Mitt Watch: What Sandy Tells Us About The Candidate And His Party

Oct 31st, 2012

UPDATE 4pm CST 11/1/12: In this piece, I made mention of Gov. Christie's very public praise of the President's management of the disaster response. The GOP has begun to savage him for it. That didn't take long.

Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath are perfectly legitimate political issues. That anyone would argue otherwise is ridiculous.

Chait puts it best:

"What you are going to see over the next week is an overt effort by Democrats to politicize the issue of disaster response. They're right to do it. Conservatives are already complaining about this, but the attempt to wall disaster response off from politics in the aftermath of a disaster is an attempt to insulate Republicans from the consequences of their policies."

The GOP has directly targeted our national disaster response mechanisms, having gone so far as to threaten a total government shutdown last year while seeking a nearly forty percent cut to first responders. The outright elimination of FEMA has become a central position among the party's leadership.

You Can Tell Because His Lips Are Moving, cont...

Nov 1st, 2011

Good old Gov. John Kasich (OH), whose actions against the average citizen almost make Gov. Scott Walker's (WI) look moderate, is lying. Again. Because that is what he does.

Stark County, Ohio's Very Own Abu Ghraib

Jan 2nd, 2011

Torture is torture. It's not something you can spin. Regrettably, we live in a culture that has been doing just that for the past 9 years. That the tactics of brutalization and sexual humiliation we've visited on other countries are now perpetrated in our own communities was merely a matter of time.

Four years ago, a woman in rural Ohio named Hope Steffey was assaulted by a family member. She did what citizens are supposed to do and called the police. She had been knocked unconscious in the initial attack and was disoriented. After some confusion resulting from her state of shock, it was she who was arrested instead of the assailant. The arresting officer injured her back and her face and cracked her teeth. She was later violently stripped naked by both female and male officers. There are many questions surrounding the behavior of all the officials involved. Dash-cam footage does "not exist" prior to Steffey being placed in the cruiser.

We continue to tolerate this at our peril.