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Payson Teabaggers declare war on the U.S.
July 19, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
How is it that these people are allowed to be associated with the "party of Lincoln" — Abraham Lincoln, the president who preserved the Union? They clearly share more in common with Jefferson Davis and the confederate insurrectionists.
Check out these Neoconfederate insurrectionists from Payson, Arizona. The Payson Roundup / Candidates declare war on feds:
The three Republican contenders for the state House and Senate seats representing Rim Country launched a full-throated call to wage figurative war on the federal government at a joint appearance last week before the Payson Tea Party.
Incumbent state representatives Chester Crandell, running now for the Senate, and Rep. Brenda Barton and Flagstaff Tea Party Chairman Bob Thorpe, both running for the state House, all support a constitutional amendment to revoke the terms of Arizona’s statehood so the state Legislature could take control of federal lands in Arizona. [Proposition 120]
The crusade against federal authority dominated the discussion before more than 100 Tea Party backers at Tiny’s Restaurant.
“It’s time ‘we the people’ stepped up … we will take over the management of the land, of the water, of the air” from the federal government, said Rep. Crandell, the lone Republican running for the District 4 Senate seat, which includes northern Gila County, Camp Verde and Flagstaff.
Rep. Barton, who shifted her official address to Payson to run in the newly configured District 6, repeatedly quoted the Declaration of Independence’s justification of rebellion against England more than 200 years ago, saying a government can exist only with the consent of the governed.
“I really want to withdraw my consent,” she said. “This is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. If it were a democracy, all the wolves would decide which lambs they want to have for dinner. Right now in the Valley [Laurie Roberts Here it is: My list of kooks at Capitol is] calling us ‘kooks,’ they’re working very, very hard to ‘dekookify’ the Legislature. They want to get rid of anyone who wants to live under the constitution.”
I am pretty sure that Jefferson Davis Brenda Barton means the Constitution of the Confederate States of America.
Grijalva on Bain startup money
July 19, 2012
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by David Safier Here's the complete text of Raúl Grijalva's Media Release about the funding Romney used to start Bain Capital. July 19, 2012 Washington, D.C. – Rep. Raúl Grijalva released the following statement today in response to this morning's Los Angeles Times article examining the funding sources Mitt Romney used to start Bain Capital. … Read more
Senate Tea-Publicans filibuster the Bring Jobs Home Act
July 19, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeamnie: When your nominee is a pioneer in outsourcing American jobs to third world countries, of course you filibuster a bill to encourage bringing those jobs back home to America. They are shameless. Senate Tea-Publicans continue to sabotage the U.S. economy by filibustering the Bring Jobs Home Act today. GOP senators block top … Read more
About Romney’s Swiss bank account …
July 19, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
So Ann Romney told Good Morning America this morning that she and her husband had released "all (you) people need to know and understand about our financial situation." (There is some dispute from the video whether she said "you people" or simply switched from saying "all you need to know" to "all people need to know" mid-sentence, whatever).
Well, no actually, Ann, you have not even produced the full 2010 tax return. You see, there is a very important disclosure document missing from your 2010 tax returns. Steve Benen summarizes in The twists and turns of tax returns:
[I]t turns out that the one year of materials we do have — Romney released his 2010 returns earlier in the year — may be incomplete, leaving the public with zero full reports to scrutinize. The Huffington Post reports that documentation related to his Swiss bank account is legally required, but has not been released. Does this really matter? Actually, it does.
By serving as a curtain between Romney's U.S. accounts and his foreign holdings, Romney's Swiss account could shield many financial activities from American scrutiny. Hypothetically, any politically unpopular investments, clever and complex asset sales designed to lower Romney's tax bills or other activities would be far more difficult to decipher.
Greg Sargent also had a good report on this, stressing the importance of understanding how Romney may have gone about reducing his tax liabilities. When Greg checked with the Tax Policy Center's Joseph Rosenberg about this, he confirmed that today's revelation is another piece in the broader pattern: "There could be assets abroad that wouldn't necessarily be shown in the standard tax return, but would be on this other sort of disclosure form. What are these accounts, and what is the purpose for having them?"
The Romney campaign has not yet explained this need for so much secrecy.
Hmmm, I have a theory.
Dr. Word says: It depends on what the meaning of the word “that” is.
July 19, 2012
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by David Safier
Let's have some fun with pronouns and antecedents.
In a recent speech, President Obama said, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." Romney has cynically turned those words into the center of his campaign. But, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, Obama's statement hinges on what the meaning of the word "that" is.
"Look at that!" The exclamation means nothing unless you can see the person who said it pointing at a beautiful sunset over the mountains or a horrific car wreck on the highway. The pronoun "that" is a pointing word. Either it's accompanied by the physical act of pointing, or it points back to its antecedent in a statement.
Taking Obama's words out of context, "that" seems to point back to "business." In the context of Obama's whole statement, however, "that" points back to the teachers who helped business people learn the skills that allowed them to succeed as well as the roads and bridges that are vital for businesses to exist, both serving as examples of the ways society as a whole helps people create their businesses.
Replace the two pronouns "that" and "somebody" with their antecedents, and the sentence would read, "If you've got a business, you didn't build the roads and bridges which are vital to your success. Other people in this great country of ours helped pay for those roads and bridges, and they were also the teachers who gave you the skills you needed to succeed."
Unfortunately, the pronoun-free statement I constructed is poetry-free as well. It's clunky and uninspiring. That's one of the reasons our language affords us options, like the ability to substitute pronouns for people, places, things and ideas — to help our language and our ideas flow more smoothly.
The Obama campaign has created a short video eviscerating Romney's attack and exposing him for the purposeful liar he is. You can watch the video below the fold.
The Romney campaign’s death by a thousand cuts
July 19, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Best practices for a politician is full disclosure. But Willard "Mittens" Romney has opted to run the most secretive and deceptive campaign for president since Richard M. Nixon. The result will be a death by a thousand cuts as the drip-drip-drip of media disclosures and "no comment" from the Romney campaign will continue.
Romney spent Wednesday on the campaign trail once again questioning President Obama as an "other," not American but "foreign." This is an old GOP tactic to question the Americaness and patriotism of anyone who does not share their extremist conservative views, i.e., the majority of Americans.
It is Mittens Romney who has bona fide foreign connections, from Swiss bank accounts, to a blocker corporation in Bermuda, to bank accounts in the tax avoidance haven of the Caymen Islands. Then there is Sheldon Adelson's money from Macao pouring into the Romney and GOP Super PACs. There is also the better part of three years Romney spent in Paris, France as a draft dodger during the Vietnam war, but I digress.
Romney's foreign connections are again in the news today with this report from the Los Angeles Times, Bain Capital started with help of offshore investors:
When Mitt Romney launched Bain Capital in 1984, he struggled at first to raise enough money for the untested venture.
So he and his partners tapped an eclectic roster of investors, raising more than a third of their first $37-million investment fund from wealthy foreigners.
Most of the foreign investors' money came through corporations registered in Panama, then known for tax advantages and unusual banking secrecy.
Previously unreported details, documented in Massachusetts corporate filings and other public records, show that Bain Capital was enmeshed in the largely opaque world of international high finance from its very inception.
The documents don't indicate any wrongdoing, and experts say that such financial vehicles are common for wealthy foreign investors. But the new details come as President Obama has criticized Romney for profiting from Bain Capital's own offshore investment entities, which are unavailable to most Americans.
Romney has had some shady business associates:
Arpaio on Trial
July 19, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The "most corrupt sheriff in America," Crazy Uncle Joe Arpaio, goes on trial today in a civil lawsuit for a declaratory judgment that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department has a systematic policy of discrimination of racially profiling Latinos. U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow is presiding over the trial that begins today and is expected to last until early August. Ariz. sheriff faces profiling allegations at trial:
Now, the sheriff in Arizona's most populous county will have to convince a federal judge who is presiding over a lawsuit that heads to trial on Thursday and is expected to last until early August.
The plaintiffs say Arpaio's officers based some traffic stops on the race of Hispanics who were in vehicles, had no probable cause to pull them over and made the stops so they could inquire about their immigration status.
"He is not free to say whatever he wants," said Dan Pochoda, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, one of the groups that has pushed the lawsuit against Arpaio.
"He will be called as a witness in our case," Pochoda said. "He will not have control over the flow of information, and he is not the final arbiter."
The plaintiffs aren't seeking money damages and instead are seeking a declaration that Arpaio's office racially profiles and an order that requires it to make changes to prevent what they said is discriminatory policing.
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The lawsuit marks the first case in which the sheriff's office has been accused of systematically racially profiling Latinos and will serve as a bellwether for a similar yet broader civil rights lawsuit filed against Arpaio in May by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Senator McCain Does the Right Thing
July 19, 2012
by Michael Bryan
Sometimes you get the chance to be immensely proud of an elected official with whom you deeply disagree on most subjects. Today is one of those days for me. Senator John McCain stood up on the floor of the Senate and denounced a scurilous and baseless attack on a decent and patriotic American by some of his fellow Republicans. He's had a Murrow moment, and today I could not be more proud to have John McCain as my Senator.
See his denouncement of Representative Bachman's and Franks' attack on Hillary Clinton's aide Huma Abedin (wife of Anthony Weiner) after the click…
