Is Sandy God's Endorsement of Obama?

I watched CNN at a neighborhood restaurant for two hours today.  Romney's name was mentioned only once or twice. Obama had face time again and again. Obama has the microphone now. The hurricane emergency has obliterated election coverage.

Rather than Hurricane Sandy being an expression of God's anger against gays, as at least one fundamentalist pastor preaches, it's much more likely that Sandy is an expression of God's approval of Obama's support for gays.

Sandy is God's endorsement of Obama.

Tsunami Moon

The moon is full, in earth sign Taurus.

A major earthquake has struck, just off the western coast of Canada. Because it was at sea, the shock, though widely felt, did little damage.

A tsunami resulted from the earthquake, and warnings were issued. But by the time the waves hit Hawaii, they were only 5 feet high.

On the East Coast, hurricane Sandy is roaring up from the south and crashing into a winter storm from the north, and the mix is threatening 50 million people. The New York City transit system has shut down in anticipation. The stock exchanges will be closed for two days. There may be damage.

Windows 8 has just been released.

This can't all be mere coincidence.

Define The Need

Too often, government creates a solution in search of a need.

 A "needs definition" needs to precede any project plan. As my dear father said, many times in fact, "A problem clearly understood is half solved." 

Also the needs definition needs to be dynamic, not fixed. It needs to be adaptive. That way your project creep can keep up with your needs creep. Or needs shrinkage.

Romney: Drop Wages Below China's And Jobs Will Return

In the last debate, Mr. Romney called, essentially, for reducing American wages below Chinese wages. Then the jobs he sent overseas jobs will return, he says. 

I want to know, will we Americans be required to live in dormitories, too? And what if the Chinese then decide to reduce their wages below American wages? This could go somewhere dreadful.

Romney was responding to the Goldberg question:

Crowley: "I want to ask Carol Goldberg to stand up, because she gets to a question that both these men have been passionate about. It's for Governor Romney.

Goldberg: The outsourcing of American jobs overseas has taken a toll on our economy. What plans do you have to put back and keep jobs here in the United States?

Romney: Boy, great question and important question, because you're absolutely right. The place where we've seen manufacturing go has been China. China is now the largest manufacturer in the world. It used to be the United States of America. A lot of good people have lost jobs. A half a million manufacturing jobs have been lost in the last four years. That's total over the last four years.

One of the reasons for that is that people think it's more attractive in some cases to go offshore than to stay here. We have made it less attractive for enterprises to stay here than to go offshore from time to time. What I will do as president is make sure it's more attractive to come to America again.

This is the way we're going to create jobs in this country."

Suppose, instead of reducing American wages, that we helped to unionize China. Turn it  back into a workers' paradise. Get them some decent wages. That would also bring our jobs back. Without reducing our wages.

Dumpster-gate in Virginia?

It started small. Somebody found some discarded voter registration forms in a dumpster. A person had driven up, dropped them in, then had gone and parked in front of the Republican headquarters down the street. He was driving a car from Pennsylvania. The sheriff said he would investigate.

That was yesterday. Today we learn that there has been an arrest.

"A Pennsylvania man employed by a company working for the Republican Party of Virginia was arrested by investigators from the Rockingham County Sheriff’s office on Thursday and charged with destroying voter registration forms.

Colin Small, a 23-year-old resident of Phoenixville, Pa., worked for Pinpoint, a company hired to register voters on behalf of the Republican Party of Virginia. Prosecutors charged him with four counts of destruction of voter registration applications, eight counts of failing to disclose voter registration applications and one count of obstruction of justice."

Colin Small's "Linked-In" profile says he is a "Grassroots Field Director at Republican National Committee" rather than an employee of Pinpoint. He has worked for the Republican National Committee since August, according to his resume. Before that, he worked as an intern for four months in 2011 on the staff of conservative congressman Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Small graduated in 2012 from the Catholic University of America with a BA in politics, minor in philosophy.  College activities included " Homeless Food Runs, Relay for Life, Habitat For Humanity." And he was an Eagle Scout.

He must have thought he was doing good.

How many registrations have been tossed overall is an open questions. Who it was that told him to break the law is an open question. How many other organizers toss registrations is an open question.

Voter registration forms are the kind of form that is carefully audited.This is the kind of crime for which people serve jail time.

Obama Fact-Checks Romney

Two evenings ago, candidate Romney stumbled badly over his own deceptions. In the second presidential debate of the current season, he saw his collection of lies that had been made popular by the right defused, deflated, disabled by facts.

Romney started off by insulting the moderator, Candy Crowley. This failure of diplomacy did not serve him well. She later caught him in a lie. Obama caught him over and over again, saying "That's not true!" at least six times. Romney's son Tagg got so mad at his father being called a liar that he wanted to take a swing at the President. But distance and the many layers of Secret Service people led him to hesitate.

Truth is different for the Right. Truth, for many of them, is what you believe. Not proven fact.

Strong enough faith can ignore facts and embrace the ancient inscribings of a small tribe in Israel as its over-arching paradigm. Strong enough faith can work miracles. Strengthen your faith in your husband, and he will be true again. Sometimes it works that way.

When Romney preaches to his faithful, they love to hear how bad things are, how weak the President is, how low their taxes could be cut. Whatever myths right-wing radio has managed to stick to the wall become fact due to the cheering section's belief. And these "pseudo-facts" are what Romney has been running on. Truthiness.

So, ignorant of the real facts, Mr. Romney proudly charged that Obama had not called the attack on the American consulate in Libya an 'act of terror' for two weeks. In fact, Obama had done so the next day, speaking in the Rose Garden. Romney had not checked the truth of his truthy 'fact'. Obama and Cindy Crowley almost simultaneously threw a flag on that statement.

Romney spoke of going out as governor and filling binders full of women's resumes so he could have a lot of women in his organization. In fact, the binders were created and vetted by women's organizations before his election. He did not do it, he did not think of doing it. They tasked him with hiring women. But he claimed the credit.

What's worse for his cause than lying is that Romney says things that are easily disproven. If the world can easily disprove your words, you shouldn't say those words. That is, if you have a shred of common sense. But Romney can't tell when his lies are transparent. Here is his face as he realizes the problem: Romney in panic.    


 Republicans face a truth crisis. "Truthiness" is not enough. Factuality is needed, too.

"Trickle-down" economics hasn't been working.  Tax cuts for the rich do not spur economic growth.

Also, free birth control access dramatically reduces abortion rates.

Also, massive drug control spending has no effect on the addiction rate. 

Also, Obama cut the deficit and slowed spending increases to the lowest level in 50 years.

Surely, Mr. Romney will come to the next debate armed with proven facts.

Ryan Rants As Biden Smiles

With a voice resembling an adenoidal Jerry Lewis playing to Mitt Romney's urbane impression of Dean Martin, the Republican candidate for Vice President, Congressman Paul Ryan, two nights ago found himself full of principles but bereft of practice.

Ryan whined. Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate, sounded instead like a gentle daddy explaining to his son why he couldn't take his balloon to bed.

Ryan stretched the truth. Biden smiled, even laughing now and then, he held up his hand, he finally interrupted with the facts. Again and again.

Biden told about the large group of countries involved in organizing sanctions against Iran to halt its development of nuclear power. Biden clarified that Iran is very far from producing a bomb as Republicans have claimed. Biden gave details on his and the President's close working relationship with Bibi Netanyahu, the hawkish leader of Israel. Biden pointed out that the Libyan embassy's request for more security guards was not one that would have come to the President's desk. 

The gentle daddy could be firm. Although many listeners considered the moderator the winner of the debate, Biden was willing to correct misunderstandings on her part as well.

As FactCheck.org observes, Biden himself stretched the facts several times. He said that his administration rescued Detroit, when it simply carried through on a process started under the Bush administration. But their review found Mr. Ryan's failures severe.
 
For voters, one hopes the question may be "Which of these people do I want to have his hands on the red telephone?"  The answer should be clear.

Fight Terrorism Locally - Stand Up Against Bullying

"Spirit Day" is October 19th. Last year and again this year, people who wish to stand against bullying in the schools, bullying in the workplace, bullying in marriage, will wear something purple.

Perhaps Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will stand against bullying.

More:  http://www.glaad.org/spiritday/purple2012

Romney Puts His Best Foot Forward

It's hard, when you tell a joke and nobody laughs. It's harder still when no one even realized it was a joke.

So it was for Mitt Romney a week or two ago when the presidential candidate innocently asked the press why airplane windows cannot be opened in an emergency. His wife had just been riding on a plane with a cockpit fire, and had sat trapped in smoke that couldn't be exhausted. He may have been sardonically echoing his wife's complaint. He may have been trying to make a joke. The dryness of his humor was missed by the press.

They then noted his failure to provide specifics on his pledge to provide specifics.

But in the first presidential candidates' debate last week, Mitt Romney shone like a newly polished shoe. He had warned ahead of time that he would be armed with zingers. So the President let him zing. The President cooled his heels.

Mitt proposed a $17,000 limit on income tax deductions. Mitt proposed removing Big Bird from the airwaves by de-funding public television. Mitt was confused, refusing to admit that his changes to Medicare would once again deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, although his campaign corrected him the next day.  He backed away from his own tax plan. Mitt said that half of the green energy firms that the Obama administration had given loans to had gone out of business.

Later in the debate, Romney fuzzied up his original $17,000 number:  "Make up a number — $25,000, $50,000. Anybody can have deductions up to that amount."  Charities which depend on deduction-driven contributions were not impressed with his concept. It appears to still be in flux.

"Leave Big Bird Alone" became the battle cry of public television defenders, now rallied to join the anti-Mitt cadres. The New York Times op-editorialized. The Obama campaign came riding to Big Bird's defense.
 
On October 4th, the Romney campaign admitted that Romney didn't mean to say that half the green energy firms that were given help had failed. He said it, but he didn't mean to say it. Not to this audience. (The number is actually about 1%.)

Although Romney had no opportunity to use his "47%" zinger during the debate, on October 5th he denounced his own words, saying about his recorded speech at a fundraiser, "In this case I said something that's just completely wrong."  (As noted on this blog, Romney's statement that 47 percent of the American people are playing a victim game was a confabulation of three different populations: voters, homes with a person receiving government aid, and people who pay no income taxes.) Romney had been roundly criticized for this, and he had paid for his statement in the polls.

The Romney campaign is moving its staff out of Pennsylvania. 28 days before the election. Their work there is done.

At a Romney fundraiser on October 8th, there was a big sign, "No Video or Audio Recordings Allowed of Tonight's Event."  This message warns donors that they are going to be told what they want to hear, not what Romney, given popular pressure, may actually do if  he actually were to be elected.

Presidential Debate Goes Global

YouTube will be streaming the US Presidential Debate tonight. To connect, a person simply needs to go to YouTube and search on "presidential debate streaming".

People can watch this debate from anywhere in the world that has internet access. At the same time that global money is trying to rule the United States by overwhelming voters with ads, this vision of democracy in motion will be going out to the whole world.

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Appendum and addendum:  YouTube froze. Way too many viewers for their bandwidth. Same thing for ABC, which was covering the debate. However, Huffington Post had viewer slots left in their streamery, so I watched it there. Also watched the Vice Presidential debates at HuffPo.

It seems like sites are re-streaming the video. Significant video gets re-streamed, like the video of the British bobbies getting ready to invade the Ecuadorian Embassy and capture Assange a month or two ago. Enough people saw this before it happened that it didn't happen.