DOWNLOADS: (156)

PLAYS: (401)

Embed

Please... let it be Paul Ryan - Romney to announce running mate Saturday in Va.:

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) -- Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will announce his running mate Saturday morning in Norfolk, Va., his campaign said Friday night.

The short list of candidates - if there is one - is believed to include Ohio Rep. Rob Portman, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan. In a statement issued Friday night, the Romney campaign said the running mate would be revealed at 9 a.m. EDT at the Nauticus Museum. Romney is kicking off a four-day bus tour through swing states.

Speculation has focused in recent days on Ryan, the seven-term congressman. Conservative pundits have been urging Romney to choose Ryan in large part because of his authorship of a House-backed budget plan that seeks to curb overall entitlement spending and changes Medicaid into a voucher-like system to save costs.

Pawlenty was maintaining his Saturday schedule campaigning for Romney in New Hampshire, an official close to Pawlenty's political team said. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak ahead of the formal announcement.

The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial on Thursday, praised Ryan as a strong choice for Romney: "The case for Mr. Ryan is that he best exemplifies the nature and stakes of this election. More than any other politician, the House budget chairman has defined those stakes well as a generational choice about the role of government and whether America will once again become a growth economy or sink into interest-group dominated decline."

Romney's choice comes as he tries to repair an image damaged by negative Democratic advertising and shift the trajectory of a campaign that's seen him lose ground to President Barack Obama. Read on...

UPDATE: It appears my wish may have come true and that Romney is going to pick Ryan. I guess we'll see once the announcement is made in the morning. In the mean time, here's the crew over at MSNBC pretending that Ryan's budget policies don't matter all that much because as David Gregory let us know, some in the Republican party consider him a "visionary." If anyone wants a preview of what Meet the Press is likely to look like this Sunday, I'd say you've got one with this late night coverage of Romney's potential announcement of Ryan as his VP from MSNBC. Video below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (376)

PLAYS: (1013)

Embed

Here we go again. Earlier in the week we had Joe Klein repeating this nonsense. Now it was Chuck Todd filling in for Chris Matthews on his weekend show, making the claim that the Obama campaign is somehow “Swiftboating” Mitt Romney.

TODD: Dan, we know that this is, it feels right out of the 2004 Karl Rove playbook. In fact I think Charlie Cook wrote earlier this week that Karl Rove ought to get royalties from the Obama campaign on what they're doing. Essentially, they're Swiftboating Romney.

And Dan Rather agreed with him. I don't expect any better out of Gloria Borger or Kathleen Parker who will gladly repeat Republican talking points ad nauseum, but after what the Bush campaign did to him while the Swiftboat attacks were going on against John Kerry, you'd think we'd get a little more honesty out of Rather, and some push back as to why what the Obama campaign is doing with the Bain attacks is not the same as the attacks on Kerry's military record. Instead he was happy to play along and help Todd compare the attack ads to Karl Rove as well.

Kathleen Parker goes on to carry some water for the dishonest so-called “fact checker” Glenn Kessler over at the Washington Post who lied and claimed there was nothing to the attacks on Bain Capital, even discounting the other reporting from journalists at his same paper. For some background on why no one should be calling him a “fact checker” on anything, I'd recommend reading Marcy Wheeler's post about him from earlier this week before anyone else holds him up as some “journalist” who can be counted on to tell the truth: Yesterday’s Some-Sayers Have Become Today’s Fact-Checkers. Just go read the whole thing but she's got a very long list going back to the George W. Bush years on how Kessler's been doing this same sort of thing for a very long time now. All things are not equal when you have one side continually just making stuff up out of whole cloth and the other side attacking you for things that are true.

And all of them on the panel this week were completely dismissive of what a nasty, dishonest, mean spirited presidential campaign Mitt Romney has run from day one, but oh my goodness, don't dare let the Obama campaign run any nasty ads attacking Mitt Romney, or voters might not think he's a nice guy any more and there's going to be blow back. Funny how that only seems to apply to one side with our Villagers in the beltway media.

DOWNLOADS: (191)

PLAYS: (776)

Embed

During what's been one of the nastier, most expensive, fact-free and divisive presidential elections we've seen from Republicans, whether it was Mitt Romney going out and carpet-bombing his opponents with negative ads during the primary race, or him lying non-stop now that we're early into the primary season, it seems the talking heads in our corporate media are full of campaign advice for the Obama administration. And it generally consists of what we heard this Wednesday on CNN's The Situation Room from the likes of Gloria Borger, which is don't blame George W. Bush for the current economic problems we're still facing, or it might look like you're "whining."

I know why Republicans would prefer to ignore the fact that Bush ever existed and don't want him out on the campaign trail. It seems the likes of Borger and her ilk are happy to do the same as well by playing the role of concern troll and warning of dire consequences if heaven forbid the Obama campaign goes negative on Mitt Romney. Americans seem to have short enough memories as it is. I don't understand how reminding them of the cliff Bush was running the economy off of, or the fact that we've seen record obstruction from Republicans in getting us back out of that ditch could ever amount to a negative, or come across as "whining."

The press has allowed Mitt Romney to go out on the campaign trial and lie constantly, without doing the proper fact checking and rebutting the things he's been saying. As we've noted before here, Steve Benen has been doing a great job of doing that in his series on Romney, the latest of which you can read here: Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXI.

If Borger and her cohorts in the corporate media did a better job of laying out plainly to viewers the sheer number of lies Romney has been out there telling as Benen has been doing, and the fact that Romney wants to return us to the policies that drove our economy into the ditch to begin with, maybe President Obama wouldn't have to do so much "whining" out on the campaign trail. Borger seems to think that the Obama campaign should just universally disarm, because heaven forbid we can't have the voters thinking he's not nice.

Borger brought this up in the context of James Carville having some advice for the Obama campaign about what their message ought to be on the campaign trail and how they should be talking about their vision for the future. I don't understand how that's somehow mutually exclusive to continuing to remind voters about the economic ditch the Republican Party put this country in during Bush's time in office. If we'd had a recession of the magnitude under a Democrat's watch that we had under Bush, you know damn well the Republicans would be running on exactly that if the tables were turned and I don't think we'd see Borger say they were whining while doing it.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (154)

PLAYS: (1124)

Embed

While discussing how the Mitt Romney campaign is going to respond to Newt Gingrich winning the South Carolina Republican primary race and how it was he managed to win there, we got this bit of infinite wisdom shared with us by one of CNN's panelists, Republican “strategist” Alex Castellanos on how Mittens can play the “tough guy” just like Gingrich did during the debates leading into this third primary race.

CASTELLANOS: There's more to it than that you know. We don't know what a president will be faced with. You want somebody in that chair who can handle big things. Newt Gingrich got attacked. He demonstrated tremendous strength. Mitt Romney, next time somebody accuses him of closing down a steel mill should say “Yeah, I'm that guy and you know what? I'd do it again. I'd hate to do it... I'd hate to do it, it would hurt, but somebody needs to go to Washington and I think I can replace most of these buildings in here with like three good web sites.”

We've got to change this country dramatically . He's that kind of guy. He does transformational things.

I don't know about anyone else but the kind of “transformation” that Castellanos is talking about here is not exactly the kind most Americans think is good for our country. If shutting down steel mills, outsourcing jobs to China, raiding pension funds, slashing wages, busting unions and lining your pocket while doing it is something he thinks Romney ought to be bragging about, I just wonder what anyone is smoking that would ever hire this guy.

If he really believes it's good advice that Romney should be playing the tough guy when it comes to shutting down industries in America and putting people out of work during his time at Bain Capital, someone's overpaying him to manage their political campaign if he can actually find work other than being an overpaid right-wing hack at CNN (or sadly a guest on Meet the Gregory a.k.a. Karl Rove's dance partner as well) these days.

DOWNLOADS: (287)

PLAYS: (4785)

Embed

It seems we just got round two with Ron Paul on CNN, again being asked about those 20-year-old racist newsletters that were published in his name. Ali Velshi pushed him on the topic this Tuesday morning. This time around, it was Gloria Borger repeatedly asking Paul about the newsletters until he finally decided he had enough of it and walked off the set with her.

As noted in our previous post here, Ron Paul's taking fire from all sides on this, but given the fact that he's rising in the polls in some of the early primary states, I'm not sure how Paul thought he was going to avoid answering questions about those newsletters, especially given his past associations with groups like Stormfront and The John Birch Society. Here's more from our own David Neiwert from his blog, Orcinus from back in 2007 on Paul's brand of right wing extremism and with more on those newsletters and what was in them. Here's a portion of that post:

And it's equally important to understand that he hasn't changed his beliefs appreciably in the interim. Most of his positions today -- including his opposition to the Iraq war -- are built on this same shoddy foundation of far-right conspiracism and extremist belief systems, particularly long-debunked theories about the "New World Order," the Federal Reserve and our monetary system, the IRS, and the education system.

Much of this has already been documented by Sara here and here, as well as by phenry at dKos (who has more here) and by Off the Kuff, which also notes Paul's kookery on Social Security. [...]

The same is generally true, I think, of Ron Paul. While I think the evidence that Paul is incredibly insensitive on racial issues -- ranging from a racially incendiary newsletter to his willingness to appear before neo-Confederate and white-supremacist groups -- is simply overwhelming, it isn't as simple to make the case that he is an outright racist, since he does not often indulge in hateful rhetoric -- and when he has, he tries to ameliorate it by placing it in the context of what he thinks are legitimate policy issues. (Hansen, Symms and Chenoweth were also skilled at this.)

To be fair, Paul has written on the subject of racism and seemingly denounced it. But take a close look at his argument [...]

This is, in fact, just a repackaging of a libertarian argument that multiculturalism is the "new racism" -- part of a larger right-wing attack on multiculturalism. This is, of course, sheer Newspeak: depicting a social milieu that simultaneously respects everyone's heritage -- that is to say, the antithesis of racism -- as racist is simply up-is-down, Bizarro Universe thinking.

If Paul's express views on racism are less than convincing, then the piece that appeared under his name in 1992 about black crime, as reported by the Houston Chronicle, was simply damning. The ugly smear intended by the rhetoric in that case was unmistakably racist. Paul has since claimed it was ghostwritten and he wasn't paying enough attention, but that doesn't explain why he continued to defend those views to a reporter four years later, in 1996 [...]

What Paul never explained was that one of the primary sources for this information about black crime came from Jared Taylor, the pseudo-academic racist whose magazine American Renaissance was at the time embarked on a long series of tirades on the subject (the June 1992 issue was primarily devoted to the subject; the statistic claiming that 85 percent of black men in D.C. have been arrested appears in the August issue), the culmination of which was Taylor's later book, The Color of Crime, which made similarly unsupportable claims about blacks.

This sort of unspoken dalliance -- an uncredited transmission of ideas, as it were -- takes place all the time with far-right politicos like Ron Paul. It's one of the reasons to be concerned about any traction they may actually gain within the mainstream.

Lots more there so go read the rest. The fact that the corporate media is finally starting to ask Paul about his views in interviews like the one above shows if nothing else, they apparently are taking his rise in the polls seriously. I expect we'll see them continue to push him on these newsletters for some time to come. They were published in his name. Saying he doesn't know what was in them doesn't let him off the hook for their content.

Transcript below the fold via CNN.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (303)

PLAYS: (6763)

Embed

Just before the start if GOP presidential debate in Nevada, Erin Burnett and her panel had a little bit of trouble broadcasting from their outdoor studio as they were drowned out by the Occupy Wall Street protesters and chants of "Banks got bailed out! We got sold out!"

After TeaNN's relentless promotion of the AstroTurf "tea party" and Burnett's derisive treatment of the protesters during her opening show, I can't think of a more fitting bunch to have to put up with this, other than anyone from Fox "News."

DOWNLOADS: (218)

PLAYS: (970)

Embed

Here's an example of why no Democrat or President Obama should ever look to the likes of someone like Michael Gerson for advice on what makes for good campaign messaging. While discussing President Obama now campaigning on raising taxes on the rich, here was some of Gerson's input after Chris Matthews asked him whether he thought it would hurt or help the president in the upcoming election, given that he's “now seen as the guy taking sides against the rich, he says aren't paying taxes.”

GERSON: I'll tell you what. I think the problem is not that he's being to harsh on the rich. I think the problem is he's being irrelevant to the only debate in American politics, which is growth and job creation. He had an anemic plan he brought forward that was largely recycled stuff and then even swamped that plan with now class warfare rhetoric.

People are concerned with Europe in economic decline, with the possibility of a second dip of an American recession. How do we get growth back in this economy? The president's not even speaking to this issue.

After some of the panel acknowledging that anything President Obama has proposed to try to get our economy back on track has been knocked down by Republicans and Chris Matthews talking about how some fairness in our tax system has finally gotten the progressive base animated and supportive of what they're hearing from the president, Matthews went to his “Matthews Meter” for the week, the question being whether “tax the rich” will get Obama votes in 2012. Three of them agreed that it was a smart move that were on the panel this week. Naturally, Gerson disagreed and then pulled out the angry black man card, or if not that, at least the heaven forbid anyone should be angry about the real class warfare we've seen waged on the poor and middle class card.

GERSON: But I think Obama's basic problem here, political problem, is changing his narrative completely. He ran the last time as the candidate of hope, inclusion, progress. Now he's running as the candidate of anger and redistribution. That's not a particularly good Democratic message.

As Andrew Sullivan rightfully pointed out, a large part of the reason the president has finally resorted to just calling out Republicans instead of continuing to try to work with them was because Republicans have obstructed everything President Obama has tried to do and he can't keep running on the meme of bipartisanship because he “looks like Lucy with the football.”

Can I just say amen to Andrew Sullivan here with that statement and for pointing out to Gerson how ridiculous it is to say that President Obama should continue to pretend that Republicans are ever going to work with him on anything. Most of us on the left have been tired of the President continuing to pretend like the Republicans were not the obstructionists they obviously showed themselves to be quite a long time ago, but Gerson apparently thinks it's still worth beating that dead horse here.

Note to Michael Gerson. It's exactly a good Democratic message that we've got horrible income disparity in the United States and asking the rich to pay their fair share and a call for some “shared sacrifice” is a message any Democratic candidate should be running on rather than asking for more austerity measures and tax breaks for the rich, which is apparently the Republican's only plan to supposedly create jobs.

The Republicans' economic policies are nothing but a race to the bottom for what's left of our dwindling middle class and American workers and Gerson's message here pretty well resonates with one group of people, and that's the far right of the Republican Party. And they're not going to do anything to help President Obama get reelected no matter what he says on the campaign trail.

DOWNLOADS: (180)

PLAYS: (909)

Embed

As House Republicans threaten another government shutdown if they don't get some steep cuts in return for disaster relief and as Democrats look like they're finally standing up to the hostage taking, what do we get from David Gergen, Gloria Borger and host Anderson Cooper on CNN? More false equivalencies and the "both sides" are playing politics game.

For a more honest assessment of what's going on, here's more from TPM -- CRUNCH TIME: House GOP Jams Senate With Government Funding Bill, Partisan Budget Cuts For Disaster Aid:

House Republicans closed ranks just after midnight on Friday morning, and passed legislation to avert a government shutdown at the end of the month. The vote tally was 219-203.

But the bill received almost no Democratic support and faces an uncertain future in the U.S. Senate because Republicans have used the funding bill as a vehicle for disaster relief money, and insisted it be paid for by slashing funds for jobs programs Democrats support. Dems say the GOP legislation provides insufficient aid, and sets a dangerous precedent by requiring those funds to be offset with partisan budget cuts.

"The bill the House will vote on tonight is not an honest effort at compromise," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in a statement anticipating its passage. "It fails to provide the relief that our fellow Americans need as they struggle to rebuild their lives in the wake of floods, wildfires and hurricanes, and it will be rejected by the Senate."

A livid Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) told reporters Thursday night "We're fed up with this...we're sick of it, we're tired of it."

Democrats are pushing Republicans to strip the disaster aid provisions from the bill entirely and pass a clean funding bill, and separate, emergency, Senate-passed legislation to provide relief to disaster-stricken regions across the country. At her weekly press conference Thursday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) pointed to a potential compromise. Read on...

UPDATE: It appears that we had some bipartisan objection to the House's hostage taking in the Senate -- Cram It! Senate Dems And Republicans Reject Holding Disaster Aid Hostage.

Gergen and Borger's hackery from CNN last night below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (658)

PLAYS: (3673)

Embed

On this weekend's Chris Matthews Show, Matthews' "Big Question" for the week was this: Of the Republicans running for president, which one offers the best chance of becoming, a great president? The response, mainly crickets by his panelists John Heilemann, Kelly O'Donnell, Gloria Borger. The only one willing to give him an answer was Joe Klein.

His response of what Republican president might end up on Mount Rushmore -- Barack Obama. That's a pretty sad state of affairs with our current field of Republican candidates when all of them were not willing to say anything good about any of them.

And someone should remind Joe Klein that to be an actual Republican these days and not the Villagers imaginary idea of what remains of the Republican Party, you have to be a bat shit crazy ideologue who's not willing to negotiate with anyone on anything if you think there's political gain in it and the public will fall for it.

I'm not any happier than a lot of us with how far both parties have moved to the right and how money is corrupting our political process, but sorry Joe, the party that has run off the cliff with being insane should not have their label attached to our current president.

I'd like for him to be further to the left like the rest of us, and as aggravated as I have gotten with what's he's been willing to concede to the other side and with validating a lot of their talking points, I would not wish having to navigate this current political climate he walked into and the Congress he's been forced to deal with on my worst enemy. And today's current Republican Party does not deserve to have anyone who is even half-way sane tagged with their label. They deserve to be called out for the zealots and TeaBirchers they are that have taken over their party.

DOWNLOADS: (287)

PLAYS: (845)

Embed

I'm with Digby... watching this stuff just makes me want to go have a tall drink as well. Dana Bash, Ed Henry, John King and Gloria Borger were discussing how the policy debate was going on raising the debt ceiling and on the 2012 budget, and the Republicans refusal to raise taxes. Ed Henry goes from saying that the President needs to get his base excited if he hopes to be reelected in 2012 and in the next breath, talks about how having liberal Democrats mad at him "is not a bad thing."

I think our beltway Villagers love to push this stuff just to aggravate the hell out of people at the left wing blogs and anyone that writes at or reads them. In what world would Ed Henry or anyone else in our corporate media be talking about how it's a good thing for a Republican to piss off their conservative base and conservative Congressional members and that it would somehow help their chances for reelection?

Whoever it is at the White House that talked to Ed Henry has their head on backwards because liberal Congressional Democrats are trying to keep the President from giving in too much to Republicans and allowing them to destroy our fragile economy, which is obviously the Republican's plan. They'd like nothing more than to see us in another recession because they think it helps their chances for reelection, because they can then blame the bad economy on the Democrats.

And if anyone doesn't think they're crass enough to do it, just look at how they attacked Democrats the last election for the health care bill as an assault on Medicare. Who wants to let a few facts get in the way when you can do some fearmongering instead?

I don't know what the President is going to say tomorrow, but if he concedes too much to Republicans, I think he's going to help them get their wish with tanking the economy again. The center of our political debate in this country has moved so far to the right, it's ridiculous. It would really be nice to see some push back in the other direction and the hostage taking by Republicans called out for what it is so the blame can lay at their feet if their demands harm the economy, which they will.

And as Digby noted in her post, Chambliss has not agreed to tax increases:

Chambliss has not actually signed on to "modest tax increases" he's signed on to "raising revenue" which is not the same thing in this debate and relies on magical thinking about loopholes --- and tax cuts!

She's got more on that here -- Raising revenue without raising taxes. We need to be beating back at these Republican memes. We don't have a spending problem. We've got a revenue problem. And lowering taxes on the rich does nothing to reduce our deficit; it makes it worse.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »