I have a great one today from King Crimson for our last “dream” inspired Long Song Tuesday post. This is an amazing song from King Crimson’s first album and I think you will really enjoy it. Greg Lake is one of my favorite rock vocalist and he does a fine job on The Dream portion of this one. Let’s listen…..
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the song.
“Moonchild” is the fourth track from the British progressive rock band King Crimson’s debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King.
The first section, “The Dream”, is a mellotron-driven ballad, but after two and a half minutes it changes to a completely free-form instrumental improvisation by the band (called “The Illusion”), which lasts until the end of the song. Robert Fripp plays a snippet of “The Surrey With the Fringe on Top” from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” in this section. In the 2009 remastered version of the album, the track was edited by Fripp and colleague Steven Wilson, with around 2.30 minutes of the original improvisation (the reference by Fripp to “Surrey With the Fringe on Top”) being removed. This issue of the album does, however, offer the original version as a bonus track.
Republicans like to talk about how they plan to cut the federal government and turn key Federal programs over to the States. They seem to forget that we are the United States of America, not 50 independent states. Every American, regardless of the State they live in, should be guaranteed the same benefits and services. Voting rights are one important example. All of the voter suppression programs that we have spoken about in this blog are done by Republicans at the State level. Another example is education. The quality of the education of your child should not depend on what State you happen to live in. I happen to live in the south in one of the poorer States, should my children suffer because of that?? The answer is no and we have the Federal Department of Education that ensures that every child gets a solid education. Of course, as we discussed in a post last night, the Republicans what to do away with the Department Education.
The particular example I have chosen to highlight today is the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA. FEMA ensures that people, regardless of the State that they live in, get the support that they need during disasters. This one is a particularly timely example today as our highly populated northeast cost is getting hammered by Hurricane Sandy. It is FEMA that is coordinating disaster relief across the 10-15 States that are likely to be impacted and ensuring that everyone benefits from the power and resources of the UNITED States.
What is Mitt Romney’s position on FEMA you might ask……kill it and turn disaster relief over to the States or even more laughable turn it over to private industry. Read the Huffington Post article, watch the associated video, and then you make the call. I think the answer is pretty clear!
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Mitt Romney In GOP Debate:
Shut Down Federal Disaster Agency,
Send Responsibility To The States
During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA’s cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?”
“Including disaster relief, though?” debate moderator John King asked Romney.
“We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids,” Romney replied. “It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.” The clip was flagged by HuffPost blogger Eric Zuesse.
UPDATE Sunday, 10:04 p.m.–
A Romney official reaffirmed the former governor’s position Sunday evening in an email.
“Gov. Romney wants to ensure states, who are the first responders and are in the best position to aid impacted individuals and communities, have the resources and assistance they need to cope with natural disasters,” the Romney official said.
UPDATE II Monday, 9:10 a.m.–
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent adds: “There’s another nugget here worth highlighting, though. In that appearance, Romney also suggested it would be ‘even better’ to send any and all responsibilities of the federal government ‘to the private sector,’ disaster response included. So: Romney essentially favored privatizing disaster response.”
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If you haven’t heard enough yet, watch this video and hear it from Mitt himself.
Today, I want to share an article from The Telegraph, a newspaper in the UK. I am more than pleased to see that our friends in the UK are aware of this topic and have taken a stand very similar to the one expressed in this blog. I think you will find it to be most interesting.
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Mitt Romney can be a centrist,
or he can stand by Richard Mourdock
He can’t do both
By Dan Hodges US politics Last updated: October 25th, 2012
Richard Mourdock believes that if a women gets raped she should be forced to give birth to her rapist’s baby, because that is the will of God. “Life is a gift from God,” he said, “and I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape that it is something that God intended to happen.”
While that view may be abhorrent to most people, it is not an unusual one. There are plenty of cranks out there with extreme fundamentalist views, and normally we just ignore them and scurry on our way.
But Richard Mourdock isn’t any old crank. He’s the Republican candidate for the United States Senate seat of Indiana.
What’s more, he isn’t just any old Senate candidate. On Monday, a video started airing in Indiana. In it Mitt Romney looks directly at the camera and says “This fall, I’m supporting Richard Mourdock.”
Romney’s endorsement wasn’t just ritualistic support for a GOP candidate in a tight race. It was the only personal ad endorsement he has given any Republican senate hopeful in the entire campaign. And it spells big trouble for Romney.
I’m not a student of the “game-changer” school of politics. We’ve had lots of “gotcha” moments in this election campaign: Obama’s “not optimal” comment, Romney’s Gerald Ford moment on Libya, Donald Trump’s October surprise, Big Bird. None of them have stuck.
But Mourdock’s comment will. And that’s because it goes straight to the heart of all the old doubts about Mitt Romney and his candidature.
On Tuesday I wrote how the final debate had exposed the fundamental strategic weakness at the heart of the Romney campaign; that he is trying to position himself as a centrist while leading a party that has lurched to the political margins. Well, Richard Mourdock has just turned himself into a national poster boy for that particular strain of GOP fanaticism.
He believed that life was precious “to the marrow of my bones”, he told a hastily convened press conference yesterday. It was the most precious gift God could give, he added, and what’s more, he’d seen the polling to back it up. He hadn’t meant to claim God wanted people to be raped. But he stood by his comments that if people were raped, and that resulted in pregnancy, it was God’s will. They would have to carry their rapist’s baby to term.
That would have been bad enough for a Romney campaign desperately trying to give the impression his is a campaign with momentum. But having being given a stark reminder of the lunacy of senior members of the Republican party, the voters were then given a staggering reminder of the poor judgment of that party’s candidate for president.
Mitt Romney had one course of action; cut Mourdock loose. Instead, he tied himself to him. A statement issued by the Romney campaign said that while their man disavowed Mourdock’s comments, he was still endorsing him for the Senate, and would not be withdrawing the advert urging people to vote for him.
This could not have come at a worse time for Mitt Romney. Just at the point he was trying to sustain his faltering “surge” narrative up pops a very real, and self-inflicted, October surprise. “I don’t know how these guys come up with these ideas,” Barack Obama said on the Jay Leno show. “This is exactly why you don’t want a bunch of politicians, mostly male, making decisions about women’s health care decisions.” Cue thunderous applause.
Watching from the UK, it’s difficult to understand how someone who holds views such as Mourdock’s could actually be a candidate for high public office. And it’s even more difficult to understand how a candidate for the highest office of all could continue to endorse him once those views had been aired publicly.
Thankfully, large number of US voters won’t understand it either. Mitt Romney can try to can recast himself as one of the great American centrists. Or he can stand by Richard Mourdock. But he can’t do both.
Mourdock’s intervention is no game-changer. But with less than two weeks less to go before the polls close, it is a significant moment all the same.
Neither of my parents was a big music fan…I don’t remember them ever playing music in any of the different houses that we lived in. Amazingly, I do not even remember them playing music on the car radio when we driving…..and we did a lot of driving as we moved around the United States every year or so.
We did have a old record player, however, and when I was about ten years old I discovered a few records that belonged to my mother. For the next four years or so I wore those few records out playing them over and over again. The records were a diverse selection of popular music from the late 50s and early 60s and they represent my earliest musical memories.
One of my mother’s albums was Johnny Horton’s Greatest Hits and it was a treasure trove of great music and American History put to music. If I had to name one album that got me interested in music it would be this one. The album also gave me a love of history that continues to this day. Jim Bridger is probably my favorite Johnny Horton song. Let’s listen….
Jim Bridger was one of the many mountain men that explored the American west in the early 1800s. They were a hardy lot to say the least and we have them to thank for laying the ground work for the expansion of America to the Pacific coast. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article about Jim.
James Felix “Jim” Bridger (March 17, 1804 – July 17, 1881) was among the foremost mountain men, trappers, scouts and guides who explored and trapped the Western United States during the decades of 1820-1850, as well as mediating between native tribes and encroaching whites. He was of English ancestry, and his family had been in North America since the early colonial period.
Jim Bridger had a strong constitution that allowed him to survive the extreme conditions he encountered walking the Rocky Mountains from what would become southern Colorado to the Canadian border. He had conversational knowledge of French, Spanish and several native languages. He would come to know many of the major figures of the early west, including Brigham Young, Kit Carson, George Armstrong Custer, John Fremont, Joseph Meek, and John Sutter.
You might be more familiar with another of Johnny’s songs about the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812. That song was a number 1 hit for him in 1958. Here is a great television performance of the song, let’s listen……
I am sad to have to tell you that Johnny died a tragic death in 1960 at the age of 35. He was returning home from a concert performance when a car that he was driving was hit by a drunk driver. Another talented musician lost way too soon.
The last couple of nights we have discussed Richard Mourdock’s despicable view on rape, bipartisanship, and global climate change and what those views tell us about Mitt Romney. Let’s not forget that Mitt has chosen Richard as the only Senate candidate that he has personally endorsed in an ad. Five days after the Rape comment Mitt is still supporting Mr. Mourdock so let’s continue our discussion of him and learn some more about Richard and Mitt.
Next up, let’t talk about how Richard Mourdock supports elimination of the US Department of Education. Once you watch the video below you will discover that Mitt and Richard hate education just as much as they hate women and science. The Republican Party is clearly the party of ignorance and Mitt is right there with the dumbest of the dumb based on his support of Richard Mourdock.
Again, I think this one is well documented but since this is my closing argument I feel the need to review where the Republicans stand on all key issues. Let’s hear their position in their own words. Listen to this and then decide if you stand with the Republicans or with President Obama.
Not enough for you? Listen to Rick Santorum on this topic….
Still not enough? Listen to to Mitt on this 2008 video that was just posted.
The right gives us another crazy outburst about women and rape. As before, it’s in keeping with what conservatives believe about women and sex.
You gotta love these heartland Republicans. From a Blue state point of view, the kinds of things that Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin, et al. have been saying are so eye-rollingly over the top that they seem designed precisely to keep Comedy Central and MSNBC in business.
You know what I’m talking about, right? Akin started our heads spinning when he mansplained that if a woman gets pregnant, it couldn’t have beenlegitimate rape—because a woman’s bodies can only wash in those little swimmers if she was hot to trot to begin with. In this week’s installment of repro rights funnies, Mourdock explained on television that he was against abortion, even in the cases of rape and incest because:
I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. … And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.
The choking-on-thin-air sounds started immediately from women all over the country, amplified by Twitter. That man did not justsay that God intended for me to be raped!
No, I don’t think he did. Honestly, I think he means that God somehow intended the new life—not the rape—and that the rape, well, that was terrible, but get over it. You know, the way Sharon Angle said that women should make lemons from lemonade, and all that. Love the baby, not the sin. But understanding what he meant is very, very far from excusing his belief that women should just lie back and think of England if they’re colonized by an unexpected invader.
As Irin Carmon writes over at Salon today, “Dear everyone asking what it is about Republican candidates and their clumsy talk about rape: This is a feature, not a bug.” Really. Mourdock, Akin, Walsh, Angle—all of them are simply saying straightforwardly what they and many other people around them believe. They’re articulating the conventional wisdom in their echo chambers, without softening it down. It only sounds shocking to us left-of-center types because we’re protected in our own echo chambers. They believe that if women are going to spread their legs, they deserve to get pregnant. They believe that most of what you and I would call rape today is just some slut who got angry because the dude didn’t take her out to breakfast the next morning. Here’s a recent quote I found in Jessica Valenti’s incredibly timely commentary on current attitudes toward sexual assault in The Nation, “Ending Rape Illiteracy”:
As Tennessee Senator Douglas Henry said in 2008, “Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse.”
In other words, only virgins can be raped—sweetly white-gloved, white-skinned virgins, in case we’re not clear. Any woman who ever wanted sex—yes, that includes married women who unconditionally give permission when they put on that ring—deserves what she gets. Valenti’s piece is a brilliant and absolutely essential manifesto on what still has to change to get from “What about ‘no’ don’t you understand?” to the more advanced concept that womenhave a right to enjoy and control our own bodies. Here’s more from her must-read piece, which, if there is no justice in the world, better be anthologized in a thousand women’s studies textbooks and used as a handbook by women’s groups:
What feminists should do in response to bad policy and legislation has been clear cut—and successful. When the GOP tried to pass an anti-abortion measure last year that would redefine rape only as an assault that was “forcible,” feminists groups immediately took action. Thanks to national organizations, online activism and a clever Twitter campaign, the language was taken out of the bill. Feminists also won a campaign to push the FBI to change their outdated definition of rape, language dating from 1929 that said sexual assault was “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.”
But how we change the culture is a hurdle we haven’t properly tackled. Feminism’s major cultural successes around rape have occurred on a micro level—taking on individual television shows or products. And, for the most part, our cultural work has been reactionary—we’re constantly on the defensive, whether it’s trying to fight back against victim-blaming headlines or offensive rape jokes.
There’s more, and it’s all worth reading.
But Mourdock’s shocking comment was only partly about rape. It’s also about abortion—i.e. When is abortion legitimate? Maybe it’s time to go back a couple of decades and say: any time a woman wants it. I could just be cranky today, but I’m getting sick of defending the idea that woman are and can be independent actors. We are subjects, not holding vessels. No woman owes anyone else the use of her reproductive equipment—not the entryway, and not the inner chambers. For those first few months, that little blastocyst or embryo has no absolute claim on existenceˆunless the woman actively wants to carry it until it’s an actual person. When there’s a conflict between actual and potentiallife, I’m on the side of the independently breathing person every time.
First up in my final argument why you MUST NOT vote for Mitt Romney and the Republicans……Republicans hate women.
We have talked about this issue endlessly in this blog so I will just hit the high points as part of my closing argument. Republicans, driven by their extreme conservative religious views, believe that it is perfectly acceptable for them to control women and their bodies. In particular, anything related to their a woman’s reproductive system is best decided and controlled by the old, completely out of touch, men in the Republican Party.
Rape – ok because it is God’s will.
A child from Rape – God’s will and his gift to women.
“Legitimate Rape”…….(since when did any Rape become legitimate except in the mind of the Republican Party???)
Do I need to go on?
If you need more, watch this and then reconsider.
Do you want to hear from the other side of the Republican ticket? Read this from today’s Huffington Post….
Paul Ryan’s Record Opposing Abortion Rights
Back In Spotlight
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace argued on Sunday over GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s position on abortion. Warner said that during Ryan’s 14 years as a Wisconsin congressman, he backed legislation that would not only ban abortion, but made no exception for pregnancies resulting from rape.
Wallace responded that Ryan supports Mitt Romney’s position on abortion, and argued that Ryan has supported exceptions to opposing abortion for “some period of time.”
Wallace: He has taken the position that Mr. Romney, which is to allow those exceptions…Warner: But Mr. Ryan’s voting record, Mr. Ryan’s voting record, Mr. Ryan’s voting record…
Wallace: Listen, Joe Biden didn’t agree, Senator Warner, with a lot of Barack Obama’s positions, but you listen to the guy in the top job.
Warner: So, Mr. Ryan has changed his positions now. I guess that’s news.
Wallace: No, actually, it has been for some period of time.
Since joining the Romney campaign, Ryan has said that Romney will “set the policy”on abortion if elected. Romney, who described himself as “pro-choice” in earlier stages of his political career, today favors a ban on abortion except in cases of rape, incest or when the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother.
But a look at Ryan’s record on abortion shows a different path. Last year, Ryan co-sponsored a bill that aimed to give fetuses “constitutional attributes and privileges” and did not include exceptions for cases of rape, incest or life-threatening pregnancies. Ryan and Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), a Senate candidate who recently claimed that women’s bodies can prevent pregnancy in the event of a “legitimate rape,” were among a group of 54 co-sponsors of the bill, most of whom were male. The measure, known as the Sanctity of Human Life Act, was referred to the House Judiciary Committee and has not reached the floor for a vote.
Ryan and Akin also co-sponsored a 2011 bill identifying cases of “forcible rape” as the only exception to an existing law that witholds federal funding for abortions. Known as the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, the bill would have effectively eliminated funds for victims of statutory rape. Abortion rights advocates said the bill also would have limited the ability of women who are drugged and raped to terminate any resulting pregnancies.
The “forcible rape” language was later removed from the bill. Ryan described it as”stock language” and said in August that he agreed with its removal. In May 2011, the measure passed the House, but it is not expected to reach the Democratic-controlled Senate floor for a vote.
The National Right to Life Committee has said Ryan voted with the group on 78 abortion-related measures considered during his tenure in office. NARAL Pro-Choice America has also reviewed Ryan’s voting record and described him as uniformly opposed to abortion rights.
I doubt this headline will shock anyone reading this blog but I was very proud to see Mr. Wilkerson come to the defense of Colin Powell and call out the Republicans for what they really are. It should offend everyone in this country to have one of Mitt Romney’s henchmen imply that the only reason that Colin Powell would have endorsed President Obama is that they were both black. What bullshit!
Thanks to Huffington Post for the following article.
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Lawrence Wilkerson,
Former Colin Powell Aide,
Blasts Sununu, GOP, As ‘Full Of Racists’
Colin Powell’s former chief of staff condemned the Republican Party on Friday night, telling MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, “My party is full of racists.”
Retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson made the comment in response to Mitt Romney campaign surrogate John Sununu’s suggestion on Thursday that Powell’s endorsement of President Barack Obama’s re-election was motivated by race. Wilkerson, who served as Powell’s chief of staff when the general was secretary of state during the first George W. Bush term, told Schultz that he respected Sununu “as a Republican, as a member of my party,” but did not “have any respect for the integrity of the position that [Sununu] seemed to codify.”
When asked by Schultz what, if anything, the remark said about the attitudes of the Republican Party, Wilkerson said:
My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people — not all of them, but most of them — who are still basing their positions on race. Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists, and the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin, and that’s despicable.
The retired colonel also said that “to say that Colin Powell would endorse President Obama because of his skin color is like saying Mother Theresa worked for profit.”
Powell, a Republican, endorsed Obama for the second time on Thursday morning –he also backed the president in 2008 — saying on CBS’ “This Morning” that he was “more comfortable with President Obama and his administration” than with Romney on a host of issues.
Sununu, no stranger to incendiary rhetoric this election cycle, reacted to the endorsement on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight,” saying that “when you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder whether that’s an endorsement based on issues or whether he’s got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama.”
Obama himself dismissed Sununu’s suggestion on Friday, telling radio host Michael Smerconish:
Any suggestion that Gen. Powell would make such a profound statement in such an important election based on anything but what he thought was what’s going to be best for America doesn’t make much sense.
Sununu backed off his remarks shortly after his CNN appearance, issuing a statement that said Powell is a friend and, “I respect the endorsement decision he made, and I do not doubt that it was based on anything but his support of the President’s policies.”
It is good to know that I am not the only one making this point. We have to judge Romney, and determine what he really believes after all of his flip flops, based on the people that he has supported over the years. We have been, and will continue to, talk about his support for Richard Mourdock but that is only one example. Bill Maher’s comments below, and his associated video, look at a number of other examples. This is important so I hope you take the time to read and watch!
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Bill Maher’s Mitt Romney Warning:
‘When You Elect Mitt You’re Electing
Every Right-Wing Nut He’s Pandered To
In The Last 10 Years’
If you’re a moderate considering voting for Mitt Romney, there are certain facts you should know… according to Bill Maher. While you may not think the two candidates are terribly different, in Maher’s opinion, only one of them is poised to release the Kraken in terms of the religious right:
“When you elect Mitt you’re electing every right wing nut he’s pandered to in the last 10 years. If the Mitt-mobile does roll into Washington it’ll be towing behind it the whole anti-intellectual, anti-science freakshow.”
Watch Maher’s stern warning to voters above and let us know what you think. Would President Romney stand-up to the zealot-side of his party or are “standing up” and “Mitt Romney” mutually exclusive concepts?
