Obama out-raised Romney in August!
And his bounce from the convention is not only good but doubly good because Romney got NO bounce. Zero. Zilch. This virtually never happens to a candidate in a presidential election. "All brides are beautiful on their wedding day." But not Mitt Romney!
Let's look at the money first. Obama beat Romney by $3 million ($114 mill to $111 mill). The $3 mill is not, however, the real story.
YOU are the real story!
A whopping 98% of Obama's money came from donations of $250 or less! That's an amazing percentage! Only 32% of Romney's did. So it was YOU who put Obama ahead. GOOD FOR YOU!
This tells us two things. First, Obama's supporters are "fired up and ready to go." Romney's aren't. People follow their own money. If folks contribute to a campaign, they are "invested" in that campaign. It's now THEIR campaign! And they are not only going to vote for "their" guy but make sure others do too. In a close election the resulting commitment to work for the campaign, by identifying favorable voters and getting them to the polls, is EVERYTHING. Now it looks like Obama will have a larger base of campaign workers than Romney will. And that's what counts.
This isn't just me blathering. Studies show that people are more bound by what they give than by what they get. It's one of the nicer aspects of human nature.
What else do we learn from Obama getting so much from so many and Romney so much from so few? The timing tells us something. All summer Obama built a well-deserved negative view of Romney. The result? Obama succeeded in rallying his troops, a big achievement in these economic times and with a generally skeptical press. He looked like a fighter and a winner. Romney kept stumbling into the ropes, increasingly looking punchy from all the blows. People do not donate money to losers. By early August the GOP small donors - the people the GOP must have as voters and workers - were putting away their checkbooks, while the Democratic small donors increased in number. This seemed to indicate that Obama's summer campaign might be succeeding not only with his base but with a larger electorate.
And it was. By the end of August, Obama was not only still holding on in the polls despite an onslaught of lying super pac ads, but was also inching ahead.
And that brings us to the bounce. It wasn't really a bounce at all!
Yes, Obama had an excellent convention and Romney's was a mess. But Obama's gains in the polls began BEFORE and DURING the Republican convention. Something else was going on! Something better than a bounce!
Dare I say it? Yes, I'll stick my neck out.
It's called "mo". And it's starting. The very first tiny beginnings of something indescribable and wonderful.
I think it was George Bush Sr. who cut the word down from "momentum" to "mo". It's an almost inexplicable energy that starts to rise at some point in a candidate's campaign. You can almost feel it or smell it in the air. When it starts to flow, it feeds upon itself and keeps growing. The candidate feels it, is energized and feeds it further. The electorate feels it, like iron filings being pulled towards a magnet. Campaign volunteers feel it and start putting in extra hours and laughing a lot. The last ones to notice it are the members of the media.
It's not here big-time yet. By that time the media will have to note it. And it may never arrive as a great wave, as something like 2008. But it's here, like the first hint of autumn in the air. Something small and ineffable is out there. Still small and perhaps delicate. And I love it!
Can YOU feel it? Taste it? Smell it? I'll bet you can!
Now let's make it grow!
**************
Mr. Romney! Mr. Romney! Collect call for Mr. Romney! Collect your tax returns, please, and show them to the American public!
Monday, September 10, 2012
Saturday, September 8, 2012
It's NOT the Economy, Stupid! And Obama Wins!
[ A DISCLAIMER: I don't believe in "the races". There's only one race: the human race. I don't like categorizing people as "minorities". Nevertheless, politics in America still swirls around these distinctions. So if we are going to swim in the pond, we have to get wet.]
Game over!
Obama is not only getting his convention bounce, but he will score his basket throw for a November win! It's mathematically assured, not just wishful thinking. And it's not just this morning's new polls that tell us this - though they are looking good! - nor the way Obama WAS "the President" in his speech while Romney was an obviously pathetic wanna-be, scratching at the window.
It's the demographic numbers. It's what you SAW at the two conventions. Just a glance at the delegates tells the story of this presidential election and its inevitable outcome. The GOP delegates were almost uniformly white. The Democratic delegates were definitely not. He who has the support of the "minorities" wins this election. And the skin tones at the conventions merely reflect the reality of the divide between the two parties: minorities support Obama overwhelmingly. Thus he wins in 2012.
This isn't just a factor. It's the whole game.
This assured victory for Obama is not any feel-good theory on my part. In fact, if this election is a done deal, what's to blog about for two more months? And why should any of us lift a finger for Obama? (More on that later.) Most of all, doesn't it just seem too good to be true?
Ask two guys who really know numbers: Nate Silver and Karl Rove. The all-time odd couple, for sure! Everybody knows who Karl Rove is but mostly for the wrong reasons. His one incontestable achievement is that he grasped the political reality of demographic changes back in the 1990s and launched a strong effort to make the GOP the Latino friendly party. (That's a whole blog by itself.) It worked! In 2000 he got George W close enough to a winning total that it took only one more vote to make him president. (Thanks a lot, Sandra Day O'Connor!) And Rove did this by just shaving the usual Latino vote for the Democrat.
Time passes. In the intervening decade the GOP stupidly scuttled Rove's courtship of Latinos just as Latino population numbers and geographical distribution explode. It was the biggest boner in American elective political history!
And now comes NY Times statistics analyst Nate Silver to whisper just how big a boner it was. He recently posted a column seemingly indicating that there is no way Romney can win. Nate was very low-key about this. No blare of trumpets. (Nate's a quiet guy. Plus he's got to keep his NYT column going for two months.) ) His point is that, according to the numbers, the so-called minorities will provide Obama with the majority. And that's that. Game over.
"Oh, sure", you shrug. "If turnout is high."
No, says Nate. Even if minorities come out in the same proportion as in 2004, Obama has the win. Yes, Nate said 2004!
Further, this is true even if the whites turn out in greater numbers than in 2008. Yes, greater than 2008!
Apparently Obama's lead among minorities is so large - and they are such a large portion of the public - that a big turnout isn't a big issue.
This is hard to believe. I want to believe it, but it seems too good to be true.
But it could be. The caveat is that Obama still requires a solid number of white votes. He still has to draw almost as many as Kerry did in 2004. And don't snicker! Kerry drew a lot of votes in '04. But for Ohio being snagged by the GOP, Kerry would have won the election.
So now it's clear why the GOP has leaned on race-baiting these past three years in hope of stoking more whites into a pro-GOP, anti-minorties vote. They can't switch the Latinos to the Republican side because the GOP base hates the new spread of Latinos and other minorities into the North, rural Midwest, and the Old South. Having wedded a racist base decades ago, the GOP can't risk its base when that base is now seeing Latinos in its formerly lily-white Southern and Midwestern towns. With these new folks in town, many more whites are very uneasy. Thus the GOP dared not support the Dream Act, and Romney had to endorse Arizona's racist anti-immigrant laws. It is not really about illegal immigration; it's about skin color.
All the GOP can do is keep playing for more whites. Their bet is that most blue-collar, nominally Democratic whites are potentially racist. This is the bet that Nixon made in 1968 with his "Southern strategy" and Reagan made with his talk of "welfare queens" and "strapping bucks on welfare". Nixon in '68 and Reagan in '80 won their bets and their elections.
Will this strategy work again for the GOP? Or have all the potentially racist whites already left the Democratic rolls? Will current economic hard times make new racists out of whites who feel newly financially threatened by "the other"?
Without specifying the reason, Nate Silver includes in his projection an upturn in whites voting Republican this time. This is probably a prudent move on his part, but it is a sad one. If he is doing it, not because of a perceived increase in white racism but because of white displeasure with the economy, then why isn't he doing the same with the non-white voters? Indeed, blacks and Latinos have been hurt the worst by the Bush Crash we are still struggling with. Apparently Nate is silently acknowledging that the GOP race play is working up to a point. How much? He's projecting it's going to raise the GOP white turnout about 2%. Not enough to give the GOP the win, but a sad commentary on some portion of America's whites.
On the bright side, there's the simple justice of the larger result. The GOP's use of racism has finally backfired on them. (No matter Marco Rubio, etc., people of color are very astute at recognizing racism.) The racist evil launched by Nixon and Reagan now rises from their respective graves to push the GOP into its own. This election is but the first step of the GOP into its ever-deepening grave. The GOP will not only lose the presidential race in 2012 but national elections a long way into the future as demography shifts against the Republicans at an ever-increasing rate. In short, the GOP in 2012 - and hereafter - is toast.
So can Democrats lean back, crack a beer, and relax? Absolutely NOT! Tune in next time for "Why Democrats Still Need A Good Turnout".
But, meantime, it's okay to smile. Evil has lost a great battle.
***************
Be a good boy, Mitt. Do as your daddy did. Give us those tax returns! You're gonna lose anyway, so 'fess up!
Friday, September 7, 2012
He Did It! The Hope Lives On!
Obama did it! I've heard all the great speeches of the past 70 years, and his was right up there! In fact, given what he had to do in that speech - what a challenge it was! - maybe we have to reach back beyond my 70 years to Lincoln at a battlefield cemetery, explaining why we had to go on with a struggle that was long and difficult and costing 800,000 lives. Why we had to go forward and finish the job. These are difficult speeches to construct!
So I guess a lot of us worried whether Obama could pull it off. He couldn't soar as in 2008 because the people are not in a soaring mood. He couldn't defend because that would look weak. He couldn't blame Bush or the present Congress because that would look worse. And he couldn't give "the specifics" of a "grand vision", as the commentators demanded, because "specifics" and "grand vision" don't go together.
So he looked to you, and he found the hope he gallantly passed on to us last night. He was absolutely truthful when he said he found his inspiration about this country in the Americans he has met. The folks who are battling on against tough odds. He was also absolutely truthful when he said that all that we have achieved in these four years is because of you and that this presidency is yours. And we have indeed achieved a lot. And so he chose you as the theme of his speech. A brilliant choice!
Yes, we Democrats let him down in 2010 by not getting out to vote. We stuck him with a hostile Congress. But we won't let him down again. No, we can't!
In this one speech he said what I have tried to say for a year. That we are a people who care about our brothers and sisters. That America is something far better than just a money-making machine. The Republicans have proved repeatedly that their economics don't deliver even prosperity, let alone make this the society we want to be.
Obama doesn't get paid like a big CEO, but he gives the world's toughest job all his heart and his fine intellect and his high courage. He's gone gray caring about us. All he asked last night from us is that we match his hope by giving him our vote.
He could ask for more. And if he won't, I will. Get other people to the polls! We are fighting a devilish vision of America and its name is legion. We are fighting social injustice, racism, vote suppression, denial of health care and opportunity to learn, schemes to bilk our people, warmongering, and shredding of the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that shelter our most vulnerable neighbors. (The GOP plans to slash Medicaid enormously. Two-thirds of Medicaid goes to caring for our parents and grandparents in nursing homes. MediCARE doesn't pay for that! MedicAID does! And YOU are in line for an old folks' nursing home because we ALL get old!)
We are also fighting those who will destroy our planet. Of course if we lose this environmental fight against the GOP greedy and the Know-Nothings, none of us will have to worry about getting old.
In a way it's a shame that Obama has to "fire up" the troops. We should already have been burning with zeal, given the threats that face us if Romney is elected.
This is a life and death election. OUR lives and OUR deaths. Remember the little girl who needs the heart surgery, whose mother begged for her life on the convention stage? As the mother pointed out, if Romney's elected, the little girl will die. None of the commentators (cynical poseurs that they are) paid any attention to her plight. But Obama did in his speech. This isn't pathos, folks; this is reality. That little girl has counterparts all over this great country. Are we going to let these children die so Romney and Ryan can have MORE tax cuts for the wealthy? Should even ONE CHILD die so that Romney can pay only ONE PER CENT in taxes?
Obama spoke last night on behalf of these threatened children and all the others of us who will be ground under foot by the Republicans. But a HALF BILLION DOLLARS is being spent to drown him out. So we have to fight money with money. GOP donors are writing million dollar checks. Obama just sent an email asking if his speech was okay and could we send him $75? Poor guy. He has to beg money from us to help him to help us!
Yes, President Obama, the speech was a master work. And, yes, we are going to help. Yes, we can and we will.
*************
Mr. Romney, the President didn't demean himself last night by demanding your tax returns, but I will. I've got plenty good meanness in my old bones and am happy to de-mean some in your direction: Hand over the tax returns, buddy boy! It's our RIGHT to see them!
More than that, he did it splendidly. And we're his toughest critics because we are the ones who are literally going to live or die depending on whether Obama wins this election.
I already write about that little girl who won't get her heart surgery if Romney is elected and repeals the Affordable Health Care Act (See: Outsourced Elves and a CHild's Heart) Obama spoke of her last night in his speech.
The commentators ignored her mother's plea from the convention stage. So don't trust their evaluation of Obama's acceptance speech. They don't get it.
So I guess a lot of us worried whether Obama could pull it off. He couldn't soar as in 2008 because the people are not in a soaring mood. He couldn't defend because that would look weak. He couldn't blame Bush or the present Congress because that would look worse. And he couldn't give "the specifics" of a "grand vision", as the commentators demanded, because "specifics" and "grand vision" don't go together.
So he looked to you, and he found the hope he gallantly passed on to us last night. He was absolutely truthful when he said he found his inspiration about this country in the Americans he has met. The folks who are battling on against tough odds. He was also absolutely truthful when he said that all that we have achieved in these four years is because of you and that this presidency is yours. And we have indeed achieved a lot. And so he chose you as the theme of his speech. A brilliant choice!
Yes, we Democrats let him down in 2010 by not getting out to vote. We stuck him with a hostile Congress. But we won't let him down again. No, we can't!
In this one speech he said what I have tried to say for a year. That we are a people who care about our brothers and sisters. That America is something far better than just a money-making machine. The Republicans have proved repeatedly that their economics don't deliver even prosperity, let alone make this the society we want to be.
Obama doesn't get paid like a big CEO, but he gives the world's toughest job all his heart and his fine intellect and his high courage. He's gone gray caring about us. All he asked last night from us is that we match his hope by giving him our vote.
He could ask for more. And if he won't, I will. Get other people to the polls! We are fighting a devilish vision of America and its name is legion. We are fighting social injustice, racism, vote suppression, denial of health care and opportunity to learn, schemes to bilk our people, warmongering, and shredding of the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that shelter our most vulnerable neighbors. (The GOP plans to slash Medicaid enormously. Two-thirds of Medicaid goes to caring for our parents and grandparents in nursing homes. MediCARE doesn't pay for that! MedicAID does! And YOU are in line for an old folks' nursing home because we ALL get old!)
We are also fighting those who will destroy our planet. Of course if we lose this environmental fight against the GOP greedy and the Know-Nothings, none of us will have to worry about getting old.
In a way it's a shame that Obama has to "fire up" the troops. We should already have been burning with zeal, given the threats that face us if Romney is elected.
This is a life and death election. OUR lives and OUR deaths. Remember the little girl who needs the heart surgery, whose mother begged for her life on the convention stage? As the mother pointed out, if Romney's elected, the little girl will die. None of the commentators (cynical poseurs that they are) paid any attention to her plight. But Obama did in his speech. This isn't pathos, folks; this is reality. That little girl has counterparts all over this great country. Are we going to let these children die so Romney and Ryan can have MORE tax cuts for the wealthy? Should even ONE CHILD die so that Romney can pay only ONE PER CENT in taxes?
Obama spoke last night on behalf of these threatened children and all the others of us who will be ground under foot by the Republicans. But a HALF BILLION DOLLARS is being spent to drown him out. So we have to fight money with money. GOP donors are writing million dollar checks. Obama just sent an email asking if his speech was okay and could we send him $75? Poor guy. He has to beg money from us to help him to help us!
Yes, President Obama, the speech was a master work. And, yes, we are going to help. Yes, we can and we will.
*************
Mr. Romney, the President didn't demean himself last night by demanding your tax returns, but I will. I've got plenty good meanness in my old bones and am happy to de-mean some in your direction: Hand over the tax returns, buddy boy! It's our RIGHT to see them!
More than that, he did it splendidly. And we're his toughest critics because we are the ones who are literally going to live or die depending on whether Obama wins this election.
I already write about that little girl who won't get her heart surgery if Romney is elected and repeals the Affordable Health Care Act (See: Outsourced Elves and a CHild's Heart) Obama spoke of her last night in his speech.
The commentators ignored her mother's plea from the convention stage. So don't trust their evaluation of Obama's acceptance speech. They don't get it.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
The Voice of 2008 Was Enough
Bill didn't talk to a chair.
He talked to us.
He didn't talk to the seemingly ubiquitous "small business owners" who monopolized the attention of the GOP convention. (By tax code definition "small business" actually includes a lot of big, big businesses.)
He just talked to us Americans. As if we were all one people. As if we had some sense. As if the truth counts.
Ol' Bill not only gave the best speech anyone's ever made on behalf of Barack Obama but gave the best speech Clinton's ever made.
So what's left for Biden and Obama to say tonight? It seems like the bar has been set awfully high. But let's not worry. Contrary to all the media hype, Bill Clinton is not the only "great communicator of the era". I'm not sure when an era begins and ends, but we Democrats have had a plethora of great speakers in my time. The Republicans have had only one, the much-touted Ronald Reagan, and he stole a lot of his "moves" from Ike: the tilted head, the lifted shoulder, the lop-sided grin. Reagan was pretty good after a lifetime of performing, not just as an actor, but as a vociferous union-busting president of the Screen Actors Guild and a pitchman for General Electric, the company with the most labor law infractions in the history of the National Labor Relations Board.
Well, we'll give the GOP their Reagan and match our "great speakers" against the GOP any time. Ours is quite a list. FDR, JFK, Bobby, Teddy, Shirley Chisolm, Jesse Jackson, Mario Cuomo, Cesar Chavez, Julian Bond. And there's others. By contrast, the GOP have had nobody except Reagan because the GOP has no passion for anything but money. A good speech comes from passion about people but not from passion about money. Money is only paper and corporations are NOT people.
Forgive an old woman a sentimental moment. (A good Democratic Convention stirs memories of the golden lads and lasses now gone to dust.) I've heard most of our great Democratic speakers. FDR's fireside chats on the radio when I was a little girl. Then in 1960 sitting in the LA Coliseum, holding my three-month-old baby girl and hearing JFK accept his nomination. Bobby on tv addressing a Detroit crowd of African-Americans on the night of King's assassination. Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech live on tv as he gave it. Shirley Chisolm getting 152 votes at the '72 convention as the first woman and the first black to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Cesar Chavez at 7 a.m. in a parking lot talking in sweet, gentle Spanish to farm workers headed out to the fields. Teddy, my dear old Teddy, giving "The Dream Will Never Die" speech at the '80 convention and calling us his "golden friends". We cheered for forty-five minutes afterwards, still a convention record.
They are all gone now. They had spoken to the best in us. And I loved them and I missed them. Then - after the better part of forty years in the desert - there was Barack Obama in 2008. Like those who were gone, he spoke to the angels in our natures. I'm very grateful I lived long enough to hear the clarion call raised again of hope and compassion.
No matter how well Barack Obama does tonight, in his 2008 speeches he gave us all that we really need from that time forward. He brought us the sweet reassurance that, over the last seventy-six years, the voices have not died and the dream indeed lives on. And by the way we stood up when he called us. we know the dream will always be in us, waiting for the call. And in our children. And in their children. That will be their inheritance.
The greedy GOP leave their children only money. We leave ours the poetry and passion of life and the voices of our singers of the song.
He talked to us.
He didn't talk to the seemingly ubiquitous "small business owners" who monopolized the attention of the GOP convention. (By tax code definition "small business" actually includes a lot of big, big businesses.)
He just talked to us Americans. As if we were all one people. As if we had some sense. As if the truth counts.
Ol' Bill not only gave the best speech anyone's ever made on behalf of Barack Obama but gave the best speech Clinton's ever made.
So what's left for Biden and Obama to say tonight? It seems like the bar has been set awfully high. But let's not worry. Contrary to all the media hype, Bill Clinton is not the only "great communicator of the era". I'm not sure when an era begins and ends, but we Democrats have had a plethora of great speakers in my time. The Republicans have had only one, the much-touted Ronald Reagan, and he stole a lot of his "moves" from Ike: the tilted head, the lifted shoulder, the lop-sided grin. Reagan was pretty good after a lifetime of performing, not just as an actor, but as a vociferous union-busting president of the Screen Actors Guild and a pitchman for General Electric, the company with the most labor law infractions in the history of the National Labor Relations Board.
Well, we'll give the GOP their Reagan and match our "great speakers" against the GOP any time. Ours is quite a list. FDR, JFK, Bobby, Teddy, Shirley Chisolm, Jesse Jackson, Mario Cuomo, Cesar Chavez, Julian Bond. And there's others. By contrast, the GOP have had nobody except Reagan because the GOP has no passion for anything but money. A good speech comes from passion about people but not from passion about money. Money is only paper and corporations are NOT people.
Forgive an old woman a sentimental moment. (A good Democratic Convention stirs memories of the golden lads and lasses now gone to dust.) I've heard most of our great Democratic speakers. FDR's fireside chats on the radio when I was a little girl. Then in 1960 sitting in the LA Coliseum, holding my three-month-old baby girl and hearing JFK accept his nomination. Bobby on tv addressing a Detroit crowd of African-Americans on the night of King's assassination. Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech live on tv as he gave it. Shirley Chisolm getting 152 votes at the '72 convention as the first woman and the first black to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Cesar Chavez at 7 a.m. in a parking lot talking in sweet, gentle Spanish to farm workers headed out to the fields. Teddy, my dear old Teddy, giving "The Dream Will Never Die" speech at the '80 convention and calling us his "golden friends". We cheered for forty-five minutes afterwards, still a convention record.
They are all gone now. They had spoken to the best in us. And I loved them and I missed them. Then - after the better part of forty years in the desert - there was Barack Obama in 2008. Like those who were gone, he spoke to the angels in our natures. I'm very grateful I lived long enough to hear the clarion call raised again of hope and compassion.
No matter how well Barack Obama does tonight, in his 2008 speeches he gave us all that we really need from that time forward. He brought us the sweet reassurance that, over the last seventy-six years, the voices have not died and the dream indeed lives on. And by the way we stood up when he called us. we know the dream will always be in us, waiting for the call. And in our children. And in their children. That will be their inheritance.
The greedy GOP leave their children only money. We leave ours the poetry and passion of life and the voices of our singers of the song.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Outsourced Elves and a Child's Heart
"If Romney were Santa Claus, he would fire the reindeer and outsource the elves!"
So spake former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland in a rip-roaring speech on the first night of the Democratic Convention. And the crowd roared right back, full of energy and enthusiasm. Not down and sad-looking like the GOP delegates last week.
And Michelle Obama loaded the bases and hit a home run! She's become one of the best political speakers EVER!
But the most impressive speaker at this convention - at any convention ever - was that mother who came on stage with her husband and two little children. The mother was nervous. But she had pulled her courage together because she was there to fight for her little girl's life. The little girl was maybe three years old. Her skirt was a bit too long. She wasn't dressed up fancy. The other child was maybe just under a year old and began to cry in her dad's arms, almost drowning out her mother's message for a bit.
But mom soldiered on. She's used to soldiering on. When you have a sick child, that's what you do. But her soldiering on is no longer going to be enough. That little girl needs heart surgery. And her mom had come to tell you that if Romney is elected he will repeal the Affordable Care Act and her little daughter will die.
She didn't use the word "die" because she didn't want her daughter to hear that word. Also, she probably can't bear to say it aloud. She probably wouldn't have been able to finish her speech if she had had to say that word.
But it is the word. Sarah Palin rattled the cages of the know-nothings with blather about "death panels". The real death panels are the likes of Palin and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. They are determined to take away the only life-saving hope of millions of Americans - access to health care insurance that can't be denied because of pre-existing conditions or, as in the case of the little girl, because you have reached the dollar cap on coverage.
That mother came there to ask YOU to save her daughter's life.
If Romney is elected and repeals the Affordable Health Care Act on his "first day in office", as he has pledged, that little girl will die.
Lots of other people will also die because they won't be able to get medical care. One of our family friends died two years ago because he hit the cap on his policy. The Affordable Care Act was too late for him. His name was Steve and he was only forty-two years old. If he'd asked us, we would have scraped the money together somehow. I'd have mortgaged my house. But he was too shy to ask.
But when it's your little girl, you have got to ask. You have to beg and plead and do anything to save your child's life. And that mother did. She was scared on that stage, but she's more frightened by her daughter dying.
So what's it going to be, folks?
Are we going to save the little girl's life? Are we going to get Obama re-elected by contributing some dollars and lots of volunteer work? Or are we going to let the "death panel" GOP condemn that child and many more like her to dying for lack of medical care?
The Jews have a saying that he who saves one life saves the world. Now's your chance to save the world.
I don't think you need that big an incentive. I think you'll dig down in your pocket and you'll also sacrifice some time to help Obama just for the sake of that one little girl.
And they who thereby save that little girl save not just the world but themselves.
*******************
Hey, Mitt, how much did you deduct for Ann's medical expenses on your income taxes? It must have been nice to have all the money you needed for her treatment. So how much was it? Why can't we see those tax returns? Because so many of us could never pay for such care when we need it?
.
So spake former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland in a rip-roaring speech on the first night of the Democratic Convention. And the crowd roared right back, full of energy and enthusiasm. Not down and sad-looking like the GOP delegates last week.
And Michelle Obama loaded the bases and hit a home run! She's become one of the best political speakers EVER!
But the most impressive speaker at this convention - at any convention ever - was that mother who came on stage with her husband and two little children. The mother was nervous. But she had pulled her courage together because she was there to fight for her little girl's life. The little girl was maybe three years old. Her skirt was a bit too long. She wasn't dressed up fancy. The other child was maybe just under a year old and began to cry in her dad's arms, almost drowning out her mother's message for a bit.
But mom soldiered on. She's used to soldiering on. When you have a sick child, that's what you do. But her soldiering on is no longer going to be enough. That little girl needs heart surgery. And her mom had come to tell you that if Romney is elected he will repeal the Affordable Care Act and her little daughter will die.
She didn't use the word "die" because she didn't want her daughter to hear that word. Also, she probably can't bear to say it aloud. She probably wouldn't have been able to finish her speech if she had had to say that word.
But it is the word. Sarah Palin rattled the cages of the know-nothings with blather about "death panels". The real death panels are the likes of Palin and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. They are determined to take away the only life-saving hope of millions of Americans - access to health care insurance that can't be denied because of pre-existing conditions or, as in the case of the little girl, because you have reached the dollar cap on coverage.
That mother came there to ask YOU to save her daughter's life.
If Romney is elected and repeals the Affordable Health Care Act on his "first day in office", as he has pledged, that little girl will die.
Lots of other people will also die because they won't be able to get medical care. One of our family friends died two years ago because he hit the cap on his policy. The Affordable Care Act was too late for him. His name was Steve and he was only forty-two years old. If he'd asked us, we would have scraped the money together somehow. I'd have mortgaged my house. But he was too shy to ask.
But when it's your little girl, you have got to ask. You have to beg and plead and do anything to save your child's life. And that mother did. She was scared on that stage, but she's more frightened by her daughter dying.
So what's it going to be, folks?
Are we going to save the little girl's life? Are we going to get Obama re-elected by contributing some dollars and lots of volunteer work? Or are we going to let the "death panel" GOP condemn that child and many more like her to dying for lack of medical care?
The Jews have a saying that he who saves one life saves the world. Now's your chance to save the world.
I don't think you need that big an incentive. I think you'll dig down in your pocket and you'll also sacrifice some time to help Obama just for the sake of that one little girl.
And they who thereby save that little girl save not just the world but themselves.
*******************
Hey, Mitt, how much did you deduct for Ann's medical expenses on your income taxes? It must have been nice to have all the money you needed for her treatment. So how much was it? Why can't we see those tax returns? Because so many of us could never pay for such care when we need it?
.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Better Off? YES WE ARE!
Romney poses the question "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" To quote another GOP luminary: You betcha!
Let's us count the ways Obama has benefitted America (in no particular order). Much of this he had to do on his own because of the GOP House blocking him many of his efforts.
1. The auto industry is alive and well. It was near death's door four year's ago. A million jobs saved!
2. Our financial system is stable. It was crashing four years ago.
3. Bin Laden is dead, as is most of the Al Queda leadership.
4. Four and a half million jobs have been added in four years, more than in eight years of George W.
5. The housing market has turned around.
6. Personal income has risen.
7. You can get health insurance even if you have a serious pre-existing condition. And no more cap on your coverage!
8. Millions more children have health coverage through CHIPS, as do the under-26s because of the
Affordable Health Care Act. And millions more Americans will get coverage in just over a year!
9. WE ARE OUT OF IRAQ!
10. We are getting out of Afghanistan, with another 33,000 troops coming home this fall.
11. Student loans are cheaper because of the removal of the intervening private lenders and the cutting of interest rates.
12. Almost one million undocumented young people are not going to be deported.
13. Native Americans are getting billions in oil/gas royalties previously stolen from them.
14. TWENTY BILLION dollars from BP, as demanded by Obama, is going into Gulf Coast
restoration.
15. Women can more easily get equal pay for equal work because of the Lilly Ledbetter Act.
16. Seniors are saving big bucks on RXs because the new health care act plugs half the "donut hole".
17. TWENTY-NINE straight months of job growth, while deficit-cutting Europe drifts down, down.
18. Larger pay checks for our families with Obama's "payroll tax holiday."
19. TWENTY-FIVE MILLION acres of coral reefs protected off the Atlantic Coast in a new preserve.
20. A new anti-nuclear weapon treaty with Russia.
21. The stock market has more than doubled and is back to pre-Crash levels.
22. Corporate profits are high. (Well, some folks rejoice in that.)
23. The bad aspects of No Child Left Behind and its "teach-to-the-test" have been alleviated.
24. The "green" industries of the future are growing lustily after getting a boost from the feds.
25. THE END OF "DON'T ASK; DON'T TELL"!
26. Better regulation of Wall Street has been enacted and future bank bailouts are barred.
27. Consumers are better protected from credit card lenders.
28. Billions are going into repairing and upgrading our roads and bridges. (Job, jobs, jobs!)
29. Global warming to be lessened by enormous reduction in gasoline consumption due to Obama's imposing higher mileage requirements on auto makers.
30. Doubling of Pell grants.
31. Big increases in veterans' benefits, plus an Obama jobs-for-vets program that's cutting vets' unemployment.
32. A little African-American boy asked the President if he could touch his hair. In that touch a whole generation of brown-skinned children set aside any feelings of inferiority whites might try to impose on them. They now know that any child can indeed grow up to be president.
Maybe this last thing on the list was the best thing of all. Sure, Obama's being president has stirred up the racist nuts, but it has also shown the children of this country, brown AND white, a path forward away from racism. There should be no going back.
So are we going forward by helping re-elect Obama?
YES WE ARE!
******************
I may have forgotten some of Obama's achievements, but we haven't forgotten those Romney tax returns You hear that, Mr. Romney?!
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Obama HAS Held Back the Oceans!
I don't recall Obama promising in 2008 that he would hold back the oceans. Was Romney lying about this too in his acceptance speech?
If so, the joke is on Romney. Obama has actually held back the seas, as I'll explain shortly.
But first let's recall the GOP 2012 conventioneers laughing along with Romney at the idea. It's hard to know if they were scoffing at the alleged chutzpah of Obama or the notion that the waters are rising. After all, they are staunch deniers of climate change and its resulting rising sea levels.
In short, they are ignorant and proud of it. Stubbornly proud of it.
Indeed, the American GOP has seemed to be the world leader in denial of climate change. But now one of my grandsons has found an Australian blog site which urges Aussies to dive into the ocean and attack the coral reefs. Smash them! Kill them!
Why? Because the reefs are the focus of strong environmental concern. And they are not doing well. Warming of the oceans and acidification from CO2 are taking a serious toll. We must reduce fossil fuel use or lose the great coral reefs, which are vital to the chain of life in the oceans. We should cherish the reefs for their own sake - as does grandson Ted - but, for the more crass among us, the reefs are what help sustain fisheries, a serious component of our food supply.
The Aussie blog is clearly the ridiculous work of a nut job who fears environmentalism But the GOP ridicule of climate change is more serious stuff. If it triumphs it will likely kill us all. It's fed in part by the fundamentalists' insistence on an anti-science interpretation of the Bible, as if their God couldn't come up with some really clever things like physics, math, evolution, cause and effect, etc.
The real driving force in the denial of climate change, however, is the fossil fuel industry, i.e. the oil, gas and coal bunch. Why do you think the Koch brothers are funding millions against Obama? Those millions come from oil.
And that brings us to how Obama has actually held back the oceans. He did it by using the executive power to order that gasoline mileage must double and emissions must be reduced. This will be an enormous cut in the CO2 that is frying the planet. It won't stop climate change entirely (it's already here) but it's a giant step forward for the environment.
It's also a big break for consumers, reducing the cost of running our automobiles. And it helps lift us out of oil bondage to the Middle East, vastly improves our balance of payments, and reduces the likelihood of oil spills and other horrors.
Obama not only did one of the greatest pro-environment moves in history but he did it with such cool. When the auto makers were plummeting into bankruptcy, he knew he had them right over a barrel, a barrel of oil. He didn't have to insist on an environmental quid pro quo, but he did: "I'll bail you out, but you accept my regs." This tough bargain did him no good politically. The environmentalists have decided he's no good. (They too can be very stubborn; I know because my environmental activism goes back to the 1950s.) Like almost all Americans and the media, they have chosen to ignore his great achievement.
But the oil baron Koch brothers and the GOP haven't failed to notice what Obama did. They want him OUT of power so that the new auto regulations can be repealed by Romney. When Romney & Co. talk about "ending regulation" so as to "unleash business", it's not about some little nit-picky regs! IT'S ABOUT OIL! TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF OIL! Obama's big, big auto regs mean far less money for oil-producers.
And the Koch brothers and the GOP will lie and deceive and spend perhaps a billion dollars to get rid of Obama and the new auto regulations. They might even get nastier than that. With so much money at stake and - as the GOP convention made clear - their great love of money, they may literally stop at nothing. This is why Romney & Co. have never try to squelch the loose-cannon, racist crazies in their ranks. Quite likely they would not weep if one of those loose cannons literally turned the firepower on our president. It's happened before. He's getting more threats of violence than any prior president ever. And someone put a bullet in the White House wall.
So the Aussie nutcase may be urging that people kill the coral reefs, but the nutcases here are being nudged toward killing too. I hope like anything that I'm just a paranoid old gal, but I remember JFK, Martin Luther King, Bobbie, Medgar Edwards, the attempt to shoot Truman, the shots at FDR that killed the mayor of Chicago. And we all remember Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and the little girl who died next to her.
Our only weapon against the lies, hatred, and potential violence is our vote. And the votes of our brothers and sisters. We must do all we can to get out the vote. Our only weapon against the hundreds of millions of oil-soaked money coming at Obama is our $50 and $100. Okay, even our $5 and our $10.
Help Obama hold back the oceans. For God's sake, save yourselves!
**********
Hey, Romney, had any income from Big Oil? Like your pal Paul Ryan? Let's see those tax returns!
If so, the joke is on Romney. Obama has actually held back the seas, as I'll explain shortly.
But first let's recall the GOP 2012 conventioneers laughing along with Romney at the idea. It's hard to know if they were scoffing at the alleged chutzpah of Obama or the notion that the waters are rising. After all, they are staunch deniers of climate change and its resulting rising sea levels.
In short, they are ignorant and proud of it. Stubbornly proud of it.
Indeed, the American GOP has seemed to be the world leader in denial of climate change. But now one of my grandsons has found an Australian blog site which urges Aussies to dive into the ocean and attack the coral reefs. Smash them! Kill them!
Why? Because the reefs are the focus of strong environmental concern. And they are not doing well. Warming of the oceans and acidification from CO2 are taking a serious toll. We must reduce fossil fuel use or lose the great coral reefs, which are vital to the chain of life in the oceans. We should cherish the reefs for their own sake - as does grandson Ted - but, for the more crass among us, the reefs are what help sustain fisheries, a serious component of our food supply.
The Aussie blog is clearly the ridiculous work of a nut job who fears environmentalism But the GOP ridicule of climate change is more serious stuff. If it triumphs it will likely kill us all. It's fed in part by the fundamentalists' insistence on an anti-science interpretation of the Bible, as if their God couldn't come up with some really clever things like physics, math, evolution, cause and effect, etc.
The real driving force in the denial of climate change, however, is the fossil fuel industry, i.e. the oil, gas and coal bunch. Why do you think the Koch brothers are funding millions against Obama? Those millions come from oil.
And that brings us to how Obama has actually held back the oceans. He did it by using the executive power to order that gasoline mileage must double and emissions must be reduced. This will be an enormous cut in the CO2 that is frying the planet. It won't stop climate change entirely (it's already here) but it's a giant step forward for the environment.
It's also a big break for consumers, reducing the cost of running our automobiles. And it helps lift us out of oil bondage to the Middle East, vastly improves our balance of payments, and reduces the likelihood of oil spills and other horrors.
Obama not only did one of the greatest pro-environment moves in history but he did it with such cool. When the auto makers were plummeting into bankruptcy, he knew he had them right over a barrel, a barrel of oil. He didn't have to insist on an environmental quid pro quo, but he did: "I'll bail you out, but you accept my regs." This tough bargain did him no good politically. The environmentalists have decided he's no good. (They too can be very stubborn; I know because my environmental activism goes back to the 1950s.) Like almost all Americans and the media, they have chosen to ignore his great achievement.
But the oil baron Koch brothers and the GOP haven't failed to notice what Obama did. They want him OUT of power so that the new auto regulations can be repealed by Romney. When Romney & Co. talk about "ending regulation" so as to "unleash business", it's not about some little nit-picky regs! IT'S ABOUT OIL! TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF OIL! Obama's big, big auto regs mean far less money for oil-producers.
And the Koch brothers and the GOP will lie and deceive and spend perhaps a billion dollars to get rid of Obama and the new auto regulations. They might even get nastier than that. With so much money at stake and - as the GOP convention made clear - their great love of money, they may literally stop at nothing. This is why Romney & Co. have never try to squelch the loose-cannon, racist crazies in their ranks. Quite likely they would not weep if one of those loose cannons literally turned the firepower on our president. It's happened before. He's getting more threats of violence than any prior president ever. And someone put a bullet in the White House wall.
So the Aussie nutcase may be urging that people kill the coral reefs, but the nutcases here are being nudged toward killing too. I hope like anything that I'm just a paranoid old gal, but I remember JFK, Martin Luther King, Bobbie, Medgar Edwards, the attempt to shoot Truman, the shots at FDR that killed the mayor of Chicago. And we all remember Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and the little girl who died next to her.
Our only weapon against the lies, hatred, and potential violence is our vote. And the votes of our brothers and sisters. We must do all we can to get out the vote. Our only weapon against the hundreds of millions of oil-soaked money coming at Obama is our $50 and $100. Okay, even our $5 and our $10.
Help Obama hold back the oceans. For God's sake, save yourselves!
**********
Hey, Romney, had any income from Big Oil? Like your pal Paul Ryan? Let's see those tax returns!
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