On the Environment: Romney and Hannity Share a Dirty Joke 2/2

by Nomad

In Part One, we examined Mitt Romney and Fox News' Sean Hannity sharing a few laughs at President Obama's expense. 

In the friendly chat, they mentioned Obama's remark that he stood for progress while Romney represented only "dirty air and dirty water." 

Hannity snidely asked Romney,"Do you want dirty air, Governor? I didn't hear you in the course of the campaign talk about dirty air and dirty water. Is that your plan?" 

What none of us heard in the campaign was Romney's relatively-recent alliance with the Koch brothers (and all the pollution that they create). That topic was something that Fox News conscientiously avoided. 

Surprisingly, there's still a little more mining to be done on this story. It requires us to shift direction.

Jake and Rupert

The private joke between Hannity and Romney about the environment works both directions. When it comes to the environment, if Mitt Romney's chummy relationship with major polluter (and all around toxic) Koch Brothers brings the candidate a giggle, then the owner of News Corporation must have a few reasons to cackle, chortle and guffaw as well.

As everybody knows, Fox News is a part of that Argus-eyed monster, News Corporation which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Most people mistakenly think of Rupert Murdoch as a media mogul and this is not strictly true. Murdoch is also an oil man.

On the Environment: Romney and Hannity Share a Dirty Joke 1/2

by Nomad

During times of extreme stress, it's always nice to see a person like Mitt Romney cut loose and have a good chuckle among his friends.  
We see far too little of this but it does make you wonder what kinds of things actually tickle Mitt's funny bone.
Here’s a exchange between Sean Hannity, Fox News host, and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney from May 8 2012.

HANNITY: It's pretty clear now, I think, in many ways, what the Obama campaign has planned. They can't run on their record, I make -- I contend they can't run on their record. So, they're going to -- they're going to use a lot of class warfare. There's been a lot of rhetoric that's been thrown around.

Let me show you, for example, this is -- like, you know, bad it's gotten. And it's very early. We still have six months to go. This is what the president said about the Republicans' plan. I just want you to hear it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, OCT. 17, 2011)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: My plan says we're going to put teachers back in the classroom, construction workers back to work to rebuilding America, rebuilding our schools, tax cuts for small businesses, tax cuts for hiring veterans, tax cuts if you give your worker a raise.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: That's my plan.

And then you got their plan, which is -- let's have dirtier air, dirtier water.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Is that -- do you want dirty air, Governor? I didn't hear you in the course of the campaign talk about dirty air and dirty water. Is that your plan?

ROMNEY: I think the only dirty air and dirty water is coming out of that clip that you saw of the president.

(LAUGHTER)

And that, my friends, is just an example of the kind of side-splitting humor that we will have to look forward to should Mitt Romney ever become president.

Firstly any time a man like Hannity moans about the amount of campaign rhetoric that is being “thrown around,” you may expect an mind-bending blur from hypocrisy to amusing irony.

University Students Should Remember in November

________________

Please feel free to copy, and re-post wherever you think it will do the most good. Thanks.
Also take a look at this graphic. Shocking, isn't it? 

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The Strange and Unnecessary Lies of Mitt Romney

by Nomad

A Presidential History of Truth

I suppose all of us are, by now, used to politicians bending, twisting, spinning and throttling the truth. 

Before our current president, there was George W. Bush who looked at truth like a butcher examines a side of beef before knife hits the flesh. He seemed to think the truth needed a lot of trimming and only about half was fit for public consumption.

Bill Clinton looked right into the camera lens and told the American people "I did not have sex with that woman" without so much as blinking a watery blue eye. Later he fell back on his personal- or perhaps a sort of hillbilly- definition of sex. ("That's not sex. We were just a-playin and a-foolin'")

The lies of George H. W. Bush are possibly some of the most shocking in American history but because he was so successful at covering most of them up we may never know the truth. His involvement in the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy assassination, the naughty things he did with the CIA, and so many other exploits will require quite a monstrous backhoe to uncover them all. 

A Closer Look at the Swing States Obama Must Win: Nevada

by Nomad

Back in February of this year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won by a substantial margin over his Republican rivals in the Nevada caucus. Referring to the state’s economic woes in his speech, he told the people of the Silver State,

"Mr President, America has had enough of your kind of help.”

For some voters, the remark must have hit home. Nevada was hit hard by the economic meltdown and both its once prosperous gaming and construction industries went into free fall. At 14 percent, Nevada has the nation’s highest unemployment. If that weren’t bad enough, the state has seen the steepest drop in home values. 

Obviously Romney’s game plan is to exploit the issue of the slow economic recovery and the perception that the president has failed to deliver on putting the economy back to together. 

And Now for Something Completely Different...

by Nomad

I thought I would offer you something exotic on this Sunday afternoon. A break from the grimy political scene. I'd much prefer to put a little music in your soul today. I stumbled across this Youtube video and it seemed so wondrous that I thought my faithful, patient readers might also enjoy it.

First some background. That UFO-shaped instrument is akin to a steel drum only inverted. It is called a "hang" and although the musicians are street performers (very talented ones) the hang is not a cheap to purchase. (Nevertheless I want one really really bad.) The reason they are so expensive is because they are manufactured by one Swiss firm by hand. I suppose they are each hand tuned, but that's just a guess. I do know that in order to have one you have to go to Switzerland to pick it up. That right there would add to the cost. I saw one on e-bay selling for.. grip your armrest, 8000 clams. Used. Oh, that's enough information. Here are three songs played on the Hang drum. 

Hangdrum Performance By James Winstanley & Daniel James Waples  shot in Arambol, Goa, India by Suzi & Rakesh Kashyap, Shimla

Puppet Masters Koch Brothers and Pinocchio Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney's nose gets longer and longer

by Nomad

Once again, the American public is witness to the folly of the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United decision. The Brothers Koch recently launched a $6.1 million attack ad against the Obama administration which quickly received a "Pants on Fire" rating from PolitiFact.

The factchecker at the Washington Post had this to say about the ad which was sponsored by the Americans for Prosperity - an astroturf organization created and heavily-funded by the Koch Brothers.

Our Factchecker deemed this ad false, relying on since-debunked claims about the stimulus. “One can certainly raise questions about how stimulus funding was used and whether it was effective,” he wrote. “But there is no excuse for these kinds of ads, which take facts out of context or simply invent them.”

Out of respect for my readers and the truth, I will only give you a link to the original ad. Falsehoods when repeated often enough bear a similarity to the facts, especially when the lies come come various sources. That itself is the very reason why the Supreme Court's decision was such a disaster and a blot on the America's judicial history.

Apologies to British Petroleum

Feel free to download, repost and distribute.

A loyal Nomadic Politics commenter and reader, JF,  has also supplied these links to add to the poster. Thanks so much.

http://www.examiner.com/articl... 

Here is a you-tube copy of the apology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... 

Oil Leak in the Gulf-Amazing, Devastating Photography 

http://planetgreen.discovery.c...

The Conspiracy Theory, 9-11, and Susan Lindauer

Susan Lindauer

by Nomad
Each of us has a personal limit as to what we are prepared to believe or not. Every religion, every news report and documentary and every conspiracy theory continually probes those limits of our capacity to believe. 

The Theory of Conspiracy

The term, conspiracy theory, is nowadays used as pejorative or dismissive term. 

Without any further discussion, a State Department official or a reporter might say with a smirk, "Well, you know what conspiracy theorists are going to say..."

Because aren't people who believe in conspiracy theories unbalanced or gullible or just plain ignorant? 

But the idea that there could be an alternative version of history is not something that strikes me as strictly incredible. Call it a conspiracy theory, if you will, but giving it that title doesn't make it any more or less invalid. As any scientist will tell you, not all theories are equal but then that's what makes them theories. Each of us has to weigh the evidence in our own minds, to measure it against our own personal sense of reality, and to accept or reject the unconventional hypothesis. 

A Message to Women

Feel free to download and distribute. 

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All about Rob: Will Portman be Romney's Running Mate?

by Nomad

Finding a person that doesn’t outshine the bland Mitt Romney was always going to be something of a problem. Even his supporters would admit that, for all his ambition, charismatic is not one of Romney’s great attributes.

Recently, he has been compared to a modern day Don Draper, but with half the looks and none of the charm or sex appeal. That just leaves a head of good hair, a strong jaw and the determination to do whatever it takes to get ahead of the competition.

So the question for the Republicans boiled down to how do you out-vanilla vanilla? The answer, as far as the GOP was concerned was Republican Senator Rob Portman from Ohio . According to the Washington Post:

Two thirds of the state party chairmen and Republican National committeemen and women polled by the online news site BuzzFeed said that the Ohio senator was the most likely and best pick to be Romney’s running mate.

That’s not to say it’s a done deal of course. Still, it’s only fair to ask: who is Mr. Portman and what, besides colorlessness, does Romney like about him?

Portman’s resume seems pretty straightforward.

Remember in November- Hispanic Americans

Here's some information about why the Hispanic vote could play a crucial role in this years election.

In an op/ed piece at Politico, Martin Frost asks: Can GOP ever win Latino vote?

Romney captured the Cuban vote in the Florida primary, this doesn’t mean the GOP can win Latino votes this fall. Unlike other Latino voters, Cuban-Americans are reliably Republican.

The vast majority of Latinos in other states, however, are not from Cuba. Many are from Mexico, as well as Central America and Puerto Rico. Even in Florida, there is now a significant number of non-Cuban Latinos, who tend to vote Democratic.

Second, assuming Romney is the Republican nominee, he has a lot of ground to make up with Latinos after being pushed far to the right on the immigration issue during the early primaries and caucuses.

Many Latinos are culturally conservative, patriotic and remarkably entrepreneurial. On paper, this sounds like fertile territory for the GOP. But once Latinos have heard the GOP’s strong anti-immigrant rhetoric, they may well stop listening to anything else Republicans have to say.

Rupert Murdoch, Ratings and The Yellow Journalism of Fox News 2/2

Roger Ailes, President of Fox News

by Nomad

In the first part of a two-part series which was first posted at Politicalgates earlier this year, we examined the intricate and intimidating Murdoch connections and how watching Fox News apparently makes you more ignorant than watching no news at all.

In spite of the near continual boasting at Fox News, some (real) reporters have dared to question the Fox News ratings. Their suspicions were aroused by the simple fact that the numbers made little sense. Was it actually plausible?

How is it, they wonder, that Fox News can be so consistently in the lead despite their obvious niche programming focus on a narrow segment of the viewing audience. The decidedly right-of-center bias of Fox News corresponds to a rather small portion of the national electorate. Republican favorability has been hovering in the mid-twenties for years. So how does this negligible slice of the market translate into such a disproportionate ratings advantage?

Rupert Murdoch, Ratings and The Yellow Journalism of Fox News 1/2

(Originally posted at PoliticalGates earlier this year.)

by Nomad

At the turn of the century, writers searching for the soul of America looked at the country through the new lenses and found much to criticize. While the nation had become a world power with a great navy and mounting wealth, the journalists sought to prove that much of the wealth was gained through cheap labor that kept the laboring class subservient, poor and unhealthy.

Millionaires... had developed a powerful economy enjoyed by the few. What rights should workers have? What education should be afforded child laborers? What quality and safety were afforded the working class in their homes, their food? Through the lens of these news ideologies, early twentieth century journalists re-examined the relationships among politicians, business tycoons, and laborers.

The Public Press, 1900-1945: The History of American Journalism, by Leonard Ray Teel

That quote refers to a time over a hundred years ago - fondly called the Progressive Era- and yet what has changed since that golden age of journalism? 

In some ways, America as a nation is stuck in the right-turn lane.  

A full century has passed and the battle between the wealthy- now super-wealthy- and the middle laboring class- now called the 99%- has re-commenced. Or has it ever really ended? 
One essential difference is, of course, the state of American journalism- the once disinterested crusader for the people’s interests. The press- along with the promise of reform it once represented- has been absorbed into the system and what's left when the capitalists got through with it is, well,  Fox News and CNN.

Beyond Flip-Flopping: Is Romney Just a Liar?

By Nomad

Here we are with only 193 days before the election night and Mitt Romney appears to have the Republican nomination wrapped up. This hellishly long vetting process, with endless, needless debates and primaries run amok, has been an inglorious examination of a variety of political failures. 

From Newt Gingrich's impossible pomposity and Rick Santorum's often unnerving tendency to sound as tolerant as your average Iranian mullah, to Rick Perry's bout with unexpected amnesia in mid-sentence.  

Quote Smackdown: Ann Coulter vs. Stephen Hawking

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If you like this post, feel free to repost or retweet. Thanks. 

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"Nobody Could Have Predicted it": Bush Administration's Shocking 911 Lie

                Condoleezza Rice

by Nomad

During a May 16, 2002 press briefing, speaking about the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters:

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking."

This defense was used repeatedly by the administration and few reporters never seemed to bother to question it. 

According to one source, 

White House spokesman Tony Fratto showed that Rice's talking point had legs. Spoon-fed last month by Fox News anchor Jon Scott's suggestion that "nobody was thinking that there’d be terrorists flying 767s into buildings at that point," Fratto reliably coughed up the laughably discredited sound bite:

"That’s true. I mean, no one could have anticipated that kind of attack - or very few people."

Asteroid Mining Enterprise: Billion Dollar Boondoggle or Breakthrough to the Future?

by Nomad

Remember this date. Today- April 24 2012- could be the day that the commercial exploitation of outer space began in earnest. No, seriously.

Speculation along those lines has had the Net buzzing for the last week or so. Planetary Resources Inc., founded earlier this year,  will be making a formal announcement of its plans at an event Tuesday in Seattle. Things are somewhat vague with an earlier press release stating only that the proposed operation   would "overlay two critical sectors—space exploration and natural resources—to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP" and "help ensure humanity's prosperity."

Evangelical Religion’s War on Common Sense

by Nomad

Hostility and Antipathy

During their failed runs for the Republican nomination in this year’s presidential election, GOP candidates such as Gingrich and Santorum, made the shocking claim that Obama was waging a war on religion. That sort of nonsense might play well to the average Fox News watchers who seem to be fully prepared to swallow any anti-Obama rhetoric, no matter how preposterous.

Naturally this meme was picked up by conservative religious leaders, eager to make a name for their crusade against the evils of secularism and the horrors of the separation of Church and State.

As Mother Jones reports:

Gary Marx, the executive director of Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition, sent out a fundraising letter this month urging people to sign a petition fighting Obama's "war on religion," writing: "The Obama Administration's actions are evidence of a pattern of hostility towards religious institutions and an antipathy to uphold and protect the nation's most fundamental founding principles."

Despite showing precious little in the way of evidence of Obama's hostility, apart from not taking orders from the Church, people like Marx are allowed to promote this claim without anybody challenging them. 

Mitt Romney and the NRA: The Conning of the GOP Voters

by Nomad

Damn the historical record! To hell with what I said in my past. I'll say anything! I'll do anything! I am severely conservative, Darn it.

That seems to be the line that Mitt Romney thinks will carry him to the White House. And it's entertaining for your average progressive liberal to watch Romney attempt to con his own party into believing he has somehow actually changed- reversed every one of his positions.

The latest scrubbing redacting and erasing involves the National Rifle Association (NRA). Speaking National Rifle Association's annual convention in St. Louis with an estimated 70,000 people in attendance, Romney last weekend made every attempt to win the hearts and minds of gun owners.

America's Dystopian Future? You Have Been Warned.

Artwork by Masakatsu Sashie

by Nomad

It's getting increasingly more difficult to decide what is science fiction and what is the real world. I stumbled across a couple of stories that might give us an unpleasant foreshadowing of things to come if things keep going the way they are now. One note of caution, however: this kind of speculation is not for the paranoid.

Discover Magazine has a story ( Seeing Crime Before It Happens ) that could have been snatched from the Philip K. Dick novel, "Minority Report.

Ladies, Listen Carefully: A Free Poster

I based this poster design on some of the old war posters.  I thought that don't-mess-with-this-gal look fit the bill quite nicely. "Bent on revenge" is how I would describe that expression on her face. This poster is free for anybody who wants to download it. 


There are only 203 days left until the next election. Some people are counting on the public (and especially women) to be forgetful or distracted by the time November rolls around. It's possible but I hope not. 

Who Said That?: The Quote Game

Time for a little game. A Sunday afternoon diversion. I have collected these quotes by the famous and the infamous and I realized that without more information, it's becoming harder and harder to know the difference. 

Take your best shot. The answers are given at the end. 

1. Today Christians ... stand at the head of [this country]... I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit ... We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the *poison of immorality* which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of *liberal excess* during the past ... (few) years.