Fire Walk With Me

Mitt Romney’s father, George W. Romney, also ran for president in 1968, and for awhile was a frontrunner. He lost the Republican nomination to Richard Nixon. He then served in Nixon’s cabinet.

Which is sort of hilarious. And it’s funny that we never talk about Mitt trying to follow in his father’s footsteps (ruthless CEO, governor of an ostensibly liberal state, running for president under a strictly corporate profiteering platform). 

That’s very interesting, Mitt.

We’ve had a lot of mass shootings in 2012. Were they caused by single parenting? Were these all young people?

• This guy shot a carload of seven teenagers in Philadelphia. 30 years old, married with children.
• Jeong Soo Paek burst into a spa his family owned near Atlanta, Ga, killed four relatives and then himself. He was 59, married with children. Also, he was previously acquitted of having murdered 3 other people in a completely seperate incident. 
• Nathan Van Wilkins shot 17 people in a bar in Alabama. He was 44 years old. He also set fire to his former workplace, where he had been fired a few months before. He was divorced with children.
• School shooter T. J. Lane killed three fellow students near Cleveland. 17 years old, being raised by a grandfather. 
• 30 year old John Shick fired into a Pittsburgh psychiatric clinic, hitting 7 people and killing one. He had been fired from his job for harassment. He seems to have been raised by two parents (but has changed his name many times, so it’s difficult to know for sure).
• A disgruntled former student opened fire on campus at Oikos University in Califormia, killing seven people.  43 years old, unmarried, raised by 2 parents and close to both.
• 19-year-old Jake England and 32-year-old Alvin Watts went on a racist killing spree in Tulsa on Good Friday, killing 5 people in separate shootings. The killings were partially motivated by the shooting of England’s father 2 years before.
• Ian Stanwicki, 40, opened fire at a Seattle coffeeshop and killed 5 people. He was unmarried, a loner, raised by two parents.
• James Holmes burst into a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight” and killed 12 people.  Holmes was 24 years old and was raised by two parents.
• Wade Michael Page shot and killed 7 people at a Sikh temple in a white supremacist killing.  He was 40 years old, a skinhead, and had just broken up with his girlfriend.
• Thomas Caffeell opened fire on Texas A&M campus and killed 2 people. He was 35 years old and had been raised by his mother and a stepfather.
• Jeffrey Johnson shot ten people outside of the Empire State Building. Johnson was 58 years old and had just been fired from his job inside the complex.  

As it turns out, the “binder full of women” was already waiting for him when he became governor. He did not ask for female candidates. A group of women put it together for anyone who took office.

A bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.

They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.

So how DID women fair under Governor Romney?

 First of all, according to MassGAP and MWPC, Romney did appoint 14 women out of his first 33 senior-level appointments, which is a reasonably impressive 42 percent. However, as I have reported before, those were almost all to head departments and agencies that he didn’t care about — and in some cases, that he quite specifically wanted to not really do anything. None of the senior positions Romney cared about — budget, business development, etc. — went to women.

Secondly, a UMass-Boston study found that the percentage of senior-level appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 29.7% in July 2004, to 27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006. (It then began rapidly rising when Deval Patrick took office.)

Third, note that in Romney’s story as he tells it, this man who had led and consulted for businesses for 25 years didn’t know any qualified women, or know where to find any qualified women. So what does that say?

President Obama continues to dominate Mitt Romney in the presidential race in Massachusetts

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Massachusetts Voters shows Obama with 57% support to Romney’s 42%. One percent (1%) is undecided.

Mitt sure loves to point to his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts as an experience that qualifies him for the White House. Yet the state he governed does NOT want him as President, and by a large margin.

Why do you suppose that is?

(As someone who lived under his tenure, I’d say it’s because he was a lousy governor who was just warming the seat on his way to something more lucrative. But that’s just me.)

• Bank Overdraft Regulations - Remember how your bank used to manipulate your transactions so that they could hit you with as many overdraft fees as possible if your bank account was overdrawn? I sure as hell do. They’d sit on my power bill payment ($200) until I’d built up enough lunch charges ($4) to overdraw, then blammo - 5 overdraft fees instead of one, which cost me $150. This stuff was KILLING me, and everyone else living paycheck to paycheck. Well, Obama changed the regulations so that now they can only charge you ONE fee when you go over, and your bank card has to decline when you’re overdrawn. This has saved me an untold amount of money over the last year. 
• Lily Ledbetter Act - This legislation will allow me to sue if I find that my employer has been discriminating against me by paying my male colleagues more for the same work, with no time limit to figure out whether and how much I’m being screwed. Employers will have to think twice before underpaying their female workers thanks to this law. This was the first bill Obama passed back in 2009, and I’m still pretty happy about it. (ps. Paul Ryan voted AGAINST this law)
• Cut prescription drug costs for Medicare recipients by 50%, which allows my father (a vietnam vet) to buy his diabetes medications after he had to retire earlier than planned for health reasons.
• Repealed Bush-era restrictions on federal funding for Stem Cell Research, which impacts my entire profession as well as the place that I work and the livelihoods of a number of my coworkers. Not to mention the potential discoveries that are now under development that could impact all of our health in the future!
• Obama’s Stimulus Package saved my job. About 2% of the funding (something like $18 billion) was directed to non-military scientific research, a good chunk of which went directly to my sector. Before this, we were all afraid for our jobs, and a lot of layoffs were planned. After this, we managed to weather the economic storm with minimal job loss. 

What has Obama done for you?

• the way the media furiously spun Romney’s appearance as though it was some transcendent political performance was a stark reminder of how much the deck is stacked against us. People with money want Romney. People with money own everything. It’s gonna be tough.
• while it was pretty obvious to me that Romney came off as this lying, fascist bully asshole, apparently a big chunk of America saw this bully asshole and they liked him. It’s incredibly demoralizing to remember that people like bullies, they like power, and they especially like bland white dudes with power. 
• even as the incumbent President of the United States, Obama is seriously boxed in in terms of how he is able to respond to blatant assholery without getting painted as an Angry Black Man. It’s something we should all know already, but watching it play out it is still fucking depressing.

Is nobody else freaked the fuck out? 

I wasn’t at all worried before, but it’s OCTOBER and the Obama supporters are… asleep? On vacation? In some secluded location planning their next move? What?

WTF you guys. PRESIDENT ROMNEY. Just think about that. The UNMITIGATED DISASTER of that. This guy has no morals or standards whatsoever that I can discern. He’ll do whatever the money tells him to do. The money tells him to bomb Iran, he’ll shrug and inform the Pentagon. 

PRESIDENT ROMNEY. 

We should all be terrified by that possibility.

And if there isn’t enough drama, they will create some. 

So they are going to act like the election is a lot closer than it really is. All the political media know how to do anymore is the “horse-race” coverage, where you obsess over the polls and the candidates’ strategies. They have to have a competitive contest, otherwise they will have no interest and lose ratings.

Keep it in mind in this last month before the election, because they are going to jump on every little thing as though it will swing the whole election. Obama clinches the election! Now Romney takes the lead! No it’s Obama! Romney’s catching up! No he’s not! 

This is what they do instead of any substantiative coverage of the issues and the candidates. Feel like you just watched a totally different debate than what the newscasters did? That’s because it doesn’t matter what actually happened - they’re shaping a narrative. They are only cherrypicking the parts that will make their narrative more interesting. And when they talk about what “people” are thinking, they cherrypick people who will follow the right script. 

So. Don’t panic. Ignore them for the most part, call them out if they’re blatantly ignoring the facts. They’re nearly obsolete, anyway.