Mitt Romney's Empathy Problem, cont...

Feb 3rd, 2012
by F. Grey Parker

The fallout from Wednesday's gaffe continues to mount... particularly on the right.

As I noted shortly after this blew up, Romney seemed not only detached from the common citizen but also from his own party.

A growing chorus of conservative voices is afraid that Romney's pronouncements about "the very poor" are a sign that he's exactly the kind of "Massachusetts Liberal" Newt has been portraying for weeks.

Some of them are also saying, flat out, that Mitt's just an idiot.

Quote Of The Day - Here and Now Edition

Feb 3rd, 2012

"One is a practicing polygamist, and he’s not even the Mormon."

-- Retired, Ronald Reagan nominated, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the current GOP Presidential field.

Quotes Of The Day

Feb 3rd, 2012

"All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.


It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. 

For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens."

-- George Washington

Or, to put it more simply...

"The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion."

-- John Adams

Santorum Gets The BLR Treatment

Feb 2nd, 2012

They have really outdone themselves with this one.

Quote Of The Day

Feb 2nd, 2012

"A word of kindness is seldom spoken in vain, while witty sayings are as easily lost as the pearls slipping from a broken string."
-- George Dennison Prentice

Another Liberal List

Feb 1st, 2012

I am increasingly wary of passing stuff like this along. Liberal lists of this-or-that without very much (if any) critique, commentary or discussion are generally the sort of thing that doesn't get play across the various divides. Therefore, it's often seems like just more 'preaching to the choir.'

With that caveat, I think everyone should give this list a whirl...

Stephen D. Foster's "102 Things NOT To Do If You Hate Taxes."

Yup.

A Journalist To Be Admired

Feb 1st, 2012

As is increasingly common, Mike Daly has joined the ranks of journalists willing to respond to reader commentary directly and on camera. In response to some of the inappropriate feedback to a truly horrifying story, Daly goes further than most of his peers would. He is, what they called back in the day, a stand-up-guy.

Mitt Romney's Very Ugly Florida Victory Speech

Feb 1st, 2012

Here are the highlights. Or the lowlights. Pick your poison. Dripping with venom about the President's "friends in the faculty lounge" and his policies of "appeasement" (tell that to Bin Laden), it's the most vicious gutter-smear of Obama's supposed "otherness" that Romney has yet made.

This Is Your Brain On... Words?

Feb 1st, 2012

Jason Palmer has an amazing and somewhat unsettling report over at the BBC:

"Researchers have demonstrated a striking method to reconstruct words, based on the brain waves of patients thinking of those words.

The technique reported in PLoS Biology relies on gathering electrical signals directly from patients' brains.

Based on signals from listening patients, a computer model was used to reconstruct the sounds of words that patients were thinking of.

The method may in future help comatose and locked-in patients communicate.

Several approaches have in recent years suggested that scientists are closing in on methods to tap into our very thoughts; the current study achieved its result by implanting electrodes directly into a part of participants' brains."

The Day In Awesomely Depressing

Feb 1st, 2012

First came news that the man who made my childhood Saturday mornings decidedly more funky, Soul Train's Don Cornelius, had died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Then came the news that Mike Kelley, multi-media artist and founding member of the seminal pre-punk band Destroy All Monsters had passed away, also of an apparent suicide.

Next came the story that veteran soap actor Nick Santino had taken his life last week, unable to cope with the grief of having been forced to put down his beloved pit bull, Rocco.

In other news, RedState editor Erick Erickson recently said the use of a tazer on an unarmed civil disobedient at Occupy DC was "made of awesome."


Sigh... Do something decent for somebody today, would ya? Seriously. Just be kind.

Except to Erick. Erick is an asshole.

About The Latest Afghanistan Handwringing

Feb 1st, 2012

First of all, it's not news that members of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service are in bed with radical elements of the Taliban. Second of all, if we stayed in Afghanistan for another hundred years, they would begin destroying each other not long after we departed. This is what we are seeing in Iraq already. Eventually, we are going to have to think about doing more nation building at home. In fact, discussion of that kind have begun in earnest on both sides of the aisle. Now comes an "explosive report" detailing the imminent return to power of the Taliban aided and abetted by the ISI. Sigh.

Reuters has some coverage about this "report" which is essential reading for anyone before they start running around in panic-circles and yelling that the sky is falling:

"Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, confirmed the existence of the document, reported by Britain's Times newspaper and the BBC. But he said it was not a strategic study.

"The classified document in question is a compilation of Taliban detainee opinions," he said. "It's not an analysis, nor is it meant to be considered an analysis." EMPHASIS OURS

Get it? This prisoner braggadocio. This is not the kind of thing on which so much as a single change in policy particulars should be based. It will be interesting to see if the neo-conservative permawar crowd, which is always harping on the need to 'listen to military,' actually listens to the military on this one.

Newt Gingrich... Zombie?

Feb 1st, 2012

Good Stuff

Mitt Romney's Empathy Problem

Feb 1st, 2012

When I wrote about Bain Capital a few days ago, I stressed that one of Mitt Romney's main obstacles come November is the perception that he lacks empathy. Now, he has handed American voters one more reason to suspect he doesn't have a clue what it's like to be an ordinary citizen in this economy.


ABC reports:

"GOP front-runner Mitt Romney said this morning that he's not concerned about the plight of the country's very poor because there are social safety nets that take care of them.

"I'm in this race because I care about Americans," Romney told CNN's Soledad O'Brien this morning after his resounding victory in Florida on Tuesday. "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it."

Obviously, this has blown up in his face.

Plausible "Self Deportation"

Feb 1st, 2012

The GOP War On Unions, cont...

Feb 1st, 2012
UPDATED 2:46pm CST - Original story below the fold

CBS reports:

"Indiana has become the first Rust Belt state to enact the contentious right-to-work labor law prohibiting labor contracts that require workers to pay union representation fees.

Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels signed the bill Wednesday after it passed the Senate following weeks of discord that saw House Democrats boycott the Legislature and thousands of protesters gather at the Statehouse.

Indiana is the first state in a decade to enact a right-to-work law."

This bill is a blow to every working man and woman in the country.
__________________________________________________

Fraud In The SC GOP Primary?

Feb 1st, 2012

Coming just weeks after the strange tilt in the Iowa Caucus, comes claims of potential fraud in the South Carolina GOP primary.

Brandon Turbeville writes:

"Although no one is pointing fingers at the Gingrich campaign, or any other campaign at this point, the anomalies that are arising from the accounts of eyewitnesses call into question the certainty and the credibility of the final count in South Carolina.

At this time, the most serious questions are centered around the precincts in Pickens County. It was in this precinct that Chris Lawton, representing the Paul campaign, came to the Pickens County elections office to witness the vote certification and noticed a series of situations that were either in direct opposition to State voting laws, or, at the very least, highly questionable."

What Lawton details does seem to be a series of odd departures from expected procedure. We'll keep an eye on this one.

Go Ahead And Film The Cops

Feb 1st, 2012

Reason reports on the latest good news:

"Last week a federal jury in Oregon awarded damages to an environmental activist who sued the city of Eugene after a police officer seized his video camera and arrested him for wiretapping. In March 2009, Josh Schlossberg was distributing leaflets outside Umpqua Bank in downtown Eugene when Sgt. Bill Solesbee told him to move along. Schlossberg replied that his lawyer had advised him he was not breaking any laws. Solesbee then entered the bank and came back out. When he approached Schlossberg again, Schlossberg took out his camera and announced that he was recording the encounter."

As you can imagine, that was the beginning of the latest big fight to affirm our right to hold law enforcement accountable for their actions. Film away.

Mitt The "Flipper"

Feb 1st, 2012

A brutal assault on Mitt from disgruntled Republicans

Mitt Wins Big

Feb 1st, 2012

Boy, was I wrong about Florida. Although I was certain Mitt would take the win and, with it, all of the delegates, I was convinced that older GOP voters and early voting would produce a much narrower margin than the most recent polls were showing. In fact, the opposite proved to be true.

Having lost by nearly fifteen points, Newt has pivoted, again, to what was only recently the kind of argument we hear from Democrats; That is, that money basically bought the Romney team's victory. The thing is, he has a point. Just as he was correct in arguing that Bain Capital's methods were somewhat dubious (the latest example is HERE), the degree to which vastly larger amounts of money and negative advertising by Romney and his backers made this victory can't be understated.

The Guardian's Ewan MacAskill noted the disproportion last Friday:

"On television stations from Jacksonville in the north to Key West in the south, as well as radio stations, negative ads about Gingrich are near unavoidable, paid for either directly by the Romney campaign or by the super-PACs supporting him. The television spots, popping up regularly between ads for carpets, weather-resistant paint and holidays, focus on Gingrich's tempestuous years as House Speaker and ends with a picture of him with Obama, saying "If Newt wins, this guy (Obama) will be very happy."

The radio ad claim Gingrich has "more baggage than airlines".

Gingrich ads by comparison seem sparse, with a ratio that feels closer to six in one. Gingrich describes himself in the ads as the "true conservative". In another ad, yet to be broadcast, he accuses Romney of lying five times in the CNN debate on Thursday in Jacksonville, Florida"

In the end, Romney took 46.4% of the GOP primary votes. Gingrich had 31.9%, Santorum had 13.4% and Ron Paul eked out a mere 7.0% with all the ballots counted.

Here's where things are getting interesting and somewhat reminiscent of the bruising battle the Democrats fought among themselves in 1980... No one is pulling out of this race. At least, not yet.

Rachel Rose Hartman reports:

"Gingrich claimed Tuesday's results solidified the 2012 primary as a "two-man race" between a "conservative leader" and a "Massachusetts moderate." He vowed to remain in the race for the duration.

"We are going to contest every place, and we are going to win, and we will be in Tampa as the nominee in August," Gingrich said, speaking from his Florida headquarters in Orlando. Gingrich claimed he will show how "people power" can defeat "money" in this race.

Gingrich also announced that he will soon release a new version of the Republicans' 1994 "Contract with America," which Gingrich helped author.

In Las Vegas, despite his third place finish, Santorum vowed Tuesday night to remain in the race. He called on his competitors to focus on issues instead of "mud wrestling."

While I predict Santorum will cave no later than Super Tuesday, there is every reason to believe that Paul and Gingrich will, as they say, "take this all the way to the convention."

Paul's motives are still clearly a desire to force certain concepts into the debate. Newt, however, has a renewed lust for vengeance. It's in the core of his nature.

David Corn agrees:

"Thirty-four years ago, Newt Gingrich summed it up. In a speech to College Republicans—shortly before he would win his first election to Congress—the future speaker had a piece of fundamental advice for the young and impressionable GOPers: "I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal, and faithful and all those Boy Scout words."

Nasty—that was a critical component of Gingrich's formula for political success. And through the 1980s and 1990s, as Gingrich wielded his nastiness to overturn the Democratic order in Congress and seize the people's House for the GOP, he was hailed by Republicans."

While Corn seems less convinced than I that Newt will refuse to bow out before the convention, he's correct in seeing the next few weeks as likely to be even more vicious and unrelenting than anything we've seen so far.

Grab the popcorn and get ready to duck.

Quote Of The Day

Feb 1st, 2012

"A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green."
-- Francis Bacon