Tenaj's Blog

Do you trust a former Republican muck-a-muck who’s now in a hot legal lava pool and scorned by fellow members of his party when he starts trashing his ex-colleagues? Sure, we do! Here’s delightful former party chairman Jim Greer, in a deposition recorded in late May: “I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting.” Ha ha, sure, that must have really upset him, before he was kicked out and indicted on corruption charges. Nevertheless, he denounces the “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” who have taken complete control of his political party, so let’s offer him the platform for a full explanation.

See, here is why we probably shouldn’t lionize this dick:

In a deposition Jim Greer gave as part of his lawsuit against the party, Greer portrays himself as a victim of a conspiracy against him while painting a picture of a party in turmoil that’s marred by loose ethics. But a secret tape released as part of the criminal investigation also shows Greer was worried about what party leaders knew about Victory Strategies, a company he and his executive director formed to pay themselves 10 percent of major party donations.

He was fine with all of these lunatics, see, when he was able to skim off some o’ that crazy people money for himself. He would tell the crazy parents that they were correct about Obama trying to indoctrinate their children with his address on the opening day of school, and they’d throw money at his party, and he’d steal it.

But anyway, this all sounds completely correct:

“They talked about not letting blacks vote … and minority outreach programs were not fit for the Republican Party,” Greer said.

He also detailed a party in chaos, saying elected leaders tried wrestling control of the party from then-Gov. Charlie Crist while “whack-a-dos” from the party right and tea partiers also tried to grab control. And he portrayed himself as getting caught in the middle as he stayed loyal to Crist

“The wing of the party that does not agree with Charlie Crist considered me a moderate chairman,” Greer said. “As was commonly referred to them, the whack-a-dos, the crazies, the right wingers. As Dean Cannon said to me one time, the people that want to destroy our Party are trying to take it over.”

"The Problem We All Live With" - The Truth About Rockwell's Painting

Mitt Romney and Republicans are attempting to mislead Americans by attacking President Obama for ensuring “massive defense cuts.” They’re basing this false attack on a “sequestration” passed by Congress last August—a policy that is supposed to force Congress to reach a deal to reduce the deficit. Here is what you need to know about the sequester and where each candidate stands on preventing the cuts:

What is sequestration?

If Congress cannot reach a deal to reduce the deficit by the end of the year, a “sequester” will trigger $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts evenly split between defense and non-defense spending. Democrats and Republicans in Congress created this mechanism in order to pressure its members to reach a compromise on deficit-reduction. The potential defense cuts, which passed Congress with a majority of Republican support in both the House and the Senate, will only go into effect if Congress cannot agree on a deficit deal.

Why is this plan in place?

After House Republicans refused to support President Obama’s deficit-reduction proposal—a compromise that could have cut the deficit by $4 trillion over ten years—Congress had to find a way to address our country’s rising levels of debt from two wars, the Bush tax cuts, and the effects of the worst recession since the Great Depression. To reach a long-term deal, Democrats and Republicans in Congress reached an agreement with President Obama: $1 trillion in spending cuts and a pledge to reduce the deficit by an additional $1 trillion. Congress established the threat of sequestration as an enforcement mechanism: the automatic and indiscriminate spending cuts were designed to be so damaging that Congress would have no choice but to reach a deficit-reduction deal in order to prevent their implementation.

What are the consequences of the sequester for national security?

Congressional Republicans are risking serious consequences in order to launch a political attack. President Obama understands that the effects of such massive spending cuts would undermine our national security. The reductions would indiscriminately slash the Pentagon’s funding by nearly 20% over the next decade, threatening to undermine America’s military. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta noted that sequestration would drastically shrink the military and diminish its ability to keep us safe.

What is President Obama’s plan to avoid these cuts?

President Obama made it very clear that Congress “can and must act to avoid the sweeping impacts of the sequester” and provided several blueprints for balanced deficit reduction to avoid these cuts. His deficit reduction package, for example, offered more than $4 trillion in deficit reduction while making sure we continue to invest in education, job creation, and long-term economic growth. The package “would achieve more than enough deficit reduction to avoid the sequester,” and would provide our military the support they need to keep America safe. Fiscal commission co-chairs Erksine Bowles and Alan Simpson both called the President’s plan “a balanced, comprehensive approach to deficit reduction.” But Republican leaders “walked away from negotiations” because they refused to accept any revenue increases.

Does Mitt Romney have a plan that would prevent these cuts?

No. Romney has refused to support any proposal that would include additional government revenue, saying “I don’t believe that raising revenues is the right answer to balancing our budget.” He even backed Congressional Republicans who refused to raise revenue as part of a deal to avoid government default. Romney said that he didn’t want Congress to take any actions that might prevent these cuts before inauguration day in January 2013, even though the country faces looming defense cuts.

Why hasn’t Congress voted to pass a solution yet?

Republicans in Congress have apparently decided to stall legislation and “put off striking deals on major legislative issues” like deficit reduction in hopes that Romney wins the White House. Republican leader Rep. Jim Jordan even said that some Republicans were willing to see major fiscal decisions postponed until next year, because they are bullish about Mr. Romney winning.

In fact, with buy-in from the Romney campaign, Congressional Republicans have laid out month-long plans “in painstaking detail” that attack the President on defense cuts rather than attempting to find a solution. As Politico notes, “the main goal” of these attacks is “to boost the party’s prospects on Election Day.”

In a blatant attempt to mislead Americans, Mitt Romney is falsely accusing the Obama campaign of trying to restrict military voting in Ohio. In fact, the opposite is true: The Obama campaign filed a lawsuit to make sure every Ohioan has early voting rights, including military members and their families.

What happened to early voting in Ohio?

• In the 2008 presidential election, more than 93,000 Ohioans utilized early voting in the three days before the election.

• Earlier this year, Ohio’s GOP-controlled legislature passed an election reform law that cut off early voting three days before the election.

• More than 300,000 Ohioans signed a petition to secure a referendum on the November 6th ballot in order to repeal this law. Rather than face the referendum, the legislature, at the urging of Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, decided to repeal the law.

• However, “in an unusual turn of events,” Ohio Republicans managed to keep a technical provision of the bill that shortens the early voting process and eliminates the last three days of early voting for all citizens except military personnel and their families.

What does that mean for voters?

In addition to reducing Ohioans’ access to the polls, the legislature created inequality between military voters who can cast early ballots in person through the day before the election and all other voters who only have until 6 p.m. on the Friday before the election to vote in-person absentee.

Why is there a lawsuit?

These restrictions are a violation of the equal protection guarantees in the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit seeks to make sure that all Ohioans, including military members and their families, can exercise their right to vote early. “This lawsuit seeks to treat all Ohio citizens equally under the law,” said Obama for America attorney Bob Bauer. “We want to restore the right of all to vote before Election Day.”

The facts show that Romney’s claim about restricting military voting is a blatant distortion. The purpose of the lawsuit is to ensure that every Ohioan—including military voters—has the right to make their voices heard at the polls.

I'm going to get this out of the way right up front: the time-honored American Dream of parents sending their kids off to college so they can get a higher education that will allow them to live better than they did is dead as doornail. Just how bad is it? CNN reports in an article entitled "Stop the Tuition Madness":

For parents with college-bound kids, it seems like a no-win situation. Your child is eyeing the grassy quads and Gothic dorms of Dream U., while you're staring down at a too-small 401(k), a shaky job market, and a house worth a lot less than a few years ago.

Meanwhile, colleges are bidding up tuition prices faster than a hedge fund manager at an art auction. Over the past 10 years the cost of private college has jumped more than 60%, nearly three times as much as incomes over the same period, and will now set you back $42,000 a year on average.

Prices at public colleges have shot up even more, nearly doubling to $21,000 for in-state students. Got younger kids? By 2020 you're looking at a four-year bill that's likely to top $240,000 for private schools and $155,000 at public universities. Sure there's financial aid, but scholarships aren't keeping up with tuition inflation. So long, retirement hopes; hello again, boss.

Your children will suffer, too, if they're forced to start their adult lives with onerous debt. "Student loans can affect every decision young adults make: whether they can go to graduate school, buy a house, even start a family," says Patrick Callan, president of the Higher Education Policy Institute.

I actually have one nit to pick with that excerpt from the story. There is no way college tuitions are going to rise from their already lofty heights to those insane levels by the year 2020. It should be obvious that we are already reaching the point of Peak Higher Education, in which the mounting price tag for even a Bachelor's Degree at a public university is rising beyond what's affordable for most people even with student loans. The $155,000 figure cited as the future cost for a four-year degree is about three-and-a-half times the current median annual household income (around $45,000).

At some point, the growing consciousness that a college education no longer guarantees a good salary or even any employment at all upon graduation is going to reach critical mass, and enough students (and their parents) are going to balk at taking on a six figure debt only to end up at best waiting tables at Applebees five years later. Once that happens, the higher education system in its current form is going to collapse.

Many will lament its passing, but it really is for the better. Except in rare instances, universities long ago largely stopped being places where students could learn for knowledge's sake and expand their minds to become better citizens. Instead, a university degree had become merely a ticket that needed to be punched to gain admittance into the white collar corporate world.

The rapid rise in tuition costs, which for well more than a decade have greatly exceeded the rate of inflation, very much encouraged the transformation of our universities into mere job factories. Even if obtaining a high paying job wasn't a student's first motivation for attending college, it likely moved high on the list once they started to realize how much debt they were going to have to take on to obtain that degree. As for the colleges themselves--beyond enabling big, fat pay raises for administrators, professors and football and basketball coaches--the need to keep their cash cows from dropping out no doubt also greatly contributed to the grade inflation that has turned, for example, attaining a "B" average from a genuine academic achievement into a complete joke.

The CNN article actually goes on to propose a list of potential solutions for curbing college costs, which wouldn't be half-bad if we were still living in "normal" times. I particularly like the idea of cutting way back on the expensive college football programs. Sadly, however, like most mainstream media articles this one assumes that the system can be "saved" by making a few tweaks here and there, when in truth the effects of peak oil and resource depletion and the fact that we have now entered the age of permanent contraction means that the system itself is soon going to follow the old Communist bloc into the dustbin of history.

Tom Hartmann

Published: 19 July, 2012, 19:26

­The heirs of the Wal Mart fortune – the Walton family – have gotten a lot wealthier since the Bush recession began in 2007, while the rest of us have gotten a lot poorer.  According to data from the Federal Reserve, median family wealth in America dropped by nearly 40% between 2007 and 2010.  But, during that same, the wealth of the Walton family increased 22% to nearly $90 billion.

So now, the six Walton heirs have more wealth than 48 million American families – or more than 41% of all American families – COMBINED.  And yet, despite the incredible wealth disparity – Republicans in Congress are pushing for even more tax breaks for the Wal Mart heirs – and other millionaires and billionaires who fund Republican candidates.

This is a make-or-break moment for the American middle class, as Democrats try to extend tax cuts for working Americans, while cutting them off for the Walton heirs.  We’ll see if Republicans go along with this common sense solution, or if they hold the middle class hostage so that their billionaire buddies can hoard even more wealth.  Stay tuned.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Tuesday that Republican lawmakers are engaging in distortions by asserting that Operation Fast and Furious arose from a strategy created by the Obama administration.

In a report following an 18-month probe of the flawed gun-smuggling investigation, Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said that the administration shifted the emphasis in fighting Mexican drug cartels from merely seizing firearms to identifying the networks that traffic them.

Operation Fast and Furious "was born from this strategy," the report concluded.

In Operation Fast and Furious and at least three earlier probes during the administration of Republican President George W. Bush, agents in Arizona employed a risky tactic called gun-walking — allowing low-level "straw" buyers in gun-trafficking networks to leave with loads of weapons purchased at gun shops. The goal of the tactic was to track the guns to major weapons traffickers and drug cartels in order to bring cases against kingpins who had long eluded prosecution under the prevailing strategy of arresting most low-level purchasers of guns who were suspected of buying them for others.

In Operation Fast and Furious, many of the weapons weren't tracked and wound up at crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S., including at the site of a shootout on the U.S. side of the border that resulted in the death of a border agent, Brian Terry. Fast and Furious identified more than 2,000 weapons suspected of being illicitly purchased. Some 1,400 of them have yet to be recovered.

Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said that the Republican report "reiterates many of the distortions and now-debunked conspiracy theories that Rep. Issa has been advancing for a year and a half, including the fiction that the flawed tactics used in Fast and Furious were somehow the brainchild of the current administration as opposed to the reality that the pattern of flawed tactics dates back to 2006 and the prior administration."

The gun-walking tactic that Issa and Grassley are linking to the Obama administration has long been against Justice Department policy.

The Justice Department did adopt a strategy in 2009 for fighting Mexican cartels that said merely seizing firearms through interdiction would not stop firearms trafficking to Mexico. And records show that more than 68,000 guns reached Mexico from the U.S. over the last five years despite the long-standing policy of arresting low-level participants in suspected gun-running. "We must identify, investigate, and eliminate the sources of illegally trafficked firearms and the networks that transport them," the department stated.

Issa's report says that federal agents and William Newell, head of the Phoenix division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, may have viewed the Justice Department strategy statement as "the green light they had been waiting for" to engage in what became Operation Fast and Furious.

The report says that "Newell had an audacious goal. He intended to dismantle the U.S.-based gun trafficking network that supplied the formidable Mexican Sinaloa Cartel" led by Joaquin "EL Chapo" Guzman.

The Republican draft report on Operation Fast and Furious says that Newell and four other ATF officials share much of the blame for what went wrong with the Arizona gun-smuggling probe.

All five were removed from their jobs and reassigned a year ago. Attorney General Eric Holder has said further personnel changes could be made, depending on the findings in an upcoming review of Fast and Furious by the Justice Department inspector general.

Schmaler said the report does signal a notable shift in that the Issa-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee "finally acknowledges what the attorney general and other department officials have been saying from the beginning — that the flaws in this operation, and in previous ones, had their origins in the field in Arizona and occurred, in part, due to weak oversight by ATF leadership."

A second still-unreleased report by Republican congressional investigators on Operation Fast and Furious will deal with the roles of the deputy attorney general's office and the Justice Department's criminal division. A third report will deal with the roles of the attorney general and other top officials at the Justice Department in responding to the controversy after it erupted publicly in early 2011.

The third report will follow what is likely to be a lawsuit against the attorney general by the Republican-controlled House seeking Justice Department documents detailing how Justice officials decided to respond to the congressional investigation.

The House voted June 28 to hold the attorney general in contempt of Congress for withholding material sought by Issa's committee. President Barack Obama invoked executive privilege to order Holder not to turn over the documents on grounds that they reveal internal executive branch advice and recommendations.

CNN's Kevin Liptak

(The Associated Press)

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney visits the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, July 31, 2012 (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

NEW YORK (AP) — Mitt Romney has been on the national political stage for nearly a decade — through two presidential bids, countless campaign events and millions spent on TV ads. But the likely Republican presidential nominee still isn't well-known to most voters.

So now he's trying to fix that.

With less than 100 days until the Nov. 6 election, Romney is starting to introduce himself to them in earnest — through a combination of carefully selected media appearances and biographical ads — before President Barack Obama's efforts to define him in a negative light cripple his candidacy.

"I got the chance to start my own business ... I went off to have the chance at running the Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002 ... The real experience was in Massachusetts," the former governor says in a new television commercial released Tuesday that features him on the campaign trail, in factories and with his wife, Ann, by his side. "I want to use those experiences to help Americans have a better future."

Until now, Romney has emphasized his record at the private equity firm Bain Capital, giving Obama and other Democrats the chance to portray him in their ads as an out-of-touch corporate raider and job killer. The new ad is an effort to deflect that barrage by letting him round out that biography by touching aspects of it that he hasn't stressed in the past.

The ad marked the start of a new phase for the Republican presidential candidate as he looks to move from a seven-day, three-nation trip abroad and into a period where the media glare will shine even brighter as he prepares to announce his vice presidential running mate in the run-up to the GOP convention where he'll accept the party's presidential nomination.

In what may be his most extensive series of national broadcast interviews this campaign, Romney and his wife spent much of the trip answering questions from TV anchors on everything from her part ownership of a horse competing in the Olympics to whether they were each other's true love (The answer? Yes.)

In one appearance, Romney touched on the challenge he faces in introducing himself to voters as the clock ticks down on the campaign and he runs against an incumbent who is universally recognized and generally liked by most voters.

"You know, I've been on 'The Tonight Show' and Letterman and 'The View' and I do some of those things to get better known," Romney said when NBC anchor Brian Williams asked if he was a "hidden man." Romney said he expected voters to tune in more after Labor Day. "Most folks won't really get to see me until the debates and will get a better sense of the character that I have," he said.

It was an unusual acknowledgement for a major party's presidential standard-bearer this late in a campaign, but one borne out in recent polling.

A CBS News/New York Times poll conducted in mid-July found that 31 percent of registered voters were either undecided or hadn't heard enough about Romney when asked if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of him.

The new ad is meant to boost those numbers. It's a striking shift from the negativity that has marked much of the TV advertising in the campaign so far this year.

Romney granted wide-ranging interviews on the trip to many news organizations the campaign has largely avoided until now. He spoke to the three major broadcast networks and CNN after spending months favoring venues like the conservative-friendly Fox News over other cable and network TV outlets.

Even so, he's only going so far.

Romney gave no interviews to American-based print media and largely avoided most of the U.S.-based reporters who accompanied him on the trip, taking just three questions from them in London and none during his subsequent stops in Israel and Poland. The lack of access produced a dust-up between the traveling press corps and campaign staffers, with a spokesman at one point telling a reporter to "shove it."

Romney got some favorable coverage, especially from CNN's Piers Morgan, who asked softer questions to the Romneys outside London's scenic Royal Naval College. ("Was your best deal the moment you asked this lady to marry you?" was one such query.) But the rest of the interviews were a mixed bag, contributing to a string of gaffes that came to characterize the trip.

For one, Romney's controversial musings about London's preparedness to host the Olympics came during the interview with Williams. Romney also disclosed information in other interviews that undoubtedly will provide fodder for Democratic operatives.

Romney continued to insist he would not release more of his income tax returns and told ABC News that he had been audited by the IRS in the past. Romney also ducked when asked whether he had paid less than 13.9 percent of his income in taxes, saying he hadn't calculated that but would be "happy to go back and look." Earlier this year, Romney released his 2010 tax return, which indicated he had paid just 13.9 percent tax on income of $21.6 million — a rate substantially lower than what most Americans pay on far less income.

On CBS News, Romney was asked to respond to a Newsweek magazine cover that referred to him as a wimp.

"If I worried about what the media said I wouldn't get much sleep. I sleep pretty well," he said.

The Obama campaign, for its part, happily distributed information about media access when Obama, then an Illinois senator and the likely Democratic presidential nominee, took a major international trip in the summer of 2008. The campaign said Obama held four news conferences in four countries with a total of 25 questions and did seven network television interviews and a number of print interviews.

Romney campaign strategist Stuart Stevens, who traveled abroad with Romney, promised the candidate would do several print interviews before the general election. "He gave a lot of interviews over here," Stevens said.

___

Associated Press writers Kasie Hunt in Warsaw, Poland, and Steve Peoples and News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Follow Beth Fouhy on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/bfouhy