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.