Jack & Jill Politics

VIrginia Lt.Gov. breaks tie, voter ID passes:

http://www2.newsadvance.com/news/2012/feb/27/bolling-breaks-tie-to-pass-voter-id-bill-ar-1720155/

thanks for this

Snob!
Posted on 02/27/2012 at 5:30 pm by JM Ashby

During his address to the National Governor’s Association today, President Obama reiterated the need to provide an education to those who seek it because the health of the economy and America’s future depend on it.

“No issue will have a bigger impact on the future performance of our economy than education,” the president said in remarks before the National Governors Association at the White House.

The president insisted that higher education is the key to preparing Americans for the jobs of the 21st century. “We can’t allow higher education to be a luxury in this country. It’s an economic imperative that every family in America has to be able to afford,” he said.

While Obama did not mention Santorum by name, he clarified his push for Americans to receive higher education. “I have to make a point here. When I speak about higher education, we’re not just talking about a four-year degree,” he said. “We’re talking about somebody going to a community college and getting trained for that manufacturing job.”

“We all want Americans getting those jobs of the future, so we’re going to have to make sure that they’re getting the education that they need,” he said.

At the same time, Obama argued that education should not be a partisan issue. “All of us should be about giving every American who wants a chance to succeed that chance,” he said.

Concerned about the future performance of our economy. Ensuring that Americans have the education they need to get a job. Giving everyone a chance.

What a snob!

I’m expecting the GOP response will be that the president obviously doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism because he thinks Americans need to be educated to compete in the 21st century.

http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2012/02/snob.html

How The GOP Lost Michigan

Tomasky believes that Republican opposition to the auto bailout will cost the party in November:

If Romney wins tomorrow, he’ll stand up there all smiles and talk again about his great love for Michigan and its fine people and its perfect trees and its cavernous and empty football stadiums. Don’t be fooled. He lost Michigan this past week, and he richly deserved to. And he didn’t lose it because of some campaign-trail gaffe. He lost it on policy—his, and his party’s.

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/

Does anyone have a link to any organization that is working to promote acquiring the ID necessary?

Romney’s risible ‘recollections’

By Steve Benen -  Tue Feb 28, 2012 8:00 AM EST.

Mitt Romney has spent the last couple of weeks desperately trying to prove to Michigan Republicans he has deep, meaningful roots to the state, as evidenced by his love of the state’s tree heights. These efforts, however, can occasionally go too far.

Mitt Romney heard plenty of stories from his father.

For example, the former Massachusetts governor shared a cherished childhood memory last week with a Michigan audience, which Mitch Potter noted, Romney did not witness in reality.

Romney recalled he was “probably 4 or something like that” the day of the Golden Jubilee, when three-quarters of a million people gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the American automobile.

“My dad had a job being the grandmaster. They painted Woodward Ave. with gold paint,” Romney told a rapt Tea Party audience in the village of Milford Thursday night, reliving a moment of American industrial glory.
The Golden Jubilee described so vividly by Romney was indeed an epic moment in automotive lore. The parade included one of the last public appearances by an elderly Henry Ford.

And it took place June 1, 1946 — fully nine months before Romney was born.

In fairness to Romney, this may not have been a deliberate effort to deceive the public. Children hear family stories and see photographs, and the occasional result is a false memory.

The problem for the Republican presidential hopeful, though, is the larger pattern, which makes it more difficult to give Romney the benefit of the doubt.

Indeed, there was a similar incident in his last presidential campaign, when Romney assured voters he remembers having seen his father march with Martin Luther King Jr., when in reality, that never happened.
If Mitt Romney had earned a reputation as an honest, straight-talking candidate who could always be counted on to tell the truth, slip-ups like the bogus Golden Jubilee claim could be easily overlooked, even by critics. But therein lies the point: Romney has actually earned the opposite reputation — his deliberate falsehoods come so frequently that it’s a challenge just to keep up with them. As Paul Krugman put it a few days ago, Romney “is running a campaign of almost pathological dishonesty.”

It’s against this backdrop that Romney wants voters to forgive inconsequential mistakes, such as his memories of an event that he did not witness. The more likely scenario is that the public is starting to realize this candidate is suffering from an acute allergy to the truth..

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/28/10527729-romneys-risible-recollections

It’s
the Houses, Stupid

” What’s different? Housing is different. And it’s been a nightmare.
Single-home construction took a nosedive after ascending through the
previous decade. Home equity, which makes up 80% of household wealth for
the bottom fifth, has collapsed. Service jobs around the real estate
industry have been decimated, especially in the
Michican/California/Arizona/Nevada/Florida nexus of doom. Residential
investment is the key variable here, and it’s been flat out decimated.
Related is the misery of state and local government financing. Local
governments get up to 80% of their revenue from property taxes, so you
can imagine why they’ve been killed. State government have suffered
similar financing droughts since the end of the stimulus.”

And there is no separating the fact that the coddling of the financial institutions that keeps the administration from acting. For the most part every action the administration has taken to improve the economy has never had the financial industry held responsible for their perfidy.

I blogged about the housing industry (in a more generalized way) suggesting that this particular phenomenon won’t last long. 

Essentially, the same financial institutions who pledged stricter lending guidelines after being exposed for their blind-eye, greedy practices, will eventually revert back to said practices. 

For the most part, the American dream is still suburban, aloof, Escalade-leasing, upper-middle-class posturing.  And the public are still supportive (OK, dependent) on government bailouts to make that happen. 

Follow the dream.  The banks sure are.

Exacerbating the gender gap

By Steve Benen -  Tue Feb 28, 2012 9:26 AM EST.

In 2008, Barack Obama cruised to an easy win over John McCain thanks in large part to a large gender gap — the Democrat got the support of a narrow plurality of men, but defeated the Republican among women by 13 points.

Four years later, the GOP agenda may very well make the gap even wider.

[President Obama's] standing with female voters is strengthening, polls show, as the economy improves and social issues, including birth control, become a bigger part of the nation’s political discourse. [...]

The recent furor over whether religious employers should be forced to pay for their workers’ contraception is certainly a factor but hardly the only reason for women warming up to Obama again after turning away from him late last year.

An Associated Press-GfK poll suggests women also are giving the president more credit than men are for the country’s economic turnaround.

The numbers are pretty striking, at least at this point in the process. Obama’s approval rating among women is up 10 points since December — a period that includes an improving economy and a renewed culture-war agenda from Republicans — and in hypothetical match-ups, while the president ties his GOP challengers among men, he leads Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum by 13 and 16 points, respectively.

And while the economic future remains uncertain, Republican policymakers remain eager to pursue policies that push women away, including a vote this week on the odious anti-contraception Blunt Amendment on Capitol Hill, and a variety of offensive measures at the state level.

Patricia Speyerer, an 87-year-old Republican-leaning voter in Mississippi, told the AP, “Republicans are making a big mistake with this contraception talk, and I’m pretty sure that they are giving (the election) to Obama. It’s a stupid thing.”.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/28/10528342-exacerbating-the-gender-gap

09:38 AM EST

Romney: ‘I’m Not Willing To Light My Hair On Fire To Try And Get Support’

Speaking at his first press conference in almost three weeks in Michigan on Tusday, Mitt Romney elaborated on what he was willing to do to in order to garner votes in the primary, as opposed to the general election. He said he wasn’t “willing to light [his] hair on fire to try and get support,” implicitly taking a shot at some of his fellow rivals:

In some cases our flaws over emphasized, but I do think in the general election all of what’s gone on during the primary becomes very much a thing of the past and we focus on what’s being said in the general.

It’s very easy to excite the base with incendiary comments. We’ve seen throughout the campaign if you’re willing to say really outrageous things that are accusative, attacking of President Obama, that you’re going to jump up in the polls. I’m not willing to light my hair on fire to try and get support. I am who I am. I’m a person with extensive experience in the private sector, in the economy.

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/romney-im-not-willing-to-light-my-hair?ref=fpa

I’d like for the Black Community to convince me why I should vote again for this president.
I was one of the millions of Americans who voted for “Hope and Change”
What have we gotten in 4 years?  Nothing for common Americans Black or otherwise.
This guy has been Gorge Bush II and is asking me and you to vote for him again……Not dis honkey.
You say the healthcare bill?  It’s nothing more than a big give away to Big Pharma and the insurance companies that allows them to raise premiums until none of us can afford them except the rich.  Same as before.
Oh, yes they did something about pre-existing conditions.  If you can’t pay the priemum, what’s the difference?
Oh, and what about jobs and housing?  Everything he and his worthless attorney general have given the banks and mortgage companies a complete pass and a minor slap on the wrist while MILLIONS of Americans are thrown out of their homes in the street.
Wall Street?  This dude took more money from those criminals thans ANY POLITICIAN IN HISTORY!  What’s he going to do to prosecute the crimes comitted against small investors? Squat.

I understand the pride the Black community feels of having accomplished something that, in this day and age, was considered impossible, but don’t let your pride blind you to the fact that this guy is Black in color only.
In my view he is nothing more than a paid schill of the 1% and the only Black is that he can MAYBE talk the shinit wif the brothas.  Well So Canit IznI!
I  believe it is time for the Black community to call this trick out for the things he has NOT done for ALL Americans:
End the racist “War On Drugs” the vast majority of people in this corrupt private prison system are Blacks and minor drug offenders.
Where is the Black Community on this issue.  You should be in the streets EVERY DAY! Their goal is to control the Blacks by making sure every one of them has a record.
What about jobs, education and skills training?
I, being white, know about the prejudice against Blacks being called too lazy to work and too stupid to learn.  I also know that that is exactly WRONG.  The shining example of the Tuskegee Airman dispells that stupidity completely and everytime I lay eyes on an American Black soldier with discipline, education and esprie de corps. Carrying themselves as and being an independent clear thinking man, I am proud of the US Military and what a great equalizer they are in affording young Black men and women the opportunity to pull themselves out of the hood and become a fully functioning FREE Black person.

I’d like to call on the Black American people to challange this president to honor his promise to create change and charge these Wall Street and Banking and Mortgage criminals across the board with the crimes they have committed.
End Private Prisons and release all non violent offenders into their home communities and give them training and jobs they can be proud of and support their families.  Everybody gets a buzz in one way or another to relax from the tensions of the day.  Alcohol is the worst. They and him need to quit branding Black people with criminal records so they can control Black males in Society. We both know that this is exactly what goes on.  Why are you not in the street over this slavery?

Just tell me why you are so quiet?  This is the time to sieze the ring and threaten to abandon this false Black person in the coming elections en masse and in the streets.  Now is the time to demand a response and action, BEFORE the election.  Time to make your stand, Brother.
I predict that the vast majority of Americans will join you and maybe, just maybe…Wizne Canze Chiznange thizna World!

February 27, 2012
Gingrich will again be the story

I take E.J. Dionne’s predominant point about electoral prudence — in fact we have all taken it, since Thomas Dewey — but on this one minor-est of premises within a minor premise (which I have duly italicized) I dissent:

Democrats have an interest in the Republican contest going on indefinitely. Romney victories in Tuesday’s Michigan and Arizona primaries would likely shorten the process, and ending the nomination battle quickly is the precondition for a Republican counteroffensive.

What evidence exists that Romney victories tomorrow would in any way shorten the GOP’s primary process? I don’t see it.

Doubtless, two more Romney wins would contribute immensely to Romney’s inevitability, but such inevitability has so far failed to impress or persuade a very substantial portion of a quite disgruntled GOP base. Yes, he da man; but they don’t have to be happy about it, and of that, they’ve made no secret. And just because Romney may walk off with Michigan and Arizona tomorrow, as he’s already done with New Hampshire and Nevada and Florida, there’s little reason to think the base will suddenly be wild about Willard.

Both Gingrich and Santorum can live off the land (and a couple of billionaires) till June; which is to say, for us they can make life a delightful hell for Mitt Romney. In time, the base may have to swallow the former governor, but till then, they don’t have to savor him. Thus enter the would-be spoilers, whose permanent doom Romney must continue to heavily invest in — because one never knows.

And, if I may … I still believe Newt Gingrich is “the story,” more so than Rick Santorum. The latter was merely the last to be elevated to national notoriety, and like all the others — Bachmann, Cain, etc. — he’ll fade, assuming he doesn’t stupendously dynamite himself first. The base will remain in need of a Romney-alternative, though. So then comes a recycling process. And who’s first in line? Who, that is, will be left?

Yep, Newt.

http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2012/02/gingrich-will-again-be-the-story.html

 ”The question is will this administration reign them in…

No.  This administration will not.  But then I don’t know of any other elected office-holders that would.

What a difference a decade makes on income inequality

By Steve Benen -  Tue Feb 28, 2012 10:05 AM EST.

For much of the Obama era, issues such as income inequality have been deemed largely off limits by the right. The problem, according to many conservatives, isn’t the growing gap between rich and poor, or the emergence of a new Gilded Age, but rather, talking about these issues in public. Maybe, the argument goes, if we ignore the societal dilemma, it’ll just go away.

But it wasn’t too terribly long ago that Republicans felt this was at least a problem worth considering. Our pal James Carter flagged a fascinating item from 2002, written by one of the Republican presidential candidates for an academic journal.

[T]oday, growing disparity between the rich and poor is one of the critical social dilemmas we face in the 21st century. I believe that the growing wealth gap is one of the key reasons for this increasing disparity.

Despite a strong economy through the 1990s, the gap between the rich and the poor expanded. Among Americans who reach age seventy, the top ten percent own more wealth than the bottom ninety percent. How do we address this inequity? [...]

Initiatives that encourage individual wealth creation are imperative to closing the gap between the rich and the poor. I believe the government can play a role in helping many Americans who struggle to enter the economic mainstream.

The same article went on to note that while “the net worth of the typical family has risen substantially in recent years, it has actually dropped substantially for low-income families…. Until recently, the booming American economy had delivered significant income gains to the nation’s upper-income earners, leaving lower-income workers on the sidelines.”
The author was then-Sen. Rick Santorum, in a piece for the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, & Public Policy.

It’s only fair to note that Santorum’s preferred prescription was not at all progressive. The Republican’s focus was on addressing inequality by expanding “wealth creation” — we would see more income mobility, for example, if working families had their own retirement investment accounts, replacing Social Security.

But what’s striking about the Santorum piece is the way in which it helps document the rhetorical transition.

——————————————————————————–

In 2012, the Republican line is that discussions about economic fairness, if they’re to exist at all, should be forced into “quiet rooms,” where questions can be whispered. In 2002, leading Republicans — Santorum was the third highest-ranking GOP senator at the time — were entirely comfortable noting the “growing disparity between the rich and poor,” exploring solutions to close the gap, and even envisioning a role for government action.

Santorum’s piece 10 years ago wasn’t seen as scandalous; it was seen as routine. It’s only now that the Republican mainstream sees the need to narrow the public conversation, declaring some topics verboten. Indeed, if President Obama were to declare today that the “growing disparity between the rich and poor is one of the critical social dilemmas we face in the 21st century,” nearly all of the leading GOP voices would be quick to condemn such talk as inherently “divisive,” promoting “envy,” and fomenting class conflict.

What a difference a decade makes.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/28/10529015-what-a-difference-a-decade-makes-on-income-inequality

Can you respond to the substance of post without resorting to name calling, personal attacks and insults?

28 Feb 2012 11:26 AM
Real Class Warfare
This is what it actually looks like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkjbJOSwq3A&feature=player_embedded

Notice

 that this is not an argument about the president’s policies (which are actually all about vocational training and apprenticeships). It is an argument about the character of the president, and he is defined as contemptuous of the working class. Santorum calls Obama what no Republican has yet called Romney: a “snob”.

Not an argument. Not a policy difference. Pure class hatred – personalized. And driving the base of the GOP

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/

February 27, 2012

Attorney General Holder Names Tony West Third In Command At DOJ

Tony West, who has led the Justice Department’s Civil Division since April 2009, was named today acting associate attorney general.

West, as the third in command at Justice, will replace Thomas Perrelli, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. announced. Perrelli, who managed the Washington office of Jenner & Block, recently announced his plans to leave DOJ.

Holder today also named Stuart Delery the acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Division. West and Delery were not immediately reached for comment this afternoon.

“Tony and Stuart have served the department with professionalism, integrity and dedication, and both bring a wealth of experience to their new positions,” Holder said in a prepared statement. “I’m confident they will provide invaluable leadership and will play a critical role in furthering the department’s key priorities and fulfilling its traditional missions.”
West was a Morrison & Foerster partner when he took over the leadership of the Civil Division, the largest litigation division at Main Justice. Civil Division lawyers have defended the constitutionality of the health care laws and are involved in legal issues stemming from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

West serves as a co-leader on several DOJ-sponsored financial fraud enforcement initiatives, including the recently announced residential mortgage-backed securities working group.

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2012/02/attorney-general-holder-names-tony-west-third-in-command-at-doj-.html

looked at the pics of POTUS at the UAW convention. THOSE are some working-class folks who know which way is up.

no wishy-washy from them.

no ‘luxury of delusion’ that I’ve read in stories with other White working-class folks.

Blacks always base their votes on “performance” rather than skin color.

If everyone goes to college, where will we get serfs?
Tuesday, February 28, 2012 |  Posted by Liberal Librarian at 9:03 AM 

You don’t have to go to college to be a success … We need the people who run the offices, the people who do the hard physical work of our society.

—George H.W. Bush, Statement to the students of East Los Angeles’ Garfield High School (5 May 1988)

“Not all folks are gifted the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands,” Santorum began. “Some people have incredible gifts and want to work out there making things.”

Then he went after the president’s call for making college easier for Americans to attend.

“President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob,” Santorum said as the crowd howled with laughter and applause. “There are good, decent men and women who work hard every day and put their skills to the test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor.”

—Rick Santorum

My mother was a seamstress.  At 80, she still works, Tuesday through Saturday, 6 hours a day, making alterations at a dry cleaner in a Los Angeles suburb owned by a good friend.  She doesn’t work because she has to, but because she loves the companionship and the doing of things.  The things she can do with needle and thread and cloth amaze me.

She left school after ninth grade.  She didn’t leave school out of economic need; both sides of my family were very middle class.  But children in Cuba in her day had compulsory education only through ninth grade, and school bored her, and she had that talent with her hands.  She left school and has never stopped working since, delighting in something she knows she can do as well as anybody, and sometimes better.

Her skill, learned at my grandmother’s feet, got her a good union job in the New York garment industry.  Between her job and my father’s barber shop, they were able to send myself and my two brothers to parochial school for elementary and high school, to college—which we self-funded through grants and minimal loans—and me on to get my master’s degree in library science.

My mother loves working with her hands.  But, both she and my father were determined that their sons wouldn’t; that we would go to university, that we would work with our minds, have lives easier than they had, have lives which improved on theirs.  No, they didn’t perform back-breaking labor; but it was physical enough that they knew they wanted something better for their children.  No sacrifice was too great to ensure that we would have opportunities they hadn’t, that we could take advantage of everything this country offered.

No, you don’t have to go to college to be a success.  My parents are proof of that:  they raised a family that’s gone on to achieve parts of the American Dream.

But Mr. Santorum’s statement—like Mr. Bush’s in 1988—point not only to an anti-intellectual strain among conservatives, but also to an ideology that in part is against economic fairness.  Study after study shows that those with college degrees have a better shot at a middle class life than those without.  That point isn’t up for debate.

But among the right wing there’s always a fear that too much education is dangerous; students get worrisome ideas, they start to question the world around them, they start to go against lawful authority—and remember that all authority ultimately derives from God in their world view. There’s always the fear that if they send their sons and daughters to a liberal arts university that they’ll jettison all the beliefs they’ve tried to inculcate in them.  The fact that it isn’t borne out by empirical evidence—in fact, that the opposite is true, that those who don’t go to university experience steeper declines in religiosity than those who do—doesn’t stop the idea from propagating and taking root. 

 It dovetails nicely with the anti-intellectualism currently rife in the GOP and the Right—egged on, it should be said, by leaders with advanced degrees themselves, but without the requisite wisdom that possession of such degrees would indicate.

http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/02/if-everyone-goes-to-college-where-will.html

AFTERNOON OPEN THREAD IS UP!!

(1.)  Honestly, what’s wrong with requiring voter ID’s? For many, it would be a valid for of identification whereas under other conditions, they wouldn’t have any.  I hardly see it as a burden (on the other hand, one has to question why Republicans push so hard for voter IDs, but fight so vigorously against same-day voter registration.  (2.) The more Santorum opens his mouth and continues to kiss up to the Tea Party and the extreme Right Wing of the Republican Party, the better Obama’s chances look for the Fall