McCain Calls On Mourdock To Apologize For Rape
Comments

post from ThinkProgress on 24 October 2012 09:58:07 PM. © ThinkProgress

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) became the most prominent Republican to call on Indiana senate candidate Richard Mourdock to apologize for claiming, during a debate on Tuesday night, that pregnancies resulting from rape are a “gift from God.” The Arizona senator told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Wednesday night that he would withhold his support until Mourdock “apologizes [...]

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The Log Cabin Republicans are a sad and lonely
group

post from Daily Kos on 24 October 2012 09:45:05 PM. © Daily Kos

Log Cabin Republicans logo Sigh.Oh, Log Cabin Republicans. Will you ever learn?

The Washington Blade reports on Mitt Romney's very, very quiet meeting with a few Log Cabin officials earlier in the month. It lasted 15 minutes, but was apparently all that was needed to gain the LCR's endorsement. The optimism of the group is a sight to behold:

Previously, the Washington Blade reported Log Cabin was seeking clarity on ENDA before making its endorsement decision. Romney supported the legislation as a U.S. Senate candidate in 1994, but in later years backed away from that support. The GOP nominee hasn?t addressed the legislation over the course of the 2012 presidential campaign.

Mitt Romney changed his position on something? And now won't even say what his current position is? That's unpossible!

During the meeting, Cooper said Romney was ?very interested? in talking about different state laws on workplace discrimination for LGBT people. A total of 21 states have laws barring job discrimination against gay, lesbian and bisexual people; 16 states and D.C. protect all LGBT people from job bias.
?He is aware that there is a kind of patchwork or quilt of states that don?t, and that inequity was something of discussion,? Cooper said. ?Some states have it, and some states don?t and this is where it gets confusing and problematic from an administrative standpoint as well.?

Raise your hand if you think the Republican approach to a "patchwork" of state protections against discrimination will be to propose a stronger federal law. Raise your other hand if you think Mitt Freaking Romney is going to champion a new law for workplace rights. When those workplace rights, his base says, are an outrage to their deeply held religious beliefs about how they ought to be allowed to treat their employees like crap.

Yes, no doubt Mitt Romney was concerned over all those laws.

Asked if there was any portion of the current version of the legislation to which Romney objected, Cooper said Romney didn?t express concern about any particular language and did not object to protecting people from discrimination on the basis of gender identity. [?]
?He gives us a firm personal view of opposing workplace discrimination without endorsing ENDA specifically,? Kolbe said. ?I think that it?s an area of opportunity where we have an opportunity to make a lot of headway with him.?

Oh gawd, make it stop. The entire Log Cabin Republican premise is built on the supposition that Mitt Romney "not expressing concern about any political language" counts as opportunity.

Have these poor people been paying attention at all during this campaign season? I can only assume not, since nothing else that's happened over the last few years has seemed to affect them.

Please give the president a boost by chipping in $5 to help him close strong in the final days of this campaign.

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Daily Kos Elections Polling Wrap: Muddled
messages about the post-debate electoral state of play

post from Daily Kos on 24 October 2012 09:30:05 PM. © Daily Kos

Today's data, on the surface, seems to have some very clear conclusions that can be drawn. However, with a little digging, it is a day of "buts".

Example #1: PPP's daily tracking poll moved two points in the direction of President Obama.

BUT Tom Jensen of PPP made clear that Tuesday's sample was deadlocked, and the movement was solely attributed to a good Romney night on Saturday falling off of the tracker.

Example #2: Rasmussen claims that, post-debate, the race in Ohio has moved from a slight Obama lead to a (gasp!) tie.

BUT a quick dive into the crosstabs shows Obama leading with Ohio Independent voters, and garnering more support from Democrats than Romney is from Republicans.

The net result? We don't know a hell of a lot more on Wednesday than we did on Tuesday, despite a pretty sizable polling load of 59 separate polls.

On balance, the coin flip narrative seems to be persisting, though there were some small signs that should give Democrats a slight tinge of optimism.

More on that after the jump. For now, though, on to the numbers:

PRESIDENTIAL POLLING:

NATIONAL (ABC/WaPo Tracking): Romney 49, Obama 48
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Romney 50, Obama 47 (LV); Obama 48, Romney 47 (RV)
NATIONAL (IBD/TIPP Tracking): Obama 47, Romney 44
NATIONAL (Ipsos/Reuters Tracking): Romney 47, Obama 46 (LV); Obama 46, Romney 42 (RV)
NATIONAL (Pharos Research): Obama 50, Romney 47
NATIONAL (PPP Tracking): Obama 48, Romney 48
NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Romney 50, Obama 46
NATIONAL (UPI/CVoter): Obama 49, Romney 47
ARKANSAS (Univ. of Arkansas): Romney 53, Obama 34
CONNECTICUT (Mason-Dixon): Obama 49, Romney 42
CONNECTICUT (Quinnipiac): Obama 55, Romney 41
FLORIDA (Pharos Research): Obama 47, Romney 47
INDIANA (Pharos Research): Romney 51, Obama 38
MASSACHUSETTS (WBUR/MassINC): Obama 56, Romney 36
MONTANA (Pharos Research): Romney 47, Obama 41
NEBRASKA (Pharos Research): Romney 51, Obama 41
NEVADA (PPP): Obama 51, Romney 47
NEVADA (Rasmussen): Obama 50, Romney 48
NEW HAMPSHIRE (Lake Research For USAction--D): Obama 48, Romney 45
NEW HAMPSHIRE (Rasmussen): Romney 50, Obama 48
NEW YORK (NY1/Marist): Obama 61, Romney 35
NORTH DAKOTA (Pharos Research): Romney 49, Obama 39
OHIO (Lake Research--D): Obama 46, Romney 44
OHIO (Pharos Research): Obama 50, Romney 45
OHIO (Rasmussen): Obama 48, Romney 48
OHIO (SRBI for Time Magazine): Obama 49, Romney 44
OHIO (SurveyUSA): Obama 47, Romney 44
PENNSYLVANIA (Pharos Research): Obama 49, Romney 46
VIRGINIA (Old Dominion University): Obama 50, Romney 43
WISCONSIN (Mason Dixon): Obama 48, Romney 46

DOWNBALLOT POLLING:

CA-SEN (USC/Los Angeles Times): Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) 53, Elizabeth Emken (R) 38
CT-SEN (Mason-Dixon): Linda McMahon (R) 44, Chris Murphy (D) 44
CT-SEN (Quinnipiac): Chris Murphy (D) 49, Linda McMahon (R) 43
FL-SEN (Pharos Research): Sen. Bill Nelson (D) 52, Connie Mack IV (R) 44
IN-SEN (Pharos Research): Richard Mourdock (R) 46, Joe Donnelly (D) 46
MA-SEN (WBUR/MassINC): Elizabeth Warren (D) 50, Sen. Scott Brown (R) 44
MT-SEN (Pharos Research): Sen. Jon Tester (D) 48, Denny Rehberg (R) 46
NE-SEN (Pharos Research): Deb Fischer (R) 48, Bob Kerrey (D) 45 46
NV-SEN (PPP): Shelley Berkley (D) 44, Sen. Dean Heller (R) 44, David VanderBeek (IAP) 7
NY-SEN (NY1/Marist): Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) 68, Wendy Long (R) 24
ND-SEN (Pharos Research): Heidi Heitkamp (D) 49, Rick Berg (R) 48
OH-SEN (Pharos Research): Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) 52, Josh Mandel (R) 41
OH-SEN (Rasmussen): Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) 48, Josh Mandel (R) 44
OH-SEN (SurveyUSA): Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) 43, Josh Mandel (R) 42
PA-SEN (Pharos Research): Sen. Bob Casey (D) 42 52, Tom Smith (R) 42
PA-SEN (Wenzel Strategies for Citizens United): Sen. Bob Casey (D) 45, Tom Smith (R) 44
VA-SEN (Old Dominion University): Tim Kaine (D) 50, George Allen (R) 43
WI-SEN (Mason Dixon): Tammy Baldwin (D) 47, Tommy Thompson (R) 45
MT-GOV (Pharos Research): Steve Bullock (D) 47, Rick Hill (R) 45
ND-GOV (Pharos Research): Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R) 63, Ryan Taylor (D) 32
ND-GOV (Rasmussen): Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R) 53, Ryan Taylor (D) 39
WA-GOV (Elway Research): Rob McKenna (R) 47, Jay Inslee (D) 45
CT-05 (National Research for the Roraback campaign): Andrew Roraback (R) 45, Elizabeth Esty (D) 39
FL-18 (Frederick Polls for the Murphy campaign): Patrick Murphy (D) 47, Rep. Allen West (R) 47
MT-AL (Pharos Research): Steve Daines (R) 47, Kim Gillan (D) 41
NH-01 (Univ. of New Hampshire): Rep. Frank Guinta (R) 41, Carol Shea-Porter (D) 38, Brendan Kelly (L) 4
NH-02 (Univ. of New Hampshire): Anne McLane Kuster (D) 39, Rep. Charlie Bass (R) 36, Hardy Macia (L) 3
ND-AL (Essman/Research): Kevin Cramer (R) 52, Pam Gulleson (D) 32
ND-AL (Pharos Research): Kevin Cramer (R) 54, Pam Gulleson (D) 42

A few thoughts, as always, await you just past the jump ...

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Is Voting for Obama Immoral

post from Firedoglake on 24 October 2012 09:25:09 PM. © Firedoglake

People of good conscience should not vote for President Obama. So says columnist Conor Friedersdorf. In a piece in Atlantic magazine entitled, ?Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama,? Friedersdorf is unequivocal. ?I don?t see how anyone who confronts[...]

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I could use that five million, Sarah being Sarah,
and the black information bubble.

post from field negro on 24 October 2012 09:00:42 PM. © field negro

If I have to cut this post short I hope you will understand. I am waiting on word from my peeps who are out there trying to dig up Obama's college transcripts and his passport. I could use that five million Mr. Bad Hair is offering to O. Maybe if I get it to him first he will give me the money.

".. Donald Trump, whose birtherism helped fuel a presidential exploration last year and prodded President Obama to release his Hawaii birth certificate, is now challenging Obama to release college and passport records.

?Many, many people have questions, and very serious questions,? Trump says today in a video statement that doesn?t elaborate on what those questions are.
?If Barack Obama opens up and gives his college records and applications, and if he gives his passport applications and records, I will give to a charity of his choice?.a check, immediately, for $5 million,? The Donald says. To claim the reward, Trump says, Obama must release the records by 5 p.m. on Oct. 31.
?If he releases these records it will end the question and indeed the anger of many Americans. They?ll know something about their president. Their president will become transparent like other presidents,? Trump says."

So this is Mr. Bad Hair's "October surprise" and bombshell? Sometimes I swear the man is working for the dems.

So anyway, I saw a little of Mitt's speech in Colorado, today. Mitt, who is the "colored" candidate in this race? WTF is that on your face? Is that an orange spray tan? Yes, I think it is. Mitt, I sure hope that you aren't tanning up again for the Hispanic vote.

Finally, it seems that thanks to sports and our girl Sarah Palin, there are some racial issues to address.

First Sarah.

"Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin released a statement on her Facebook page accusing President Obama of engaging in "shuck and jive shtick" regarding last month's attack in Benghazi, Libya.

"Why the lies? Why the cover up? Why the dissembling about the cause of the murder of our ambassador on the anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil? We deserve answers to this. President Obama's shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end," Palin wrote.
For those who aren't familiar with the phrase, "shuck and jive" is a racially-tinged expression. According to the user-submitted Urban Dictionary, the term "originally referred to the intentionally misleading words and actions that African-Americans would employ in order to deceive racist Euro-Americans in power, both during the period of slavery and afterwards." [Source]
Yawn. Sadly for her, Sarah is no longer relevant. These comments might as well be coming from some redneck in a trailer down in Mississippi.

Besides, I am done calling out racism in the republiklan party. If the Negroes who belong to that party and support it aren't bothered, then why should I concern myself?

Then there are sports.

Jason Whitlock is at it again. This time he is calling out what he calls the ~~black~~ "information bubble" for protecting black quarterbacks like Cam Newton:

"The ?information bubble? is the No. 1 obstacle/hindrance for black NFL quarterbacks.

This bubble creates delusion, erodes self-awareness and unwittingly undermines a black QB?s chance of sustaining success.
Cam Newton is a victim of the information bubble. Robert Griffin III is the bubble?s next target.

Let me explain. We?re in our political season. Democrats and Republicans both have their respective information bubbles, MSNBC and FOX News, respectively. They can lock their televisions on a single channel and avoid hearing their perspectives challenged in a credible way and hear their critics? lambasted. It?s comforting. It?s polarizing. It?s unhealthy for intellectual growth and our democracy.

Black sports fans and black pop-culture media (not sports media) have created a loosely-formed-but-influential social-media and talk-radio information bubble for black QBs. This network of groupthink roars on sports-talk radio, black-owned radio stations, Facebook and Twitter, pumping out the message that Newton, Griffin and others can do no wrong and any criticism of them is rooted in racism. Fear of backlash from this network of well-intentioned enablers causes many mainstream sports analysts (media and fans of all colors) to avoid being totally honest about black QBs.

That?s how a career-killing, information bubble is formed.
White QBs don?t have to deal with this. In Kansas City, a group of fans paid for a banner to be flown over Arrowhead Stadium that called for owner Clark Hunt to bench Matt Cassel. Kansas City?s backup quarterback is Brady Quinn, the Cleveland bust. He?s not a solution. But he was named the starter on Monday.
Imagine the uproar if Eagles fans took similar action against turnover-machine Michael Vick? There would be riots in the streets. Philly fans would be labeled racist." [Source]

Jason has written a lot of dumb things in his day, but this one might just be the dumbest. The post was so absurd, that Rush Limbaugh ,of all people, found vindication in Jason's words.

First of all, Jason needs to understand the passion of the average football fan be he black, white, brown, or green. If he did, he would understand that Eagles fans could care less what their QB looks like as long as he is winning. Some of Seven's biggest critics here in Philly are black. Why? Because they want to win, and in their minds Seven isn't getting it done right now. If Jason had done a little research before writing his ridiculous article he would have realized that.

Pic from mashable.com

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Step right up and vote for that "transparent
faker" Willard Inc. and the unknowable contents of his campaign Mystery Box

post from DownWithTyranny! on 24 October 2012 09:00:34 PM. © DownWithTyranny!

Uh-uh, no peeking! You're not supposed to know what your next president is hiding in his Mystery Box. That's the whole idea. The thing is, you don't need to know.

"Everyone could see [Romney] was a faker and could accept that because he was such a transparent faker. It's the polished faker who scares politicians, master fakers like Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson."
-- Russell Baker, in his contribution to NYRB's
election symposium in the November 8 issue
"Here is the Romney strategy: since you don't like what you've got, vote for what you haven't got. Whatever it is you haven't got, it is better than what you've got. . . . [T]he Romney campaign is taking what-you-haven't-got-ism to new heights of what-you-mustn't-know-ism. It supposes that revealing any details of what you haven't got will just distract from the fact that you haven't got it. . . . So we are supposed to vote for a big Mystery Box full of things we haven't got."
-- Garry Wills, in his contribution
by Ken

I've been trying to figure out how to clue you in to the New York Review of Books's election symposium in the generally remarkable November 8 issue. The individual pieces, by 13 contributors including a number of the magazine's most prized regulars, don't even have titles. They're just interspersed through the issue in four groups, which you will now be able to access directly online via this little guide (with apologies for the woefully inadequate summaries):

I.

Michael Tomasky on the mangled politics of the coming four years ("If Obama wins, we will see a battle within the Republican Party the likes of which we?ve not witnessed in modern history. . . . And if Romney wins, which Romney will govern?").
Elizabeth Drew on the prospects for a second Obama term ("[Q]uite remarkably, Obama lost the definition of the health care bill he was battling to get through Congress. . . . A second term will show us how much he learned from his first one").
Cass R. Sunstein, former White House regulation overseer, on the thousands of rules and regulations issued by the Obama administration and their fate at the hands of the future federal judiciary ("Of course it is true that the 2012 presidential election will help to establish the meaning of the Constitution. Perhaps equally important, it will help to establish the fate of numerous rules designed to protect public safety, health, and the environment").

II.

Frank Rich on the descent to 2016 ("As a retail campaigner, Romney?s human skills fall somewhere between those of Richard Nixon and Hal the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey").
David Cole on national security and human rights ("Of course, President Obama has not exactly been a beacon of light on such critical rule-of-law issues as transparency and accountability . . . Still, as the latest 'torture memo' illustrates, President Romney would be far worse").
Ronald Dworkin on the stakes for constitutional law ("The record of the Roberts Court is already one of the worst in our history. . . . Perhaps it is impossible to make independent voters alert to these dangers. If so, that is a shame").
Russell Baker on the candidate the Republicans hate but were stuck with ("The nine [presidential wannabes] who took the stage for the Republicans' first televised debate reminded all America that ours is not a great age for producing statesmen"), for which they hated him even more ("Many obviously hated him for being inescapable, but what could be done?").

III.

Darryl Pinckney on Willard and the politics of ethnic division ("Romney's kind control the country's wealth, but they cannot get back in charge, psychologically, and this induces a kind of mania in people like John Boehner and the Koch brothers . . . . Such white folk cannot forgive Obama for winning in the first place").
David Bromwich, the Yale English professor, on invisible campaign issues ("Obama clearly believes that political democracy cannot survive in the face of extreme and widening economic inequality. Unless he finds a way of saying so without embarrassment, his largest differences with Romney will seem to the uninformed a matter of recondite details").
Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton on the likelihood of wrongly learned lessons from Obama's first term ("Administrations are often credited with initiatives that were really undertaken by their predecessors. . . . The problem is that if the wrong person gets the credit, we learn the wrong lesson").

IV.

Steven Weinberg, the Nobel physicist, on the disappointments of the Obama first term ("If I lived in a swing state like Ohio or Florida, I would doubtless swallow my disappointment and vote for Obama. In any case, I would not allow disappointment with Obama to keep me from voting for truly liberal candidates for Congress, such as Elizabeth Warren").
Garry Wills on the "Mystery Box" Willard has chosen to ask voters to vote for ("The strategy of no full disclosure at the top of the campaign silently meshes with the party of no full confession below. Under all the other hidden things, the Mystery Box is hiding a lethal level of radioactive racism").
Jeffrey Sachs on the insanity, built into our political system, of operating the U.S. government, "the world?s largest enterprise, with $3.7 trillion in outlays, $2.5 trillion in revenues, and 2.1 million civilian workers," and "also the most complex, operating in every sector of the world?s largest economy, in every country of the world, and in every possible setting: markets, technology development, social programs, basic science, and much, much more" without any kind of planning beyond our day-to-day seat-of-the-pants partisan brinksmanship.

JEFFREY SACHS'S PIECE MAY BE THE MOST IMPORTANT,
BUT REGULAR READERS WON'T BE SURPRISED . . .

. . . that it's Garry Wills's I want to spotlight now. (However, I reserve the right to return to Sachs's, or to any of the others, for that matter.)

At the top of this post I've already introduced Garry W's idea of the "big Mystery Box full of things we haven't got" which is the core of what Willard Inc. is asking voters to vote for. Let's have him explain a bit.

Ann Romney, asked about abortion, said she could not address that since it would just be a distraction from the promised great economy (what we haven't got). Asked about her husband's tax returns, she said two years are all we are going to get (leaving all other years among the things we haven't got). Romney himself, asked what loopholes he would eliminate to fund his great new plans, said telling us that would cheat Congress of the wonderful surprise of working with him on the problem.

His views on voter-identification drives to reduce the electorate? A distraction. On requiring ultrasound exams for pregnant women seeking abortions; on "legitimate rape"? Just distractions, all of them. So, for that matter, is whatever he did at Bain Capital, or as governor of Massachusetts. The main thing we are supposed to advert to or be reminded of in his past is that he "saved the Olympics."

Even Romney's strong first debate was simply a harder emphasis on what you've got (falsely, a doubling of the deficit) and what-you-mustn't-know-ism (what deductions will be eliminated and how this will reduce the deficit) -- which Romney got away with because the president inexplicably let him limit the discussion to those terms. All the things Romney treated as "distractions" -- women's rights, gay rights, citizenship for undocumented immigrants, the 47 percent of moochers -- Obama treated as if they were indeed distractions. But they are not, and that should become clear by the election.

Even the selection of right-wing love god Paul Ryan was configured into the Mystery Box format.

[T]here was an expectation that Ryan would pop out like a jack-in-the-box, filling the air with numbers like confetti. He was the party's great thinker; he would make the campaign serious and nerdy; he would blind with pure intellect his Elmer Fudd vice-presidential rival. He would turn his Ayn Rand death ray on him and Biden would evaporate. But as soon as Ryan was asked for his great specific plans, he was told that he could not violate his master's secrecy campaign, and Jack was stuffed back into the box.

Garry points out, "We have seen this kind of mystery election before."

In the elections of 2010, we were told that the Tea Party candidates arriving on the scene would eliminate the deficit and shrink the government, somehow. Other issues were set aside. Abortion, gay rights, religion in politics -- those were all part of the old religious right, now supplanted by the deficit purists. But in a great bait and switch, the first thing the new people in Congress, the state houses, and state legislatures did was introduce a flood of bills to limit, stigmatize, or eliminate abortions, and the flood has not abated -- 944 provisions on abortion or contraception were still being introduced into state legislatures during the first three months of 2012.

"The mass of voters," Garry points out, "did not choose that."

There was no way it could. No one knew what was in the 2010 version of the Mystery Box. In the same way, if we vote for "the economy only" Republicans, the old causes will again race to the top of their agenda -- challenges to women's rights, gay rights, global warming, religious education, and Supreme Court nominees. All of a sudden, other things will not be distractions from the bad economy.

When Willard does get specific, Garry says, it's "a specificity about the non-existent.

He will not apologize for America -- as if that were occurring. He will not cut work requirements from welfare -- and neither has anyone else. He will not take God's name off our coins -- lifting a burden of fear from the beleaguered "Keep God on Our Coins" movement.

"On the other hand, he was very specific about one thing": Anyone who wanted to be his vice presidential running mate would have to produce ten years' worth of tax records.

Romney was too smart to let anyone standing for that office tell him it was none of his business. No one could use mysteries on the Mystery Box candidate. But we are not supposed to be as smart as Romney when it comes to taking risks about important offices. What was required to become a candidate for the vice-presidency is off limits for becoming the president. That is still in the Mystery Box, and it has to stay there.

As with the Teabaggers in 2010, 2012 Willard conceals what's in his Mystery Box by waging "a revulsion campaign . . . rid[ing] the diffuse and partly disguised distrust of Obama."

Romney could explicitly voice only one aspect of this revulsion, Obama's economic performance. But under the vague general feelings about Obama -- reports to pollsters that he is not quite one of us, perhaps not a citizen, not a Christian -- there were radioactive centers too hot for a candidate to handle directly. He could, nonetheless, profit from their broader toxic waves, an unconfessed (sometimes, perhaps, unconscious) force. It was rightly said that a historic boundary had been crossed when a black man was elected president. That breakthrough partly escaped but did not cancel a long sad record of historic American racism. A proof that many were not willing to live with this new level of tolerance is that twice as many conservative Republicans (34 percent) now say that Obama is Muslim as the number who said it when he was elected (16 percent). The number of Republicans in general who say it is 30 percent.

That is not because more evidence has emerged in the last three years, or because the evidence has been more carefully considered. It is because a number of people are digging in their heels even more firmly against where the nation is going. As I say, there is no open racism in the Romney campaign. But it has to be fiercely concentrated on other things (like the economy) to turn its eyes from what sizzles below the surface, and sometimes not very far below.

Dinesh D'Souza's book Obama's America became number one on the New York Times best-seller list, and the film based on it has played in over a thousand theaters, yet its chapter on Obama's mother revives one of the oldest racist stereotypes, that a white woman must be a slut if she has sex with a black man. A "documentary" with that same theme has been mailed to thousands of voters in key states, screened by Tea Party groups and by Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum Council. Guess which man the audience for these, and for hundreds of obscurer tracts, will vote for?

Romney, of course, does not cultivate these voters. He does not have to. He does not denounce them, either. He needs them. He cannot disown a third of his party -- and those are only the hard-core Obama revulsionists. Who knows how far the penumbra of softcore revulsionism has spread among the less candid or more cautious harborers of it? The strategy of no full disclosure at the top of the campaign silently meshes with the party of no full confession below. Under all the other hidden things, the Mystery Box is hiding a lethal level of radioactive racism.

#

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Frontline: 'Climate of Doubt'

post from Crooks and Liars on 24 October 2012 09:00:00 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Watch Climate of Doubt on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

If you think Mitt Romney?s recent threats against PBS were actually about budgets or Big Bird, think again. The reason the right hates PBS is that sometimes it commits the unpardonable sin of journalism.

?Climate of Doubt,? a ?Frontline? documentary that aired Tuesday night on PBS, explores how a movement mobilized to undermine public acceptance of the scientific consensus on global warming and on how human activity contributes to climate change. The conservative Heartland Institute, which has played a prominent role in seeking to discredit climate science, pre-emptively issues a statement denying that a scientific consensus exists and predicting that the documentary will be unfair.

Four years ago, the presidential candidates agreed that climate change was a critical issue demanding urgent attention. But that national call to action has disappeared and in the past four years public opinion on the issue of climate has cooled. This election cycle, the presidential candidates barely discuss climate change. New studies find that only about half of Americans believe global warming is caused by human activity. What?s behind this dramatic reversal? In Climate of Doubt, Frontline correspondent John Hockenberry of PRI?s The Takeaway explores the inner workings of the movement that changed the debate on climate change.

In numerous interviews that took him across the country, Hockenberry discovers how climate skeptics mobilized, built their argument, and undermined public acceptance of a global scientific consensus. Tim Phillips, President of Americans for Prosperity, explains how the movement was able to find a voice and gain momentum as the economy failed, ?We got up a hot-air balloon, put a banner on the side of it that said, cap-and-trade means higher taxes, lost jobs, less freedom. And we went all over the country doing events and stirring up grassroots anger and frustration, concern.?

"Climate of Doubt" describes the individuals and groups behind an organized effort to attack science by undermining scientists, and to unseat politicians who say they believe there is current climate change caused by human activity. Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M, says, ?I fully expect that after this program airs I?ll get another FOIA request for all of my emails with you. And you know, I?ll just deal with that. As a climate scientist, I think a lot about the future. It goes with the job. And I want to make sure that in 50 years or 100 years or 200 years, nobody could ever say we didn?t warn them.?

Frontline also investigates the funding that powers the skeptic movement in the name of free market, anti-regulation, small government causes. Hockenberry finds that funding has shifted away from fossil fuel companies to more ideological, and less public sources. According to Robert Brulle, a sociologist studying the funding patterns of these groups, ?The major funders of the climate counter-movement are ideologically driven foundations that are very much concerned about conservative values and world views.?

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My Little Town 20121024: The Day I Met Allen
Ginsberg

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River. It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate[...]

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Now Romney supports gay adoption, DADT repeal,
and hospital rights

Call me shocked. Suddenly Mitt Romney is back to his old “better than Ted Kennedy” on gay rights self. But he’ll only tell you this in private secret meetings. In public he’s still the big bad sever conservative. Let’s examine the latest in what have been a series of bizarre stories about Romney’s contortions on [...]

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-adoption-dadt-repeal-and-hospital-rights.html

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Romney Ad Slams Obama Over Climate Pledge, Sort
Of

So Mitt Romney posted this on the inter-webs this week: At first glance, this appears to be a follow-up on Romney’s mockery of Obama at the Republican National Convention: President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans ? [pauses for audience laughter(!)] ? and to heal the planet. MY promise is to help [...]

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http://thinkprogress.org.feedsportal.com/c/34726/f/638927/s/24d8a6ea/l/0Lthinkpro
gress0Borg0Cclimate0C20A120C10A0C240C10A6420A10Cromney0Ead0Eslams0Eobama0Eover0Eclimate0Ecommittment0Esort0Eof0C/story01.htm