Month: October 2012

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

One criteria undecided voters must consider in this presidential election are the people who will influence policy direction in either a second term for Obama or during a Romney presidency. Ultimately, we are not just electing an individual but an administration. Assessing the likely character of an administration is especially vital when determining which candidate would be the best commander and chief.

I suspect that even after tomorrow night’s foreign policy debate, since Romney is the challenger, his behind the scenes advisers are largely unknown to undecided voters. Perhaps undecided voters (yes they do exist!) have not given this a moment’s thought.

Hence, when discussing the presidential election with any undecided voters who are your friends, colleagues or relatives, you may want to inform them of a few pertinent items.  
Mitt Romney’s campaign website identifies twenty-four individuals as “Special Advisers” that he announced on October 6, 2011.  There are also additional individuals not referenced on his campaign website. Reviewing the credentials and track records of these individuals whether acknowledged publicly as advisers or not is instructive. As the July 12, 2012, edition of Foreign Policy magazine reported,

“Out of Romney’s 24 special advisors on foreign policy, 17 served in the Bush-Cheney administration. If Romney were to win, it’s likely that many of these people would serve in his administration in some capacity — a frightening prospect given the legacy of this particular group. The last time they were in government, it was disastrous.”

In September, ABC News reported that eight of Romney’s advisers participated in the Project For A New American Century co-founded by William Kristol in 1997. Some of you may recall this group was hoping for a “Pearl Harbor” in order to flex American muscle in the Persian Gulf and Iraq. This group of neocons exploited 9/11 to justify invading and occupying Iraq, costing America blood and treasure as well as jeopardizing our geopolitical position.

It is disquieting to contemplate any of these people enjoying access, influence and power in a Romney administration just as America is regaining its footing in the world. I’ve summarized six of them below:

Elliot Abrams

Not referenced on Romney’s campaign website but a rumored to be an adviser in a Romney administration. In August, Abrams wrote an article for the Weekly Standard advocating that congress authorize the use of force against Iran.

Abrams was convicted in 1991 for two misdemeanor counts for withholding information from congress during the Iran-Contra affair while serving in the Reagan administration and later pardoned by President George Herbert Walker Bush.

Abrams served in George W. Bush’s administration as a Special Assistant and senior director for democracy, human rights and international operations. Of course the George W. Bush’s administration was infamous for serial abuses of human rights. This is a scary man who has demonstrated throughout his career that he is unfit for public service.

Cofer Black

Listed on Romney’s campaign website and Romney’s chief intelligence adviser. The The Daily Beast profiled Black in its April 11, 2012 edition. While serving in the CIA he famously promised George W. Bush he would deliver Osama Bin Laden’s head on a pike. Bin Laden of course was not eliminated until President Obama’s national security team made it a priority. When Black left government service in 2004 he became the Vice Chairman of the infamous security contractor, Blackwater USA and managed a subsidiary called Total Intelligence Solutions. As some of you may recall, Blackwater USA. Blackwater USA employees repeatedly undermined American diplomatic efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan with immoral and illegal conduct. Black essentially profited handsomely from blood money.

John Bolton

Although not referenced in Mitt Romney’s website as an adviser, David Sanger reported in the May 12, 2012 edition of the New York Times that,

“But what has struck both his advisers and outside Republicans is that in his effort to secure the nomination, Mr. Romney’s public comments have usually rejected mainstream Republican orthodoxy. They sound more like the talking points of the neoconservatives — the “Bolton faction,” as insiders call the group led by John Bolton, the former ambassador to the United Nations. In a stormy tenure in the Bush administration, Mr. Bolton was often arguing that international institutions, the United Nations included, should be routed around because they so often frustrate American interests.”

As with most neocons, Bolton is not inclined to favor the sort of coalition building that Obama has skillfully utilized during his presidency. Bolton was too controversial to be approved by the Senate and President George W. Bush utilized a recess appointment to put make this reckless buffoon America’s UN Ambassador.

Robert Kagan

Listed on Romney’s campaign website. Although Kagan rejects the neoconservative label, he was a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century with William Kristol. Put simply, you are who you associate yourself with, and Kagan’s friends are reckless and crazy war mongers.

Daniel Senor

Listed on Romney’s campaign website, Senor was America’s former spokesman in Iraq and regarded in numerous accounts as a close adviser. In August, the New York Times  reported that,

“In Mr. Senor, Mr. Romney turned to an advocate of neoconservative thinking that has sought to push presidents to the right for years on Middle East policy. (His sister, Wendy Senor Singer, runs the Jerusalem office of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential lobbying organization.)”

In other words, Senor has been another advocate for the sort of reckless foreign policy and philosophy that isolated America diplomatically and undermined our national security.

Jim Talent

Listed on Romney’s campaign website and a former senator from Missouri. Wikipedia reports that,

“Although Talent was not in Congress at the time of the 2002 vote authorizing the war in Iraq, he stated in October 2006 that he would have voted for the war knowing that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Talent did not support a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq until American troops are able to train up an Iraqi army capable of maintaining security within the country.

Talent has written that defense spending should remain at an elevated level, even after all American forces are withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Foreign Policy magazine reports that Talent is rumored to be a Romney’s choice as Secretary of Defense.

Simply put, with a Romney administration, America is more likely to engage in another conflict in the Middle East with increased defense spending when our resources have already been overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, our allies in Europe are in economic disarray and what will replace the old order in the Arab world is still evolving. Now is not the time to elect an untested leader who appears to be malleable to appeasing the extremist foreign policy views within the Republican Party.

So tell any friend, relatives or colleagues who are undecided to please use their heads this November. Our blood and treasure depend on it.

My son asked me to share the below video with you all.  So that maybe you can hear the many voices who will be voting and so that maybe you can help another’s voice be heard this election.

My son, like his sister, takes voting very seriously.  Just the act of voting itself is hard for him.  Holding a pen is not the easiest thing to do.  He fretted last election about his signature on the envelope.  He worried and agonized over every dot that he filled in.  Every measure was met with the same concern of not misunderstanding.  The wording in the measures can be very confusing and misleading.  He didn’t want to be “tricked”.  We attempted to drop the ballots off at the Washington County Election Office but it’s right next to the Sheriff’s office, their lights going and lots of police activity which spooked him so we dropped our votes off elsewhere.  

We talk about GOTV, voting and all the bullying that is going on.  We can not forget just what this voting means…

Our voice being heard.  Even if that voice is hard to hear.  And those are the voices we need to hear the most.  
This week, my son shared a video of a commercial that one of his former post-graduation developmentally and neurological disabled program’s classmate was in.  It’s from the Oregon Council on Developmental Disabilities, Disability Rights Oregon and The Oregon Secretary of State.  It’s very powerful.  More so than ever.  He asked me to pass it along to you all.  

The young woman who says she votes because she cares about her community is his dear friend, Carly.  He wants you all to know just how proud he is of her and all of his classmates who are voting.  So many of us take it for granted.  

My son is 20 and my daughter is 18.  Both are registered Democrats.  Both are compassionate, aware and active.  Both are voting for the first time in a Presidential election.  Both are counting on you to vote as well.  

Vote!

Thank you.

.
BooMan’s story – Obama’s Vision and Foreign Policy [July 15, 2008}

Senator Obama spoke in his speech about George Marshall … so did recently Mitt RMoney in Virginia, also on foreign policy. More about George Marshall, the founding of Israel and President Harry Truman.

Mitt Romney, George Marshall, and Israel-Palestine

(Washington Note) – During a major foreign policy address earlier today at the Virginia Military Institute, GOP presidential candidate Governor Mitt Romney paid tribute to one of the school’s most distinguished graduates, former Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State as well as Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall.

Romney said of Marshall that he “helped to vanquish fascism and then planned Europe’s rescue from despair. His commitment to peace was born of his direct knowledge of the awful costs and consequences of war.”

What he didn’t share about General Marshall was that he vehemently opposed recognizing Israel and instead favored U.N. trusteeship after British withdrawal slated for midnight, the 14th of May, 1948.

 « click for story
Washington's Battle Over Israel's Birth (Washington Post)

As reported in a fascinating historical snippet by the late Richard Holbrooke, who helped organize presidential adviser Clark Clifford’s papers for a co-authored memoir, then-President Harry Truman overruled George Marshall, the secretary of state he “revered” along with “James V. Forrestal, George F. Kennan, Robert Lovett, John J. McCloy, Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson” and did recognize Israel.

I think it’s un-American to try to win an election by rigging the rules so that it’s harder for the other party to get out their vote:

During his keynote speech at an election law symposium at University of Toledo on Friday, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) claimed two recent court decisions restoring early voting on the last three days before the election was “un-American.”

It also makes it harder to accept the outcome of a close election if the other side made your voters stand in long lines. That’s what happened in 2004, and that is what early voting in Ohio is intended to prevent. Let’s have people express their will and let the chips fall where they may. But trying to win by making it hard to vote in densely populated areas is simply cheating. And cheating is supposed to be un-American. In any case, it’s wrong.

George McGovern has passed away at the age of ninety. One of my earliest political memories is of one of my older brothers wearing a McGovern-Shriver shirt. I learned about McGovern, initially, through the jaded and drug-addled writing of Hunter S. Thompson who was a great admirer. Nothing like a good first impression.

Maybe some of the members here who were older than three in 1972 can chime in and provide Sen. McGovern with a good eulogy.

Iran’s uranium enrichment program is a complicated subject, as is the subject of nuclear non-proliferation efforts in general. I find it nearly impossible to write about in a blog format. Yet, I support nuclear non-proliferation efforts, including crippling sanctions on Iran’s economy aimed at reaching a deal that will allow Iran to have a domestic nuclear energy industry but which also satisfies everyone that Iran will not be joining the club of nuclear-armed nations. If Iran is ready to have one-on-one talks with the American government after the election, then I consider that as evidence that the president’s policy has worked very well so far.

The idea is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapons capability without having to resort to war, and to do it in a way that the international community believes in. That means that we need constant verification that Iran is complying with the agreement, but it also means that countries are satisfied that we’re not just trying to effect regime change or revolution in Teheran. It means that we recognize Iran’s right to have a nuclear power industry. And the principles we use must be applicable on a broad scale, not just for Iran. A successful nuclear policy vis-a-vis Iran should be part of a broader, international effort at nuclear disarmament, including in the USA, Russia, China, and Israel.

Within these broad outlines, the Obama administration has been successful without having any kind of breakthrough. Iran has never been so isolated, their currency is in free-fall, their best ally Syria is a mess, and now Iran wants to talk.

The United States and Iran have agreed in principle for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, according to Obama administration officials, setting the stage for what could be a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran.

Of course, the foreign policy debate between Obama and Romney is on Monday, so this announcement is fortuitous and creates real problems for Romney in terms of what kind of tone he wants to take. The Iranians have agreed in principle to meet with Romney, too, should he win the election. Would he blow up that opportunity to score cheap points in a debate?

When you’re working in a political campaign that has a week like the week Sen. Scott Brown’s re-election campaign had this week, generally about the most optimistic statement you’ll hear is,  “Well, at least it’s not the week before Election Day.  This way we’ve at least got some time to turn things around.”  (The fact that “some time” is down to just two weeks is best left unsaid.  No need to depress your colleagues any further.)

Here’s some of what happened to Scott Brown this week:

   
• On Tuesday, the conservative Boston Herald reported the Massachusetts Republican party is paying homeless black people to wear “Obama Supporters for Brown” t-shirts.

   

• At a campaign appearance in Taunton on Wednesday, Brown falsely claimed “A lot of them are paid.  We hear that maybe they pay actors,” when referring to family members of asbestos victims appearing in Warren’s campaign ads.

   

• The latest statewide poll showed Warren’s lead over Brown growing to 9 points as Brown’s favorability rating dropped to 46% while Warren’s rose to 52%.

   

• Republican Sheila Bair—former head of the FDIC and a Bob Dole protege’—has been traveling the country endorsing Republican women running for U.S. Senate; Wednesday she stopped in Boston, Lowell and Worcester to appear with and endorse Brown’s Democratic rival, Elizabeth Warren.

   

• On Friday the story broke that Sprinkler Fitters Local #550 member George Patriarca (his union has endorsed Warren) who’s appeared in a (misleading at best) Brown attack ad has a Facebook page on which he called Warren a “douchebag”, called Pres. Obama a “faggot” and just for good measure made anti-Semitic remarks too.

All this comes on the heels of Warren outpointing Brown in their third televised debate, with Brown getting criticized for referring to “his service in Afghanistan” (two weeks of National Guard duty “in the rear with the gear”) and questions about Brown’s favors for the compounding pharmacy industry just weeks before the co-owner of New England Compounding Center hosted a big fundraiser for Brown’s campaign…and a nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak was traced to the pharmacy.

There are still 17 days until Election Day, and Brown and Warren have one more debate scheduled (Oct. 30).  But if Scott Brown really is nine points behind Elizabeth Warren, he really can’t afford another week like the one that’s just ended.

Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/

At long last:

We’ve reached a new phase in the campaign now where I can begin to look at a few new things to help provide added context to the poll numbers. Before I start here, I want to tell you that I do believe that the average of polls is probably going to be accurate nationally and in individual states. This will probably be truest of the most robust (weighted) averages that take into account individual poll bias and history, like Nate Silver’s analysis. So, if Nate Silver is saying, for example, that Obama is going to lose Florida, I am not going to make up some magic argument for why he is wrong. At most, I’ll show you some reason to hope he’s wrong.

There are two states I want to discuss in that vein today. The first is Nevada. Nate Silver projects that Obama will win the state 50.6%-48.2%. That’s pretty close. I think Obama may very well do much better than that. The reason is, of course, the ground game. It has paid enormous dividends.

The final voter registration report is here. And here’s what’s in it:

– Statewide, Nevada Democrats now have a 90,187 raw vote advantage. And yes, that makes for a 7.17% advantage. Back in March, Democrats only had about a 4% statewide edge. And it was even smaller earlier this year.

– In Washoe County, Republicans’ voter registration edge has narrowed even further. It’s now a mere 1,169 raw votes, or 0.005%. In March, Republicans had a 1.76% edge.

– In Clark County, Democrats are closing with a 127,471 raw vote lead, or a 14.96% advantage. In March, Democrats had an 11.68% advantage countywide.

– In NV-03, Democrats are closing with a 7,066 raw vote lead, or a 2.11% edge. In March, Republicans actually had a tiny 0.01% edge.

– In NV-04, Democrats are closing with a 41,094 raw vote lead, or a 13.27% advantage. In March, Democrats had a 9.91% advantage.

This is the Obama for America machine in action. They absolutely crushed the Republicans in “anytime, anywhere” voter registration, wiping out or reversing GOP advantages in federal and state districts throughout the state. And they are very ready to get these new voters to the polls. What’s unclear is whether or not the pollsters are accounting for this boomlet in their likely voter screens.

That’s also a question people should be asking about in North Carolina. The polls have been looking grim there lately and Nate Silver is only giving Obama a 17% chance of winning the state. That means he probably will not win the state. But let’s take a look at something.

North Carolina began in-person early voting on Thursday, and oh what a difference a day makes. In one day, over 150,872 people voted in-person, which is the Democrats preferred method of early voting in North Carolina. The party registration numbers were upended. As of Wednesday, registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats 52 percent to 27 percent and as of Thursday, Democrats outnumber Republicans 47 percent to 35 percent. But before we call North Carolina for Obama, registered Democrats had healthy early vote leads in 2008 and 2004.

North Carolina has an innovation unavailable elsewhere. In-person early voting is called “one stop” voting in the state because a person can register and vote all in one stop at an early voting polling location. Over 100,000 people took advantage of this in 2008. Unregistered voters don’t even make registered voter poll screens, much less likely voter screens. It will be worthwhile to watch if one stop voting moves the North Carolina polling as early voting progresses.

In this case, you can look back at 2008 and the 100,000 voters who registered to vote when they went to vote, and you can assume that at least that many people will do the same this year. And none of those voters should get through a likely voter screen.

To be more precise, only those newly registered voters who have already voted (since voting started on Wednesday) are going to get counted in polls. None of them are likely to have been contacted in the polls we’re seeing today, and if they were, they weren’t counted because they weren’t registered.

Everyone knows that Obama has the superior ground game but the advantage they can get out of their ground game varies according to the rules in each state. In North Carolina, anyone who is eighteen can be dragged off the street and brought to a polling place where they can register and vote. That makes having a stronger ground game a much bigger advantage than it is here in Pennsylvania where we have no early voting and registration closed over two weeks ago.

So, I will be keeping my eye on early voting numbers in a few states and I’ll be making comparisons to 2008 to see if Obama is performing better or worse than he did last time around. Some states are more likely to surprise the pollsters than others, and Nevada and North Carolina are at the top of that list.

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

On October 17th, Martin Longman, the talented proprietor of the excellent community blog, Booman Tribune had a post entitled “Romney the Destabilizer”. His post referenced recent reports that Romney was encouraging CEO’s to scare their employees into voting for him. Longman was particularly focused on how the post-New Deal consensus between employers and workers that helped nurture the middle class had broken down and the danger Romney represented to our civil society. I posted the following comment in response to Longman’s fine piece:

“Liberalism at its most effective is the indispensable alternative to revolution and reaction. At its worst liberalism is a temporary place holder to extremism like the Provisional Government after the fall of the Czar in 1917 before Communism’s ascendancy or the Weimar Republic in Germany when it preceded National Socialism.

What’s scary about our country in this moment in time is that Obama whether he wins or loses may be the last finger in the dike before the tsunami that comes next.

What makes Obama’s position even more fragile is that his political survival required he be co-opted by some of the same institutional forces that has disintegrated the consensus you described above. When that consensus was stronger such compromises could be more easily finessed as Clinton demonstrated. But not anymore. The stability we were taught in Social Studies class way back when is long gone and Humpty Dumpty can’t be put back together again.

Obama is a good man and I hope he wins but through no fault of his own, win or lose his ability to stem the tide is fragile. Romney of course would unleash a tsunami immediately. Alas, that is America’s choice in 2012.”

I have second guessed my response in recent days and believe the trajectory of this election as well as our country’s future is not merely a choice between Romney’s tsunami or Obama’s fragile hold on America’s equilibrium. Win or lose, America’s future is in the hands of my age group, Generation-X which at its best is represented by Barack Obama and worst by Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan.

Generation X is unique because our collective memory includes the experience of our parents and grandparents when a strong middle class existed and the gap between rich and poor was not as grotesque as it is today. We came of age following a post-80s hangover and early `90s recession, rode the dot.com boom until 2000 but also reaped the whirlwind of union busting, tax policy favoring the hyper-wealthy and deregulation of Wall Street.

In today’s politics we’re largely ignored even with a Generation X president and vice presidential candidate. Much of the focus is instead on preserving Social Security and Medicare for folks over fifty-five or lamenting the bleak future of today’s Millennials.

I do not overlook the importance of preserving a safety-net for seniors or establishing upward mobility for our young people. Indeed a whole lot of our seniors served in World War Two, Korea and Vietnam while our twenty-somethings risked their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of my peers are stretching their diminished resources to raise children of their own as well as take care of their parents and grandparents. We all want upward mobility and security for our young people and folks who have worked hard their whole lives.

Nonetheless it irks me whenever I hear Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan utter assurances that people over fifty-five “have nothing to worry about” with respect to Social Security or Medicare. I’ve managed to more or less be steadily employed since 1991 and paid FICA taxes into the system the whole time. Conceivably, if I’m healthy and remain employed, I can contribute another twenty plus years of FICA taxes into the system.
Should that not count for something?

Or is my generation chopped liver?

It also irks me when hard working people in my generation with kids to support and aging parents to take care have their jobs callously tossed aside, outsourced, lose their pensions or are forced to live in trailer parks due to plutocrats like Romney and shenanigans on Wall Street. They exploited their influence to enrich themselves at the expense of our fiscal solvency, gorged themselves while claiming to worship at the holy temple of job creators and proceeded to undermine the livelihoods of millions of wage earners. They do this even while wrapping themselves in the false piety of morality and patriotism.

America has an abundance of wealth that was misappropriated. And the agents of these thieves, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want to “reduce the size of government” for the same reason thieves want less cops on the beat: so their friends can commit even more crimes.

A civil society cannot be maintained with that trajectory. The end result ultimately means more gated communities and police intimidation to preserve the wealth stolen by the top from what used to be this country’s middle class as well as the poor. That is the trajectory we are on and it’s the very young and senior citizens who will be the most vulnerable if civil society breaks down.

Demographically, seniors are more inexplicably inclined to vote for Romney and Ryan. Young people while they favor Obama obviously will not turn out with the same enthusiasm as 2008. Much of the get out the vote efforts in this campaign’s final days are understandably focused on undecided women voters. Yet I suspect get out the vote efforts with those Generation X voters inclined to support Democrats that is really the X-factor for both the presidency and down ticket races.

Win or lose in 2012, it will also be Generation X that determines our destiny. If Obama wins he and the Democrats will need to be empowered and supported by Generation X to restore the balance between capital owners and wage earners and not give in to Tea Party crazies or greed mongers. Otherwise even with a second term President Obama will be little more than a fragile finger in the dike against Generation X plutocrats like Paul Ryan.

And if Obama loses, Generation X will have to stand up for itself and demand not to be trodden on behalf of ourselves and generations to come.  Young people are still finding their way in this world and our parents and grand parents have done all they can.

It’s up to us.