Thank God for Bill Clinton. As President Obama said ex-President Clinton is the Secretary of Explaining Stuff.
For shared prosperity over trickle down
For we are all in this together over you are on your own
For cooperation over conflict
For arithmetic over illusion
Absolutely awesome!!!!!
Bruce Springsteen is making appearances with Bill Clinton this week at rallies for President Obama.
Here is part of Bruce’s performance from one of those appearances today. It is a great acoustic version of Blood Brothers. See what you think.
No retreat, baby no surrender! Thanks for supporting the cause Bruce!
This is the sixth in a series of posts that highlight classic rock songs featuring someone interesting sitting in on the recording session. For this series I post the song on one day and identify who is sitting in the following day. I hope you enjoy the concept and maybe learn some interesting music history in the process.
My selection for this post is Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. No, it isn’t the original Beatles song, it is the cover of it by Elton John. It is a great cover that pays homage to the original but introduces an interesting little reggae break in the middle. Listen to the song and see if you can tell who is sitting in. I will give you a hint, he is credited on the album as Dr. Winston O. Boogie.
The answer will be posted tomorrow along with some additional background information.
Send in your guesses and I will identify the the first person who gives the correct answer in tomorrow’s post.
It’s hard to believe but rich business owners are trying to swing the election to the Republican by coercing employees to vote for Romney. I know this sounds to crazy to be true but it’s not….these people will do anything to rig the election for the Republicans. Checkout the video below for the details.
If you don’t believe Mitt is involved with this kind of thing, check out the audio clip from Mitt below where he encourages small business owners to do the same thing!
Let’s summarize some previous posts into a concise summary of the Republican strategy regarding the vote:
Not the American way and once again completely wrong.
This is the second in a series of posts about Tribute Songs. Our second tribute song is written and performed by Elton John. Let’s listen…..
Elton and John became very close in the mid-1970s during the period that John and Yoko Ono were separated (a period referred to as the “lost weekend”). John was more than a little out of control during this period and it seems that he and Elton had some good time 🙂 Checkout the picture of the two them below….
I think that Empty Garden is the best of the tribute songs written after John’s murder. What do you think?
I just watched the second debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney. President Obama chewed him up and spit him out tonight……way to go!
The most interesting comment might have been Mitt talking about “Binders Full Of Women”……..what a great idea! Maybe this is a whole new line of Republican attacks on Women…..”A woman’s place is in the binder”
The Republicans have not given up on suppressing the minority vote.
The latest proof of this is that even though an appellate court overturned the Republican effort to prevent early voting (which we celebrated on this blog a few days ago), the Republicans in Ohio refused to abide by that ruling. This forced the Democrats to take the issue to the Supreme Court which today ruled to uphold Ohio early voting.
The Republican actions on suppression are absolutely disgusting….thank God for the Supreme Court!
The details on this topic are provided below in an article from the Huffington Post so check it out if you are interested….but first let’s celebrate. I found this Metallica cover of a song called I Just Want To Celebrate……..let’s listen.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a last-gasp appeal by Ohio Republicans and approved early voting for Ohio residents on the weekend before Election Day.
Ohio’s Secretary of State John Husted had refused to enforce last week’s appellate court decision, in which a three-judge panel came down on the side of the Obama campaign and blocked a law that would have limited early voting.
Husted remained adamant that Ohioans should not be allowed to vote on that weekend, which was a prime voting period for minorities in the 2008 election.
The Supreme Court’s order was one line long: “The application for stay presented to Justice [Elena] Kagan and by her referred to the Court is denied.”
In response to the Republican-backed law to limit early voting, the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party had sued the state, asking a federal court to restore voting during those last three days on the grounds that Ohioans would not have equal access to the polls otherwise.
Ohio Republican leaders said their motivation was to make things easier for election administrators. But the appellate court noted that some Ohio election administrators actually preferred having those extra days of voting — and that in either case, the “proffered interest in smooth election administration” wasn’t sufficient reason.
Husted’s refusal to establish a statewide rule definitively restoring voting over the final weekend before Election Day added more confusion to an already chaotic run-up to the elections, stalling efforts by African-American churches to shuttle people to the polls after church on Sunday.
Soon after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Husted issued a directive to local election boards, setting uniform hours for the three days before the election: 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday and Monday, and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.
The Obama campaign expressed delight with the ruling. “We now turn our full attention to educating Ohio voters on when and how they can vote along with presenting the clear choice they face when selecting their next president,” Bob Bauer, general counsel for the campaign, said in a statement.
The early-voting period began two weeks ago in Ohio, but in accordance with the new law, mostly during working hours.
“Justice has prevailed,” said Pastor Rousseau O’Neil, of Rockdale Baptist Church in Cincinnati, who has taken part in several Souls to the Polls campaigns. “We saw that early voting made a tremendous difference four years ago and I suspect that it will have a tremendous impact this time around as well.”
“At this time in our lives and in this country, we can not afford to go back to a time when so many people were denied the right, in any form or fashion,” O’Neil said. “We’ll come out in droves.”
Had enough? I didn’t think so……..here is one more.
Thanks to NPR for this great article below about how SECRET rich donors are attempting to buy the election for Romney. Compare where the Obama and Romney campaign funding comes from and then tell me, with a straight face, that you believe that Mitt Romney is going to be looking out for the average American!
Since April, most of the TV ads supporting Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney have come from outside groups, not from Romney’s own campaign. And those groups raised more than half of their money from secret donors, according to a six-month study of ads.
From April through September, Romney for President aired slightly more than 144,000 ads on broadcast TV. The outside groups supporting him ran nearly 250,000.
That enabled Romney to start saving cash for a last-minute TV blitz, which has just now begun.
This is the first presidential campaign since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling of 2010. And it’s giving us a good look at how that decision and other recent court cases have changed politics.
Citizens United allowed corporate spending in support of individual candidates. But former Federal Election Commission Chairman David Mason says the big effect was on donors’ thinking.
“I think there are two things going on. One is that the explosion of reported spending sort of encouraged more big donors to get into this space, to give large sums of money and be more active in politics,” Mason says.
“The second thing that occurred is people looking around at the different reporting and other legal consequences,” Mason says.
SuperPACs sprang up soliciting donors for seven- or even eight-figure contributions.
But for some donors, the trouble with a superPAC is it has to disclose their names. But other groups — the 501(c)(4) tax-exempt groups known as social welfare organizations — do not.
“For donors who wanted to spend money on politics but perhaps not have their names disclosed publicly, the (c)(4) option was much more attractive,” says Mason.
Soon after Citizens United, Karl Rove and other Republican Party leaders founded the 501(c)(4) Crossroads GPS and the superPAC American Crossroads. They became the biggest outside advertisers for Romney, spending an estimated $70 million since April attacking President Obama on TV.
More than half of the money has flowed secretly through Crossroads GPS.
Earlier in the election cycle, tax returns from Crossroads GPS showed that nearly 90 percent of its funds came from as few as 16 donors; two donors gave $10 million each.
“I think it defies common sense to think that these … ‘social welfare organizations’ — that exist apparently to attack political candidates, sometimes support political candidates — that they are truly educational or socially oriented,” says Sheila Krumholz, director of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics. “I don’t think anybody buys that argument.”
NPR and PBS NewsHour used data from Kantar Media CMAG — which tracks political ads — to do this analysis of presidential campaign advertising. It tracked ads since April 10 — when former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum dropped out of the race, essentially ceding the Republican nomination to Romney and marking the unofficial launch of the general election campaign — through Oct. 10.
| Party Affiliation | Amount Spent | Donor Status | Percent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | $20,032,460 | Disclosed | 86.6% |
| Democratic | $3,101,280 | Undisclosed | 13.4% |
| Total Democratic | $23,133,740 | ||
| Republican | $69,112,620 | Disclosed | 44.4% |
| Republican | $86,600,860 | Undisclosed | 55.6% |
| Total Republican | $155,713,480 |
Source: Kantar Media CMAG
The analysis shows how Crossroads GPS and another social welfare group split the burden of advertising this year. They alternated a few weeks at a time, almost always putting at least $1 million per week into anti-Obama ads.
Crossroads’ partner is Americans for Prosperity, which has the backing of billionaires David and Charles Koch.
For the 501(c)(4)s, donor secrecy is an essential element. The ads themselves are often indistinguishable from superPAC ads.
The ad aired most often by any of the outside groups attacks Obama’s job record. The superPAC American Crossroads spent about $11.5 million on it.
The second most common ad is from Crossroads GPS. It cost roughly $8.5 million and carries a similar message, saying Obama has failed to create a significant number of new jobs. Its tagline: “Tell President Obama: For real job growth, cut the debt. Support the new majority agenda.”
Neither ad tells the viewer to vote against President Obama.
The story among Democrats is simpler: 91 percent of the ads have come from the Obama campaign, financed with donations that are capped at $5,000 and disclosed.
As for liberal outside groups, they spent $3 million from secret donors — compared with $87 million by conservative groups.
“Will this money ever be disclosed?” asks Krumholz. “We have no idea the degree to which this is funded by wealthy individuals or organizations for whom it’s far preferential to fly under the radar.”
Occasionally, information about secret donors leaks out. But those leaks have in no way kept up with the flood in secret contributions.
One of my favorite Mary Chapin Carpenter songs! Let’s listen…..
Being the oldest child in my family, I never experienced an older sibling moving away like in this song but I well know that feeling of loss that she is talking about! I identify with all of Mary’s songs on that same, very personal, level. She is without a doubt my favorite female singer/songwriters.
