Dear Republican friends: Your Romney vote disrespects my marriage
A Pulitzer-winning playwright's Facebook post goes viral, calling out moderate GOP friends backing Mitt
By Salon Staff - Friday, Oct 26, 2012 01:06 PM +1100
Dear Republican friends: Your Romney vote disrespects my marriage
Doug Wright wrote the book for “Grey Gardens” and adapted Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” for Broadway. He won the Tony Award for best play for “I Am My Own Wife,” as well as the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
But he might have an even bigger audience for this Facebook message addressed to Republican friends considering a vote for Mitt Romney. The post went viral Thursday evening:
I wish my moderate Republican friends would simply be honest. They all say they’re voting for Romney because of his economic policies (tenuous and ill-formed as they are), and that they disagree with him on gay rights. Fine. Then look me in the eye, speak with a level clear voice, and say, “My taxes and take-home pay mean more than your fundamental civil rights, the sanctity of your marriage, your right to visit an ailing spouse in the hospital, your dignity as a citizen of this country, your healthcare, your right to inherit, the mental welfare and emotional well-being of your youth, and your very personhood.”
It’s like voting for George Wallace during the Civil Rights movements, and apologizing for his racism. You’re still complicit. You’re still perpetuating anti-gay legislation and cultural homophobia. You don’t get to walk away clean, because you say you “disagree” with your candidate on these issues.
Randall Terry Airs Graphic, Anti-Muslim Ad Against Obama In Pennsylvania
By Ian Gray Posted: 10/31/2012 2:31 pm EDT
A gruesome, anti-Muslim television ad aired Tuesday night in Pittsburgh, insinuating that President Barack Obama is sympathetic to violent extremism in the Middle East.
The ad, first flagged by the liberal group American Bridge 21st Century [ http://www.americanbridgepac.org/ ], was paid for by fringe write-in presidential candidate Randall Terry and aired around the popular 11 p.m. time slot on Pittsburgh's local FOX affiliate WPHG.
It features a sleeping woman who is struggling through a nightmare. It intersperses graphic images of bloodied corpses and a man being decapitated. A portion of President Obama's speech in Cairo [ http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/NewBeginning (at {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39512678 )] about bridging the gap between the Muslim and western worlds, and chants of "Allahu Akbar" serve as the background audio in the ad. The woman ultimately wakes up from the nightmare and says, "I can't vote for Obama again." The ad ends with Terry on screen saying, "A vote for Obama helps Muslims murder Christians and Jews. I'm Randall Terry and I approve this message."
A request for comment from WPGH as to why the station agreed to air the ad was not returned.
Together, they aim to exploit a Federal Communications Commission loophole and saturate major media markets with graphic anti-abortion images. What the ads lack in production values, they more than make up for in shock value. As he explained in an interview with Catholic Online last November, Terry, who is himself running for president as a Democrat, explained: "By running campaign ads in the top 25 media markets, we can reach one-third of the nation with a message about the truth and horror of abortion."
Terry attracted attention earlier this year when he attempted to air a graphic ad depicting aborted fetuses during the Super Bowl on NBC's Chicago station, WMAQ. The station ultimately refused to sell Terry the time slot.
The anti-Muslim ad that aired last night was pulled from YouTube for violating its policy regarding "shocking and disgusting content." It can still be viewed on Terry's website [ http://www.terryforpresident.com/ ].
President Barack Obama Targeted By Anonymous Hate Text Messages
By Michael McAuliff Posted: 10/30/2012 9:57 pm EDT Updated: 10/30/2012 10:16 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- A sting of vitriol-laden text messages hit voters' phones Tuesday night, blasting President Barack Obama with anti-gay attacks and false claims.
In what appeared to be a coordinated campaign of cell phone text mail or text messages, one Virginia voter received one from the address sms@votegopett.com that made the inflammatory claim: "Obama supports homosexuality and its radical social agenda. Say No to Obama on Nov 6!"
MIke Madden tweeted one for sms@informedett.com that declared "Re-electing Obama puts Medicare at risk."
Attorney Pater Saharko tweeted that he got a message from the same address that read: "Obama is using your tax dollars to fund Planned Parenthood and abortion. Is that right?"
New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman tweeted that his 13-year-old daughter also got a text. "Obama denies protection to babies who survive abortions. Obama is just wrong," said the message from sms@gopmessage.com.
HuffPost's Sam Stein also got a message, declaring "Seniors cant afford to have 4 more years of Obama budget cuts to Medicare."
Some of the messages did not seem well-targeted.
Jennifer Cryer tweeted that she got one from sms@obamaliesett.com that said: "Stop Obama from forcing gay marriage on the states. Your vote is your voice."
Cryer used her voice, and answered back, saying "I'm gay, you fucking douchebags."
The Federal Communications Commission bans unsolicited text messages, but political operatives use a loophole of sending emails to people's phones. But phone companies interpret them as text messages [ http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/26/news/la-pn-political-text-message-spam-20120926 ], and send them along. They also charge the recipient for the unwanted messages if the receiver does not have a text messaging plan.
The senders were all anonymous. A quick search for one -- votegopett -- found it was registered in February, with the owner information blocked.
Scott Goodstein, a progressive online strategist with the group Revolution Messaging, said the texts "are coming from an email address."
"It is not just random cell phone numbers," Goodstein said. "There is a company out of Northern Virginia that does this." He said the company data "matches right-leaning voters ... It registers a URL and you can't find out without a court order who owns the URL. And they send emails to your phone number via text messaging."
Goodstein added: "It costs consumers money. It is disinformation and there is no source as to where it is coming from."
Misleading Billboard: MLK Was A Republican. Vote Republican!
By Terrell Jermaine Starr Oct 29, 2012
This is not the first time we have heard rumors over Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. being a member of the GOP — especially around election time.
The man behind the billboards is Claver Kamau-Imani, head of Raging Elephants. “The use of Dr. King, because of him being an icon in the community, we feel would be most effective. That’s why we used it,” says Kamau-Imani. “We have the documentation to back the claims we’re making on the billboard.”
One of the billboards is strategically placed. It looks down on the very street that bears that civil rights icon’s name. There are others mostly located in Black communities in Dallas, Houston and Austin. The hope is that the billboards will get some Blacks to consider voting Republican this November.
However, some locals in Dallas are not happy about Kamau-Imani’s use of of King’s image to promote partisan politics. Peter Johnson, a Dallas social activist who worked with King in the 1960s, says the billboard is a “disgrace.”
“Using his image is one thing, exploiting his legacy is another. To distort his legacy, it’s sacred to some of us. We know the suffering and sacrifice that was made.”
In reality, no one knows for sure what Dr. King’s views were.
Think about it: Does anyone really believe Dr. King would vote for Mitt Romney, a man who said that he can’t do anything for 47 percent of the American population? We doubt it. More than 96 percent of Black voters cast [ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15297.html ] their ballots for Obama in 2008 and it seems like he will get the same level of support next month. And it Blacks are on track to vote Democrat in overwhelming majorities in November.
In the end, GOP efforts to recruit Black voters with misleading symbols and facts on the Republican Party’s history are likely to be a big fail — as they always are.
No Supreme Court action to curb the Voting Rights Act — yet
In this Aug. 6, 1965, photo, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in a ceremony in the President's Room near the Senate Chambers on Capitol Hill in Washington (AP Photo)
by Jay Reeves and Mark Sherman, Associated Press | October 30, 2012 at 9:38 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) — Three years ago, the Supreme Court warned there could be constitutional problems with a landmark civil rights law that has opened voting booths to millions of African-Americans. Now, opponents of a key part of the Voting Rights Act are asking the high court to finish off that provision.
The basic question is whether state and local governments that once boasted of their racial discrimination still can be forced in the 21st century to get federal permission before making changes in the way they hold elections.
Some of the governments covered — most of them are in the South — argue they have turned away from racial discrimination over the years. But Congress and lower courts that have looked at recent challenges to the law concluded that a history of discrimination and more recent efforts to harm minority voters justify continuing federal oversight.
The Supreme Court took no action Monday on cases asking it to end the Voting Rights Act’s advance approval requirement that has been held up as a crown jewel of the civil rights era.
The justices sidestepped this very issue in a case from Texas in 2009. In an opinion joined by eight justices, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote then that the issue of advance approval “is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today.”
Since then, Congress has not addressed potential problems identified by the court. Meanwhile, the law’s opponents sensed its vulnerability and filed several new lawsuits.
The advance approval, or preclearance requirement, was adopted in the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to give federal officials a potent tool to defeat persistent efforts to keep blacks from voting.
The provision was a huge success, and Congress periodically has renewed it over the years. The most recent occasion was in 2006, when a Republican-led Congress overwhelmingly approved and President George W. Bush signed a 25-year extension.
The requirement currently applies to the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. It also covers certain counties in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota, and some local jurisdictions in Michigan and New Hampshire. Coverage has been triggered by past discrimination not only against blacks, but also against American Indians, Asian-Americans, Alaskan Natives and Hispanics.
Before these locations can change their voting rules, they must get approval either from the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division or from the federal district court in Washington that the new rules won’t discriminate.
Congress compiled a 15,000-page record and documented hundreds of instances of apparent voting discrimination in the states covered by the law dating to 1982, the last time it had been extended.
Among the incidents in the congressional record:
—In 1998, Webster County, Ga., tried to reduce the black population in several school board districts after citizens elected a majority-black school board for the first time.
—In 2001, Kilmichael, Miss., canceled an election when a large number of African-American candidates sought local office following 2000 census results that showed blacks had become the majority in the city.
—In 2004, Waller County, Texas, sought to limit early voting near a historically black college and threatened to prosecute students for illegal voting after two black students said they would run for office.
But in 2009, Roberts indicated the court was troubled about the ongoing need for a law in the face of dramatically improved conditions, including increased minority voter registration and turnout rates. Roberts attributed part of the change to the law itself. “Past success alone, however, is not adequate justification to retain the preclearance requirements,” he said.
He also raised concern that the formula by which states are covered relies on data that is now 40 years old. By some measures, states covered by the law were outperforming some that were not.
Jurisdictions required to obtain preclearance were chosen based on whether they had a test restricting the opportunity to register or vote and whether they had a voter registration or turnout rate below 50 percent.
In the federal court of appeals in the District of Columbia, Circuit Judge Stephen Williams objected that the law specifies that these criteria are measured by what happened in elections several decades ago. But writing for a majority that upheld preclearance, Circuit Judge David Tatel said the question is not whether old data is being used, but whether it helps identify jurisdictions with the worst discrimination problems. “If it does, then even though the formula rests on decades-old factors, the statute is rational,” Tatel said.
Shelby County, Ala., a well-to-do, mostly white bedroom community near Birmingham, adopted Roberts’ arguments in its effort to have the voting rights provision declared unconstitutional, but lost in the lower courts. The county’s appeal is among those being weighed by the high court.
Yet just a few years earlier, a city of nearly 12,000 people in Shelby County defied the voting rights law and prompted the intervention of the Bush Justice Department.
Ernest Montgomery became the only black member of the five-person Calera City Council in 2004, winning in a district that was almost 71 percent black. The city redrew its district lines in 2006 after new subdivisions and retail developments sprang up in the area Montgomery represented, and the change left Montgomery’s District 2 with a population that was only 23 percent black.
Running against a white opponent in the now mostly white district, Montgomery narrowly lost a re-election bid in 2008. The Justice Department invalidated the election result because the city had failed to obtain advance approval of the new districts.
A lifelong resident of Calera and a church deacon, the 56-year-old Montgomery said he doesn’t know whether discrimination was involved in the redistricting decision six years ago. But, he said, discrimination still exists and the law is still needed.
“I think things have gotten a lot more leveled out, but we’re not to the point we need,” he said.
Search For Mythical Voter Fraud Leads To False Sighting In Ohio
By Dan Froomkin Posted: 10/31/2012 4:46 pm EDT Updated: 10/31/2012 5:04 pm EDT
Right-wing activists bent on exposing the alleged epidemic of in-person voter fraud suffered a major misfire over the weekend when anonymous pollwatchers set off alarms over groups of Somalis getting rides to a central Ohio early voting center.
Many members of the large Somali community in and around Columbus are U.S. citizens and therefore have the constitutional right to vote. But that didn't stop the conservative Human Events website from warning of "troubling and questionable activities" -- or the Drudge Report getting its readers exercised about "Vanloads of Somalians driven to the polls in Ohio."
The Human Events story [ http://www.humanevents.com/2012/10/26/is-voter-fraud-being-committed-in-ohio/ ] quoted two anonymous pollwatchers complaining of "Somalis who cannot speak English" arriving in groups, being given a slate card by Democratic party workers outside the polling place, then coming in and being instructed by Somali interpreters on how to vote. The article also raised the question of "whether a non-English speaking person is an American citizen."
Somali leaders in central Ohio said the charges in the article were upsetting as well as unfounded.
"They shouldn't single out the Somalis," said Hassan Omar, head of the Somali Community Association in Ohio. "That's the American dream; exercising the freedom of voting."
Omar said that only those Somalis who are citizens register to vote. "There's no cheating. This is scare tactics, to be honest with you," he said.
Ben Piscitelli, a spokesman for the Franklin County Board of Elections, mocked the concerns expressed in the Human Events story. "'Gee, all these Somalis, who knows if they're U.S. citizens? Who knows what Somali pollworkers are saying to them? Gee, we saw Democrats outside that were giving them slate cards.'
"The answer to all of that is: So what?" Piscitelli said.
Somali voters have been a "very visible presence" at the early voting center, which happens to be smack dab in a heavily Somali part of town where many of the older women still wear traditional dress. "They stand out," Piscitelli said. "But that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it. As far as we're concerned, we think everything's okay."
People who register to vote have to affirm their citizenship under penalty of perjury, and "we haven't had any instances in my memory or in recent years of somebody trying to vote who wasn't a citizen," Piscitelli said. "There's no more reason to suspect someone with a Somali name than there is to suspect someone with a name like Piscitelli."
Members of either party are allowed to campaign and give voters slate cards as long as it's more than 100 feet from the polling place, he noted, and voters are allowed to bring those slate cards into the voting booth.
The article claimed there were no Republican Somali speakers at the polling place. Piscitelli said the very first Somali speaker they hired was, in fact, a Republican.
And those pollworkers often help voters understand how the touchscreen machines work, he said. "Yes, they're speaking Somali, and we don't know what they're saying to voters, but then again we don't eavesdrop on our English-speaking pollworkers either."
Omar said his association estimates there are about 45,000 Somalis in the area. Most entered the country in the early 1990s as refugees from the civil war in their country, and were ultimately drawn to places like central Ohio and Minnesota for economic reasons. Many -- Omar thinks more than 40 percent -- have become naturalized American citizens.
Omar said that even for some Somalis who have been in this country a long time, when they have a question about something like how voting machines work, they are more comfortable doing so in their native language.
Mussa Farah, president of the Columbus-based Horn of Africa Rescue Committee, said he was shocked when he read the Human Events article. "That was crazy," he said. "I wish they would have to show why they believe that. Just because you see two vehicles of Somalis, doesn't mean there is voter fraud."
Omar said his household has six registered voters, and his brother's has nine. "So if we take the same bus or the same van and we vote and we want to have lunch together, is that cheating?"
The Franklin County Democratic Party, meanwhile, will take anyone to the polls if they want a ride, said spokesman Chuck Ardo.
"We have taken many vanloads of Somalis," he said. "We have also taken older folks, we have taken disabled folks, we have taken -- in fact, we just now took five women from the local Y to vote. Clearly the Somalis are more obvious because of their dress, but they are simply part of our greater ride to the polls campaign," he said.
"I think that given the Republicans' efforts to suppress Democratic turnout overall, this comes as no surprise. It's just part of their scare tactics," Ardo continued. "I think part of the concern is that early voter turnout here in Franklin County is setting new records. And I think that concerns the Republicans, because the folks turning out in large numbers are supporters of the president."
One obvious concern raised by this incident is that it could foreshadow what will happen when uninformed, overvigilant, possibly even racist pollwatchers descend on unfamiliar minority precincts all over the country on election day, on behalf of right-wing groups.
Some Democrats fear that voter intimidation by pollwatchers will be the crowning element of a GOP-led campaign that has already restricted registration drives, purged voter rolls, rolled back early voting, and pushed new voter ID laws. Republicans say such measures are necessary to stop voter fraud, though they have no evidence that voter fraud is anything but a theoretical problem. By contrast, the measures they've advocated have the distinct effect of depressing the vote among minorities, the poor and other generally Democratic constituencies.
Donald Trump wants Barack Obama to publish his college and passport records but won't reveal his own Adviser deems Guardian request 'stupid' after tycoon's 'October surprise' proves to be call for information on president 25 October 2012 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/oct/24/donald-trump-barack-obama-records [with embedded audio, and comments]
Before Hurricane Sandy hit, Mitt Romney had turned to his make-your-head-explode closing message [ http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/10/mitt-romney-ohio-ad-car.html ] in Ohio that Barack Obama is the one who let the auto industry go bankrupt, and Mitt Romney is the guy who wanted to save it. This is perfectly in keeping with Romney’s approach to any situation in which his opponent has a more popular position: Just say you’re for that thing, and also, possibly, that they’re not. Then you can go to the voters and say, I believe in pretty much the same stuff as Ted Kennedy or Shannon O’Brien or Rick Perry or Newt Gingrich or (now) Barack Obama but I will be taller and handsomer and more effective.
The basics of this debate are pretty clear. Mitt Romney opposed using government funds to keep General Motors and Chrysler afloat. He has managed to muddy up the issue because he has said numerous things about it, many of which contradicted each other or simply made no sense at all. (Jonathan Cohn [ http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/109008/romney-obama-debate-auto-detroit-bailout-gm-chrysler-taxpayer-government-loans ] has a nice rundown.) But if you don’t want to chase every factual rabbit down every hole, the even bigger picture is that the notion that Romney or any Republican supported a taxpayer bailout of the auto industry is totally insane.
Since I’m apparently the only person old enough to remember it, let me sit down in my rocking chair, offer you a Werther’s caramel [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byEmdbLo1PA ], and tell you all about what it was like way back in 2009. The government had already bailed out the financial industry, was proposing an $800 billion stimulus, and Republicans were running around with their hair on fire screaming about socialism. The idea of extending another bailout to an industry not as central to the entire economy as finance struck even many Democrats as an inappropriate extension of government – numerous internal Obama advisers opposed a bailout, and I remember having a hard time making up my mind before uncomfortably deciding it was worth it.
In his book, Romney excoriates the bailout in the starkest terms, contending that “the rule of law was ignored in order to reward the auto workers union at General Motors.” He cites it in a list of a half -dozen examples during Obama’s first 18 months in office of what he describes as “actions that demonstrate” the administration’s “distrust in free enterprise.” On page 8 of his 325-page treatise, Romney insists that when liberals are in power, “they take action” like the bailout “that is consistent with socialism but call it by a more plausible name.” …
At another point in the book, Romney wrote: “I opposed Washington’s bailout for the industry in 2008 because it enabled GM and Chrysler to avoid the restructuring and productivity improvements essential for their success. The managed bankruptcy that I proposed ultimately occurred, but only after tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money had been wasted, and only after sweetheart deals and paybacks for favored interest groups had been engineered with the public’s money. The question now is whether or not the administration’s heavy hand has protected political and UAW interests in such a way that the industry’s burdens persist.”
“Of course, the financial system itself must not be allowed to collapse,” he wrote, “but individual institutions that do not show the capacity to right themselves should be allowed to fail. Non-financial businesses should also be allowed to fail; if they have future prospects, bankruptcy will allow them to remerge as stronger, viable employers.” Leaving no doubt that he means the auto industry, his next line adds: “General Motors shares should have immediately been distributed to the public rather than being held by the federal government.”
That was what the entire party believed. Bailing out Wall Street was one thing, but bailing out a non-financial industry was a step toward endless socialism.
If you could have gone back to 2009 and told Republicans that their 2012 nominee was trying to hug Obama on the auto bailout -- or, now, get to his left! – they never, ever would have believed you. It would have been more plausible to believe that the GOP nominee would be running as a huge fan of Obamacare.
Mitt Romney's Napoleon Complex and Orwellian Tactics
By Jason Stanford, Tue, October 30, 2012
Mitt Romney has a Napoleon complex. Yes, I know he stands 6'2", and no, I'm not talking about any insecurities he may harbor about his, um, tax returns that he keeps hidden. We're talking about a different Napoleon entirely.
We all know the basic story of George Orwell's Animal Farm [ http://www.george-orwell.org/Animal_Farm ]. The animals overthrow the drunken farmer, and an evil pig co-opts the revolution, oppressing his animal brethren through violence and groupthink. The evil pig adopts twisted slogans [ http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/georgeorwe141783.html#HObOktMJwAcbmEmM.99 ] and resorts to faking economic indicators to convince the beasts of burden that they're doing well despite their suffering. That evil pig, of course, is named Napoleon.
My Orwell came back to me when I saw Romney's new car commercial that's running in Ohio, not only the most crucial swing state but also a place where they build a lot of cars. In a campaign more notable for its whitewashing than its white papers, Romney's Ohio ad broke new ground in balderdash. It's impossible to appreciate this ad if you haven't read Animal Farm.
The ad tells two lies so grand that Orwell would have been embarrassed to write it as the pig's dialogue. First, Romney's ad implies that Jeep is moving jobs to China. It started with a misunderstanding of a Bloomberg article [ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-21/fiat-says-china-may-build-all-jeep-models-as-suv-demand-climbs.html ] that said Chrysler "plans to return Jeep output to China." Romney attacked Obama on the stump, but as it turns out, no jobs are leaving Ohio. In fact, not only is Chrysler expanding overseas manufacturing to sell Jeeps to the Chinese, but they're hiring 1,100 more autoworkers as well in Ohio.
Chrysler had little patience with Romney's misinterpretation.
"Despite clear and accurate reporting, the take has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. work force. It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats," said Chrysler spokesman Gualberto Ranieri.
Instead of backing off from the lie, Romney rephrased the lie, saying Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China." That's true, but it gives the impression that American jobs are going to China when both are gaining jobs. The Orwellian genius of this ad is that it uses words to convey their opposite meaning, especially as they're followed by the promise "Mitt Romney will fight for every American job," a statement that's only true if you assume it's something he intends to take up in the future, like a hobby or a New Year's resolution to lose weight.
All that is tap dancing on the head of a pin compared to Romney's claim that he has a "plan to help the auto industry." It must be a super secret plan with an encrypted password with spaces and numbers because he's refused [ https://twitter.com/morningmoneyben/status/262933716177936384 ] to tell reporters what that plan is. His campaign won't even confirm that a plan exists. Maybe this is a hostage situation, and we only get his plan to help automakers, the details of his $5 trillion tax cut, and his old tax returns when we hand over the keys to the White House, nice and easy and nobody gets hurt.
Either way, Orwell was right when he wrote, "Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
In 1984 [ http://www.george-orwell.org/1984 ], Orwell wrote, "War is peace. Freedom is slavery." And Romney was for the bailout all along. It makes sense if you don't think about it. After all, ignorance is strength.
Voiceover: "When the auto industry faced collapse, Mitt Romney turned his back. Even the conservative Detroit News criticized Romney for his 'wrong-headedness' on the bailout. And now, after Romney's false claim of Jeep outsourcing to China, Chrysler ITSELF has refuted Romney's lie. The truth? Jeep is ADDING jobs in Ohio."
Voiceover: "Mitt Romney on Ohio jobs? Wrong Then. "
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