While it hasn’t been particularly effective, the Romney/Ryan ticket has tried to cloud up their image in order to pull the wool over the eyes of the mainstream public. In front of an audience of their base, there was none of that and, at the ‘Value Voter’s Summit’, there was an eyeful. It never ceases to amaze me that so called small-government types love big government when that government is telling other people how to live.
• ‘Values Voter Summit’: “We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country,” Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, told the audience at the Omni Shoreham hotel. “We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.”
• ‘Values Voter Summit’: Saying that “commitments on the campaign trail prevent me from being with you,” Romney gave a three-and-a-half minute, pre-recorded video address to the annual gathering of political social conservatives, beginning with his desire to “thank Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council for their leadership.” Perkins has faced opposition from organizations on the left, including the Southern Poverty Law Center. “We need a president who shares our commitment to conservative principles and our respect for traditional values. We will uphold the sanctity of life, not abandon or ignore it. And we will defend marriage, not try to redefine it,” Romney said in the video. He went on to ask for the summit attendees’ support and help in the dwindling days until the November 6 election.
• Americans recognize that judgment, prudence, instinct and a sense of what the moment demands are all job requirements for the presidency. Romney met none of them this week.
• Counting On Magic: The Washington Post editorial board on Saturday published another critical review of Mitt Romney’s campaign, this time focusing on his tax plan. “For several weeks, we’ve been asking Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to explain how he can cut taxes, as promised, without adding to the nation’s debt, as also promised,” the piece said. “Now he’s effectively let the cat out of the bag: He can’t.” The editorial attacked Romney’s plan as “counting on magic” and compared it to “the wishful thinking of President George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts that helped turn a surplus into the deficit now weighing the nation’s economy.”
• Cleverness afoot. US House Republicans have gotten their Workforce Investment and Improvement Act through the Education & Workforce Committee. It would put TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) into the new WIF (Workforce Investment Fund) program. Since there are no work requirements for welfare recipients under the Republicans’ WIF, they will have accomplished what they are accusing Obama of trying to do with TANF work requirements.
• Clint Eastwood, citing old age, defends bizarre RNC performance. “One advantage of being my age is that, you know, what can they do to you?” Eastwood said. “You just have fun and do what you think and you can say what you think, you don’t have to edit yourself.”
Resources and CBRNE
• Environmental activists in Canada have announced plans for a mass sit in at the British Columbia legislature to protest the proposed tar sands pipeline. Greenpeace Canada has claimed that the organizers’ goal is to create the “biggest act of civil disobedience” on the tarsands issue in Canada to date. The action, organized under the title Defend Our Coast, seeks to highlight the B.C. and Federal government’s compliance with the oil industry, which is gutting environmental protection laws and has canceled more than 3,000 safety assessments of industrial projects such as the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.
• Halliburton misplaces mystery radioactive device: ‘Do not handle’. Somewhere in West Texas is a 7-inch radioactive cylinder that Halliburton would like to find. Anyone who comes across it is advised to keep their distance. The oil field services company lost track of the device, which is used to assess potential sites for hydraulic fracturing, last Tuesday while trying to transport it from Pecos to a well site near Odessa 130 miles away. A special unit of the Texas National Guard has now stepped in to aid Halliburton in a search for the cylinder, according to Bloomberg.
• Though Mitt Romney has been campaigning for president since 2006, it’s alarming how little is known about critical chapters of his business biography. Nothing spells that out more clearly than his ties to Monsanto—the current target of a mid-September Occupy nationwide action—whose dark history features scandals involving PCBs, Agent Orange, bovine growth hormone, NutraSweet, IUD, genetically modified (GM) seed and herbicides, reaching back to the 1970s and ’80s. That’s when Monsanto was the largest consulting client of Romney’s employer, Bain & Company, and when Romney helped move Monsanto from chemical colossus to genetic giant, trading one set of environmental controversies for another.
Middle East
Not technically IN the Middle East, but it certainly has an effect, hopefully a positive one.
• Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has been questioned regarding the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ YouTube video that sparked violent protests around the world. But it’s probation violations for earlier convictions on bank fraud and methamphetamine charges that could put him back behind bars. Just after midnight Saturday morning – his face and head covered – a man identified as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was taken from his home in Cerritos, Calif., by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies for what law enforcement officials described as a “voluntary interview.”
• Canada is closing three of its Middle East embassies for the day today because of continued security concerns. A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird says the missions in Egypt, Libya and Sudan will not be open to ensure the safety of diplomatic staff.
• Mass protests in Spain and Portugal, against ever tougher austerity measures, have ramped up the pressure on Iberian governments struggling to avoid international bailouts. Tens of thousands of chanting protesters from across Spain packed the centre of Madrid on Saturday, including policemen in blue T-shirts, firemen with their red helmets, teachers decked out in matching green, healthcare workers in white and parents pushing strollers.
• German Defence Minister Thomas de Maiziere dismissed Israeli pressure not to sell two submarines to Egypt, while acknowledging the country was “not as stable” as he would like in an interview published Saturday.
F.D.Brightly
Scary values at the value voter’s summit
Shorter Question Everything
While it hasn’t been particularly effective, the Romney/Ryan ticket has tried to cloud up their image in order to pull the wool over the eyes of the mainstream public. In front of an audience of their base, there was none of that and, at the ‘Value Voter’s Summit’, there was an eyeful. It never ceases to amaze me that so called small-government types love big government when that government is telling other people how to live.
• ‘Values Voter Summit’: “We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country,” Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, told the audience at the Omni Shoreham hotel. “We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.”
• ‘Values Voter Summit’: Saying that “commitments on the campaign trail prevent me from being with you,” Romney gave a three-and-a-half minute, pre-recorded video address to the annual gathering of political social conservatives, beginning with his desire to “thank Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council for their leadership.” Perkins has faced opposition from organizations on the left, including the Southern Poverty Law Center. “We need a president who shares our commitment to conservative principles and our respect for traditional values. We will uphold the sanctity of life, not abandon or ignore it. And we will defend marriage, not try to redefine it,” Romney said in the video. He went on to ask for the summit attendees’ support and help in the dwindling days until the November 6 election.
• Presidential Candidate Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) – Message for Values Voter Summit 2012
US Politics
• The Question
• Americans recognize that judgment, prudence, instinct and a sense of what the moment demands are all job requirements for the presidency. Romney met none of them this week.
• US President Barack Obama’s campaign lashed Mitt Romney for “hypocrisy” on China Friday, claiming his tough talk was undermined by his business record of shipping US jobs to the Asian giant.
• Counting On Magic: The Washington Post editorial board on Saturday published another critical review of Mitt Romney’s campaign, this time focusing on his tax plan. “For several weeks, we’ve been asking Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to explain how he can cut taxes, as promised, without adding to the nation’s debt, as also promised,” the piece said. “Now he’s effectively let the cat out of the bag: He can’t.” The editorial attacked Romney’s plan as “counting on magic” and compared it to “the wishful thinking of President George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts that helped turn a surplus into the deficit now weighing the nation’s economy.”
• Cleverness afoot. US House Republicans have gotten their Workforce Investment and Improvement Act through the Education & Workforce Committee. It would put TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) into the new WIF (Workforce Investment Fund) program. Since there are no work requirements for welfare recipients under the Republicans’ WIF, they will have accomplished what they are accusing Obama of trying to do with TANF work requirements.
• Clint Eastwood, citing old age, defends bizarre RNC performance. “One advantage of being my age is that, you know, what can they do to you?” Eastwood said. “You just have fun and do what you think and you can say what you think, you don’t have to edit yourself.”
Resources and CBRNE
• Environmental activists in Canada have announced plans for a mass sit in at the British Columbia legislature to protest the proposed tar sands pipeline. Greenpeace Canada has claimed that the organizers’ goal is to create the “biggest act of civil disobedience” on the tarsands issue in Canada to date. The action, organized under the title Defend Our Coast, seeks to highlight the B.C. and Federal government’s compliance with the oil industry, which is gutting environmental protection laws and has canceled more than 3,000 safety assessments of industrial projects such as the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.
• Halliburton misplaces mystery radioactive device: ‘Do not handle’. Somewhere in West Texas is a 7-inch radioactive cylinder that Halliburton would like to find. Anyone who comes across it is advised to keep their distance. The oil field services company lost track of the device, which is used to assess potential sites for hydraulic fracturing, last Tuesday while trying to transport it from Pecos to a well site near Odessa 130 miles away. A special unit of the Texas National Guard has now stepped in to aid Halliburton in a search for the cylinder, according to Bloomberg.
• Though Mitt Romney has been campaigning for president since 2006, it’s alarming how little is known about critical chapters of his business biography. Nothing spells that out more clearly than his ties to Monsanto—the current target of a mid-September Occupy nationwide action—whose dark history features scandals involving PCBs, Agent Orange, bovine growth hormone, NutraSweet, IUD, genetically modified (GM) seed and herbicides, reaching back to the 1970s and ’80s. That’s when Monsanto was the largest consulting client of Romney’s employer, Bain & Company, and when Romney helped move Monsanto from chemical colossus to genetic giant, trading one set of environmental controversies for another.
Middle East
Not technically IN the Middle East, but it certainly has an effect, hopefully a positive one.
• Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has been questioned regarding the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ YouTube video that sparked violent protests around the world. But it’s probation violations for earlier convictions on bank fraud and methamphetamine charges that could put him back behind bars. Just after midnight Saturday morning – his face and head covered – a man identified as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was taken from his home in Cerritos, Calif., by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies for what law enforcement officials described as a “voluntary interview.”
• An armada of US and British naval power is massing in the Persian Gulf in the belief that Israel is considering a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s covert nuclear weapons programme.
• House GOP was warned their obstruction on Libya would embolden our enemies
• Canada is closing three of its Middle East embassies for the day today because of continued security concerns. A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird says the missions in Egypt, Libya and Sudan will not be open to ensure the safety of diplomatic staff.
• The United States ordered non-essential staff to leave its embassies in Tunisia and Sudan on Saturday after both diplomatic posts were attacked and Khartoum rejected a U.S. request to send a platoon of Marines to bolster security at its mission there.
Europe
• Mass protests in Spain and Portugal, against ever tougher austerity measures, have ramped up the pressure on Iberian governments struggling to avoid international bailouts. Tens of thousands of chanting protesters from across Spain packed the centre of Madrid on Saturday, including policemen in blue T-shirts, firemen with their red helmets, teachers decked out in matching green, healthcare workers in white and parents pushing strollers.
• German Defence Minister Thomas de Maiziere dismissed Israeli pressure not to sell two submarines to Egypt, while acknowledging the country was “not as stable” as he would like in an interview published Saturday.