Here are the latest polls from the battleground states:
Colorado: Romney 47%, Obama 46% (Reuters/Ipsos)
Colorado: Obama 50%, Romney 46% (Public Policy Polling)
Florida: Obama 48%, Romney 46% (Reuters/Ipsos)
Iowa: Obama 49%, Romney 45% (Gravis)
New Hampshire: Obama 50%, Romney 44% (New England College)
Ohio: Obama 47%, Romney 45% (Reuters/Ipsos)
Virginia: Obama 49%, Romney 44% (Reuters/Ipsos)
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Passive-aggressive, much? Having been disinvited from Mitt Romney’s convention in Tampa earlier this year, George W. Bush opted to go to the Cayman Islands — a locale made infamous during the presidential campaign as one of Mitt Romney’s tax havens — to give a speech yesterday.
The fact that Bush chose to go to the Caymans, of all places, five days before his would-be predecessor faces election, is a majorly unreported story, primarily because Bush’s staff imposed a news blackout onto coverage of Bush’s speech:
What we have learned about Mitt Romney as a person during this election cycle is that he embodies the cliche of a politician who will do or say anything, no matter how vile, false or degrading, in order to win.
Nothing is more emblematic of Romney’s Nixonian corruption than the fact that he has chosen to open and close his general election advertising campaign with a pair of ads based on spurious lies.
The intentionally deceptive ad that launched Romney’s television campaign showed then Sen. Barack Obama in a video clip from four years ago quoting a statement from the campaign of his 2008 Republican opponent John McCain: “If we talk about the economy, we’ll lose.” In the 2012 Romney ad, the quote was deliberately taken out of context to make it appear the president was speaking during the current cycle and referring to his own campaign.
It’s hard to imagine a more cynical abuse of the public trust in presidential campaign advertising — except for the ad the Romney campaign is running now.
In 2007, when he was running against Mitt Romney in the Republican primaries, Mike Huckabee, the evangelical Baptist preacher and former governor of Arkansas, suggested that Mormonism was a “satanic cult,” based on an assertion that it is part of the cult’s dogma that Jesus and Satan were brothers.
Now Huckabee is out with a pro-Romney ad that warns voters that if they do not vote for Romney, they are bound for hell.
Partial transcript:
The fact that Republicans are so desperate to discredit Nate Silver over his prediction that Mitt Romney has a less than a 25 percent chance of winning the presidency is a clear sign that desperation is setting in on the right.
But the oddest, and most childish, attack on Silver comes from polling conspiracy theorist Dean Chambers — he’s behind the “unskewed” poll website that reconfigures polling results so that Romney always comes out ahead. Based on the only photo of him that is widely available, Chambers appears to be at least 100 pounds over optimum for a man of normal height, and yet he issued a statement in which he insulted Silver’s appearance:
“Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the ‘Mr. New Castrati’ voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program.”
For the third time in a week, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the auto industry are at loggerheads, this time over a Romney radio ad implying that GM and Chrysler are expanding production in China at the cost of American jobs.
The ad claimed that “Under President Obama, GM cut 15,000 American jobs, but they are planning to double the number of cars built in China, which means 15,000 more jobs for China.”
The accusation drew a dismissive response from a GM spokesman, who explained, “We’ve clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days. No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.”
Mormon blind obedience
Since the days of the founding “prophet” of Mormonism, Joseph Smith Jr., presiding officers of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) have mandated obedience to Church officials. The LDS Church is a patriarchal religion rooted in the traditions of the Old Testament. Unquestioning loyalty to LDS leaders is an immutable demand placed on Church members — and a fundamental characteristic of Mormonism.
Mormon culture emphasizes the need for members to be obedient to the authoritarian control of Church leadership. LDS authorities believe they have a divine right to impose their will upon others. A member cannot be considered a good Mormon unless he or she is subservient to LDS leaders and demonstrates compliance with Mormon teachings. Mormons may insist they sustain Church officials on a voluntary basis, but if they do not conform to the directives of their leaders, they may be judged to be in a state of apostasy.
Blind obedience compels the subordination of individual LDS Church members to the hierarchical superstructure. It is the invisible glue that binds the LDS Church and the principal ingredient that fuels the wealthy and powerful Mormon machine. Questioning the edicts of LDS authorities is viewed as subversive behavior that undermines religious faith. Blind obedience keeps Church members in check, via an uncomplicated, orderly world, where dissent is largely prohibited and Mormons obediently do as they are told — a psychological pattern generally valued above critical thinking by faithful Mormons.
A line in the song “I Believe” from the inexplicably wildly popular musical “Book of Mormon” says, ”And I believe that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people!!” The line is a reference to the fact that in 1978, the Salt Lake City-based cult lifted a 126-year-old ban on allowing people of African descent from joining the church in any meaningful way — they could join and tithe, but they were forbidden from taking part in the secret rituals or enjoying the fruits of a righteous life in the afterlife, so why bother.
Cult dogma offered various reasons for banning black people over the years. One of the most popular of these was that Africans were descendants of Cain, whom God had punished by giving them dark skin and, presumably, curly hair.
So what happened in 1978 to change the cult’s mythology about black people? Nothing really. Cult leaders just shook their holy Etch-A-Sketch and voilà:
In 2008, the McCain campaign figured out early on that their vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was incapable of giving an interview to actual journalists, as opposed to the pretend ones on Fox, and so canceled all her prospective interviews in the run-up to the election.
There is a similar dynamic at play in the 2012 election. The Romney campaign has learned from experience that when Mitt does not have a teleprompter in front of him or a long stream of memorized talking points — in other words, when he speaks extemporaneously — disaster ensues. They spent all of August and September cleaning up messes he had made.
So now, with less than two weeks before the election, they have quietly announced that they are treating Mitt the way the McCain campaign dealt with Palin — other than reading speeches off teleprompters at campaign rallies, Romney is going dark … until after he’s elected?
How will this work if Mitt becomes president? He is even more gaffe-tastic than Bush, but even worse, he won’t have anyone remotely similar to Bush’s “brain,” Karl Rove, guiding his every political move in the White House.
For now, Pres. Obama and the First Lady have a heavy schedule of interviews lined up with the network anchors, MTV and others.
From Trump’s “stolen election” lies, we can’t get no relief,
He carps on about stolen votes, but he never names the thief.
Somebody needs to tell this guy
Americans aren’t buying his lies,
And that he’s turned us into the United States of Disbelief.
