Romney flip flops on killing FEMA: ‘I will ensure FEMA has the funding it needs’

 By David Edwards/Raw Story

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has changed his tune about his promise to “absolutely” eliminate the federal agency charged with providing relief to the millions of Americans who have been devastated by Hurricane Sandy.
During a Republican primary debate earlier this year, the former Massachusetts governor had said that abolishing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was “the right direction” and eliminating all federal disaster relief was important because “we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids.”
“It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.”

But after repeatedly ignoring reporters’ questions about that topic in the wake of this week’s super storm, Romney reversed course in a statement on Wednesday.
“I believe that FEMA plays a key role in working with states and localities to prepare for and respond to natural disasters,” the candidate said. “As president, I will ensure FEMA has the funding it needs to fulfill its mission, while directing maximum resources to the first responders who work tirelessly to help those in need, because states and localities are in the best position to get aid to the individuals and communities affected by natural disasters.”
George Haddow, who worked as a deputy chief of staff at FEMA in the 1990s, told the Boston Globe on Wednesday that Romney’s vision for the agency mirrors that of President George W. Bush, who presided over the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.
“The problem is it doesn’t reflect the reality of major disasters,” Haddow explained.
“You need FEMA, and you need a large FEMA,” University of Houston professor of economics Thomas DeGregori agreed. “FEMA can do things that no state or local government can do, and often has experience and expertise that they don’t have.”

EXCLUSIVE: Romney Campaign Training Poll Watchers To Mislead Voters In Wisconsin

 By Scott Keyes/Think Progress

Mitt Romney’s campaign has been training poll watchers in Wisconsin with highly misleading — and sometimes downright false — information about voters’ rights.
Documents from a recent Romney poll watcher training obtained by ThinkProgress contain several misleading or untrue claims about the rights of Wisconsin voters. A source passed along the following packet of documents, which was distributed to volunteers at a Romney campaign training in Racine on October 25th. In total, eight such trainings were held across the state in the past two weeks and 17 since late September.
One blatant falsehood occurs on page 5 of the training packet, which informed poll watchers that any “person [who] has been convicted of treason, a felony, or bribery” isn’t eligible to vote. This is not true. Once a Wisconsin voter who has been convicted of a felony completes his or her sentence, that person is once again eligible to vote.
The training also encouraged volunteers to deceive election workers and the public about who they were associated with. On page 3 of the packet, Romney poll workers were instructed to hide their affiliation with the campaign and told to sign in at the polls as a “concerned citizen” instead. As Kristina Sesek, Romney’s legal counsel who just graduated from Marquette Law School last year, explained, “We’re going to have you sign in this election cycle as a ‘concerned citizen.’ We’re just trying to alleviate some of the animosity of being a Republican observer up front.”
This packet could cause major problems if Republican observers across the state try to enforce such wrong and misleading information on Election Day. Even if they simply slow the voting process down, this could discourage voters waiting in line and drive drown turnout.
Here are four misleading or incorrect pieces of information distributed by the Romney campaign:

CLAIM: Any “person [who] has been convicted of treason, a felony, or bribery” isn’t eligible to vote. (Page 5)	FACT: Once a person who has been convicted of a felony completes his or her sentence, including probation and fines, that person is eligible to vote.
CLAIM: Page 8 lists 10 items as “The ONLY Acceptable Forms of “Proof of Residency”.	FACT: The list used is incomplete. There are many other documents people can use to prove residency that are not included, such as letters from public schools, student loan papers, correspondence with a Native American tribe in Wisconsin, vehicle registration, and food stamp correspondances. In addition, the list fails to mention that homeless voters may use an affidavit from a public or private social service agency as proof of residency.
CLAIM: “If a handicapped voter is unable to come into the polls to vote, an assistant can deliver the ballot to the voter if the CEI verifies the elector’s proof of residency.” (Page 10)	FACT: Under Wisconsin law, the CEI (Chief Election Inspector) does not have to verify proof of residency so long as the voter is registered.
CLAIM: “Election Observers should not assist [voters].” (Page 10)	FACT: A voter can ask for assistance from anyone, including a poll watcher, so long as the voter initiates the request and does not engage in electioneering.

Here are the documents in full:


Romney Volunteer Observer Training

Update

This post originally stated that it was incorrect for Wisconsin residents to be asked for photo ID at the polls. The state’s photo ID law was indeed struck down and is not in place for this election, but for Wisconsin voters who want to register on Election Day, one of the possible proof of residency documents is an identification card that must have a photo on it. (Non-photo documents are also accepted, such as a bank statement or a pay stub.) We have updated the post to correct the error.

Update

After publishing this story, the original links to the Romney campaign’s schedule of poll watcher trainings was changed to private. We have added new links from other Republican sites that show the training schedule in full.

Hidden Tapes & Secret Emails: Right Wing Now Throwing Kitchen Sink At Obama On Libya

 By Hayes Brown/Think Progress
In the closing days of the election, Republicans are throwing everything they can think of at President Obama to rattle his position on national security. Though a CBS poll taken immediately after the final Presidential debate had 64 percent of undecided voters believing Obama would be better on national security than Mitt Romney, the right remains convinced that Libya will be Obama’s undoing.
Despite former Bush administration Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice imploring that attacks be held off until an investigation is complete, more partisan Republicans refuse to heed her advice. To facilitate this, the right wing is floating almost any theory, no matter how implausible, in hopes of bringing Obama down, for example:
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Fox News this morning claimed, without offering any evidence, that veterans no longer trust Obama post-Benghazi:

MCCAIN: I’ve been traveling all over the country on behalf of Mitt Romney and I can tell you, our veterans are angry. They’re angry, and they no longer trust their Commander-in-Chief. Because this debacle has been — not only what has happened infuriated them, but also the cover-up.

John Bolton, seeming to take cues from conspiracy theorists Frank Gaffney and Aaron Klein, speculated on Tuesday that the U.S. may have been buying arms from terrorists in Libya to give to Syrians at the time of the attack:

BOLTON: Well, there has been speculation about it. I’ll just say my personal opinion. If we were buying weapons from the al Qaeda or terrorist militias in Benghazi to give to the Syrian opposition, I’m outraged by that because these surface-to-air missiles and other weapons from Gadhafi’s arsenal falling into the hands of terrorists is bad enough. For the U.S. to be transmitting them to opposition forces in Syria I think would be beyond the pale.

Also on Tuesday, Newt Gingrich referred to “rumors” about emails implicating the White House in incompetence:

GINGRICH: There is a rumor — I want to be clear, it’s a rumor — that at least two networks have emails from the National Security Adviser’s office telling a counterterrorism group to stand down. But they were a group in real-time trying to mobilize marines and C-130s and the fighter aircraft, and they were told explicitly by the White House stand down and do nothing. This is not a terrorist action.

And Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) think Obama’s anti-torture pledge is keeping one of the arrested suspects away from U.S. interrogators:

CHAMBLISS: Once the president in January of 2009 signed the executive order, saying we are going to shut down Guantanamo … any enemy combatant, as this individual is, there are no policies in place to take possession and interrogate him in a way to gain valuable information.

Meanwhile, Sean Hannity is now claiming to have sources who heard “damning” audio tapes of those under attack in Benghazi:

HANNITY: [D]on’t you think, in fairness, in the complete spirit of transparency that the Obama administration promised, that if there are tapes that we could hear that caused Ty Woods to disobey orders, risk his military career, his life, and then he gave his life, why not release them to the American people before the election so we could get a picture of the full truth?

Watch all of their claims here:

As varying and disparate as they are, these right-wing claims all focus more on attacking the Obama administration than any desire to seek the truth on Benghazi. For the last month and a half, after Ambassador Susan Rice’s Sept. 16 appearance on several news shows, the right has taken every opportunity to try to politicize the attacks. So far all of their attempts and claims have gone down in flames.
In comparison, the State Department’s investigation is set to be completed in the coming weeks, which will lay out in full any security failures. Likewise, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will be convening hearings after the election to determine what intelligence failures actually happened on Sept. 11.

GOP Candidate Opposes Abortion Exception In Cases Of ‘The Rape Thing’

 By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

John Koster, a Republican running for Congress in Washington, became the latest candidate to opine on abortion exceptions in cases of rape and incest over the weekend at a fundraiser with Rep. Tom Price (R-GA). Koster said he would support abortion only if the woman’s life was in danger, but would not extend the same right to women who are survivors of incest or “the rape thing,” as he casually termed it. To justify his opposition, Koster insisted that incest is rare and argued that abortion would only further hurt rape survivors:

Incest is so rare, I mean, it’s so rare. But the rape thing…you know, I know a woman who was raped and kept her child, gave it up for adoption, she doesn’t regret it. In fact, she’s a big pro-life proponent. But on the rape thing, it’s like, how does putting more violence onto a woman’s body and taking the life of an innocent child that’s the consequence of this crime, how does that make it better? You know what I mean?

Koster’s comments are similar to those of Senate candidate Richard Mourdock (R-IN), who recently said that rape pregnancies are “a gift from God,” and Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), who claimed women could not get pregnant from “legitimate rape.” In fact, Koster is very much in the Republican mainstream, as a growing number of Republican candidates call for tighter restrictions on the reproductive rights of rape victims.

Halloween Friday movie: Zombie

Here Come The GDP Truthers: Fox's Varney Touts Conspiracy Theory To Dismiss Economic Growth

 JEREMY HOLDEN/Media Matters for America

Fox News' Stuart Varney suggested that third quarter economic growth as measured by the Commerce Department was a conspiracy to help reelect President Obama, pointing to the fact that economic growth was driven in part by increased government spending.
On Friday, the Commerce Department released its initial estimate of gross domestic product, reporting that the economy grew by 2 percent in the third quarter. That figure was slightly higher than what economists had estimated.
Varney, discussing the figure on Fox News, raised doubts about the numbers, saying: "Dig deeper. Look inside that report, and you see a big 9.6 percent jump in government spending. There is some suspicion that these numbers have been juiced by government spending deliberately in that quarter, in the report, right before the election."

The increase in government spending during the third quarter marked the first quarter in two years when government spending increased. But the rate of increase was not unprecedented, undermining Varney's effort to make this an election year conspiracy. Spending by the federal government jumped by 9.6 percent during the third quarter, driven primarily by increased defense spending. Federal spending increased at a similar rate during the final three months of 2008 and during the second quarter of 2010. Federal spending increased by 13.7 percent during the second quarter of 2009.
Varney's GDP trutherism comes on the heels of his suggestion earlier this month that the Bureau of Labor Statistics was manipulating unemployment data to boost Obama's reelection chances, part of a broader right-wing effort to downplay positive economic news.

New Romney lie: Scare Ohioans by falsely claiming Chrysler may move all Jeep production to China

 By Jed Lewison/Daily Kos

This is really despicable:

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney told a rally in northern Ohio on Thursday night that Chrysler was considering moving production of its Jeep vehicles to China, apparently reacting to incorrect reports circulating online. "I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state Jeep — now owned by the Italians — is thinking of moving all production to China," Romney said at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, home to a General Motors powertrain plant. "I will fight for every good job in America. I'm going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it's fair America will win."
Romney was apparently responding to reports Thursday on right-leaning blogs that misinterpreted a recent Bloomberg News story earlier this week that said Chrysler, owned by Italian automaker Fiat SpA, is thinking of building Jeeps in China for sale in the Chinese market.

Only Mitt Romney could take a story about how Chrysler is expanding into the Chinese market ... and turn it into a story about how if he doesn't get elected, Chrysler might send all of its Jeep production there. Apparently, Romney saw some headlines on some right-wing blogs and went with it, but as Greg Sargent points out all the facts to debunk Romney's assertion are in the original article that he claimed as his source. But Romney didn't simply get his facts wrong. As Jonathan Cohn points out, Chrysler is actually expanding Jeep production right here in the United States.

About 1,100 new Chrysler employees will begin working next week on a third crew at Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit as sales of Jeep Grand Cherokees continue to rise.

So not only did Romney spread a false claim that Chrysler was looking to move all of its Jeep production to China, he overlooked the fact that Chrysler is actually expanding Jeep production right here in the United States. Obviously, Mitt Romney is desperate to win over Ohio voters who are wary of supporting him because he opposed the auto bailout, but it really is disturbing that this sort of dishonesty is the way he'd go about doing it. It's not just simple Romnesia: it's inventing an entirely new reality, completely untethered from the truth, in order to support his personal political ambitions. Romney isn't spinning—he's lying. It's one thing for a candidate to present a set of facts in the most politically advantageous way possible, but it's quite another to just make stuff up completely.
I know there's a risk of sounding holier-than-thou because in campaigns there's always going to be some exaggerations or stretching of the truth, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. But that's not what Romney does. He lies. When he speaks, he doesn't care about the accuracy of what he says—he only cares about whether his words help him achieve his personal goals. That is the essence of dishonesty and it's a fundamental character flaw.
Perhaps that willingness to lie served him well as CEO of Bain, but it's an appalling trait for a presidential candidate, let alone—God forbid—a president.

Sam Wang as the Perfect Antidote for Romomentum

 By Evil Sax/Diary of a Republican Hater

It's funny because Nate Silver has gotten a reputation among conservatives as being biased towards Obama. For those of you who read Nate regularly that may be news for. Indeed, I would not call him very bullish for the President. Even now when there is plenty of data to make the case-based on his own model-that Romney's bounce has been over since October 12, the most he could say is that it seems to have stopped.

   http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nate-silver/

   I think it's safe to say that he's been very conservative this cycle as other poll analysts argue:

   "From this perspective, it’s a bit odd to see commentary out there suggesting that Romney should be favored, or that quantitative, poll-based analyses showing Obama ahead are somehow flawed, or biased, or not to be believed. It’s especially amusing to see the target of this criticism be the New York Times’ Nate Silver, whose FiveThirtyEight blog has been, if anything, unusually generous to Romney’s chances all along. Right now, his model gives Romney as much as a 30% probability of winning, even if the election were held today. Nevertheless, The Daily Caller, Commentary Magazine, and especially the National Review Online have all run articles lately accusing Silver of being in the tank for the president. Of all the possible objections to Silver’s modeling approach, this certainly isn’t one that comes to my mind. I can only hope those guys don’t stumble across my little corner of the Internet."

   http://votamatic.org/into-the-home-stretch/

    For some sense of centering, or reality, you might want to give Sam Wang's Princeton Consortium-or for that matter, of course, Votomatic. Here is a great post where Wang takes on the mightiest analyst around: you guess it, David Brooks. It seems Brooks has spent hours poring over polls trying to get to what they are saying. Wang, however, is less than overwhelmed by his conclusion:

    "It was fun to learn of David Brooks’s addiction to polling data. He spends countless hours on them, looking at aggregators, examining individual polls, and sniffing poll internals. From all of this, what has he learned?

1. Today, President Obama would be a bit more likely to win.
2. There seems to be a whiff of momentum toward Mitt Romney.

    (Emphasis mine.)

     "I am having a sad. All of that effort, and his two conclusions still have two major errors. Evidently he does not read the Princeton Election Consortium."

      http://election.princeton.edu/2012/10/25/do-you-understand-polls-as-well-as-david-brooks/#more-7922

       More than evidently, I suspect it's all but a surety he doesn't. Wang corrects number 1. Obama is not "a bit more likely to win"; he's actually much more likely to. See what I mean about Nate: he's actually something of an outlier among the poll geeks:

       "This is false – he’s a lot more likely to win."

       "In a race today, President Obama would win with about 90% probability. The true probability is even higher, since the Meta-Analysis does not correct for individual pollster errors. We could – but the political blowback from unskewing polls is too large."

        Next he calls out Romomentum:

        "Ro-mentum ended around October 11th, the date of the VP Biden-Ryan debate and reversed around October 16th, Debate #2. Now the median EV expectation is at a plateau around Obama 293 EV, Romney 245 EV. Viewed through the all-important Electoral College, Obama has a Popular Vote Meta-Margin lead of 1.5%. This measure is precise to within <0 .5=".5" a="a" any="any" anything="anything" better="better" bit="bit" br="br" far="far" if="if" is="is" look="look" poll.="poll." race="race" single="single" starting="starting" static.="static." than="than" the="the" to="to">
         "In President Obama’s favor, he (a) won debate #3, and (b) has had a Meta-Margin lead of +3.3+/- 1.3% this year. Movement is more likely toward this mean than away from it. The red strike zone in our history graph reflects this, and gives a re-elect probability of 89%."

          Finally, Wang finishes with this advice: Don't be like David Brooks. I'd say that if you follow that rule when you do any kind of political analysis you can't go wrong. This advice is a general principle to always keep in mind.

          "Don’t be like David Brooks. Finally, a word on examining individual polls. In the comments section, I am seeing breathless statements like how the TIME poll shows Obama +5% in Ohio, and won’t that move the Meta-Margin, and so on. Hey…relax. In case you haven’t noticed, the Meta-Margin’s not moving that much. Try to avoid caressing those individual polls too much!"

           So next time you are reading some banal post about Romentum or even tired of Nate Silver's ultra careful predictions you might want to give him a try.

Obama leads in several key states

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Romney Campaign Exaggerates Size Of Nevada Event With Altered Image

Zeke Miller/Buzzfeed

 

Source: instagram.com

Via a Democratic source. Source: instagram.com

 

Colin Powell’s former chief of staff: ‘My party is full of racists

By Jillian Rayfield/MSNBC

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Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s chief of staff during his time as secretary of state, decried John Sununu’s comment that Powell only endorsed Barack Obama because they are both black. “To say that Colin Powell would endorse President Obama because of his skin color is like saying Mother Teresa worked for profit,” Wilkerson told Ed Schultz.
Wilkerson said on The Ed Show that though he respects Sununu, a top Romney adviser and surrogate, “I don’t have any respect for the integrity of the position that he seemed to codify. Look at me, Ed, I’m white. I’m not black. Colin Powell picked me because of the content of my character and my competence.”
He added that he thinks Sununu’s remark was an “unfortunate slip of words,” but that it speaks to larger problem in the Republican party.
“My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people, not all of them, but most of them, who are still basing their decision on race,” Wilkerson said. “Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists. And the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House  has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin. And that’s despicable.”
In an interview with radio host Michael Smerconish Friday, the president brushed off Sununu’s remarks, saying he will let Powell’s statement and support “speak for itself.”
“I don’t think that there are many people in America who would question Gen. Powell’s credibility, his patriotism, his willingness to tell it straight,” Obama said. “So any suggestion that Gen. Powell would make such a  profound statement in such an important election based on anything other than what he thought would be best for America doesn’t make much sense.”

Court lets Texas pull Planned Parenthood funds

 By Stephen C. Webster/Raw Story

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Texas may proceed to pull funding for more than half of the women’s health clinics across the state due to their affiliation with privately funded clinics that perform abortions.
As a result of Thursday’s decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Gov. Rick Perry (R) said that state officials will “immediately” begin defunding clinics operated by Planned Parenthood, most of which do not actually perform any abortions in the state.
Perry announced earlier this year that he’d made defunding Planned Parenthood a priority for his administration, triggering months of legal wrangling with the clinics and the federal government. Federal law requires that states not discriminate against health providers in distributing federal funds, but a court ultimately ruled that Texas could forgo federal assistance entirely and set up its own health program.

That’s precisely what Perry is doing, passing on more than $40 million in federal assistance and directing the state to exclude Planned Parenthood, which provides health care services to more than 130,000 low-income women in Texas. Planned Parenthood has 49 health centers across Texas, many of which will be forced to close due to Perry’s decision.
As an experiment, pro-choice activist Andrea Grimes said in September that she spent six hours trying to locate a women’s health clinic in Austin that isn’t Planned Parenthood but does accept Medicaid. Despite a list of 181 clinics on the state’s website, Grimes said she found just 13 actual doctors in the whole state who perform the necessary procedures and accept Medicaid, explaining that the other listings were repeats, radiology centers, labs and doctors who didn’t take Medicaid at all.
To make matters worse for many low-income women, the Kaiser Family Foundation says that Texas has one of the most restrictive Medicaid programs in the country, requiring that a family of three earn less than $188 a month to qualify for assistance. Under the president’s Affordable Care Act, however, Medicaid was slated to expand dramatically to cover nearly all low-income Americans, but Perry also said he will turn down more than $164 billion in federal money that would have been used to provide health care to 1.2 million Texans through 2023.
In a prepared statement published to the governor’s website, Perry said the 5th Circuit Court’s ruling on Thursday “affirms yet against that in Texas the Women’s Health Program has no obligation to fund Planned Parenthood and other organizations that perform or promote abortion. In Texas we choose life, and we will immediately begin defunding all abortion affiliated to honor and uphold that choice.”
The clinics have the option of seeking an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court, but the 5th Circuit’s ruling effectively denied a rehearing.
“This case has never been about Planned Parenthood — it’s about the Texas women who turn to us every day,” Kenneth Lambrecht, president of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, told Bloomberg News. “Politics should never come between a woman and her health care, but in this decision, which conflicts with Supreme Court precedent, it appears it has.”

Conservatives condemn Obama for ad similar to famed Reagan line

 By Stephen C. Webster/Raw Story

The conservative media sphere seethed with anger on Friday over actress Lena Dunham’s suggestive new ad (embedded below) for President Barack Obama that implies a similarity between voting and having sex — seemingly forgetting that the Republican Party’s greatest icon, President Ronald Reagan, personally employed the very same analogy in an even more graphic manner.
It was just days before voters swept Reagan into power in 1980 when he told a crowd in New Jersey, “I know what it’s like to be a Democrat myself, and I can tell you it only hurts for a minute and then it just feels great.”
That quote was first reported by The Washington Post on November 1, 1980, but it was Talking Points Memo’s Eric Kleefeld who revived its prescience in the national conversation on Friday morning.

Although the quote is well known and often cited by conservatives, that didn’t seem to occur to CNN contributor Erick Erickson, who declared on the Republican blog Red State that Dunham’s ad is “further proof we live in a fallen world destined for hell fire.”
Taking that even further, Kelly Fenton, the deputy chair of Minnesota’s Republican Party, declared that the president’s reelection campaign must be receiving advice from both “Putin” and “Satan.”
John Nolte, editor-at-large of the conservative blog Breitbart, announced on Twitter that the ad is “laced with innuendo about girls wanting to have sex with” the president, then added in another tweet: “This is what Obama thinks of your daughters and it’s about to blow up in his face with only 11 days to go.”
Conservative Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto also chimed in, suggesting that Dunham’s ad confirms the study that CNN pulled earlier this week, which said that some women really do vote based purely on hormonal response. He added that the Obama campaign’s “next ad” would feature Dunham describing a sexual fantasy about being caught singing in the shower, referencing a joke she posted on her Twitter account weeks ago.
Libertarian magazine Reason, on the other hand, had a much more moderate take, reminding readers that they ran a cover story in 2004 titled “Voting is a lot like Sex.” The article opens by explaining, “Both are intensely personal activities that nonetheless can have profound public consequences,” adding that both often “involve drug-and-alcohol-fueled delusions and morning-after feelings of guilt, shame, and recrimination.”
It’s been a longtime refrain among Democrats, and even some Republicans like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, that modern Republicans might not have elected President Reagan if he were running for office today, thanks to his policies now seeming radically liberal compared to the Republican tea party’s. Amazingly, the Obama campaign appears to have proved this anecdote might actually be correct, in what very well could go down as the first case of successful Reagan-baiting in the history of American presidential politics.
This video was published to YouTube on October 25, 2012.

)

Romney Campaign Chair: Colin Powell Endorsed Obama Because He Is Black

 By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

In an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan this evening, Romney Campaign Co-Chair and former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu (R-NH) offered a surprising theory on why General Colin Powell endorsed President Obama for reelection today — because both men are black:

SUNUNU: You have to wonder whether that’s an endorsement based on issues or that he’s got a slightly different reason for President Obama.
MORGAN: What reason would that be?
SUNUNU: Well, I think that when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being President of the United States — I applaud Colin for standing with him.

For the record, John Sununu is an intelligent and accomplished white man. He has also decided to endorse Mitt Romney, who is white, over Barack Obama, who is black. No one believes that Sununu made this decision for any reason other than the fact that he prefers Romney’s policies to Obama’s, and it would be absolutely inappropriate to suggest that Sununu joined the Romney campaign because he wanted a president of his same race.
Colin Powell is also an intelligent and accomplished man. Suggesting he is unable to see beyond the president’s race is no less insulting.

Update

Sununu releases statement in response to controversy:

Colin Powell is a friend and I respect the endorsement decision he made, I do not doubt that it was based on anything but his support of the President’s policies. Piers Morgan’s question was whether Colin Powell should leave the party, and I don’t think he should.

Update

An astute e-mailer points out that Sununu is an Arab-American of Greek, Lebanese and Palestinian descent, a fact that still provides no more of a window into his decision to endorse Romney than General Powell’s race does into his decision to endorse Obama.

Top Romney Adviser: If You Own A Microwave, You Aren’t Really Poor

 By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

A top adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign denied the nation’s income inequality gap in a Wall Street Journal editorial on Thursday, brushing off the growing concentration of wealth in the hands of the very wealthy by arguing that lower-income Americans are buying more consumer goods.
“Today we hear that the gains from economic growth accrue to the highest-income earners while the standard of living of the poor and middle America stagnates and the gap between the richest and the poorest grows ever wider,” Kevin Hassett and Aparna Mathur argue. “That portrait of the country is wrong“:

Yet the access of low-income Americans—those earning less than $20,000 in real 2009 dollars—to devices that are part of the “good life” has increased. The percentage of low-income households with a computer rose to 47.7% from 19.8% in 2001. The percentage of low-income homes with six or more rooms (excluding bathrooms) rose to 30% from 21.9% over the same period.
Appliances? The percentage of low-income homes with air-conditioning equipment rose to 83.5% from 65.8%, with dishwashers to 30.8% from 17.6%, with a washing machine to 62.4% from 57.2%, and with a clothes dryer to 56.5% from 44.9%.
The percentage of low-income households with microwave ovens grew to 92.4% from 74.9% between 2001 and 2009. Fully 75.5% of low-income Americans now have a cell phone, and over a quarter of those have access to the Internet through their phones.

But this argument, a favorite of conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, is highly misleading. Appliances and commonly used consumer gadgets like cell phones are necessities in the 21st century and are significantly cheaper today than they were just decades earlier. In fact, were families to sell their appliances in order to help pay for food and other basic necessities, many would still struggle — for while prices on microwaves and air conditioners have fallen, “the real everyday basics such as quality child care and out-of-pocket medical costs” are “squeezing the budgets of the poor and middle-class alike.”
Hassett argues that safety net programs like “unemployment insurance, food stamps, Medicaid” help families afford basic needs, further shrinking the nation’s income gap. But these programs are already failing to keep up with need and Romney and Ryan have proposed massive cuts to the safety net in order to pay down the deficit and finance a tax cut plan that is heavily skewed towards the rich.
Their approach would only exacerbate the differences between the rich and poor — a gap that has grown dramatically since the late 1970s. Indeed, compared to the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States has a Gini coefficient — a number that measures the distribution of income on a scale of 0 (perfectly equal) to 1 (perfectly unequal) — of 0.47 and ranks near the very bottom in inequality. America also suffers from the absolute highest “percentage of national income that went to the top 1 percent” and “has seen income inequality increase at a much faster rate than most other countries.”
This trend is already devastating the American democratic ideals of equal opportunity and upward mobility. Unfortunately, neither Romney nor his advisers can see the problem or offer the kind of tax and economic policies that will help solve it.

‘Anti-Business’ Obama Is Best President For Corporate Profits Since 1900

 By Pat Garofalo/Think Progress

Since he came into office, Republicans have consistently attacked President Obama for supposedly being anti-business. As ThinkProgress noted last week, the data shows that this charge is nonsense.
In fact, as the financial website Motley Fool noted today, President Obama is far and away the best president for corporate profits since 1900:
Even if corporate profits under Obama are compared to the 2008 peak — in order to erase the effect of the financial crisis — “average annual corporate profit growth under President Obama is 6.8%,” or nearly three times as large as it was under President Reagan. Both Presidents Bush actually oversaw corporate profit declines during their terms. Meanwhile, real GDP growth per capita is far higher under Obama than it was under either Bush administration.

Under Bush, Hannity Denounced "Politicizing" National Security. With Benghazi, Hannity Can't Stop

ERIC BOEHLERT/Media Matters For America

 Following Monday night's presidential debate, Fox News' Sean Hannity, like many conservative pundits, seemed disappointed that Mitt Romney didn't attack President Barack Obama over the issue of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11 of this year.

"I thought that would have been a big point of the debate tonight. I think a lot of people did," said Hannity, who figured using a sensitive national security crisis that claimed the lives of four Americans would have made political sense Monday night. "And really, the president seems to have gotten a pass once again."
Hannity's eagerness over the last six week to help politicize the Benghazi attack stands in stark contrast to his never-ending crusade during the Bush administration to call out Democrats for allegedly "politicizing" national security by questioning the intelligence failures behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11, or by demanding answers about the wars Bush led America into. (Note: Legitimate fact-finding into epic intelligence failures like 9/11 and the Iraq War did not "politicize" the war on terror.)
"The thing I'm most angry about in this country right now is liberals that have politicized this, our national security," Hannity announced on May 18, 2004. The politicization of national security was "unimaginable" in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Hannity complained.
It was Hannity who tried to lay down the post-9/11 ground rules: National security was emphatically off limits to presidential critics.
"Your leaders of your party have politicized our country's national security and you guys ought to be ashamed of yourself." Hannity scolded Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe in March, 2004.  "We are at war and your party has politicized the war, and your party has said false things about the President. Your party calls the President a liar every day."
Fast forward to a Democratic administration and Hannity, with his Fox News show, has perhaps done more than any other member of the American media to completely and unequivocally politicize of national security, and specifically Benghazi:

HANNITY: We are witnessing a widespread cover-up based on flat-out lies, all aimed to protect a president who happens to be running for re-election.

Whereas Hannity once bemoaned efforts by partisans to play politics with the war on terror (out of bounds!), Hannity this week bemoaned the fact the Republican presidential candidate declined to play politics with terrorism.
Today, Hannity's often hysterical allegations about a supposed Benghazi cover up revolve around pure politics and have nothing to do with trying to improve national security or intelligence. Hannity is using false claims about Benghazi to beat Obama over the head rhetorically, and he's doing for political reasons.  Or, Hannity's doing exactly what he preached against between the years 2001 to 2008.
The wholesale flip-flop from Hannity, and from the whole Fox News team, has been remarkable to watch.
To suggest the Fox host was relentless in his contempt for anyone who "politicized" intelligence or national security during the Bush years is an understatement. From the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to intelligence failures and the creation of the 9/11 commission, everywhere he looked Hannity saw contemptible Democrats trying to undercut Bush and score political points via the war on terror.
Worse, the alleged Democratic cheap shots always arrived at the very moments Bush was "trying to bring the nation together," according to Hannity. "And that's sad after 9/11."
Objecting to Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) in June 2002, Hannity complained how "outrageous" it was that the entire intelligence process in the wake of the 9/11 attacks had "already been politicized." Hannity had deep fears it was "going to be further politicized."
Interviewing Dr. Henry Kissinger in 2004, Hannity wondered if the former diplomat was as "amazed" at how Democrats had "so politicized our nation's national security," and how "all they want to do every day when they wake up in the morning is blame George W. Bush for something."
And during the presidential campaign that year, Hannity was sure Sen. John Kerry had "politicized our national security." How did Kerry do that? By criticizing Bush's handling of the Iraq War. ("Disgraceful," the talker lamented.)
On and on it went for nearly eight years:
• "Are Democrats playing a dangerous game by politicizing national security?" [June 3, 2003]
• "Well, Colonel Oliver North, he'll be here to tell us why the Democrats want to politicize the war on terror at any cost." [November 10, 2003]
• "These guys, these Democrats are politicizing national defense." [February. 4, 2004]
• "It is despicable that they have politicized our country's national security." [March 22, 2004]
• "These guys have so politicized the issue of 9/11 and our security." [March 31, 2004]
• "Many of them -- I'll even go a step further -- have undermined the president while he's at war, they've called him a liar." [February 6, 2006]
Even bipartisan, fact-finding missions were denounced by Hannity. In April 2004, he announced that the 9/11 commission, created to address how the government dealt with pre-9/11 terror warnings, had "been politicized." Days later he doubled down: "I don't have any faith in this commission. I think it's become politicized. I think it's a farce."
In January 2007, Hannity lamented the fact that "if America were united" and national security "were not politicized," there was nothing the country couldn't accomplish.  Now of course, with Barack Obama as president, Hannity views unity as a defeat.
Instead, Hannity's relentlessness for condemning the politicization of national security has been replaced by his desire to promote the politicization of national security issues. Hannity has attempted to politicize the Benghazi story and make it more damning via misinformation; to attack Obama in a purely partisan way by using the war on terror, attacks on Americans, and national security as the blunt instruments of campaign warfare.
Earlier this month while dreaming up wild Benghazi conspiracies, in which Obama knew instantly all the details of the chaotic assault half-a-world away and then hid the truth from Americans, Hannity was very specific about his big picture focus: partisan politics and what kind of toll the story was taking on Obama. "Where does this go," he asked his guest Michelle Malkin. "How does this play politically for them?"
This was part of Malkin's response:

What you've got here is a den of lying liars and craft weasels who are all behind the scenes, trying to figure out who to hang out to dry.

Malkin's name-calling claim echoed allegations of a political cover up Hannity had made days before: "I believe that they purposely lied. And the evidence seems incontrovertible to me."
But remember, when Bush was president Hannity was aghast when, he claimed, Democrats politicized national security. He also hated it when people called the president a liar. 

Both candidates stake claim on momentum

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The Digital Leap, Social Media, and Why Pundits Get it Wrong on Minority Vote

 by Deaniac83/The People's View

We already know that the President is running up unprecedented amounts of support among minority voters, particularly Hispanics. But I have been told not to bother with the minority vote, since they never come out to vote (evidently neither the 2008 national election nor the 2010 Senate election in Nevada actually took place). There are a lot of ways to gauge minority voter participation this year - the President's extraordinarily high approval among minorities, his push for and action on immigration, the Republicans' stern anti-immigrant, intolerant posture, etc. But I want to present a tangible reason to pay attention to the minority - especially the Latino - vote this year: technology; specifically smartphones. This may be a whole new ballgame from the one pundits are used to.

When the Internet became commonplace, the digital divide in home Internet indicated some time ago ethnic minorities suffering from an access gap. Here's what's changing that: smartphones. We are now experiencing a digital leap - in which the tables are turned and minorities are more likely to own smartphones than are whites. Nielson's Mobile Inside Study gives us a look into the picture:

Source: Nielson Mobile Insights Study, 2012, as Reported in Slate Magazine.

All of these numbers are significantly higher than even just a year ago. Hispanics - the group we are being told will never come out to vote - have the second highest rate of smartphone adoption, and every ethnic minority group holds an advantage over whites in this regard. Why is this important? Because as everything has gone mobile and online, so have campaigns. Think about the groups most using smartphones: young people and people of color - President Obama's most enthusiastic supporters. Nearly half of Americans between 18-29 use the mobile internet more than they use the desktop to go online. On top of this, engagement from users of mobile devices far surpasses engagement from desktop users of the web, specifically social networks. According to a study released earlier this year:

- 91% of mobile phone users go online to socialize compared to only 79% of traditional desktop users.

- Mobile phone users are 1.6 times more likely to manage finances compared to traditional desktop users (62% versus 39%).

- Mobile phone users are 1.4 times more likely than traditional desktop users to rally support for a cause (67% versus 47%).

Hmm... rally support for a cause. I wonder what that looks like on the social media, which is driving much of this mobile revolution, and vice versa. Let's look at the engagement for both Romney and Obama on the three top social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus (all screenshots taken 10/24/2012, around 9:45 am Pacific)

So why is it important that Barack Obama is beating the pants off of Mitt Romney when it comes to social network following, and how does that relate to the minority vote? It should be more than a little obvious. Let's put 2 and 2 together: social media is bursting on the mobile web - the same mobile web that minorities and young people are not just faster at adopting than anyone else but are more likely to use to engage in actions.

It's not just that, either. Smartphone users are far more self-motivated to find their topics of interest - in this case, voting - and have a different way of finding facts than sitting in front of a 24 hour cable news channel. They - we - are not a captive of the traditional media, or even the traditional media website. This population is far more social media savvy, and tech savvy enough to seek out news sources for things they are interested in. Information is about more than gathering to this group of people, it's about acting.

And we know which candidate is paying attention to this new trend - new, but now mature enough to the point I believe capable of making a difference in voting. When President Obama visited Reddit on August 31 to answer questions from users, the site broke all traffic records. Mr. Romney's bloopers in the debates (from big bird to horses and bayonets) were all immortalized by people on Twitter and Facebook - more often than not live-fact-checking and spreading the message using a smartphone.

Last but not least, let's connect this to polling. The group of people that have their social, economic, and political world not just connected but action-ized on their smartphones are not terribly likely to talk to pollsters on the phone. Not just because it will cut away from their minutes, but also because they more than likely have better things to do. Like, you know, actually vote. When polling analysts were telling us that Sharron Angle would win the Senate race in Nevada in 2010 by about 3 points, it turned out that they were severely underestimating the Latino vote, which turned the election into a 5-point win for Sen. Harry Reid instead. Is it a mere coincidence that Latinos are more likely to own a smartphone and less likely to be counted? I think not.

I was sitting there listening to pundits - curiously, all old white men - opining the other day that the social media pushback that Mitt Romney has faced didn't - and won't - matter much. I think that you dismiss the importance of mobile and the social media at your own peril come November 6. We'll see who's right. For now, I will just remind our pundits that the Arab Spring was brought to us by young people armed with mobile devices connected to social networks.

Trump’s ‘bombshell’ Obama disclosure turns out to be literally nothing

By Stephen C. Webster/Raw Story

When Donald Trump teased Fox News viewers with a “gigantic” bombshell of a disclosure about President Barack Obama that could potentially alter the course of the election, the media was expecting at least something. Anything, really.
And on Wednesday, they got absolutely, literally nothing at all.
Speculation about Trump’s “bombshell” had reached a fever pitch Wednesday morning after gossip surfaced about a nameless old Obama college buddy who was allegedly prepared to swear that the president used to sell cocaine. Other blogs speculated that Trump may have unearthed divorce papers drawn up by Michelle Obama during a rocky point in their relationship.
It turns out there’s not a lick of truth to any of that. In a video published on YouTube Wednesday afternoon, Trump offered to buy Obama’s college and passport records with a $5 million donation to the charity of Obama’s choice.
“I’m very honored to have gotten him to release his long-form brith certificate, or whatever it may be,” Trump said in his “gigantic” bombshell announcement video published Wednesday. “Now, many, many people have questions, and very serious questions. I have a deal for the president. A deal that I don’t believe he can refuse, and I hope he doesn’t.”
Trump went on to demand that Obama turn over “his college transcripts and applications” and “his passport applications and records,” after which Trump promised to write a check for $5 million to the charity of the president’s choice. “Inner-city children in Chicago, American Cancer Society, AIDS research — anything he wants,” Trump said. “A check, immediately, for $5 million.”
The millionaire real estate mogul and longtime conspiracy theorist was personally mocked by Obama during the 2011 White House Correspondent’s Dinner, an event hallmarked by traditionally satirical presentations.
“I know that he’s taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald,” Obama said, mere days after releasing his long-form birth certificate. “And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter — like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”
Since then, Trump has campaigned for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and the candidate personally appeared with him as Trump announced his endorsement. Trump also claimed that Republicans almost gave him a speaking role at the Republican National Convention too, but it was canceled at the last moment. He was in town during the convention anyway, attending a dinner held in his honor as recipient of the 2012 “Statesman of the Year” award, given out by the Sarasota Repulican Party.
Confronted by reporters earlier this year about his willing association with Trump, Romney said he doesn’t agree with every single opinion held by “all the people who support me,” and added: “But I need to get to 50.1 percent or more [of the electorate] and I’m appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people.”
Reacting to that exchange, Obama campaign spokesperson Stephanie Cutter rebuked the duo’s strange alliance. “Mitt Romney’s continued embrace of Donald Trump and refusal to condemn his disgraceful conspiracy theories demonstrates his complete lack of moral leadership,” she said in May. “If Mitt Romney lacks the backbone to stand up to a charlatan like Donald Trump because he’s so concerned about lining his campaign’s pockets, what does that say about the kind of president he would be?”
Courts have repeatedly ruled against so-called “birther” legal challenges to the president’s legitimately, and Hawaii officials have certified all along that the president released his actual birth certificate years before seeking the nation’s highest office.
This video was published to YouTube on October 24, 2012.