Friday, August 10, 2012

Romney expects to buy this election. It is why his staff is not interested in polls.


GOP presidential candidate (click title to entry - thank you) Mitt Romney recently toured a cornfield in Des Moines, Iowa, to see the effects of the Midwest drought.
Romney's guide was corn and soybean farmer LeMar Koethe (pictured left), who wants the government to stay out of farming, except for the multimillion dollar farm bill, which includes subsidies for farmers.
Koethe told the Des Moines Register: “The people know what to do on their own. Just let them do it.”...

Romney hasn't really started spending the largest part of his campaign treasury. He is hoping post convention will give him a bounce he simply has to maintain.

If you thought the Right Wing attacks on President Obama are bigoted, you'd be correct.




Is this a personal attack on the President, you betcha.

By Dana Milbank,



...I covered welfare reform in 1995 and 1996 (click title to entry - thank you) as a congressional reporter for the Wall Street Journal, so I have followed the issue closely. And Romney’s assertion is, as has been widely documented, nonsense. Republican governors were among those requesting the recent waivers of the welfare work requirements, the “demonstration projects” that sparked Romney’s attack. Ron Haskins, who as a Ways and Means Committee staffer in the 1990s helped draft the welfare law for House Republicans, told NPR that “there’s no plausible scenario under which it really constitutes a serious attack on welfare reform.”
Why Romney is doing this is fairly plain. Romney polls best among white, working-class men, and he needs them to turn out in large numbers. Yet even at this late stage of the campaign, some of the GOP base remains suspicious of his candidacy — a suspicion that was encouraged by thisweek’s defense of “Romneycare” in Massachusetts by a Romney spokeswoman. And a poll by Pew Research Center last month found that nearly a quarter of white evangelicals were uncomfortable with Romney’s Mormonism. Romney therefore has incentive to revive the culture wars, which also accounts for his ad this week claiming Obama had launched a “war on religion.”
What makes Romney’s welfare gambit dispiriting is that, as a member of one of the most persecuted groups in American history, he knows more than most the dangers of fanning bigotry. Yet now he has injected into the campaign what has for decades been a standard device for race-baiting — a suspect move because welfare hadn’t been on the radar screen....

Are Republicans changing their minds about new taxes? Is Grover losing his grip on the GOP?

Osceola County Commissioner John Quinones
Perhaps Quinones is simply taking example from Jeb Bush who states he has refused to sign the pledge as well.

John Quiñones Leaves the Door Open to Tax Hikes (click title to entry - thank you)

Congressional candidate refuses to sign Taxpayer Protection Pledge to oppose higher taxes
Today, the John Quiñones for Congress campaign said that they will not be signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge in his bid for the GOP nomination in Florida’s 9th Congressional District.  Republican candidates Julius Melendez and Mark Oxner have signed the Pledge.
Without a concrete written promise to taxpayers in the district, Quiñones is leaving the door open to higher taxes. For voters familiar with Quiñones’s record as a state legislator, this may not come as a surprise.
State Senator Quiñones voted in support of transportation bill, SB 1350, that included higher taxes. The bill targeted tourists by imposing a $2-a-day tax on rental car customers. Then Republican Governor Jeb Bush vetoed the legislation, noting that the “taxes will be paid disparately by tourists visiting Florida, consequently creating taxation without representation on a large scale.”...

Then again it would seem as though Quinones takes his own path.

Intervening in Syria means confronting Russia.

By Tom Parfitt, Moscow

5:10PM BST 13 Jul 2012


The Alaed's previous attempt to convey the Mi-25 gunships to the regime of of President Bashar al-Assad under a Curaçao flag caused anger in London and Washington. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the aircraft would be used to kill innocent civilians.
The ship's new destination is unclear but maritime data show it was travelling south off Norway on Thursday and is due in Baltiysk on the Baltic coast of Kaliningrad, Russia's exclave between Poland and Lithuania, on July 17.
A spokesman for Femco, the Russian company which owns the cargo vessel, said on Friday that it would arrive in St Petersburg two days later and may then head to the Russian Far East....
Besides trying to get helicopters into Syria, Russia has signed an agreement for Assad for his oil. Russia is carrying on relations with Syria as if nothing is happening in the country. Madeline Albright stated the USA should pull into the Syrian port. That isn't possible unless the USA wants to confront Russia.


The bill passed by the House nearly doesn't matter, except, for a symbolic gesture. The delivery to Afghanistan of 21 Mi-17s already occurred. So, there isn't any other contracts pending this would effect.

It isn't as though the action by the House isn't admirable, it just isn't causing that much impression on the company.
JULY 20, 2012 06:25
U.S. lawmakers passed a bill on Thursday (click here) breaking contracts between the Pentagon and Russian state-run arms exporter Rosoboronexport, which they claim is “arming the oppressive Syrian regime,” the House of Representatives said on its website, the Russian news agency Novosti reports. The bill, introduced by Democrat Congressman Jim Moran (VA), was passed by an overwhelming 407-5 vote and was attached to the 2013 U.S. military budget, according to the House of Representatives’ statement. The passage of the bill came several hours after Russia and China vetoed for the third time a UN Security Council resolution on Syria authorizing non-military sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime if it fails to withdraw heavy weapons and troops from urban areas within 10 days....
In an article from RIA Novosti,  (the state newspaper) Russia is viewed as being backed into a corner and an embarrassment to the peace initiative.


Russia Caught Off Guard on Syria as Annan Leaves – Analysts (click here)

MOSCOW, August 3 (RIA Novosti, Alexey Eremenko)

...Annan’s decision to step down, voiced on Thursday, spells a diplomatic loss for Russia, which never managed to implement a proactive policy on Syria, experts said on Friday.
“We were chronically late on Syria,” said Vladimir Akhmedov of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences. “Now we’ve backed ourselves into a corner.”...


Strategic Overshot
Russia would wait for appointment of a new UN envoy on Syria and continue its push for negotiations between Assad and his enemies, said Leonid Kalashnikov of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Russian State Duma.
“I just hope it would not be a partisan person, because that will cause parties to retire into their respective shells,” said Kalashnikov, a member of the Communist Party.
Akhmedov agreed, saying that Russia will wait and see how the situation in Syria develops. He added it was time for “intricate secret diplomacy” as well as economic action, such as helping the three million Syrians who do not receive enough food at the moment.
But foreign policy expert Alexei Malashenko was more skeptical. “I have no idea how we are going to save face over this,” he said....

Russia and China have to come to terms with the fact Assad is committing genocide against the Sunnis within the country. He is killing without inhibition to whom he is killing including women and children. He is treating everyone in Syria as his enemy. He has no governance of the country anymore, he is simply killing on a daily basis.

Russia is putting itself in the middle of these killing fields and permitting Assad his agenda.