National Elections

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) announced that
the organization’s official Spanish-language webpage is now live on Saturday. The
Latino community is an important part of the vibrant and diverse
cross-section of America that makes this country great, and this new
page allows the DNCC to continue engaging Latinos in the political
process.

“From day one, we set out to engage more Americans than ever before,
and our digital outreach is just another way that we are delivering on
that mission,” said DNCC CEO Steve Kerrigan. “Having a Spanish-language
web page ensures that more people can have access to the most open and
accessible convention in history.”

The page, available at http://www.demconvention.com/bienvenidos/, will include interactive
features that invite Latinos to participate in the discussion as we
move forward toward the re-nomination of President Obama. In a video
welcome message on the new webpage, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa, Chairman of the 2012 Democratic National Convention,
invites Americans to participate in the convention online and “continue
the conversation that the president started with the American people
nearly five years ago.”

Video below the fold.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: The Democratic National Convention Committee announced the full line-up of performers set to take the stage at Time Warner Cable Arena and Bank of America Stadium next week. “This roster of performances only adds to the excitement building in Charlotte for the historic week ahead of us,” said 2012 Democratic National Convention … Read more

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Here is a transcript of the RNC Convention acceptance speech by Willard "Mittens" Romney. Transcript: Mitt Romney's Acceptance Speech.

Go ahead, word search his speech for "troops," "service," "veterans," "Afghanistan." I'll wait.

In his acceptance speech, Willard "Mittens" Romney never mentioned the war in Afghanistan, never acknowledged the service of men and women serving their country in the U.S. Armed Forces, nor our veterans. Not once. Romney mentioned the "military" only once, but in reference to sequestration budget cuts.

If a Democrat did this, there would have been an instantaneous firestorm of howling criticism from the mighty Wurlitzer of the right-wing noise machine. This slight to our Armed Forces and veterans went largely unnoticed by the media villagers and Beltway bloviators in their post-speech commentary.

As Steve Benen notes today in An invisible war:

I think we know what would happen under such a scenario. McCain,
Kristol, Krauthammer, Limbaugh, Cheney, et al, would reach an
unavoidable conclusion: there's simply no way this Democrat has a
credible claim to be Commander in Chief during a time of war.

* * *

When was the last time there was a major-party nominating convention
held during a war in which the presidential candidate decided not to
mention the conflict or those fighting on our behalf? Has this ever happened?

For
that matter, can anyone say with confidence what Romney's position on
the war is? Or how he intends to execute this war if he's president in
five months?

Are McCain, Kristol, Krauthammer, Limbaugh, Cheney, et al, on board with this?

[Note: Bloody Bill Kristol was not pleased with Romney's failure to mention the troops, veterans, or Afghanistan.]

* * *

If Romney takes the oath of office in January, he'll have tens of
thousands of American troops on the ground in Afghanistan. Does anyone
have the foggiest idea what he intends to do with those troops and/or
how long he intends to keep them there? Does he?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Modern day conventions are heavily scripted affairs for TV. Every speech is vetted by the campaign and are rehearsed in advance. Nothing occurs at the convention in front of the cameras that has not been previously approved by the campaign. Nothing. The RNC spent the first three days of the convention keeping … Read more

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The GOP's alleged boy genius policy wonk, Ayn Rand fanboy Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), gave his vice presidential nominee acceptance speech last night to the GOP convention. I watched his speech. Paul Krugman is correct. Paul Ryan is The Flimflam Man – NYTimes.com.

His speech was substance free, devoid of any clearly defined policies. At best there were some undefined aspirational goals. The only clearly stated policy was "repeal ObamaCare." Apparently, boy genius did not want to disclose what he would "replace" it with (remember "repeal and replace"?)

Ryan did offer a mish-mash of focus group tested attack lines which have previously been fact checked and found to be false by media fact checkers. As I have posted previously, the "Galt – Gekko 2012" campaign has made a deliberate decision to pursue a Big Lie GOPropaganda campaign. They are saying to the media, "We're going to lie. What are you going to do about it?" This presents a test for the media villagers, who are averse to ever pointing out that someone is blatantly lying.

One thing we know for certain after last night's speech: Paul Ryan is willing to be as much of a shameless shapeshifter and pathological liar as his running mate, Willard "Mittens" Romney. America has never before seen a campaign like this, and it is setting a dangerous precedent.

It was so bad that even the GOPropaganda media arm, FAUX News, was shocked and called out Paul Ryan as a shameless liar. Sally Kohn writes, Paul Ryan’s speech in 3 words | Fox News:

On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was  Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.

The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.