Month: June 2012

Black “Nones” are Growing

Trish

11%

Proportion of African-Americans who say they have no religious affiliation, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. The figure shows that black Americans are one of the fastest growing segments of the one of the fastest growing segments of Americans: the so-called “Nones.” In 1990, 6% of African-Americans said they were “Nones,” with the figure nearly double today.

Thank You, Ray Bradbury

Trish

I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.

— Ray Bradbury, author of Farenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and numerous short stories and other works, who died on June 6 at age 91. Bradbury also said, “Death doesn’t exist. It never did, it never will. But we’ve drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we’ve got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing.”

In Upset, Tea Party Birther Queen Orly Taitz Is Trounced in Bid to Unseat California Sen. Dianne Feinstein

Jon Ponder

One disappointing result for Democrats from Tuesday’s California primary is that they will be denied the spectacle of having an even bigger tea party bozo on the ballot for U.S. Senate this fall than the bozos in the 2008 Senate races, Sharron “Second Amendment Remedies” Angle in Nevada and Christine “I am Not a Witch” O’Donnell in Delaware.

One possible reason for her change in fortunes is that Taitz, who has made her name demanding that Pres. Obama release his birth records, made news on the day before the election because she had failed to submit her campaign finance records.

Tea party birther queen Orly Taitz had been the odds-on favorite to take on the incumbent, Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the fall. But Taitz came in a disappointing fifth on the ballot, with just 3.1 percent or 113,563 votes.

There was no Republican elected official, high-ranking party member or GOP establishment candidate in the race. Instead, Feinstein will run against a political unknown, Danville autism activist Elizabeth Emken, in November.

The voting on Tuesday was the first in California’s new “jungle primary” system in which candidates’ party affiliation are not shown on the ballot. Feinstein faced 23 other candidates, 14 of whom were Republicans. The senator won 49.3 percent of the vote (1.8 million votes), while Emken received 12.5 percent (454,937 votes).

Taitz had the highest name recognition by far among the challengers. One possible reason for her change in fortunes is that Taitz, who has made her name demanding that Pres. Obama release his birth records, made news on the day before the election because she had failed to submit her campaign finance records.

What was she hiding? Possibly a poor showing in attracting donations. Records show that Taitz had been forced to lend own campaign $280,000 last month.

Axelrod: Choosing Rubio for Veep Would ‘Insult’ Hispanics

Buck Banks

I think it would be an insult to the Hispanic community to choose Senator Rubio if the thinks that that is somehow — if Governor Romney thinks that’s sort of a get-out-of-jail-free card for all of the things and the positions that he’s taken.

— David Axelod, quoted by the Washington Times, interviewed on a Spanish language political talk show about who Mitt Romney might choose as his running mate.

Romney Team Puts Out a Call for Copywriting Help

Trish

Copywriter

With Romney himself a walking gaffe, it seems unlikely that doing a better job in print will save the candidate from future embarrassment

Showing the kind of right-on-top-of-it leadership style we expect from someone born in the end zone who thinks himself an MVP, Mitt Romney is finally looking for a better copywriter, according to Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski.

The candidate suffered through three copy errors in one week, the most famous being the misspelling of the word, “America” in his “With Mitt” app as “Amercia.”

[…]

Romney Criticizes Obama for Blaming Economy on His Predecessor, Then Blames Bad Economy As Gov on His GOP Predecessor

Jon Ponder

It is verboten for Mitt Romney or his campaign surrogates to mention the most recent Republican president by name. Instead, George W. Bush — who left office as the most unpopular president in the history of presidential polling — must be referred to in every reference as Pres. Obama’s “predecessor.”

But now, just two weeks and one or two sharp shakes of the campaign Etch-A-Sketch later, it’s the Romney campaign that is blaming Romney’s weak economic record as governor of Massachusetts on, you guessed it, his predecessor, Jane Swift, a Republican.

Here is an example of Romney using the euphemism four times in one statement in mid-May:

ROMNEY: [Obama] was very critical of his predecessor for the debts his predecessor put in place. And sure it’s true you can’t blame one party or the other for all the debts this country has, because both parties in my opinion have spent too much and borrowed too much when they were in power. But he was very critical of his predecessor because the predecessor put together $4 trillion of debt over eight years. This president however — oh, by the way, he said that doing that was unpatriotic, irresponsible and unpatriotic. And he said he would cut the debt in half if he became president.Instead he doubled it, alright, he doubled it.”

And, of course, Romney is lying. Bush increased the national debt by nearly $5 trillion, and it has increased by almost exactly the same amount under Obama, in large part as a response to the financial collapse caused by the borrow-and-spend policies, anti-regulatory zeal and colossal incompetence of Bush and his Republican rubberstampers in Congress.

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