Romney Threatened To Cancel Univision Forum If
Organizers Didnt Allow Him To Bus In Supporters

post from ThinkProgress on 22 September 2012 01:47:35 PM. © ThinkProgress

Mitt Romney packed the audience for a Univision forum earlier this week, BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins reports, busing in local supporters “after exhausting the few conservative groups on campus.” The campaign threatened to “reschedule” the event if organizers did not allow the “rowdy activists from around southern Florida in order to fill the extra seats at [...]

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Former Pittsburgh Pirates Owner Comes Out As Gay

post from ThinkProgress on 22 September 2012 01:20:54 PM. © ThinkProgress

The former owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates has come out as gay in the New York Times, telling the paper that “homophobic language during his days in baseball” convinced “him that keeping his sexual orientation hidden was best.” “I’ve got a birthday coming up where I’m turning old,” Kevin McClatchy, who owned the Pirates from [...]

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Five Stages of Impunity for Torture

post from Firedoglake on 22 September 2012 01:15:40 PM. © Firedoglake

One hallmark of the administration of President Barack Obama has been the commitment of the administration to move forward and not look back?to, as a Democratic Party operative only concerned with election results might say, not re-litigate the eight[...]

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AL GOP Chair Goes Full Birther, Says Obama Is
'Communist'

post from Crooks and Liars on 22 September 2012 01:00:51 PM. © Crooks and Liars

One of the strangest things about conservatives is their willingness - no, eagerness -- to believe whatever scurrilous tales anyone tells them about a Democrat. You can say all you want about Obama's race being the reason, but I still remember all the similiarly crazy tales that were manufactured about Bill Clinton: drug smuggling, rape, murders - you name it. Oh yes, and he was a Communist sleeper agent, too. Why are they so gullible?

The head of the Alabama Republican Party this week threw his support behind one of the most far-fetched theories of the already bizarre birther movement.
Speaking to a group of GOP diehards on Wednesday in Fairhope, Ala., party Chair Bill Armistead raved about a film called ?Dreams From My Real Father.? The movie claims President Obama?s grandfather was a CIA agent who convinced Barack Obama Sr. to marry his teenage daughter to hide the fact that she?d been secretly impregnated by a communist.
The Mobile Press-Register reported that Armistead?s comments came after he was asked by someone in the group about another film, ?2016: Obama?s Presidency,? which also weaves elaborate theories about the president?s upbringing.
?If you haven?t seen it, you should,? Armistead said, according to the newspaper. ?But I?m going to tell you about another movie. The name of it is ?Dreams From My Real Father.? That is absolutely frightening. I?ve seen it. I verified that it is factual, all of it.?
Armistead?s comments were first posted to Twitter by the Press-Register?s political editor but quickly caught fire after being picked up by Right Wing Watch.

Director Joel Gilbert is, of course, a completely unbiased source. We know this from his description of himself as "an Islamic history scholar" and writer/director of two recent documentary feature films on the Middle East, including Atomic Jihad: Ahmadinejad's Coming War for Islamic Revival and Obama's Politics of Defeat. He complains about the media conspiracy that keeps him out of the mainstream media.

But don't worry. Alex Jones, Matt Drudge and the usual suspects are on the job.

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On Tom Coburn and GOP Senators Blocking Veterans
Jobs Bill

post from MAL Contends . . . on 22 September 2012 01:00:46 PM. © MAL Contends . . .

Sen. Ron Johnson: Out-of-work veterans can go to hell58 Yeas to 40 Nays means the Nays win in the U.S. Senate as Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson again votes with 39 other GOP senators to stop legislation easing the high unemployment veterans face. Johnson and GOP make a habit of obstruction of bills helping veterans.

Heather at Crooks and Liars has excellent commentary, reserving Sen. Tom Coburn (OK) for special opprobrium as the GOP again tells veterans to get lost.

"The unemployment rate for Iraq and Afghanistan-era Veterans (or Gulf War II-era Veterans) in August ticked up to 10.9 percent," notes a VA blog.

Jon Stewart nails it: "So once again, 800 billion dollars, unfunded, for war. A billion dollars, but paid for in a way you aren't crazy about to help the guys who fought the war get jobs afterwards, 'We're not made out of money people.'"

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Fox News Host Opens a Can of Worms

post from Kmareka.com on 22 September 2012 01:00:17 PM. © Kmareka.com

Reblogged from EmancipationConversation…

Film provocateur, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is temporarily a right-wing martyr to free speech, though when it all sorts out might turn out to be more hustler than hero. Still, the picture of him covering his face as he leaves his house under the protection of police officers makes a good visual…

Nakoula is reportedly fearful for his life after the film generated widespread outrage in the Middle East and has prompted anti-American violence in numerous countries. Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, were killed in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi last week.
Deputies picked up Nakoula at his Cerritos home on behalf of federal probation officials shortly after midnight on Saturday. Nakoula was whisked away by a waiting car, his identity shrouded by a white scarf covering his face. He wore a heavy winter coat and kept his hands in his pockets.
A U.S. Courts spokeswoman said Friday that federal probation officials were reviewing whether Nakoula, who was convicted on bank fraud charges, violated terms of his probation in relation to the video and its uploading onto the Internet.

Fox News got into it, and host Eric Bolling tried to change President Obama’s religion for him. They’re always doing that. They haven’t figured out yet that the liberal Christians of the United Church of Christ are way scarier than Muslims. Dare to attend their Coffee Hour and you will know what I’m talking about…

BOLLING (co-host): Can we throw that picture up of the filmmaker again? When he’s all, like, in disguise and the cops are leading him out? To me, America changed. I –
DANA PERINO (co-host): Yeah, I agree.
GRED GUTFELD (co-host): Yeah.
BOLLING: Someone emailed that picture la– Mark Levin, actually, sent it to me. He goes, “Take a look at this.” America changed at that moment. To use a — what is being called a flimsy ploy to bring this guy in for questioning –
PERINO: What next?
BOLLING: — proves that the Obama administration, through all this appeasement and apologizing, answers to the Quran first and to the Constitution second.

I’d love to see a reporter ask Mitt Romney if he answers to the Book of Mormon first and the Constitution second. I’d love to see that type of question put to all our politicians. I think President Obama would be able to say that he answers to the Constitution in his service as President and the Bible in his personal religious convictions. It’s called separation of church and state.

I wonder how many of the politicians who use God to get votes would be able to handle that without stuttering? I once saw Sen.Harold Metts testify in the State House against marriage equality with a Bible in his hand. He was waving it. Really. This was a pretty clear message that he has no problem with using his office to promote his religion, and if you don’t follow his religion you can just move out of his district.

Come to think of it, that’s why there’s a Rhode Island. The Puritans told Roger Williams not to let the door hit him on the way out. History shows that when a state establishes an official religion, the religious start purging and persecuting dissidents among their own. It may have something to do with power politics and human nature.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula threw gasoline on a fire from the safety of his home in the USA, not caring who got hurt. He gave cover to violent anti-US extremists so they could carry out their political attacks under the cover of religion. Free speech doesn’t mean a free pass from criticism for lack of responsibility. Or for that matter, gratuitous insult.

I was raised Catholic, back when nuns wore habits. They told us stories about priests who ran into burning churches to save the Holy Host. To profane this little white wafer would be a sin unthinkable. But heretics and evil-doers were everywhere, so each of us must be prepared to defend the Faith, with our lives if need be.

Different religions have symbols they hold in reverence. From a humanistic perspective, I would not disrespect anyone’s religious practices. Or tell anyone their grand kid was funny-looking. Why be needlessly hurtful and offensive? This is bad policy in social relations.

In Democracy our elected representatives should be fair to all and favor none. So I’d love to see Fox ask each one of them if they serve the Constitution, or their religion first. Those who serve their religion should abandon politics and follow their true calling as clergy.

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Is There An Amorality To Romney's 47% Comment--
Or Something Much Worse

post from DownWithTyranny! on 22 September 2012 01:00:12 PM. © DownWithTyranny!

When I first saw the secret Romney tape at $50,000 a plate fundraiser in the mansion of sex orgy king and vulture capitalist Marc Leder, I figured this would really hurt Romney with people of faith. I don't think I've ever heard a message from a presidential candidate more inimical to Jesus Christ than the divisive claptrap that Romney was spewing about 47% of Americans. 47% of Americans, by the way, was (on Sept. 1 of this year) 147,773,640 people. That's a helluva lot of moochers for the Republicans to ignore and not be concerned about. But Ayn Romney gets pissed off if anyone dares criticize her husband. We don't know how lucky we are her husband has deigned to take time away from his life of predatory capitalism to run for president, a degrading step down for the Romney clan. "Stop it," she shrieked menacingly at her husband's critics. Not that that's stopping right-wing Republicans already distancing themselves from the GOP debacle coming on November 6. Peggy Noonan's latest undercuts Romney's most positive attribute, that he's a skilled manager. Of course he isn't... like so many CEOs, he's a propped up, stumbling dud and incompetent. "This week I called it incompetent," she reminded us, "but only because I was being polite. I really meant 'rolling calamity'." And she lists 7 of the more calamitous things dragging Romney down into electoral ignominy:

1. Mr. Romney came out of the primaries "a damaged and flawed candidate." Voters began to see him as elitist, rich, out of touch. "Here the Democrats' early advertising was crucial." Newt Gingrich hurt too, with his attacks on Bain.
2. The Democrats defined Mr. Romney "before he had a chance to define himself." His campaign failed in "not doing a substantial positive media buy to explain who Mitt Romney is and what kind of president he might be."
3. "Perceptions of the economy are improving." Unemployment is high, but the stock market has improved, bringing 401(k)s with it.
4. Obama's approval ratings are up five to six points since last year. He is now at roughly 49% approval, comparable to where President Bush was in 2004.
5. "The president had a strong convention and Romney a weak one." The RNC failed "to relaunch a rebranded Romney and create momentum."
6. Team Romney has been "reactive," partly because of the need for damage control, but it also failed to force the Obama campaign to react to its proposals and initiatives.
7. The "47%" comment didn't help, but Mr. Romney's Libya statement was a critical moment. Team Romney did not know "the most basic political tenet of a foreign crisis: when there is an international incident in which America is attacked, voters in this country will (at least in the short term) rally around the flag and the President. Always. It is stunning that Team Romney failed to recognize this."
Furious, Ayn Romney challenged her to "get in the ring" herself and run for president if she thinks it's so easy. "This is hard," said the pampered, spoiled princess of trashy white bread self-entitlement. Peggy Noonan is a pundit; they rarely run for office. But let's get back to a more important point when we all first saw Romney's attack on the core message of Jesus Christ. Where was the criticism from the country's religious leaders? I don't mean the hucksters and charlatans from the fake religions on the fringes of society. I mean crackpot Satanists like Pat Robertson, Bryan Fischer, Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Gary Bauer, who lead unsuspecting Christians astray with their hate-filled messages of greed and avarice, naturally agree with Bishop Romney. But where are the mainline Christian leaders? Maybe I'm missing something, but I haven't heard about any mainstream Christian leaders calling Romney out for his hateful, anti-Jesus message. Is that how morally bankrupt they've become?
Not long ago, we talked with a secular Mormon running for Congress in northern Utah, Ryan Combe who told us a lot about Mormonism as a force for progressive ideals. This week, a Mormon scholar, Gregory Prince, penned a piece for HuffPo that landed him in that MSNBC video above, Mitt Romney Is Not The Face Of Mormonism. He too was mortified by Romney's willingness to spit in the faces of over 140 million of his fellow Americans who aren't wealthy like he is. He went from being a Romney supporter to someone who is eager to do what he can to keep Romney out of the White House.

Having been a missionary myself, I know the formative power of two years of missionary service. Having served as an assistant to one bishop and four stake presidents-- and Romney served as bishop and stake president-- I know the even greater formative power of those offices. I understand completely what his father George meant when he said, "I am completely the product of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." That face of Mormonism is the one that calls on some of its members, particularly bishops and stake presidents, to devote as many hours gratis to their church jobs as they do to their professional jobs. It is the one that summons up extraordinary acts of love, compassion and generosity, often in response to the deepest tragedies of life-- and death.
But it is not the one that dismisses out-of-hand half the population of the United States by saying, "My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." As a bishop and stake president, Romney worried about those very people. Indeed, he worried far more about them, and spent far more time and means in assisting them, than the others in his flock who were more fortunate.
The very basis of Mormon community, stretching back to the earliest years of Mormonism nearly two centuries ago, is that the more able have a sacred obligation to assist the less able. That sense of physical community was institutionalized in the Church's Welfare Program, which sprang out of the Great Depression as an exemplary and effective means of combining church and government assistance not only to give to those in need, but also to help them to help themselves. Any who have visited Welfare Square in Salt Lake City, as did the producers of a recent "Rock Center" documentary on MSNBC, cannot help but be impressed with what we have attempted, for over seven decades, to accomplish through what is now an international network of church facilities and volunteers.
Judge Mitt Romney as you will, and vote for or against him as you will; but do not judge Mormonism on the basis of the Mitt Romney that was unveiled to the public this week. He is not the face of Mormonism.It would certainly be awesome to watch Dr. Prince debate Ayn Romney. But I'm guessing she'd prefer mud-wrestling. It's more who she is under the silk taffeta Oscar de la Renta dresses. And if you think the GOP isn't going to close ranks behind shunned-for-a-minute-and-a-half Todd Akin, you don't know the GOP.

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Saturday hate mail-a-palooza: George Rockwell
teases big news

post from Daily Kos on 22 September 2012 01:00:05 PM. © Daily Kos

Csanad Szegedi, vice president of Jobbik ( Bulgarian right-wing politician Csanad Szegedi, just the latest neo-Nazi to discover Jewish ancestry.For those of you who aren't following the George Rockwell story arc, let me summarize it:

George is a long-time hate mailer, a self-styled neo-Nazi who claims his uncle was the infamous George Rockwell that founded the American Nazi Party. He's also ... a bit off, you can get a flavor of the long-running saga here and here. But when I found out via a DNA test that I had Jewish blood in me, things got really interesting.

After much wrangling and negotiating (quite hilariously), I talked him into getting his own DNA test. You know, because we didn't want scurrilous rumors to spread about his potential Jewish heritage.

There was radio silence for several weeks until yesterday. Check out the response below the fold!

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Will Electronic Health Records Increase Health
Costs

Health care reform advocates argue that encouraging providers to use electronic health records would reduce medical errors, lower administrative costs and improve patient care, but the transition could also lead doctors and hospitals to easily prescribe unnecessary care and bill more for services, increasing costs for Medicare and private insurers. From the New York Times: [...]

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