Weekend Open Thread
Welcome to your weekend open thread. It’s the blog with mysteriously disappearing content. We must be onto something, it’s the CIA! UN black helicopters. Quick, buy gold and seeds!
Now that Michele Bachmann is an actual contender for the GOP presidential nomination, her husband is getting a lot more scrutiny. Marcus Bachmann runs a clinic that practices “pray away the gay” (only if clients request it). Sounds sweet – prescription: pray, read these passages in the Bible, that will be $1000 please. Anyway, an old clip came out where Marcus Bachmann said that gays were “barbarians that need to be educated.” Bachmann is denying this:
First, a 2010 radio interview surfaced in which Marcus Bachmann says homosexuals are “barbarians” who “need to be educated.” Then, Bachmann denied the comments from the radio show. He said the tape had been doctored and that he was referring to children in the interview, adding, “That’s not the way I would talk.” But the blogger who posted the original interview online denies changing the audio file. Ken Avidor, who uploaded the interview in May 2010 on dumpbachmann.org, told New York Magazine that he only edited the file for length.
Bachmann’s defense is that he wasn’t actually saying gays were barbarians that needed to be educated, instead he’s saying children are barbarians that need to be educated. Is that better?
So, the Chameleon Candidate has to resort to rhetoric like this.
Speaking to the Portsmouth Rotary Club Thursday, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney called on the president to end the debt crisis.
“Come on, Mr. President,” said the Republican presidential candidate. “You can, by yourself, cut spending, agree to cap the spending and put in place a balanced budget amendment.”
This really is just dumb. The president can cut spending by himself? If memory serves, Congress has power of the purse. Obama is pushing for major spending cuts — too many, in fact — but it’s Romney’s buddies on the Hill who aren’t willing to strike a deal.
But I was especially interested in that last line. As far as Romney is concerned, Obama can “put in place a balanced budget amendment.” I realize that Mitt Romney struggles to keep up with the basics — he’s the guy who thinks we’re in “peacetime” and pretends he has a credible record on job creation — but it is not within the power of the presidency to put constitutional amendments “in place.” In fact, Romney may want to read the Constitution sometime: a president doesn’t even get to weigh in on the amendment process at all. If a proposed amendment gets two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate, a president can’t even veto — the measure would go the states, not the Oval Office.
Does Romney not understand this? If not, why not?
It suits the GOP’s purpose to pretend they have nothing at all to do with the state of the economy. In fact, Mitch McConnell said it blatantly. He doesn’t want the blame. I’m hoping perhaps country comes at least in the top 5 of Republican priorities, but I haven’t seen evidence of that yet.
Tags: Open Thread
Interesting story about growing up listening to contemporary Christian music.
Via Roger Ebert’s Journal — Gay scientists isolate Christian gene.
Take that, Marcus Bachmann!
Mayor Rahm Emmanuel stacks Board of Education, turns loose corporate layoff specialist to bust Chicago teacher unions.
It’s being reported that Rebekah Brooks has been arrested in the phone hacking scandal.
“Chief Human Capital Officer”
Heh.
This is starting to feel like a coordinated international effort to bring down Rupert Murdoch, much like the efforts to bring down Julian Assange and the IMF guy. I highly doubt the governments of the US or UK give a rat’s ass whether Rupe has violated privacy of some ordinary citizens. He must have crossed somebody at the highest levels. I guess downloading the PM’s family medical records might do it. Even so it seems like there must be more.
“(Dem?) Mayor Rahm Emmanuel stacks Board of Education, turns loose corporate layoff specialist to bust Chicago teacher unions.”
Hurray for Democrats! I’m coming to the conclusion that a country without a functional left-wing is a dysfunctional country. Can anyone imagine News International’s crimes being initially uncovered and prosecuted in the UNited States? Of course you can’t.
Mitt Romney beats Obama in the Wall Street money race.
Not that this will make a dent in the local narratives, but hey.
Can someone explain why Marcus Bachmann sounds like air escaping from a balloon when he talks? He sounds gayer than the cast of Boys in the Band.
cassandra_m:
1) The link you posted is incorrect. The correct on is here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-16/goldman-favors-romney-over-obama-in-race-for-wall-street-funds.html
2) The article you meant to reference discusses only “employees of Goldman Sachs Group” and “donors reporting a New York state address, where the financial industry is headquartered.”
Conclusion: Making the assumption that everybody in NY state works for the financial industry is laughably false on its face, and your claim that “Mitt Romney beats Obama in the Wall Street money race” is likewise unsubstantiated. Not that this will make a dent your narrative, but hey.
Republicans should be careful about what they wish for. Every balanced budget amendment has a loophole for wartime or national emergency. So to balance the budget under an amendment, Republicans would have to admit that the War On Terror is over and that we are now at peace, and that our unemployment rate does not constitute an emergency. Furthermore, there is nothing in the amendment that says you can’t balance the budget by raising taxes. Having a Constitutional requirement would could dramatically raise the pressure to increase taxes on the rich.
Grover Norquist, 2003:
Thank you, A1, I fixed that link.
Making the assumption that everybody in NY state works for the financial industry is laughably false on its face
Which is something I certainly did not do and neither does this article, but making shit up to get your poutrage on isn’t exactly a new trick for you.
your claim that “Mitt Romney beats Obama in the Wall Street money race” is likewise unsubstantiated
And this was the headline of that article when I saw it, but it would be like you to run right past the fact that even though Wall Street types sent money to Obama in legendary amounts last time, they aren’t now. You’ll do anything to hang on to the story you’ve created for yourself, but we already knew that.
Dear cassandra_m,
The article states:
“In addition [to the Goldman contributions], Romney took in $2.1 million from donors reporting a New York state address, where the financial industry is headquartered, FEC data shows. Obama raised $1.3 million during the same period. For the 2008 election, Obama raised $50.5 million in the state; Romney raised $2.8 million, according to the center.”
Plus, I think that even you’ll agree that drawing conclusions by comparing a single quarter’s contributions with Obama’s entire haul in 2008 (primary and nominee) in NY is foolish.
Other than the Goldman contributions, this is the ONLY other evidence that supposedly shows “Mitt Romney beats Obama in the Wall Street money race.” That is a quote, and anybody can see that I wasn’t “making shit up to get [my] poutrage on.” Insinuating that all NY contributions come from the financial industry so as to make an utterly erroneous claim is laughably false on its face. It is something that Fox News would do.
Continuing to claim that I am “making shit up” when anyone, including you, can read the facts is becoming tiresome. Clearly you’re smart enough to come up with some new and original ways to try to discredit and humiliate me.
Your friend,
a1
You do know that when you contribute to a campaign you have to list your employer too, right? That’s how they extract that data on other financial contributions coming from New York which would equal Wall Street. You could do it too — to fact check, you know — instead of just nurturing your poutrage.
And there are two comparisons in that sentence you quote — one of Obama and Romney’s hauls in the last quarter and the other a comparison of the two in 2008. Both comparisons apples to apples. Unless, of course, you missed that Romney was running for President in 2008.
Which would be par for the course.
Dear cassandra_m,
I am not the one trying to drive the agenda that the author of that article is. They did not extract the employer data – they just lumped all the New York State contributions together to try to make a point that is unsupported by their totally junk data analysis.
It is one thing to for you to argue against my points-of-view on merits, but it is quite another for you to argue for this author’s totally junk data analysis, which neither you nor I had anything to do with.
I was just pointing out why it is a intentionally misleading piece of junk analysis.
Of course I know that you have to list your employer with your campaign contributions and that you can look that up in public records. The fact is that the author of this article did not do the analysis; they tried to use a false insinuation: “donors reporting a New York state address, where the financial industry is headquartered.”
So, why should anyone care what Romney, who is in a primary fight, raised in New York State versus what Obama raised, who is not in a primary fight? Serious, why???
Even though you hate me, it doesn’t meant that we need to disagree on everything.
a1
The data comes from the FEC as noted in the article.
They extracted enough data to get these numbers for Goldman Sachs. Either you can debunk that data or you can’t. And if you can’t, you aren’t in any position to call it “junk analysis”.
This is the same kind of analysis that the OpenSecrets people do routinely, with the same datasets from the FEC, showing the contributions of various interest groups.
So get yourself those datasets and get to work debunking this article. Otherwise GTF outta here.
The article does not support its claim that “A year after President Barack Obama signed into law the most extensive financial regulations since the Great Depression, Wall Street so far is putting its political money elsewhere.”
Goldman Sachs is not the only financial services company on Wall Street or in New York. Furthermore, not all financial services employees live in New York.
Thus, your statement, “Mitt Romney beats Obama in the Wall Street money race” has no data to support it.
However, now you’re down to just Goldman Sachs in New York, which, as totally irrelevant as that fact is, is supported by the article.
So the label of junk analysis still stands unless you can show that Goldman Sachs represents all of Wall Street’s contributions and that all the contributors from New York State work in the financial services industry.
I don’t understand why you’re working so hard to defend this anti-Obama pro-Romney article. I would have thought that you would want everybody to be contributing to Obama’s campaign. Clearly, Wall Street firms have made out like bandits under Obama.
Main Street? Well, not so much.
So now you know you are arguing a different point.
Moving the goalposts counts as making shit up, which is your stock in trade.
Once again — you either do your own analysis of these datasets and prove the article and its assertions wrong or STFU. At this point you just look like a Fool, which I guess doesn’t bother you much since you do this so very often.
You made the claim that:“Mitt Romney beats Obama in the Wall Street money race.”
Neither you nor your reference offers the data to support that claim. I already proved that.
Do your own research to prove your unsupported assertions, or don’t make the claims.
I’m not making any assertions, just repeating a headline. You are the one claiming to be “debunking analysis” presented in that article.
I guess I don’t need to keep pointing out what a fool you really are, A1, but it is completely fair to ask for you to show your homework if you are really, you know, *debunking analysis*. Just pulling it out of your foolish ass doesn’t quite count.
Feel free to have the last word in your continuing campaign to show the world what an idiot you are.