Apparently the Obama campaign wants you to see the document The Ricketts Plan to Defeat Barack Obama.

A news report this morning exposed an outrageous plan by Republican operatives, and a secretive right-wing super PAC, to spend millions of dollars to spew ugly, divisive slime on TV in hopes of tearing down the President.

Read this incredible story, and you’ll see we’re up against. It’s everything that’s wrong with politics — and the Republican Party — today.

It’s clear that this crowd will say anything, do anything, and spend anything to take the President down and elect Mitt Romney.

Right now, demand that Mitt Romney strongly condemn any hate tactics being used in his name — he can stop them if he wants to:

http://my.barackobama.com/Reject-Hate-Politics

They think they can win by shamelessly dividing our country. Let’s prove them wrong.

I think the implication of the document is the PAC’s intent to reopen the Reverend Wright story to attack the President. Since the original story is the prime example of when the media gets a story wrong they just never let it go, you know you won’t be able to hear the truth from the media.

In fact there may only be a few people in this country who have avoided the mass propaganda infection foisted on us by the press over this story that they went out of their way to distort to avoid revealing what idiots they really are. Sort of like pretending that the Stephen Colbert speech at the Washington Press Corp dinner wasn’t a hilariously funny attack on the media’s own failings, but with more serious consequences.

May 18, 2012

Could we be surprised by a slightly elevated tone of the coming campaign? See Romney moves swiftly to rule out anti-Wright ad.

By the way, does President Obama’s attempts to explain what vulture capitalism is amount to character assassination as so frequently mentioned by Romney in his remarks in the above linked article? Or are Romney’s repeated references to character assassination the real attempt at character assassination?

I report, you decide. Or is it I make innuendos and you decide?

Still May 18, 2012

Gee, this story has more legs than I thought. See The Real Super PAC Menace (Hint: It Has Nothing To Do With Jeremiah Wright Ads). Or is it more angles?

Does this mean that big donors don’t have an impact on presidential elections? Not exactly. Yesterday’s furor over Ricketts’ potential Jeremiah Wright ad proved another important point about the impact of rich individual donors in a post-Citizens United world: They don’t have to write a check to have a big impact, even on a presidential general election contest. They just have to clear their throats.

Who will N.C. marriage amendment backers target next? is an excellent commentary from McClatchy News.

Besides the commentary itself, it quotes something that I always think about and now have an opportunity to post so that I can remember these beautifully written words.

Theologian Martin Niemoller predicted what will happen then when he wrote:

First they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

As a Jew, I am one step down on the ladder from most of the rest of you.  Maybe that is why these thoughts speak to me so loudly.

The Warren campaign has just posted Elizabeth Warren | JPMorgan and Wall Street on YouTube.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out what there is about this that the average voter cannot understand.

One other thing to think about in the campaign for the U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts – can you think of another candidate who has the standing to be asked by all the major media to comment on the recent news about JPMorgan/Chase?

Would such a candidate, after becoming Senator, be able to muster a lot of publicity and public outcry for the type of regulation that she sees as necessary to protect us and our economy? Public demand is the only thing that will give the people in Congress the backbone to stand up to the moneyed interests that threaten to swamp their future campaigns with negative advertising.

Remember, they have the money, but we have the votes. We just need to keep shouting so that our elected officials know we are not asleep at the switch. Oh, and not easily bamboozled by the propaganda of the monied interests. As long as that propaganda seems to be working, the people in Congress feel safe to kowtow to the people with the money.

On the Sturbridge Political Watch blog, Thomas Creamer has written the article “Nightmare Budget”, Doomsday Scenarios, or a Reasoned, Rational Approach.

For the purposes of discussion, I have extracted the following from the Town of Sturbridge Finance Committee Report Fiscal Year 2013.

This proposed budget is an increase of $1,172,795, or 4.6%,over Fiscal Year 2012.

I am not privy to all the background material that, as a Town Selectman, Thomas Creamer is. However, I think I understand the point that the author is making. I have heard this type of discussion many times over in my 50 something years of adult life.  To emphasize the deleterious effects of not raising the budget, proponents of the new budget concentrate all the theoretical cuts needed by a level funded budget in the programs that the citizens want the most.  They do not go through the hard task of finding the programs the citizens need or want least in order to focus the cutting there.  Such an approach might lead to budget cuts that are hardly noticed.  Or at least that is the suspicion when you view the dire warnings.

On the one hand, the proponents of the increased budget will tell you that it is only 4.6%, and as a citizen you can surely afford that.  Yet a 4.6% cut from the proposed budget would bring dire consequences to the town.

Of course the proponents of the level funding are not above their own prediction of the dire consequences of raising spending. They might say that surely we can find 4.6% fat in the budget that should be easy to cut with no harm done.  On the other hand for the citizens of the town to have their taxes raised to cover the 4.6% would be so drastic that they would all find themselves in the poor house with nothing to eat and no roof over their head.

So I think that what Thomas Creamer is asking is for us to put aside the nonsense and try to come up with a reasoned approach about what to do.

For my part, I have no reason to doubt that the Finance Committee and the Selectmen (mostly women) have done their due diligence and put in the hard work of figuring out the best compromises between what we may want and what we can afford.  Unless someone can provide me with strong evidence that these two goups have fallen down on the job in some major way, I am inclined to go along with their recommendations.

If we have to come out in droves to attend the Town Meeting to fight for a rational approach, then that is what we should do.  I intend to do my part.  I am open to arguments to sway my vote one way or another. I just won’t participate in scare tactics for either side.  So I warn both sides, that scare tactics will not work on me.  I will bring along an ample supply of imaginary chill pills to let me hear all sides with calm rationality.

The Life of Julia is the Obama campaign’s  hypothetical example that looks at how President Obama’s policies help one woman over her lifetime – and how Mitt Romney would change her story.

According to a McClatchy opinion piece ‘Life of Julia’ is a life without ambition.  After reading this commentary, I rushed to the Obama site to see the item that this story parodies.

I commented on the McClatchy piece:

Where do you get “life without ambition”?  She starts a web design company, hires people, provides a decent wage for them.  They pay taxes, stay employed, and fund their own benefits and everyone else’s.

The web design company provides a service to their customers which helps their businesses succeed.  This is how a capitalist economy grows.

I don’t see how our economy remains competitive in the world, if Julia gets no education, starts no business, and makes a life out of an ambition to serve hamburgers at McDonald’s for the rest of her life.  How is she going to retire on that income?