An American Gothic: April 22, 2012

Friday, April 27, 2012

Saturday Satire: Mitt Romney,Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich Political Cartoons Edition

Technorati Tags: Politics,2012 Elections,Political Humor,Mitt Romney,Newt Gingrich,Rick Santorum,Political Cartoons,Current Events

Mitt Romney doesn't want to talk about his record as governor

by Jed Lewison

There was something missing from Mitt Romney's nomination-clinching speech on Tuesday night: any reference whatsoever to his track record as governor of Massachusetts. In fact, he didn't even mention that he had been governor.

Not even once.

During the most important speech Romney's given so far, he didn't say a single word about the one time in his life that he's ever been elected to anything. That's rather extraordinary admission by omission that he doesn't see his record as something that he can run on.

It's not hard to see why Romney feels that way. Massachusetts ranked 47th in the nation in job creation under his leadership and he left the state with a massive debt. If he'd run for a second term, he would have been defeated, with good reason.

Romney's biggest legitimate accomplishment was Romneycare, which President Obama took national. But now Romney is against Obamacare, so he can't talk about Romneycare.

Romney's failure to mention his gubernatorial experience really was a telling moment in his campaign, a vivid illustration of the fact that he believes his campaign depends entirely on convincing voters that President Obama has been a failure. As Greg Sargent has been arguing, Romney's approach to that task has been to blame Obama for the failures of the Bush years—to make the public forget that President Obama inherited an economy in freefall.

As depressing as it would be if Romney were able to pull off such an argument, I don't see it happening. His argument is transparently false, and neither the Obama campaign nor grassroots progressives are going to let him get away with making it. As tiring and annoying as it can be to constantly battle back Romney's lies, it's not particularly difficult—because the truth is not on his side.

I suspect that deep down, Mitt Romney knows just how tenuous his position really is. If he were really confident in his own claim to the presidency, he wouldn't be trying to blame Obama for Bush. He'd be out there selling his own achievements. The fact that he's not tells us everything.

Originally posted to The Jed Report on Thu Apr 26, 2012

Also republished by Massachusetts Kosmopolitans and Daily Kos.

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Governor,Politics,Current Events

Thursday, April 26, 2012

CISPA UPDATE: House Makes Changes To The Bill

House making changes to CISPA, but it's still too dangerous

WED APR 25, 2012 By Joan McCarter

EFF

Growing opposition to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) has forced sponsor Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) to make some amendments that he says will secure 218 votes. The vote on the legislation has also been postponed a day, and is expected to be held Friday—unless we stop it, like we stopped SOPA, because the proposed changes aren't enough to answer privacy concerns.

"A lot of them aren't substantive," Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the ACLU, told CNET. "They just put the veneer of privacy protections on the bill, and will garner more support for the bill even without making substantial changes."

There are amendments from Democrats that would make the bill less onerous, but still aren't adequate. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), has an amendment that would prohibit monitoring of protestors, but not other Americans. Rep. Janice Hahn (D-CA) has one that would make Homeland Security destroy personally identifiable data after a year has elapsed, but doesn't at all restrict the collection of that data in the first place. These amendments aren't bad, but they aren't good enough.

None of the amendments strike out the most dangerous part of the bill, where it says "notwithstanding any other provision of law," government agencies can collect our private data. That "notwithstanding" means this law trumps every other privacy law, federal and state, on wiretaps, educational records, medical privacy and more. That's unacceptable. And, of course, the bill still doesn't allow for the kind of regulation that could actually matter to national security: protecting key infrastructure like electrical grids and water systems from cyber threats.

Please, tell your representative to vote no on CISPA.

Technorati Tags: CISPA,House Intelligence Committee,The Internet,Privacy Rights,SOPA,CyberSecurity,Current Events

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Scott Walker’s Job Creation Statistics In Wisconsin

Oh, and it is not a very pretty picture in the state as Wisconsin is actually losing jobs. It is the only state in the nation to do so.

This chart from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says it all. It also tells you that Walker’s tax-cuts for his wealthy friends and for big business created no new jobs.

Walker did promise Wisconsin voters that he would create something like 250,000 private sector jobs by 2015 if they would elect him as their Governor. He still has time, but it will not happen because of anything Walker has done.

About the chart:

It counts jobs in the state, not the number of people working. It is an estimate based mostly on surveys that measure non-farm payroll. Every instance of someone on somebody’s payroll in that month is counted as a job. If someone in Milwaukee works at a Milwaukee McDonalds during the day and a Milwaukee Burger King at night, two jobs are counted for Wisconsin. If a person lives in Racine, Wisconsin but commutes to Chicago to work, that is not counted as a Wisconsin job. Again, the report measures jobs, not people.

There is another report put out monthly by the BLS at the same time that estimates the unemployment rate by state. It is based on different surveys from the ones described above. It is a ratio of the number of residents in a state who are working compared to the size of the state’s workforce. Those numbers are not related one to one. If the number of people working stays the same in a month but the size of the labor force goes down because people moved, died, or retired, the unemployment rate can go down even though the same number of people are working. If our imaginary worker from the previous paragraph is laid off from his night job at Burger King, he is not considered unemployed because he still works at McDonalds during the day. If the Racine worker loses her job in Chicago, she counts as one of Wisconsin’s unemployed because she lives in Wisconsin. The report measures people, not jobs.

In summary, the two reports are significantly different. Among other differences, one report is based on where the jobs are, the other is based on where the person resides. Neither is inherently better than the other, but they are not two ways of measuring the same thing, which is the way many lazy journalists describe them. Source

Technorati Tags: Scott Walker,Wisconsin,Jobs,Unemployment,Bureau Of Labor Statistics,BLS,The Economy,Recall Walker,Current Events

Monday, April 23, 2012

Help Stop CISPA

Do you remember the big blowup over SOPA ( Stop Online Piracy Act ) and PIPA ( PROTECT IP Act ) just a few months ago? As you are aware, many companies with a heavy internet presence went blank for a day in protest of these two seriously flawed bills, and they were tabled.

Well, now we have a new menace coming up on Thursday, April 26, which is basically the evil cousin of the first two defeated bills.

That would be the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act ( CISPA ), which allows the intelligence community and private businesses an open path to snoop into any citizen’s internet activity on any given day. This we can do without. This is just another government and big business tool to mine our browsing activities' and to keep records on you and I, which they have no business possessing in the first place. THIS BILL MUST BE STOPPED!

CISPA allows companies and the government to bypass existing laws in order to monitor our communications, filter content, or potentially even shut down access to online services for undefined “cybersecurity" purposes. But what it doesn't do is provide any new protections for critical infrastructure systems, like electrical grids and water supplies. Some security that is! Source

The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the bill this Thursday, April 26. Send an email to your member of Congress telling him or her to vote no. (email can be edited)

Go Here in order to do so.

Technorati Tags: CISPA,Privacy,Internet,Data Mining,Current Events

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Nugent Is Finally Getting Dixie Chick'd–By The Army

By Vyan Sun Apr 22, 2012 Original

It's been quite a while, but there was a point in time where if you were an American Musician, especially a Country musician, and you said you disagreed with, didn't like, or gulp were "embarrassed the President was from (insert your home state here)"...

If you did that, and that President was George W. Bush, you'd have a full-on Shit Storm land on your career and your life.

Fans turned on them. Destroying their CDs. Country Music Black-Listed the Band. They received numerous Death Threats. They were ruined, destroyed. Still, they persevered even when everything verbal (and sometimes physically) was thrown against them, it was practically a miracle they were able to remain in the entertainment industry at all. But they did.

Now Ted Nugent has finally tasted his first little bit of what the Chicks went through after his comments that if the current President is re-elected he will either be "Dead or In Jail", because he claims the President, Vice President and Attorney General are "Criminals" who need to have their "Heads Chopped Off". Oh, and that Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz are "varmint, cockroach, scoundrels" too.

Ted's been dis-invited from performing before the Army at Fort Knox.

(CNN) -- It's lights out on Ted Nugent's scheduled performance at an Army base in Kentucky.
Commanders at Fort Knox have decided against allowing the "Motor City Madman" to take the stage at the base in June, the latest fallout over Nugent's comments that he would be "dead or in jail" if President Barack Obama were re-elected.

"After learning of opening act Ted Nugent's recent public comments about the president of the United States, Fort Knox leadership decided to cancel his performance on the installation," according to an announcement posted Saturday on the base's Facebook page

This is just one show, just one event - where Nugent was to be the opening act with fellow aging self-coverband rockers REO Speedwagon and Styx.

I personally don't want Ted to go through what the Chicks went through. Being the blowhard wimp bullshit spigot that he is, it would probably crush him into powder to be massively shunned and humiliated the way they were and that's too cruel a fate even for him. Besides, technically he can't suffer the way they did because he doesn't really have a freaking career. All he can do is play his one or two hits over and over for 30-40 mins and call it a "Show". That's already pretty pathetic.

Other than Classic Rock, he's already off the radio. What is there to Boycott? "Wang Dang Sweet Poon Tang?" According to AllMusic.com his last charting Bill Board Single "Little Miss Dangerous" (#22 on Mainstream Rock) was in 1986 - 26 years ago. (If you include the last charting Damn Yankee single which features Styx's Tommy Shaw - that was in 1993, 19 years ago) Nobody is playing that shit on the air anymore. Please.

You can't stomp MP3's into the ground, you'd just wind up fucking up your player and what's the point of that? iPods aren't that cheap.

You really can't embarrass Ted Nugent much more than the fact that he's already Fracking Ted Nugent. A draft dodger, a big bad hunter who apparently can't count to TWO as he just recently pleaded guilty to violating the Alaska Bear hunting Limit, an admitted pedophile and misogynist who actually thinks this is a nifty album cover.

Spinal Tap is actually a step upward from Nugent. Several steps, and they weren't even a "Real" band. I'd still take ~~Derek~~ David St.Hubbins over Theodore any day. David is smarter.

Ted is already his own worst enemy, whose greatest claim to actual fame is being a mediocre guitarist, terrible singer and unrepentant asshole. You can't really go much further down from there, that's rock bottom.

At least though, he doesn't get another chance to spew his Anti-Democrat Hate Speech before the Troops who have to follow that Democrat as their Commander and Chief. Even the Army realizes that's one bridge that is simply too far to cross.

Oh, and despite his big story about crapping his pants for a week so that he'd be rejected by the draft board - Nugent actually had a student deferment from attending Oakland Community College.

This is from his Wiki.

In 2006, an interviewer from the British newspaper The Independent questioned Nugent about a 1977 interview in High Times magazine in which Nugent allegedly detailed elaborate steps taken to avoid the Vietnam draft.[51] In the interview Nugent says, contrary to the story in High Times, that "I had a 1Y [student deferment]. I enrolled at Oakland Community College.". However, the Selective Service classification for student deferment is actually 2-S, and medical deferment is 1-Y. A copy of Nugent's Selective Service record shows that he had at separate times both a 1-Y medical deferment and 2-S student deferment.

Wiki being Wiki, I dug up some more.

via Newshounds.

His draft document shows he had a succession of deferments 1-S (High School), 1A (Available), 2-S (School), 1A (Available), 1-Y (Available, but only qualified in the event or National Emergency) & what looks like "WF", but could be "4-F" (Not suitable for service). It does say that the date of his physical examination was 8-22-69 and the results were "REJ" (Rejected).

It seems that now, he's been rejected again and is no longer suitable for even Playing in front of the Military.

Vyan

Technorati Tags: Ted Nugent,U.S.Army,Draft Dodger,Dixie Chicks,Current Events