Tag: Politics
Nov 09 2011
Punting the Pundits
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Stop the Big Bank Payday Predators
While Occupy Wall Street has brought needed attention to inequality and downward social mobility-long ignored by the mainstream media and the political establishment-there are also groups that have been in the trenches for years, struggling day in and day out, doing the tough organizing that is needed if OWS’s vision is to be achieved.
One such group is National People’s Action (NPA), a network of community organizations in cities, towns and rural communities across the country working to advance a national economic and racial justice agenda. NPA-along with unions and community and faith-based groups, and coalitions like The New Bottom Line-has long played a leading role in the fight to hold banks accountable, stop foreclosures, promote housing rights and protect immigrant and workers’ rights, among other vital campaigns.
Frances Fox PrivenThe War Against the Poor
We’ve been at war for decades now-not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it’s been a war against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not surprising. You wouldn’t often have found the casualty figures from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the nightly TV news. Devastating as it’s been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed-until now.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has already made the concentration of wealth at the top of this society a central issue in American politics. Now, it promises to do something similar when it comes to the realities of poverty in this country.
Amy Goodman: Keystone XL: Ring Around the Rose Garden
More than 10,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., last Sunday with a simple goal: Encircle the White House. They succeeded, just weeks after 1,253 people were arrested in a series of protests at the same spot. These thousands, as well as those arrested, were unified in their opposition to the planned Keystone XL pipeline, intended to run from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of Texas. A broad, international coalition against the pipeline has formed since President Barack Obama took office, and now the deadline for its approval or rejection is at hand.
Bill McKibben, founder of the global movement against climate change 350.org, told me: “This has become not only the biggest environmental flash point in many, many years, but maybe the issue in recent times in the Obama administration when he’s been most directly confronted by people in the street. In this case, people willing, hopeful, almost dying for him to be the Barack Obama of 2008.”
Kim Knowlton: The Staggering Health Costs of Climate Change
The extreme weather just won’t seem to leave people alone this year.
I’m talking to an arborist to find replacements for beloved lilac bushes and one magnolia tree that just got tall enough to lend some nice summer shade, now snapped off in its prime by last weekend’s wet October snowfall that’s being called “Snowtober” by some.
My sense of humor about the year has worn thin. Neighbors across much of upstate NY and Vermont are still reeling in very serious ways from the flooding and water damage of Irene: farms and fields that were underwater, homes upended, village main streets still mending from cascades of debris and mud, all at a time when the regional and national economy is limping, at best. The preliminary tally of damages from 2011’s weather disasters already “exceed $45 billion”, according to the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). And we have nearly two months to go.
Adil Shamoo: Bahrain’s Courageous Doctors
The United States continues to ignore the thwarted Arab Spring in Bahrain. Recently, a quasi-military court in the small Gulf state sentenced 20 doctors and nurses to up to 15 years in jail. The charge against them? Treating injured demonstrators opposing the regime.
Doctors and nurses in the Middle East have a long and proud tradition of treating the ill, regardless of the situation. In ninth-century Baghdad, for example, Hunayn ibn Ishaq was the Caliph’s physician. The Caliph asked this physician to prepare a poison to kill his enemies. The physician refused, risking his life, and was eventually jailed for one year. After serving his sentence, the Caliph inquired as to why he refused. The physician replied, “My profession is instituted for the benefit of humanity and limited to their relief and cure.”
Nov 09 2011
Occupy Wall St. Livestream: Day 54
Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com
The resistance continues at Liberty Square, with free pizza 😉
“I don’t know how to fix this but I know it’s wrong.” ~ Unknown Author
Occupy Wall Street NYC now has a web site for its General Assembly with up dates and information. Very informative and user friendly. It has information about events, a bulletin board, groups and minutes of the GA meetings.
Musicians David Crosby and Graham Nash discuss their impressions of the Occupy Wall Street movement with Keith. The duo also performs an original song a cappella.
Occupy Wall Street got its confiscated generators back on Tuesday after its legal team pressed the Fire Department of New York to release them.
The machines were picked up from the New York City Fire Academy at Randall’s Island by the Wikileaks truck, which has been stationed next to Zuccotti Park since the protest’s inception. The vehicle with the generator on board made its way back to Zuccotti Park hours before a planned concert by Graham Nash and David Crosby.
Yetta Kurland, a lawyer representing the protesters, said the generators did not violate any FDNY code.
NEW YORK-The Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York City are preparing for the possibility of a punishing winter by erecting tents designed to withstand frigid temperatures.
Some of the military grade tents are as big as tiny cottages. They began popping up Monday, with the first planned for medics and another designated as a safe space for women.
Salon.com’s Justin Eliot and film maker David Savage share their thoughts
on a new 30 second Occupy Wall Street commercial, which began airing Saturday on several major networks describing what the movement desires to accomplish.
Nov 09 2011
The Foreclosure Fraud Saga Continues
Some members of Congress have begun to make noise about the proposed settlement of foreclosure fraud by some state attorney generals that would give immunity to the banks. David Dayen at FDL reports:
Raul Grijalva and Keith Ellison, co-chairs of the Progressive Caucus, are the latest. It’s pretty hedged, however:
“We applaud President Obama and the Justice Department for this effort to hold these banks accountable. However, a $25 billion settlement pales in comparison to the trillions of dollars in lost home equity, retirement savings and exploding public debt caused by these institutions,” Grijalva and Ellison said Friday in a joint statement.
“Instead of immunity for Wall Street banks, let’s stand with the American people and demand a fair deal for homeowners.”
Dayen also makes a couple of salient points about the problems with this settlement and solutions:
The whole gambit just reinforces the randomness of the foreclosure crisis. Borrowers didn’t choose to get a bank-owned loan, or a loan sold to Fannie and Freddie, or a loan securitized and sold as part of a tranche of securities to a pension fund in Norway. But where their loan landed has a direct bearing on their outcomes. Who services their loan, another outcome under which they have no control, also matters. And what state you live in matters. If you’re in Nevada, for example, you may never face foreclosure no matter what your delinquency situation [..]
Just criminalizing the standard law governing foreclosures in Nevada has basically ended foreclosure starts. Lucky for Nevadans – but why are folks in the rest of the country in a different place? For all the talk of moral hazard, there’s nothing moral about the foreclosure process right now. If there were, there may also be something like justice or accountability.
The New York and Maryland Attorney Generals, Eric Schneiderman and Beau Biden lay out their strategy in dealing with what they see as a two pronged man-made mess, the housing market and the mortgage-backed securities market:
These two markets are inextricably linked. Any real effort to repair the damage caused by the collapse of the housing bubble must address the injury in both sectors. Tens of millions of homeowners and millions of investors – including retirees with money in pension and mutual funds – were devastated by this manmade catastrophe.
We recognized early this year that, though many public officials – including state attorneys general, members of Congress and the Obama administration – have delved into aspects of the bubble and crash, we needed a more comprehensive investigation before the financial institutions at the heart of the crisis are granted broad releases from liability.
We undertook such an inquiry, building on the work of many others. And we know time is of the essence. Homeowners and investors are suffering every day, and patterns of abuse and misconduct are continuing. We’re working hard to complete the first – and most critical – phase of our investigation before the end of 2011.
The key to our strategy to root out the conduct that triggered the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression is recognizing that a comprehensive effort requires an attack from both sides – looking at harm both to borrowers and to investors. So we are investigating four distinct, but interdependent, areas of abuse. Only one of those areas is being discussed in the negotiations now under way among the banks, the administration and some of our colleagues.
These determined AG’s explain that they are investigating several areas:
They conclude that while their AG colleagues “seek to settle these servicing-related issues, the financial institutions on the other side of the negotiating table have predictably sought releases that are as broad as possible from future liabilities, delaying the process.”
Biden and Schneiderman state that they support the effort but they are not going to back down on the criminal investigation of securitization, origination and MERS:
Reforming the servicing of mortgages is crucial. But these servicing abuses did not create the mortgage bubble. Robo-signing did not blow up the U.S. economy. Rather, these are symptoms of a more far-reaching and insidious problem.
The American people deserve a full investigation and public exposure of the conduct that got us into the economic quagmire we face today. We must ensure that it never happens again. And we must restore public confidence that ours is a nation committed to the goal of equal justice for all.
Every American deserves due process before their homes are taken form them that is just not happening for far too many. There is no excuse.
Nov 09 2011
The Morning After A Night At The Polls
2011 may be an “off” years for elections but this one was of particular interest as it may forecast some outcomes for 2012. There were a couple of really important ballot initiatives and a recall that would have significant impact for both parties and there was a special disappointment for a first term, rotund, bullying Republican governor.
First the Ohio, the law restricting the collective bargaining rights of public employees was overturned by Ohio voters with an overwhelming 61% to 39%. Ouch. That must burn for new Republican governor, John Kasich. Many political pundits, left and right, see this a set up for a major political battle in a swing state and a possible resurgence of the Ohio State Democratic Party.
Ohio voters also approved a proposal to prohibit people from being required to buy health insurance as part of the national healthcare overhaul supported by Obama. The vote was mostly symbolic but Republicans hope to use it as part of a legal challenge.
On to Mississippi where some legislators wanted to give “personhood” to a 4 celled entity called a zygote. Voters there rejected ballot Initiative 26, which would have defined personhood as beginning at fertilization. With 63% of the vote reporting, the ‘No’ position is leading by a margin of 57%-43%. The proposal, initiated through petitions by pro-life activists, would have outlawed not only abortion but many forms of birth control that can prevent the uterine implantation of a fertilized egg.
The proposal obviously conflicted with the right to an abortion as decided in the Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade, and if passed could have set up a potential Supreme Court battle to overturn Roe. It was opposed by the state Medical Association and Nurses Association. Even Governor Haley Barbour had his reservations about the proposal, feeling that it went too far and would put unworkable restrictions on fertility clinics and possibly put a woman’s life at risk in the face of an ectopic pregnancy. Congratulations to Mississippi voters for protecting women.
In Maine, voters restored same day voting, shooting down the specious argument that it would be open to fraud. They overturned the new state law supported by the state’s new Tea Party-backed Republican governor, Paul LePage, that requires voters to register at least two days before an election.
The wise voters of Arizona ousted the Senate President and author of the state’s hard-line laws against illegal immigration, Russell Pearce by 53 to 45. Replacing Pearce is Jerry Lewis, a Republican school administrator who has said he opposes Pearce’s enforcement-only approach to immigration policy. The recall is seen as part of a backlash against the immigration policies that gained the state and Pearce national attention. It is also seen as a swing toward more moderate Republicans. Lewis will serve the remainder of Pearce’s term through 2012. He will be required to run again in November of next year if chooses to seek re-election.
In the two governors races, Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Steve Beshear, was re-elected, becoming the second Democrat to win a governorship in 2011. In Mississippi, lieutenant governor, Phil Bryant, appeared poised to keep the governor’s mansion in Republican hands, succeeding term limited, Haley Barbour. Bryant defeated Hattiesburg mayor, Johnny Dupree, the first black major-party nominee for governor in Mississippi, by a vote of 60% to 40%.
In the Garden State of New Jersey, the voters handed their buying first term governor, Chris Christie, the equivalent of a “no confidence vote” despite low voter turn out. Democrats maintained their 24-16 control over the Senate and added one seat in the Assembly, giving them a 48-32 edge, according to the Associated Press and Star-Ledger. While still not enough to reverse some of Christie’s draconian policies, it is enough to keep him in check and force him to negotiate instead of governing by fiat.
Nov 08 2011
Punting the Pundits
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Joseph Stiglitz: The Globalization of Protest
NEW YORK – The protest movement that began in Tunisia in January, subsequently spreading to Egypt, and then to Spain, has now become global, with the protests engulfing Wall Street and cities across America. Globalization and modern technology now enables social movements to transcend borders as rapidly as ideas can. And social protest has found fertile ground everywhere: a sense that the “system” has failed, and the conviction that even in a democracy, the electoral process will not set things right – at least not without strong pressure from the street.
In May, I went to the site of the Tunisian protests; in July, I talked to Spain’s indignados; from there, I went to meet the young Egyptian revolutionaries in Cairo’s Tahrir Square; and, a few weeks ago, I talked with Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York. There is a common theme, expressed by the OWS movement in a simple phrase: “We are the 99%.”
Desmond Tutu and Jody Williams: The Devil in the Tar Sands
CAPE TOWN – On Sunday, November 6, thousands of people encircled the White House as part of the ongoing effort to press US President Barack Obama to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. If the nearly 1,700-mile pipeline were to be built, it would run from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, through the heartland of the US, all the way to the Texas coast on the Gulf of Mexico. Should the project go ahead, Obama will have made one of the single most disastrous decisions of his presidency concerning climate change and the very future of our planet.
In August, some 1,250 people were arrested in front of the White House while protesting against Keystone. One of them was James Hanson, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has been studying for decades the impact of fossil fuels on the environment. Hanson argues that the pipeline would sound the death knell for the world’s climate. Oil from the tar sands of Alberta is the dirtiest in the world, and its extraction is already causing problems. If Keystone is built, there will be increased efforts to expand oil production there, making a bad situation much worse.
Russ Baker: Corporate Media Stumped on How to Cover the Occupy Movement
Conventional journalism is increasingly irrelevant in a time of crisis. We find abundant proof in a recent column from the New York Times’ so-called “Public Editor,” who is supposed to somehow magically represent the public interest and rarefied ethical values to the rest of the paper.
In this column, he says the media is having difficulty figuring out how to cover Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots.
What are the themes? How should The New York Times cover this movement that resembles no other in memory?
Certainly, media organizations are intrinsically better able to cover snapshot moments like official actions and pronouncements than movements or complex and subtly if rapidly evolving situations-like climate change, or Occupy.
John Nichols: Block the Vote: Ohio GOP Bars Early Voting to Suppress Pro-Labor Turnout
TOLEDO – When Mitt Romney’s dad was a candidate for president back in the 1960s, Republicans competed on the strength of their personalities and ideas.
It was the same when Newt Gingrich was an up-and-coming Republican leader in the 1980s and the early 1990s.
But no more?
Republicans have a new strategy for competing in tight elections.
They cheat.
In Ohio this fall, the party faces a serious challenge. Republican Governor John Kasich, a GOP “star” for the better part of three decades, has staked his political fortunes on an attempt to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees while undermining the ability of their unions to function.
The move has proven to be massively unpopular. More than 1.3 million Ohioans signed petitions that forced a referendum on whether to implement the anti-labor law. Polls show that Ohioans are ready to do just that when they weigh in on referendum Issue 2.
But Ohio’s Republican secretary of state is trying to make it a whole lot harder for Ohioans to cast those votes.
Jim Hightower: Shouldn’t Americans Repair American Infrastructure?
Listening at last to his inner FDR, President Barack Obama is going straight at the Know-Nothing/Do-Nothing Republicans in Congress.
At a rally in September on a bridge connecting Rep. John Boehner’s state of Ohio to Sen. Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky, Obama challenged the two GOP leaders to back his plan for repairing and improving our country’s deteriorating infrastructure.
“Help us rebuild this bridge,” he shouted out to Boehner and McConnell. “Help us rebuild America. Help us put this country back to work.”
Yes, let’s do it!
However, in addition to the usual recalcitrance of reactionary Republican leaders, another impediment stands in the way of success: many of the infrastructure jobs that would be created could end up in China.
Holy Uncle Sam! How is this possible?
Eugene Robinson: The Shame in Happy Valley
Legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno said, “I did what I was supposed to.” In fact, nobody at Penn State did what basic human decency requires-and as a result, according to prosecutors, an alleged sexual predator who could have been stopped years ago was allowed to continue molesting young boys.
The arrest Saturday of former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky on felony child sex abuse charges, involving at least eight victims, has sent university officials scrambling to justify a pattern of self-serving inattention and inaction.
Nov 08 2011
Occupy Wall St. Livestream: Day 53
Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com
The resistance continues at Liberty Square, with free pizza 😉
“I don’t know how to fix this but I know it’s wrong.” ~ Unknown Author
Occupy Wall Street NYC now has a web site for its General Assembly with up dates and information. Very informative and user friendly. It has information about events, a bulletin board, groups and minutes of the GA meetings.
Scott Campbell, a participant in the Occupy Oakland movement, describes the unprovoked police attack that left him severely wounded. “There was absolutely no warning whatsoever,” says Campbell.
On November 23rd, the Congressional Deficit Reduction Super-Committee will meet to decide on whether or not to keep Obama’s extension to the Bush tax-cuts – which only benefit the richest 1% of Americans in any kind of significant way. Luckily, a group of OWS’ers are embarking on a two-week march from Liberty Plaza to the Whitehouse to let the committee know what the 99% think about these cuts. Join the march to make sure these tax cuts for the richest 1% of Americans are allowed to die!
More information:
The 20 mile a day/2 week march from Liberty Square to DC is set to leave this Wednesday, November 9 at noon. On Wednesday we’ll be leaving Liberty Square and marching to the New York Waterway/Hudson River Ferry and onward to Elizabeth, NJ. This is our first stop. Everyone is welcome to join this two week march. If you’d like to participate, but can’t commit for two weeks you’re welcome to join us for the day or help send us off!
Nov 07 2011
Punting the Pundits
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Glenn Ford: Occupy All the Harlems, to Save Ourselves from the Dictatorship of Wall Street
Power to the people!
Say it like you mean it, because most of us have not been acting in the spirit of All Power to the People for a very long time.
For decades, we have been acting under the illusion that we could empower Black people by sending Black elected officials to the city council and the state legislature – and finally putting one in the White House – only to find that their philosophy of politics was: All Power To Those Who Already Have Power.
All Power to the Banks, to the Real Estate Developers; All Power to the Plutocrats, and to the Pentagon. That’s what has become of our Black Power, in the hands of our Black elected officials.
All Power to a President who uses his power to send $16 trillion dollars to Wall Street – and not just banks on Wall Street, but to banks in France, and Great Britain, and Belgium and Switzerland.
But not dime to bail out Harlem, and all the Harlems of this country.
There comes a time of awakening. We are now in that time – although some Black folks are not yet awake. Our job is to wake our people up, so that we don’t sleep through this moment.
New York Times Editorial: The Next Fight Over Jobs
Republicans will probably try to block an extension of expiring jobless benefits, which are the first line of defense against further weakening of the economy.
The way the job market is going, it will never be robust enough to bring down the unemployment rate, now at 9 percent, or 13.9 million people. Monthly job growth has slowed to an average of just 90,000 new jobs a month over the past six months, a pace at which growth in the working-age population will always exceed the number of new jobs being created.
High unemployment and low job growth, which have plagued the economy all through the current “recovery,” hurt both consumer spending and economic growth. But don’t count on government to do the obvious and urgent thing – intervene to create jobs.
Robert Kuttner: The Great Deflation
I never liked the term “The Great Recession,” because this is not an ordinary recession, not even a great one. It is a period of protracted deflation, where weak demand, declining incomes, and falling asset prices keep dragging the economy downward into a self-deepening sinkhole.
With the latest unemployment numbers, the evidence keeps accumulating that this will be a prolonged economic stagnation. The unemployment rate — stuck around 9 percent — is not as bad as that of the Great Depression, but in some respects the prognosis is equally grim.
Hadley Freeman: The Republican presidential candidates are farcically unelectable
Obama must have made a pact with the devil – how else to explain his good fortune?
When blues musician Robert Johnson famously if possibly not factually flogged his soul, he got in return superior guitar skills; when aged Joe Boyd did the same in the Faustian musical Damn Yankees, he was reborn as a dashing baseball player. As for Obama, just a few months ago he was being widely dismissed as a “one-term president”; now, while I can’t guarantee Obama will win the election next year (OK, I am partial to a Saturn-splattered turban, but my crystal ball recently cracked), I can say that his Republican rivals are fast becoming farcically unelectable. Some might argue that this is the inevitable result of a Republican party that has painted itself into a corner by focusing so much on social values and twisting its economic ones into such a knot that it claims to be a party for lower earners (it is, but only in the sense that it wants lower earners to pay high taxes so the rich don’t have to). But I say that only something truly satanic could conjure up what the GOP has vomited out this time round and, to prove it, I bring you the York Notes guide to the Republican candidates.
E. J. Dionne, Jr: The Politics of the Heavenly and Unheavenly
We have embarked on yet another presidential campaign in which religion will play an important role without any agreement over what the ground rules for that engagement should be.
If you think we’re talking past each other on jobs and budgets, consider the religious divide. One side says “separation of church and state” while the other speaks of “religion’s legitimate role in the public square.” Each camp then sees the question as closed and can get quite self-righteous in avoiding the other’s claims.
Anyone who enters this terrain should thus do so with fear and trembling. But a few things ought to be clear, and let’s start with this: The Mormon faith of Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman should not be an issue in this campaign. Period.
Joe Conason: Bloomberg vs. Occupy Wall Street
Americans listen when Michael Bloomberg speaks, not only because he is the mayor of New York City, but because he is a self-made billionaire and a smart guy. People think Bloomberg knows a lot about business and investment, which he surely does. But he nevertheless sounds terribly misinformed sometimes, as he did the other day-when he complained that Occupy Wall Street is unfairly blaming the nation’s big bankers for the crash and recession, when the real culprits are Congress and the government-sponsored housing lenders, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis,” said the mayor. “It was, plain and simple, Congress, who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp. … But they were the ones who pushed Fannie and Freddie to make a bunch of loans that were imprudent, if you will. They were the ones that pushed the banks to loan to everybody.”
Nov 07 2011
Occupy Wall St. Livestream: Day 52
Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com
The resistance continues at Liberty Square, with free pizza 😉
“I don’t know how to fix this but I know it’s wrong.” ~ Unknown Author
Occupy Wall Street NYC now has a web site for its General Assembly with up dates and information. Very informative and user friendly. It has information about events, a bulletin board, groups and minutes of the GA meetings.
The march will assemble at 181 St. and St. Nicholas Av in upper Manhattan at 10:30 AM. Protesters will march down Broadway back to Liberty Park. Organizers say the aim of the 11 mile march is to connect Black and Latino residents of Northern Manhattan who support Occupy Wall Street with residents from Harlem, the West Side and Greenwich Village.
Among 1,005 adults surveyed, 35 percent had a favorable impression of the protest movement that began in New York City and gained support worldwide. Only 16 percent could say the same for Wall Street and large corporations.
Twenty-nine percent had a favorable impression of the tea party movement and 21 percent of government in Washington. [..]
Wall Street and large corporations tied with Washington government in unpopularity, with 71 percent of those polled saying they had an unfavorable impression of big business and Washington. The tea party got a 50 percent unfavorable response and Occupy Wall Street 40 percent.
Nov 07 2011
Deal with the Devil
One of the editorials that was featured today in Punting the Pundits addressed the lack of choices for the office of President of the United States that voters are facing. The author, Hadley Freeman, called the Republican field “farcically unelectable”. Barack Obama may well have made a Faustian pact considering that if faced with a reasonable opponent from the GOP, he most assuredly would be leaving office on January 20, 2013.
But then there is that word: “reasonable”.
Rachel Maddow gave her take on two of more absurd candidates, Rick Perry and Herman Cain:
Best case scenario, that dude’s hammered. Worst case scenario, that is Perry sober and every time we’vee seen him previously, he was hammered
And then there is Mitt Romney and as Heather at Crooks and Liars points out:
I could not do a better job of summing this speech up if I tried, so I’ll just refer everyone to this post by Stephen D. Foster Jr. at Addicting Info — Mitt Romney Vows To Privatize Medicare, Raise The Retirement Age, And Fire Thousands Of Government Workers
Overall, Romney’s plan is heartless, gutless, unimaginative, and caters to the extreme right wing, the wealthy, and to corporations. It’s a blueprint for making America fail and wiping out the middle class and should automatically disqualify him from holding any office. It kills the voice of the American people and destroys the programs we hold most dear. If a Republican wins the election next year, it will be perilous for the United States and the American people. Their policies have been destructive for thirty years, and now they want apocalypse.
As Ms. Freeman said, “That sound you heard on the breeze? That was the sound of Obama laughing.“
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