyone he had no interest in watching his wife’s horse compete in the Olympic dressage competition — the horse that appears on his tax returns as a $77,000 loss). At a fundraiser in Jerusalem (the guest list included Sheldon Adelson, the casino baron who almost single-handedly financed Newt Gingrich’s primary campaign), Romney declared that the large disparity in living standards between Israelis and Palestinians was due to the Israelis’ high-achieving culture.
This was not a novel observation for Romney. He elaborated on the theme in his book, “No Apology”, in which he credits Israel’s cultural dynamism for powering an advanced technological economy as Palestinians languish in pre-industrial economic dependency. Still, the comments caused Palestinian spokesmen to flip out, calling Romney an ignorant racist.
Insult or not, this does not qualify as another Romney gaffe. A gaffe is a mistake; Romney meant what he said.
Since provoking Palestinians is an honored avocation in the Republican Party, he didn’t lose any votes with his comments. His rap on the Olympics, as innocuous as it was, caused him much greater grief since conservative commentators, as much as liberal pundits, were appalled by Romney’s lack of manners.
At the third stop on his tour — Poland — all seems to have gone well. Romney even received a strong endorsement from Lech Walesa, the hero of the Solidarity movement that brought down the old communist regime back in the 1980s (although it would be interesting to know if the old labor leader understands that Romney is not exactly a big booster of labor unions).
The intent of Romney’s excursion abroad was to increase his street cred as a potential world statesman, but, even if there had been no mini-media storms, it is hard to see how anyone would be overly impressed by his play-it-safe itinerary. Traveling to Britain, Israel and Poland is about as risky for an American politician as a tour of country clubs would be for an executive from Bain Capital.
Now, if Romney had gone to Pakistan, Venezuela and Somalia, we would have something more interesting to talk about than minding one’s manners at the Olympic Games.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-romneys-straight-talk-20120731,0,6092373.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:42:23 GMT 10
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:43:17 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Sick symbiosis between Colorado killings and NRA fundraisingBy DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Friday, August 10, 2012National Rifle Association fundraising gains from Aurora, Colorado, killings. — Cartoon: David Horsey/Los Angeles Times/August 09, 2012.IT IS not too much of a stretch to say the National Rifle Association profits from mass killings like the slaughter at the theater in Aurora, Colorado, and the killings at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsun. The NRA is, after all, a fundraising machine that runs on fear and a sense of crisis, even when the fear is false and the crisis manufactured.
A former Republican lawmaker has made public a four-page fundraising letter from the NRA’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, that was sent out to gun enthusiasts just three days after a young man styling himself as the Joker turned a showing of the new Batman movie into a bloody massacre. The Republican whistleblower apparently found the timing of the solicitation just a bit unseemly. At the same time, he insisted on anonymity. Even an ex-officeholder does not want to end up on the NRA’s hit list.
In the NRA’s defense, such mailings for money generally take weeks to prepare, so it is highly unlikely the letter was sent in response to the Aurora incident. Still, it was convenient timing. In the days after the Joker went wild, sales of firearms and ammunition boomed. The gun-loving populace, it seems, has been convinced by years of NRA propaganda that any mass shooting will be used as an excuse for government agents to start confiscating firearms, so they rushed to stock up before the feds came to their door.
LaPierre’s fundraising missive was yet another example of this fear-mongering. In the letter, the NRA leader says President Obama’s re-election would lead to “confiscation of our firearms” and, potentially, a “ban on semi-automatic weapons.”
“The future of your Second Amendment rights will be at stake,” writes LaPierre. “And nothing less than the future of our country and our freedom will be at stake.”
The truth, of course, is that most Democrats have given up the fight to restrict guns and Obama has shown no inclination whatsoever to renew that battle. Nevertheless, the NRA needs money and the money will not come if gun owners do not think they need the lobbying power of the NRA to protect their right to keep and bear arms. In recent years, revenue from NRA membership dues has dropped, as has total income for the organization. So, increasingly, LaPierre and company have come to depend on contributions from freaked out gun nuts.
One steady stream of NRA dollars comes from an interesting source. A 1986 law erased the ban on interstate sales of ammunition. Since then, consumers have been encouraged to add a little extra to the total when they buy their bullets online or by mail order. That tip goes to the NRA. Since 1992, these nifty gratuities have reportedly brought in $9.3 million to the organization. That means that every time there is a run on ammo in the wake of a mass shooting, LaPierre’s budget gets a nice boost.
There is a sick symbiosis between the deranged acts of the lone gunmen and the revenue stream of the NRA. In no way can the NRA be blamed for the actions of the shooters, of course, but it sure would be nice to see LaPierre take a day off from stoking the fear and raising the dough, at least while families mourn the dead.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-sick-symbiosis-20120809,0,6265052.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:43:44 GMT 10
From the Los Angeles Times....Mitt Romney's pick of Paul Ryan pleases both friends and enemiesBy DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Monday, August 13, 2012EVERYBODY seems happy with Mitt Romney’s choice of Wisconsin congressman Paul D. Ryan as his running mate. Republicans are joyful because it is a bold move that will electrify the tea party troops of the party’s base. Democrats are gleeful because they think they can scare older voters with Ryan’s proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher program.
Ryan is no bland, play-it-safe choice of the kind many expected from Romney — a Tim Pawlenty, for instance, who has all the charisma of an Arby’s franchise manager. Neither is he a wacky wild-card choice like the comically unprepared Sarah Palin in 2008. Ryan has 13 years of experience in the House of Representatives and a boldly controversial spending plan he crafted as chairman of the House Budget Committee that everyone agrees could transform the federal government.
It is Ryan’s transformative plan that now will become the center of contention in the campaign. Up to this point, Romney has been infuriatingly vague about his approach to governing and suspiciously elastic about his core beliefs. Now, joined at the hip with a man who has a specific proposal, Romney’s candidacy may rise or fall on how voters respond to the scheme put forward by the No.2 guy on the ticket.
Nonpartisan analysts have concluded that Ryan’s grand design to reduce the size of government, rein in the deficit and slash taxes and spending does not really add up. It would reward rich people with a tax cut, poke big holes in the social safety net and fundamentally change Medicare, but not produce a balanced budget until 2050.
Nevertheless, congressional Republicans have proudly adopted the Ryan plan. Until Romney offers something more concrete, which he is not likely to do, his running mate’s proposal will be at the center of the ideological debate between the Republican team and President Obama. Long before he knew Ryan would be Romney’s choice, Obama described Ryan’s budget as “thinly veiled social Darwinism” that was “so far to the right it makes the Contract with America look like the New Deal.” We can expect even harsher words in the next round of Democratic attacks ads.
Amid the whoops of joy from both parties, there is one person who might be less than thrilled by the Ryan pick — Rick Santorum. Santorum’s second-place showing in the Republican primaries put him in a strong position to vie for the nomination in 2016 should Romney fail to oust Obama this time around. As the darling of social conservatives, Santorum has barely slowed his pace since the primaries ended. He is still traveling the country, giving speeches, issuing statements as new controversies emerge, raising money for Republican candidates and doing everything he can to remain a player in the party.
However, all Santorum’s efforts to position himself as the favorite of fervent conservatives could be for naught if Ryan acquits himself well in the fall campaign. Should Ryan become vice president, he would be the natural successor to President Romney. If Obama prevails in November, Ryan will hold the inside track in the wide-open race for president in 2016.
In endorsing the Romey-Ryan ticket on Saturday, Santorum described Ryan as “a full spectrum conservative” who shares not only Santorum’s fiscal ideas but his “solidly pro-life, pro-family” philosophy, as well. What happens if voters convincingly reject Ryan’s hard-line conservatism? That is the one thing that could kill his chances to become the Republican heir apparent. But if such a rejection is bad for Ryan, it would be bad for Santorum too, along with any other “full spectrum conservative.”
Santorum’s political stock just went down. He may have to settle for a consolation prize — a gig with Pat Robertson, perhaps?www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-paul-ryan-20120812,0,4964671.story
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 18:44:27 GMT 10
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