Romney Desperation – Lies, Misrepresentations, and Threats

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on November 4, 2012
Posted in: Completely Wrong, Politics. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

The Mitt Romney campaign is in desperation mode.  The polls are telling the story and Romney’s response is to once again double down on the lies, misrepresentations, and threats that have ensured that he will never be president.  The lies about the auto industry continue to pushed in Ohio ads.  He is misrepresenting comments by President Obama where he was telling people not to “boo” Romney but instead to vote.  Most heinous of all, he and his rich business owner buddies are being even more direct in threatening employees if they do not vote for Romney.  Completely wrong but what else could you expect.

The article below from the Huffington Post contains the latest details about the threats.

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Romney, Business Allies

Finish With Strong Argument:

Vote With Us, Or You’re Fired

Mitt Romney Worker Intimidation
WASHINGTON — The Mitt Romney campaign and its business allies are driving home a final message unlike one we’ve seen in past presidential campaigns: Vote Romney, or you’re fired.

The pressure on workers in swing states to toe the GOP line hasn’t been restricted to any particular industry. Corporate apparel makers in Ohio, truck stop attendants in Ohio and Virginia, casino employees in Nevada, construction workers in Florida, gift-card purveyors in Colorado and Florida, car-parts makers in Michigan, software technicians in Florida and Colorado, coal miners in Ohio, dock manufacturers in Wisconsin, frozen-food packers in Michigan, resort staff in Florida, Virginia and Nevada, and people all over the country who work — or used to work — for Koch Industries or another Koch-owned company have all been given notice by their boss that an Obama victory could lead to layoffs or otherwise harm the company and its workers.

Even workers who’d already been laid off by the Kochs were mailed letters urging them to vote Republican or else “suffer the consequences” of Obama policies that would harm the company.

Romney himself urged conservative business leaders this June to “make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections.”

Before the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United decision, it would have been illegal for a boss to tell an employee that “their job and their future” was on the ballot on Election Day. But the court now considers such electoral pressure an expression of free speech.

“Nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision,” Romney told the business owners associated with the National Federation of Independent Business, a political organization closely aligned to the Republican Party.

Romney’s push to get businesses to pressure workers on Election Day is relatively new. Marc Wolpow, the former managing director at Bain Capital who worked under Romney, told HuffPost the future politician never pressured underlings to vote a certain way. “He was completely apolitical,” he said. “There was absolutely no pressure.”

Wolpow thought bosses of all political stripes should stay away from campaigning in employee break rooms and penning endorsements for company newsletters. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for business owners to pressure their employees one way or the other, nor by the way do I think it’s appropriate for unions to do it,” he said. (Unions, of course, can’t fire workers.)

In the case of Request Foods’ CEO’s endorsement of Romney, it fit neatly into the Michigan company’s modus operandi. The company promotes itself as “dedicated to placing priority on Christian principles in every aspect of our business,” according to its website. That means quarterly meetings that seem to emphasize GOP politics over business news and chaplains regularly in the office halls, said one former employee.

Romney simply helped reinforce the company’s atmosphere. “Just the culture is so right wing,” the former employee said. “When they have those workplace chaplains … They report directly to the head of [human resources].”

Eric Manthei, the logistics coordinator for Request Foods, told HuffPost recently that the CEO’s endorsement, which appeared in the company newsletter, did not cause any reaction among employees. “I don’t think it was weird at all,” he said. “They are very open and transparent with their thoughts and beliefs. All the employees fall in line. They support our business policies.”

Until recently, the Romney campaign outsourced to its business allies its message to specific workers. That changed Oct. 25 when Romney himself told Jeep workers, in so many words, that they were going to be fired as a result of Obama’s auto bailout. He followed up with ads that continued to imply Jeep would be moving jobs overseas, even after executives at both GM and Chrysler refuted them.

The nearly 3,000 Jeep workers at its two Toledo plants, as well as the suppliers who feed them, woke up to a Toledo Blade story about Romney’s announcement. At least a dozen auto workers were concerned enough to call their local union to ask about the situation, said Bruce Baumhower, president of the UAW local 12, which represents the Jeep workers as well as dozens of their suppliers.

On Friday, Romney warned that a second Obama term could bring about a second recession. “The same path means $20 trillion in debt, crippling unemployment, stagnant take-home pay, depressed home values, and a devastated military,” he said at a speech in West Allis, Wis. “And unless we change course, we may be looking at another recession.”

Baumhower said he’s used to hearing politicians promise that the economy will get better under them and would be worse under their opponent — that, after all, is generally the driving message behind a campaign (along with gay marriage and abortion). But what he saw from Romney was something new.

“I don’t think I’ve ever really seen people running for political office threaten people with their employment,” he told HuffPost. “It might be fair game for somebody to say, I can improve the economy. I can grow the jobs market and you’ll have more opportunities under me than the other guy. I’ve heard that. I don’t think I’ve heard anybody come out like this and say: ‘You’re going to lose your jobs if you don’t vote for me.’ Pretty ridiculous. But he did.”

Baumhower said he reminded the workers that the company was in the middle of a half-billion-dollar investment in expanding production in Ohio, and also that Chrysler had started building cars in China in the ’80s — a plan launched by American Motors, ironically headed at one point by George Romney, Mitt Romney’s father.

“I said: ‘Don’t you remember when the plant’s managers, the engineering staff and different folks would go over [to China] for two months at a time to help them launch those plants?’ And everybody said: ‘Oh yeah,'” Baumhower said, explaining how he eased the workers’ worries. “Our members went from fear to anger and people were telling me that it was pretty pitiful that somebody who wants to be commander-in-chief to be stooping down to that to try to win the election.”

A private equity executive with a track-record of mass layoffs isn’t the most obvious person to entrust with one’s job security. One Bain & Co. employee, who worked there after Romney and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that company was so predictable in its consulting advice — fire people — that it became an office punchline.

“It was a running joke,” he recalled. “‘Oh, what are we going to do? We’re going to fire people. Of course we are!’ It was a joke. That’s how we felt about it: ‘Okay, let’s have some beers on Friday and forget about it.'”

Let The Republican Whining and Excuse Making Begin

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on November 4, 2012
Posted in: Politics. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

Great article from Huffington Post…..no shocker here except that it is starting so soon!

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Romney Campaign, Karl Rove

Framing Hurricane Sandy

For Possible Election Day Defeat

Three days remain until Election Day, but Mitt Romney’s campaign has suggested that Hurricane Sandy would be to blame for a possible defeat.

Citing sources within the campaign, Jan Crawford of CBS News reported Saturday that Team Romney believes the storm, which devastated parts of the East Coast last week, is responsible for putting a halt on their much-touted momentum.

For eight straight days, polls showed him picking up support. The campaign’s internal polling, which is using different turnout models than most public polls, had him on solid ground in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Iowa. He had a slight lead or was tied in Ohio, New Hampshire and Wisconsin and was in striking distance in Pennsylvania, a state Republicans hadn’t won since Ronald Reagan in 1984.Those leads in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Iowa still hold in the internal polls, campaign sources say, but Romney’s movement flattened out or, as the campaign likes to say, “paused.” Nevada is now off the table, and those neck-and-neck swing states are even tighter.

The GOP presidential nominee’s momentum rose after the first presidential debate gave him his first bounce this cycle. But there has been little evidence in national and swing state polls conducted since then that the GOP nominee has sustained that momentum, despite the Romney campaign’s claims to the contrary.

Nonetheless, Romney’s allies also began to point prematurely at the timing of Sandy. Republican strategist Karl Rove called the storm the “October Surprise” and argued it had been disadvantageous toward Romney in an interview with The Washington Post on Friday.

“If you hadn’t had the storm, there would have been more of a chance for the [Mitt] Romney campaign to talk about the deficit, the debt, the economy,” Rove said. “There was a stutter in the campaign. When you have attention drawn away to somewhere else, to something else, it is not to his [Romney’s] advantage.”

“Obama has temporarily been a bipartisan figure this week. He has been the comforter-in-chief and that helps,” he added. “People in Eastern coastal communities are going to be preoccupied by issues of getting food to eat and having a roof over their heads; some of them won’t be thinking as much about the election.”

While Rove acknowledged that people in the Northeast would have little influence on the outcome of the election, his larger point was that the hurricane allowed President Barack Obama to step back into his role as president, while Romney could only watch from the sidelines.

Both presidential candidates temporarily suspended their campaign events in the wake of the storm. But, as the incumbent president, it was Obama who drew the most attention in the final week before the election for his leadership in a time of crisis — prompting effusive praise from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a top surrogate to Romney.

Putting all campaigning aside, Christie repeatedly commended Obama’s outreach and support in a rare show of bipartisanship — the kind the president has been promising to pursue if he wins a second term. Earlier on Saturday, Politico reported that the Romney campaign was frustrated by Christie’s recent show of affection for Obama, another sign that they felt their candidate had been placed in a losing position on account of the storm.

Day 10 Of Mitt Romney Support For Richard Mourdock – Completely Wrong

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on November 4, 2012
Posted in: Politics, Religious Extremism. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

As it turns out, Mitt Romney isn’t the only friend of Richard “Rape Is God’s Will”.  Even though Mitt is his biggest supporter (having not pulled the ad that he made for Richard “Rape Is God’s Will” Mourdock) the whole Republican Party is lining up behind him to save him from himself.  As I have pointed out before the “Rape Issue” is a systemic issue across the Republican Party and not isolated to a few isolated kooks like Todd Akins and Richard “Rape Is God’s Will” Mourdock.

To learn more about how the whole Republican Party is lining up to support Richard “Rape Is God’s Will” Mourdock, read the following article from Portico.com.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the final post in this series before the election.  in that post we will explore what “Rape Is God’s Will” implies if you think about it a little deeper.  Trust me, it is pretty troubling.

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GOP spends big to save Richard Mourdock
By: Manu Raju
November 1, 2012 06:25 PM EDT
Republicans are spending big to salvage Richard Mourdock’s candidacy in the aftermath of his comments on rape and pregnancy that have imperiled GOP hopes of taking back the Senate majority.About $4 million is being spent across the airwaves in the final week of the campaign to bolster Mourdock, from the likes of well-known Republican groups like American Crossroads, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Club for Growth. And that comes as both sides acknowledge that Mourdock has taken a hit in the polls since his comments. Democrats are now more confident than ever that their candidate, Rep. Joe Donnelly, is poised to pull off one of the biggest upsets of the cycle.

Unlike the Todd Akin situation, the influx of outside money shows how quickly Republicans nationally have rallied behind Mourdock after he roiled the political world by saying God intended for pregnancies to occur from rape. Facing a steep climb to net the four seats needed to win the majority — or three if Mitt Romney wins the White House — Republicans must hold the Indiana seat, which had been occupied by veteran Sen. Richard Lugar since 1977 until Mourdock won the GOP primary earlier this year.

“It’s a coin flip,” one Republican involved in the race acknowledged.

Sensing fresh opportunity, Democrats have hardly been sitting on their wallets. Outside groups — including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Majority PAC — are spending about $3 million in the campaign’s final week to boost Donnelly, a three-term congressman from South Bend. And with Republicans poised to make gains up-and-down the ticket in the state, Indiana Democratic candidates from governor down to the House are trying to tie Mourdock’s growing unpopularity to their opponents in the final push for voters.

“Richard Mourdock shocked and embarrassed Hoosiers,” said Dan Parker, the Indiana Democratic Party chairman. “It’s no wonder he’s become toxic on the campaign trail.”

Democrats circulated a poll Wednesday that showed a 9-point uptick in Mourdock’s unfavorability rating, with 49 percent of Hoosier voters holding a negative view of the state treasurer. It also found Donnelly up 7 points in a three-way race that also includes Libertarian candidate Andrew Horning, a stark reversal in a race long seen as a sure GOP win.

But Brose McVey, a senior official at the Mourdock campaign, dismissed the Donnelly poll, calling it “out of whack” with all the other polls that showed the race was “roughly tied.”

“Yes we’ve got an increase in unfavorable, but we’ve seen improvement in that in recent days,” McVey said. “We’re very, very pleased with the numbers we’re getting lately. We sense a little bit of a nice trend line forming since about Sunday. To be honest with you, we know we’re going to have a favorable turnout.”

Republicans believe Mourdock will ride the coattails of Mitt Romney and GOP Rep. Mike Pence, who is running for governor. And they note that there’s been a sharp decrease in the early vote in the Democratic stronghold of Indianapolis, which may bode well for the embattled GOP candidate.

 Still, there’s no dispute that Mourdock’s rocky 10 days has made the race much tighter than Republicans had anticipated in a state President Barack Obama has effectively conceded. Both sides are now eagerly awaiting a non-partisan Howey-DePauw Battleground Poll to be released Friday.

In the interim, Democrats believe Mourdock remains a major drag to Republicans throughout Indiana. The Democratic gubernatorial candidate, John Gregg, and an outside group have released campaign ads likening Mourdock’s hard-edged politics to Pence, the favorite in the governor’s race. And Gregg’s campaign claims it has cut into Pence’s double-digit lead and narrowed it to within 3 points in the aftermath of the Mourdock fallout.

“Now Richard Mourdock says pregnancy from rape is ‘something God intended,” said an ad from a Democratic-allied outside group called Believe in Indiana. “He’s just like Mike Pence.”

It’s little surprise that Democrats are training their fire on Mourdock. Internal Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee polls conducted in late September in Donnelly’s House district found just 32 percent of voters viewed the Republican favorably. Fresher polling even before the rape comments found Mourdock’s unfavorability numbers growing to 40 percent, according to a Democratic campaign operative.

The GOP candidate in that district, Jackie Walorski, has faced an attack ad from the Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC, calling her a “tea party extremist just like Richard Mourdock.”

Republicans dismissed the attacks.

“Jackie Walorski is an independent voice for Hoosiers and anybody that wants to paint a different picture is wasting their time,” said Katie Prill, spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

In a recent interview, Mourdock cited the negative attacks as a prime reason for the Senate race being so tight, calling himself a “punching bag” for Democrats.

But Republicans have punched back at Donnelly, trying to undercut his efforts to sell himself as a bipartisan moderate. Including $500,000 spent by Mourdock, about $4.1 million in ads are reserved from Oct. 30-Nov. 6 to bolster the GOP candidate. Of that total, about $1.5 million is from Crossroads and $1.4 million from the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Groups tied to Sen. Rand Paul and the billionaire Joe Ricketts are also engaged in the race.

“What would a vote for Joe Donnelly really mean?” said a 30-second ad by the Club for Growth. “It would mean a U.S. Senate controlled by liberals.”

Republican Commandment #8 – Lies Become The Truth If Told Often Enough

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on November 3, 2012
Posted in: Completely Wrong, My Closing Argument, Politics. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

This commandment is the core of the Republican strategy for this year’s campaign.  There are too many examples to focus on each one so let’s just focus on the most recent one….Republican lies about the auto industry.  Sure, you can see why they are using this approach….Mitt Romney’s “let them go bankrupt” approach to saving the auto industry is not a winning position.  So all the Republican’s can do is lie.   So tell me, are you willing to vote for a presidential candidate that has zero integrity?  I can tell you that I am not!

Let’s start with at the beginning, here is Romney’s position, Romney’s prediction of the consequences of the bailout supported by President Obama, and the reality of what has has occurred based on the bailout.

Here is the Romney ad running in Ohio that is full of lies.  The first of the lies is that President took made the companies go bankrupt .  Of course it was Romney who wanted to do this and it was President Obama that bailed them out.  The second lie is that Chrysler was moving Jeep production to China.

The following article captures Chrysler’s response to the second lie.

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Chrysler CEO Calls Romney Jeep Claim ‘Inaccurate’

Sergio Marchionne, Chief Executive Officer, Chrysler Group LLC speaks at the Chrysler Sterling Heights Assembly plant in Sterling Heights, Mich., Monday, Dec. 6, 2010. Chrysler begins production of the Chrysler 200 sedan , a midsize replacement to the Sebring that is a key part of the company's revival. CEO Sergio Marchionne says nearly every part of the car has been changed from the old model, which was derided for its poor quality.<br />

For a candidate pledged to help businesses large and small succeed, Mitt Romney sure is getting a cool reception from top executives at Chrysler.

Sergio Marchionne, the company’s CEO, felt compelled to send a company-wide email to reassure workers that assertions made by the Republican presidential candidate both in a campaign appearance and in radio and television advertisements are “inaccurate.””I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China,” he wrote, adding that the company was planning on more investment in manufacturing and jobs in the American Midwest, including the crucial presidential swing state of Ohio.

Romney commented while campaigning last week that he had read news reports saying Chrysler would be cutting American jobs in favor of manufacturing Jeeps overseas.

Marchionne said it is true that the company is ramping up overseas manufacturing, but as additional capacity to feed growing demand in Chinese markets, not to replace American jobs.

“Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand,” he said. “It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.”

The back-and-forth, held just one week before Election Day, may prove a pivotal moment.

President Barack Obama and Romney are virtually tied in national polling, but Obama has a slight edge in most Ohio surveys, likely buoyed by positive reviews of his oversight of the auto-industry bailout viewed as critical to the region.

The Buckeye State is a near must-win for Romney, as no Republican has been elected to the White House without winning Ohio. Scrutiny of the electoral map reveals even if Romney were to run the table and win other battleground states Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Iowa, he still wouldn’t win the 270 votes necessary without taking Ohio.

Obama campaign officials have called Romney’s willingness to mislead a “desperate” attempt to win.

“It reeks of desperation because that’s what it is,” said Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager in a media call on Monday.

The Ohio press has extensively covered the back-and-forth, with the Cleveland Plain Dealer editorializing that the ad is “a masterpiece of misdirection.”

The Romney campaign also made news Tuesday when it announced that it was buying television advertising time in Pennsylvania, traditionally a swing state but one that has been largely off the table this cycle due to Obama’s consistent lead in polling there. An average of statewide polling has Obama up by 4.7 percentage points, according to RealClearPolitics.com. The GOP candidate’s campaign is also going to stump in Minnesota, another state thought to be firmly in the Democrat’s corner throughout the campaign.

“With one week to go, and 96 percent of the vote on the table on Election Day in Pennsylvania, this expansion of the electoral map demonstrates that Gov. Romney’s momentum has jumped containment from the usual target states and has spread to deeper blue states that Chicago never anticipated defending,” wrote Rich Beeson, Romney’s political director, in a memo on the campaign website.

He said the campaign is flush with cash and ready to make a super-sized final push.

“As a campaign we will put more resources into the target states in the final week, than previous GOP campaigns have been able to do in the final 10 weeks,” Beeson said. “The Romney campaign has the resources to expand the map in ways that weren’t possible in past cycles (without reducing any effort in any other target state).”

The Obama campaign, however, argues this expansion into states where Romney hasn’t been spending time or resources previously is an acknowledgement they aren’t gaining the necessary traction in Ohio and in other battlegrounds.

“The Romney campaign has found itself with a tremendously narrow and improbable path to 270 electoral votes,” said Messina, in a statement distributed by the Obama campaign. “Now, like Republicans did in 2008, they are throwing money at states where they never built an organization and have been losing for two years. Let’s be very clear, the Romney campaign and its allies decision to go up with advertising in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Minnesota is a decision made out of weakness, not strength.”

Messina said it’s clear that Obama has a “significant” early vote advantage and that Romney’s momentum gained from his debate performance at the beginning of the month has stalled.

“Gov. Romney has not been able to put away a single battleground state,” he said. “In fact, as polls in the past day have showed the candidates tied in North Carolina, Republicans have raced to increase their television advertising there. Voters who haven’t heard from the Romney campaign in two years will see this desperation for what it is.”

Both campaigns suspended official campaigning by Romney and Obama on Monday and Tuesday due to Hurricane Sandy. Romney did hold what the campaign billed as a “storm relief” event with supporters in Ohio, gathering canned goods and other items and Obama made a stop by the American Red Cross headquarters in Washington. Obama will travel to New Jersey on Wednesday where he will survey storm damage with Republican Gov. Chris Christie, while Romney has a full slate of campaign events scheduled in Florida. Christie, a top Romney surrogate who delivered the keynote address at the Republican National Convention this year, has already offered praise for Obama’s leadership on Sandy relief efforts.

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Did the Romney campaign apologize for the ad……no way.  They doubled down on their lies.  Here is a news report about their second ad with even more flagrant lies.

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Finally, Rachel Maddow, in her own unique way, sets the record straight and call out Romney and the Republicans for what they are…..serial liars.

Day 9 Of Mitt Romney Support For Richard Mourdock – Completely Wrong

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on November 3, 2012
Posted in: Completely Wrong, Hypocrisy, Politics, Religious Extremism. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Do you believe in Karma?  I do……and now even more so.

Richard “Rape is God’s will” Mourdock, and his biggest supporter Mitt Romney appear to have jointly eliminated any hope the Republicans have of capturing a majority in the Senate.

  1. Mitt could have done the right thing.
  2. Mitt could have rejected the religious extremist view of Richard “Rape is God’s will” Mourdock and withdrawn his support.
  3. Mitt could have cut his losses and admitted that he made made a mistake but Mitt has proven that he is not  that kind of guy which is quite troubling.

Ask yourself…..is this the kind of man I want running the United States.

Think about Mitt and his best buddy Bibi and ask yourself when (notice I didn’t say if) they get us involved in a major war in the Middle East will Mitt do the right thing once it is clear it is a mistake.  Will he admit it and get us out or will he follow the same strategy he followed with his support for Richard “Rape is God’s will” Mourdock and double down no matter what the cost in American lives.  Are you willing to take that chance?  I can tell you that I’m not…….

IF there is a God I am pretty sure that he does not cause women to be be raped no matter what Richard “Rape is God’s will” Mourdock says.  IF there is a God I imagine that he is somewhere laughing his/her ass off as he manipulates the electorate to make sure that Mitt and his best buddy Richard “Rape is God’s will” Mourdock go down in flames with the rest of the Republican Party.

If you are interested in the polling numbers that caused me to write this post, take a look at the following article from Huffington Post.

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2012 Senate Race Polls:

Richard Mourdock’s Plunge

Dampens GOP’s Majority Hopes

Mourdock

Two new independent polls of the Indiana Senate race show Richard Mourdock (R) losing significant ground to his opponent, Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), in the wake of his statement claiming that pregnancies from rape are “something God intended to happen.”

A Howey/DePauw University Battleground poll released Friday morning found Donnelly leading Mourdock 47 percent to 36 percent, up from a 2 point lead in September. Meanwhile, a new automated Rasmussen poll found Donnelly leading Mourdock by 3 points, up from a 5 point deficit just three weeks earlier.

Donnelly now leads Mourdock by 3.5 points in the HuffPost Pollster estimate, which is based on all available public polling, including internal polls from Mourdock’s campaign that continue to show him with a narrow lead.

With all partisan polls filtered out of that estimate, Donnelly’s lead expands to 5 points. HuffPost Pollster has officially shifted the rating of this race from “tossup” to “leaning Democratic.”

If Donnelly goes on to win in Indiana, the Republicans’ chances of winning a majority in the Senate are very low, as indicated by HuffPost Pollster Senate Outlook. Assuming that independent former Gov. Angus King of Maine — who continues to lead in the polls — caucuses with Democrats as expected, Republicans would need to win eight more competitive races to get to 50 seats, which would amount to a majority if Mitt Romney wins the presidency, with Paul Ryan casting the tie-breaking vote as vice president.

The Senate races in Nebraska, Nevada, Arizona, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Virginia, Montana and Massachusetts present them with their best opportunity to reach that number. However, Democratic candidates currently lead in five of those eight races, according to the most recent HuffPost Pollster estimates.

The GOP’s more unlikely prospects lie in Senate races such as those in Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Florida, all of which feature Democratic candidates leading by at least 5 points.

However, if the Democrats manage to win all six races currently rated as “tossups” and all of the seats “leaning” their way, they could actually expand their majority by as many as four seats.

Here are the significant developments in other Senate races since Monday.

Elizabeth Warren (D) got a strong result from a new Suffolk University poll in Massachusetts, which shows her leading Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) by 7 points, with only 1 percent of voters still undecided. Meanwhile, Republican-leaning Kimball Political Consulting found Brown ahead by 2 points. The two candidates agreed to cancel their final debate, scheduled for Oct. 30, due to damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, and Brown refused to reschedule the debate for Thursday. With no other major public events scheduled between now and Election Day, the focus turns to the two campaigns’ highly touted turnout operations, especially in the aftermath of the storm. Warren currently leads Brown by 4.2 points in the HuffPost Pollster estimate and this race is still rated as “leaning Democratic.”

Former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) has pulled nearly even with Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) in the open Wisconsin Senate race, according to recent polls. Baldwin’s lead has shrunk to just 1 point in the current HuffPost Pollster estimate, and this race rating has shifted from “leaning Democratic” to “tossup.” Of the five polls taken of both the state’s presidential and Senate races over the last week, Thompson has outperformed Mitt Romney by an average of exactly 5 points. If Romney even comes within a few points of winning Wisconsin, it significantly boosts Thompson’s chances. If Romney wins the state, it’s hard to see how Thompson loses.

Polls also show the open Virginia Senate race as having tightened over the past few weeks. Former Gov. Tim Kaine (D) now leads former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) by1.4 points in the HuffPost Pollster estimate, but his fate now appears to be tied to President Barack Obama’s performance, who currently leads Romney by a similarly slim margin in the state.

The Senate race in Montana continues to be one of the closest races in the country. Since September, neither Sen. Jon Tester (D) nor Rep. Denny Rehberg (R) has led by more than a 3 point margin in any publicly released poll. This past week, two independent polls, from Pharos Research Group and Rasmussen, both found Tester leading Rehberg by just 1 point. Tester holds a statistically insignificant 1.9 point lead in the current HuffPost Pollster estimate of the race.

While former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D) saw some encouraging polling numbers last week in Nebraska, a new automated We Ask America poll found him trailing state Sen. Deb Fischer (R) by 13 points — similar to the margins she enjoyed over the summer. Since this race has been so sparsely polled, this result was enough to shift Fischer’s advantage up to 10 points in the HuffPost Pollster estimate and keep this race rated as “strong Republican.”

HuffPost Pollster rates a race as a “tossup” if the polling margin separating two candidates is less than 3 percentage points in the Pollster estimate and there have been at least five polls in that state in the last three weeks. A race is designated as “leaning” toward one party if a candidate is leading by 3 to 6 percentage points in that estimate. If a candidate is leading by more than 6 percentage points, it is rated as “strong” Democrat or Republican.

If there have been fewer than five polls in the last three weeks in any given race, composite ratings are used from three respected election handicappers: the Cook Political Report, the Rothenberg Political Report and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

Friday Word of the Week #16 – Happy

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on November 3, 2012
Posted in: Word Of The Week. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Today’s word of the week is “Happy”.  You might be asking yourself why.  Well the answer is that I am happy that the election is almost here.  To be absolutely honest, the whole process has exhausted me.  I feel passionate about the issues and have tried to do my share through this blog but there are just not enough hours in the day to take care of my family responsibilities, do my job that pays the bills, write about the election issues, and try to provide enough music posts to keep my core audience entertained.  I need a break…..

So…..I am happy that soon I will be able to get back to thinking about music with my free time.  Until then, I have some “Happy” songs for you.  The range of these songs is huge.  It starts with my favorite REM song which always makes me so happy that I have to move.  It ends with a song by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans that makes me happy because it reminds me of my carefree childhood back in the 50s and early 60s.  In the middle are songs from a diverse series of bands including the Turtles, Iron Butterfly, and Blood Sweat and Tears.  I hope you take time to enjoy the music as you start your weekend.

Shiny Happy People – REM (with Kate Pierson) – My favorite REM song!!!!

Happy Together – The Turtles

You’ve Made Me So Very Happy – Blood Sweat and Tears

Are You Happy – Iron Butterfly (Fillmore East 1968)

Happy Trails – Roy Rogers and Dale Evans

Happy trails to you, until we meet again.
Happy trails to you, keep smilin’ until then.
Who cares about the clouds when we’re together?
Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather.
Happy trails to you, ’till we meet again.

Some trails are happy ones,
Others are blue.
It’s the way you ride the trail that counts,
Here’s a happy one for you.

Happy trails to you, until we meet again.
Happy trails to you, keep smilin’ until then.
Who cares about the clouds when we’re together?
Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather.

Happy trails to you, ’till we meet again.

I hope you have a great weekend.  Don’t forget about our fellow citizens in the Northeast that are struggling!  Happy trails to all of you………

Republican Commandment #7 – Hate The Poor & Love the Rich

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on November 2, 2012
Posted in: My Closing Argument, Politics. Tagged: . Leave a comment

I think the headline says it all but let me put it another way……the Republicans are “Robin Hood in Reverse”.  What does that mean….It means that the Romney/Ryan budget is all about budget cuts that will take from the poor and give the savings to the rich.  Romney and Ryan still refuse to release any details on their budget (I understand….if they said what they were really planning no one would vote for them!) but the concept above is clear based on the Ryan budget that Romney has embraced.  If this is the philosophy you want for the US Government then the Romney/Ryan ticket is for you!  It is definitely not for me……

Bruce Springsteen said it best, in the US we take care of our own!

Watch this video for a lot of great details on the topic above, then watch Bruce perform We Take Care Of Our Own.  Please look for a special message from me before the Bruce video!

I firmly believe that in the US we do take care of our own.  With that in mind, most of you probably know that a devastating storm named Sandy hit the northeast US this week and cause lots of damage and loss of life.

People are hurting and I would like to encourage everyone to help to the extent that you can.  A donation to the Red Cross (www.redcross.org) will help make sure that that help quickly gets to the people who need it the most.  Thanks for your consideration.

No One Could Have Repaired The 2008 REPUBLICAN Financial Crash In Four Years

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on November 2, 2012
Posted in: Completely Right, Politics. Tagged: . Leave a comment

This is something Republicans do not want to talk about…….

A Republican president, following the same policies that Mitt Romney is espousing today, crashed the whole US economy in 2008 and now those same Republicans are using the fact that the economy is not fully recovered after four years as their main line of attack against President Obama.  Think about it like this…..

A drunk driver who has been repeatedly arrested for driving under the influence crashes one night during a drunken binge and totals his car.  The car has to be rebuilt from the ground up.  That is going to take a while but he expects it to be repaired overnight.  The next time he is drunk he call the repair shop to complain because they haven’t fixed his car yet.  He wants the car back so he can take it out and wreck it again.

That my friends is exactly what is happening here!  The article below from the Huffington Post provides some great details that build on this theme.  This is great stuff from Bill Clinton!

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Bill Clinton Cites Economist Kenneth Rogoff

To Argue Obama Needs Four More Years

CHILLICOTHE, Ohio — Former President Bill Clinton added some meat to his argument that President Barack Obama needs another four years to fix the economy on Thursday night, citing work by an economist whose book is often cited by Republicans talking about the national debt.

Clinton, at his third event of the day in Ohio, after a morning stop in Wisconsin, spoke to a crowd of 2,000 for about 45 minutes, even though he began his remarks with his voice sounding on the verge of failing. “I’ve almost lost my voice in the service of my president,” Clinton said.

The 66-year old former president seemed to gain strength as he spoke. And around halfway through his remarks, he got the crowd’s attention with this comment: “The whole election may come down to this, this one thing.”

“I know that no one who ever served as president — not me, not Franklin Roosevelt, not anyone — could have repaired all the economic damge done during that crash in four years,” Clinton said.

And then he cited a book called This Time It’s Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, by Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart.

This book has become a reference point for many concerned about the nation’s $16 trillion debt. Rogoff and Reinhart wrote that history has shown that once a nation’s debt swells to 90 percent of the gross domestic product, it takes a percentage point off of that nation’s economic growth per year.

Essentially, as they said in a column a year ago, “too much debt means the economy can’t grow.”The $16 trillion in U.S. debt is about equal to the total U.S. economy, though Rogoff and Reinhart’s precise metric was debt held by the public. That figure is about $11.3 trillion and does not include the $4.8 trillion in intra-governmental debt, which refers to money owed by the treasury to government accounts, such as the Social Security trust fund.

Clinton said Rogoff is a moderate Republican. And then he related a conversation he had with Rogoff after reading his book.

“I called him on the phone and I said, ‘I read this very carefully. I just have a question. Do you believe that there’s any way America could have fully recovered from that crash in four years?'” Clinton said. “He said, ‘Lord no.'”

“He said, ‘No serious person believes that.’ He said, ‘The average country takes 10 years,'” Clinton said.

Clinton did not mention that Rogoff and Reinhart wrote a column for Bloomberg News two weeks ago, arguing that the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 was not a “borderline” economic crisis, but rather a “full-blown systemic meltdown.”

History has shown that economies hit by a systemic event have taken an average of about 10 years to recover, the two scholars wrote. Their point was to counter those, including Republican Mitt Romney, who have said that Obama’s policies have made the economic downturn worse by prolonging it and stifling recovery. Romney’s point, made by many others as well, has been that the U.S. economy usually recovers from a crisis within a few years.

“The most recent U.S. crisis appears to fit the more general pattern of a recovery from severe financial crisis that is more protracted than with a normal recession or milder forms of financial distress,” Rogoff and Reinhart wrote. “There is certainly little evidence to suggest that this time was worse. Indeed, if one compares U.S. output per capita and employment performance with those of other countries that suffered systemic financial crises in 2007-08, the U.S. performance is better than average.”

Clinton, who has boasted about the amount of news and economic data he consumes each day, likely was aware of this column, even if he did not reference it.

Clinton said that at the end of his conversation with Rogoff, he asked him, “Can we beat the global average of 10 years?”

“He said, ‘You bet we can. … But we have to do the right things,'” Clinton said. “President Obama wants to do the right things in the next four years.”

Clinton also let fly a memorable line when talking about Romney’s campaign ad that talks about Chrysler building Jeeps in China. The ad has been scathingly criticized by much of the Ohio press for being misleading, and Clinton said the Romney campaign had been “caught with their hand in the cookie jar.”

Clinton offered this advice: “When you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, you kind of shrug your shoulders and take it out.”

The Romney campaign instead increased its advertising, he said, and “doubled down on something that the people involved proved is false.”

Bruce Springsteen – Conscience of America

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on November 2, 2012
Posted in: Completely Right, Politics. Tagged: . Leave a comment

I have been trading emails recently with my online friend Gerard who lives in the Netherlands.  He was telling me about a Bruce Springsteen special that was schedule to air on Dutch TV this week and mentioned that part of the promotional material labeled Bruce the “Conscience of America”.  That phrase rang true to me so I have borrowed it for this post…..thank Gerard!

What I have for you today is a complete acoustic performance by Bruce from Iowa State University.  He appeared there in support of President Obama’s campaign.  After the video I have provided a letter that Bruce sent in advance of his performance.  It is worth a read.  Enjoy!

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A message from Bruce

Dear Friends:

The election is coming up on all of us and we all have strong feelings about it. I’ve been getting asked a lot about where I stand, so for those who are interested, here goes.

This presidential election is different than the last one because President Obama has a four year record to run on. Last time around, he carried with him a tremendous amount of hope and expectations. Unfortunately, due to the economic chaos the previous administration left him with, and the extraordinary intensity of the opposition, it turned into a really rough ride. But through grit, determination, and focus, the President has been able to do a great many things that many of us deeply support.

Domestically, that record includes working to increase and expand employment for all, protecting our all important social safety net, passing guaranteed health care for most of our citizens, with important new protections for all of the insured, rescuing the auto industry and so many of the American jobs that go with it, protecting and enhancing the rights of women, and bringing us closer to full acceptance of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.

In foreign affairs, that record includes following through on the removal of troops from the misguided and deceptive war in Iraq, and vigorously pursuing our real foreign enemies, especially the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

Right now the opposition’s resort to voter suppression in so many states is not receiving as much attention as it deserves. I believe that all of us, of whatever views, should be opposing these anti-voter, anti-citizen efforts.

Right now, for the President to be effective in his next term he needs our increased support and he needs support in the Congress, where some sterling candidates, such as current Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, challenger Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, and so many others, are fighting to make their constructive voices heard.

Right now, there is an ever increasing division of wealth in this country, with the benefits going more and more to the 1 percent. For me, President Obama is our best choice to begin to reverse this harmful development.

Right now, there is a fight going on to help make this a fairer and more equitable nation. For me, President Obama is our best choice to get us and keep us moving in the right direction.

Right now, we need a President who has a vision that includes all of our citizens, not just some, whether they are our devastated poor, our pressured middle class, and yes, the wealthy too; whether they are male or female, black, white, brown, or yellow, straight or gay, civilian or military.

Right now, there is a choice going on in America, and I’m happy that we live in a country where we all participate in that process. For me, President Obama is our best choice because he has a vision of the United States as a place where we are all in this together. We’re still living through very hard times but justice, equality and real freedom are not always a tide rushing in. They are more often a slow march, inch by inch, day after long day. I believe President Obama feels these days in his bones and has the strength to live them with us and to lead us to a country “…where no one crowds you and no one goes it alone.”

That’s why I plan to be in Ohio and Iowa supporting the re-election of President Obama to lead our country for the next four years.

Bruce Springsteen