Associated Press
Two Words That May Change This Campaign:
Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri is walking back unbelievable comments he made about "legitimate rape". Akin said women can't get pregnant when they're raped, and if they do, the unborn child shouldn't be the one that's punished. Akin was the most conservative candidate in the Republican primary field and the one Sen. Claire McCaskill wanted to face. And now we know why. Akin was leading in the polls, but for how long? Democrats looked to tie Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to the Akin comments. And the Romney campaign, knowing how toxic Akin's comments could be up and down the ballot this November, quickly put out a statement saying neither Romney nor Ryan are opposed to abortion in the case of rape... a position that seems to contradict an earlier view held by Ryan.
Extreme Makeover: The Romney campaign is working hard to project a warm and human Mitt Romney at next week's convention. The New York Times reports that the Romney campaign is enlisting professionals to help Romney present a relaxed image and reverse those personal likability numbers, which aren't very good. But can nifty packaging make Romney likable?
Democrats are now moving their attack against Paul Ryan to the topic of Social Security. Ryan embraced a plan to privatize Social Security during the Bush years, but it got a deservedly chilly reception from voters.
The FBI investigated a case of a Republican congressman who went skinny dipping in a holy site in Israel at the Sea of Galilee. But should the Congressman resign?
A new Gallup poll of swing state voters finds a majority says they're not better off than they were four years ago.
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Dems policy seems to be internally controversial. They support growth of population via illegal immigration and oppose it by means of unlimited abortion rights. What is the real policy? Are Dems for zero population growth or not? Or only for growth population by means of importing cheap, slave-like immigrants? In absent of clear statement it leave wide room for speculations.
As opposed to Republicans who force population growth by denying all women the right to choose even in cases of extreme illness, deformity and health risk to themselves and their children but refuse to give them health care for those illnesses and deformities?
And who exactly supports illegal immigration? Last I looked it was the Republicans who refused to pass immigration reform of any kind! That's exactly what forced the POTUS to impose his latest immigration policy on his own! He has also deported more illegals than any other President in our history, which is why illegal immigration now stands at net 0, so please Leo try to get your facts straight before you post! Oh I forgot you're the propaganda master!
I'm sorry in editing I somehow deleted the anti-contraception stand of the GOP extremists.
So again, what's the GOP stand? Pro population growth or anti growth?
Here's the difference. The Democrats are for freedom, choice and the American way of new immigrant blood (you're an immigrant just like the rest of us right Leo)? The Dems clearly ship criminal illegals out more so than the Republicans but also give a break to those who are positively contributing to society because we use logic and reason as opposed to reacting to fear mongering and propaganda.
The Republicans however, want to force people to conform to THEIR belief system. Women can't choose for themselves, nor can their husbands. They secretly sneak immigrants into this country to work for low slave wages, but scream about scary immigrants to frighten their base (like you).
Sed the man that loves doing reefer with the Prez it is always good to blog with you. Where do you come up with the notion that repubs want to deny women's rights just because they don't want to pay for their irresponsible partying? I am all a Conservative and I believe that a woman can do what ever she wants with her body. But I don't think I should have to buy her birth control pills or condoms. If you want to party bring your own balloon. Why does the lazy liberal man get the free pass. Where I come from you don't need birth control unless a man is at the party and he should take responsibility for his actions. I do think that rape victims should have help from society for what ever SHE ( not the government ) things is best for her.
I know this is hard for you to understand but Rape and free contraception have NOTHING to do with each other.
Chem: How is it that you arrive at that Republican talking point that YOU are paying for a woman's contraceptive? I realize you believe everything you hear in the right wing media without question and therefore believe medicare, medicaid and social security are entitlements but in fact they are INSURANCE and PENSION programs that people pay for THEMSELVES.
Unless you believe that I should be able to deny whatever health care decisions, medication etc., you and all the rich guys want when they get sick because I happen to participate in the same PRIVATE health insurance program as you do and therefore I AM PAYING for your services your argument is ridiculous!
As far as rape and and contraception go they have the exact same thing to do with each other and that is that your party want to deny women the right to choose. Your party wants to outlaw ALL abortions IN EVERY CASE and they want to outlaw ALL CONTRACEPTION IN EVERY CASE. Check out Paul Ryans bills dude. He also wants to OUTLAW ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION. These are not only pieces of legislation but Constitutional amendments Rep. Paul Ryan has introduced for passage (luckily they didn't pass) in the House.
Sorry dude. Your party are the party of guys who want to take women's rights away from them because they 1. Don't think they're smart enough to make their own decisions 2. Are theocrats who don't believe in American democracy or the liberty and freedoms of our system.
Chem, being raped isn't an act of "irresponsible partying" from a woman's point of view.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/08/todd-akin-paul-ryan-redefining-rape
(Insert big Cabbie Speech on strawman stuffing and ritualized burning to serve as a distraction from a big pile of Teapublican do-do)
Your claim about women--who are provided insurance as part of their compensation package, except when Bain & Company start doing their leveraged buyouts and squeeze tactics that use overseas outsourcing as a "threat" to gain concessions--amounts to such a strawman, and it also serves to point out that women only make 78 cents for every dollar men do...
Women's health care costs more than men's in large part because they bear the responsibility of bringing forth the new generation... I suggest your notion of "irresponsible partying" is an immature cop-out to avoid facing that obligatory reality.
And Sed doing boo with the Prez? Man, where'd you get that one? From the new Bluetooth in your tinfoil helmet?
Cabbie: I'll cop to tokin' with the top cop if Chem will cop to hangin' in the bathroom stalls with Senator Craig! ha Ha Ha!
I'm not sure why everyone is so shocked by Akin's comments. He and Ryan co-sponsored an outrageous bill where they would only allow abortions in the cases of "forcible rape" which they defined as rape involving violence. Non-violent rapes didn't qualify. What does that mean? If you drug a woman and rape her it's not rape? If the woman is separated from a violent abusive husband and he rapes her because he is her husband the rape wouldn't be considered violent? Ridiculous!
Of course Romney's multiple positions on the free choice of women to determine the course of their own futures and medical decisions have varied mightily. He has been pro-choice, anti-choice, wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade, wanted all states to determine their own abortion policies, claimed that the primary function of Planned Parenthood was to perform abortions and therefore all funding should be denied to that institution and denied to all nongovernmental organizations both in this country and abroad that perform abortions.
He's also now changed his view to say that he believes life begins at conception, and that he would support a Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to protect unborn children who are capable of feeling pain from abortion.
Of course back in his Bain days he owned a fetus disposal company, so it's hard to tell where ole Mitt stands at this hour on this particular day on this or any issue so as usual there's that.
Well, ladies you must be chomping at the bit to vote in this election! I know I am! There's nothing like a couple of guys who want to take rights away from their fellow Americans in the twenty-first century! Especially when it comes to sexual rights and lack of protection from violent sexual predators! But hey this is the party that gets drunk and skinny dips at religious sites in foreign countries in front of other congressional members wives and daughters so what do you expect!
Boy was it hard to find this! I guess the American Spectator doesn't want their audience to see this anymore...
In Brief: And Then There Was That Time Paul Ryan Said Romneycare Could Be a Model for the U.S.:
This is from an editorial by Rep. Paul Ryan in the conservative magazine The American Spectator, from July 23, 2009, when Republicans feared that Democrats were going to include a "public option," a government-run health insurance program. In the midst of a fainting-couch-needed tirade on how health care reform would make Baby Liberty cry, Ryan wrote: "If President Obama and his party are serious about establishing a radical new government-driven health care program, rather than force an untested program on the whole nation, why not follow federalism by encouraging one or two states to adopt such a plan as a pilot program? Former Governor Romney of Massachusetts, a Republican, led in the creation of a state universal health care program three years ago...The benefits, costs, and satisfaction in these state health care 'labs' would be useful information before we decide on a federal role."
Ultimately, the Democrats and the Obama administration did not go with the "radical" plan (which would have been cheaper and more effective, but, hey, socialism). Instead, they went with Mitt, whose plan's benefits and costs have led to high satisfaction in Massachusetts, an approach that Paul Ryan seems to have, at least in the bad ol' pre-2010 election days, endorsed.
Concerning the warm fuzzy new Mitt, I am wondering if anybody has noticed when Ryan is somewhere, there are two African Americans who seem to be strategically placed right in back of him during the events. In Norfolk and at another spot in VA I would swear it is the same two people and then again this morning i noticed the woman once again in another crowd.... what is up with this?
People there is the successful biggest money grab ever perpetrated on the American people. We still don't get it, even with Richie Rich standing on the top of the ticket for all to see . This guns, gays and abortion which, in my opinion, nobody is really going to do anything about. The strategy is a long dragged out fight to serve as a distraction to finish off the middle class. Akin is a perfect foil and a much needed idiot. Is the end game to weaken our society, so we will be a banana republic and not know what hit us? I think this is why this faction is desperate to get rid of Obama who continues to dig in his heels in an attempt to help the 98%.
Pure unadulterated greed. The right wing used the same arguments they are using now to resist raising taxes on the rich that they used during the Clinton Administration. They care not at all about the deficit or they would return to the Clinton tax rates like they promised they would when they passed the Bush tax cuts.
What's hilarious is the revisionism you are now hearing in the right wing media. They are actually saying BUSH inherited a recession from Clinton and Obama inherited a fantastic economy from Bush! It's amazing how far the right wing is willing to go in their blatant lies and how uneducated and just plain moronic the right wing base are.
Wrote a scathing letter to my local newspaper challenging them to finally wake up from this deep trance in which they allow the public to be entertained instead of telling what is true.
Have to admit seeing Dan Quale's son caught in the skinny dipping venture on our dime still is missing the bigger story lying underneath that trip to Israel last "summer break". The Real Househusbands of DC, borish frat boys that they are, will eventually be treated with a wink and a nod. Meanwile the hidded agenda of the conservatives is a war with Iran and all the money it will generate to their special friends and interests. This crap of we just love our troops.... well if we did we could let them come home instead of ginning up another war for them to endure, die, and suffer for those very rich who will reap an enormous amount of money from the cash cow of the public.
The party of business knows it takes money to make money, so no, what deficit? At the end of the day, if you don't have to pay taxes, have houses all over the world, you can head for you island in the sun or lock yourself away in your mansion with guards and a gate while this nation continues to go under. They are like Brad Pitt who now declares his main place to live is France and George Clooney loves Italy.... so this will catch on with our real money ruling class....citizens of the world financed by the rest of us. Greed by one, stupidity by the other since for once let them eat cake has no meaning. By focusing on what old white people fear... change.... all they have to do is to focus on the welfare queens.. look to what you are afraid of becoming and who is eating your lunch while behind their backs they have to be laughing all the way to the bank... with your arsenal of guns. I have to admire (wink) their unmitigated gall and total lack of scruples in getting just what they want... money and power for themselves. While all the while keeping the morons lookiing in the wrong places and blaming their prejudices on those whom they dispise. If we did not believe in this version of entitlement called Americn exceptionalism, which is totally pounded into our psyche it would help wake us up. It is like the grooming the sexual predators use to manipulate the weak into becoming their victim. Tell folks what they want to hear, appeal to vanity and then get what you want...that is how you become a moron.
what aload of B.S. So only Republicans live in mansions, own guns, have offshore accounts, got rich by some sleazy Unlawful way..( Kennedy family ), cheat on their spouses, doesnt show tolerance to anyone who has a different opinion or viewpoint politically or religeously,are racists..( can name alot of democrats who hate black people and white people ) or sit behind a desk and call themselves Journalists who show no journalistic integrity..only one sided hate filled political viewpoint or opinion..(MSNBC? look no further)...Fox? your sinking to MSNBC's level of hatred and division. seek therapy!!!
Ha Ha Ha Bill you're hilarious! I assume you watch Fox, listen to Limbaugh or any of the other 300 right wing radio talkers or read any of the four dozen right wing periodicals? They all say EXACTLY what you just said and a whole lot worse every single day! So congratulations! You found the ONE network that has liberal talkers on in the afternoon and evening and now you like the rest of your party are whining because the media isn't 100% partisan, dishonest and intolerant like you!
Hatred and division? The Tea Partiers who scream "Liar" at the President while he is speaking to the American people and the Congress? All of Fox and the right wing talkers who claim he wasn't born here and is a traitor? Ted Nugent, Hank Willimas JR?
Gee I remember when the Dixie Chicks were banned from all radio stations for three years for saying they were ashamed for being from Texas. So why are Nugent and Williams still being played when they have said much much worse?
I remember when one of our oldest and respected newsmen Dan Rather was forced to resign when all of the Fox "journalists" have said and claimed far worse birther crap about Obama and they are all still there. I could go on and on. There are two sides but your side abuses their power to ruin careers and lives for far less and their remarks on the other hand are far worse.
Boo Hoo! The liberals are fighting back that must make you so scared! You better call your mommy!
Bull, see my big Cabbie Speech on strawman tactics, a favorite of your drama llama society...
When I was a kid, my mother managed to school me with the "two wrongs don't make a right lesson." I'll pass it on even though my Democratic relatives attended an interracial marriage of another close relative, and the Republican half boycotted it. Some of those same Democrats do live in mansions, but a couple were agitating for educational equality, and I even wound up with some Afro-American cousins as well...
You need to re-define hate speech as an idea that is something other than what you don't want to hear...
And Sed, I see some of the right wingnut crowd have switched from "birther" chants to charges that President Obama is part of a "Chicago Mob." Did they get that idea from the Humbaugh®?
Naw, the righties have been down on Chicago since the beginning of the Obama Presidency. In general they hate the NE and the far West. It's fascinating since Chicago really is one of the nicest, most polite cities in this country (just freezing beyond tolerance in the winter).
Bye Ms. Diller, we were there and we loved ya! Another light has gone out of this world.
Damn. I'm getting old. It seems like every week someone I know passes! RIP Phyllis.
(Sigh*) Me too.
My favorite Phyllis Diller one-liner dates back to the brouha over the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in the Senate during the Bush 41 era...
Our grand lady noted that Thomas's first legal decision would "be deciding whether 'harass' is one word or two."
Pass me a Kleenex, please...
Thanks, Cabbie!
Ahhh! The *great ones. Got'a love them.
Chat Everett passed July 24, 2012. I did not salute him then, because of another star's death. No disrespect intented.
Chat Everett of Medical Center fame died July 24, 2012 at age 75. May God be pleased with him.
Here is a video interview with Todd Akin part 1. (Video middle of the page.)
In listening to this video I see the conservative mind at full throttle as this most conservative partner of Paul Ryan, Congressman Akin, confidently asserts his arrived at conclusions. Conclusions which do not take any notice of problem areas or complaints by the citizenry, which caused the federal government to overrule the states on some major decisions to date.
It's like Mr. Akin went to bed one night with the states in charge of the citizenry, and woke up the next morning one hundred years later to find the federal government had take over certain state rights responsibilities! (Example: listen at 6:09 in the video to Akin "take" on voting rights and civil rights, it as if he missed the whole Jim Crow 60's south!)
Start with these Chris and team
http://www.juancole.com/2012/08/anonymous-billionaires-are-stealing-your-election-with-attack-ads.html
http://www.raceforiran.com/how-washington%E2%80%99s-determination-to-dominate-iran-corrodes-u-s-standing-in-the-middle-east-lessons-from-bahrain#comment-88468
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/08/state-dept-defines-settler-violence-as-terrorism.html
Chris on the congressional freshmen swimming naked in Israel. The bigger issue is that these trips were privately funded "excursions". I thought those privately funded trips to foreign nations were stopped with new legislation after the Bob Ney/Abramoff scandal. When is someone going to talk about these "privately funded excursions" to a foreign nation. When will someone talk about this. Not the naked swimming the trips paid to Israel by Aipac affiliations. Thought that hanky panky had been stopped
Bolton, Kagans, Max Boot, Elliot Abrams are all looking to attack Iran...not just Bolton. Feith, Wurmers and the rest of the WMD's in Iraq team are pushing for a war with Iran from the shadows
Chris are you or any of your people going to dig a bit deeper into the Congress freshman and staff swimming naked in the Sea of Galilee issue. Not the naked part but in the Politico article it states that the trips were privately subsidized. Remember after the Abramoff/Ney scandal rules were passed in congress that states "member and staff participation in officially connected (this trip was allegedly a fact finding mission) travel that is in any way planned, organized, requested or arranged by a lobbyist is prohibited" Thought this hanky panky was supposed to stop. Are you going to find out who paid for these trips, how much was spent etc etc. Are you going to dig or just talk about these congress folks and staff getting naked?