The Changing Face Of Climate Change

BREAKING NEWS:  The Vice-Presidential candidates for both parties not only mentioned that climate change was real, but both candidates pledged to do something about it as David Roberts points out at the Grist.

The questioner doesn’t mamby-pamby around with he-said she-said, he states flatly that “most scientists” agree and that future generations are at risk.

And neither candidate bothers with dissembling or dodging. Both acknowledge the problem and promise to address it.

Of course the catch is that the year is 1988 -- 24 years ago -- and that the candidates were Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quayle:



So, Roberts asks rightfully, what the hell happened?  Corporate America happened, of course.

Now, what happened in 2008 that might have turned conservatives against climate? Hm … thinking … wait, wasn’t there an election that year? Why yes, I believe there was. Black Democrat took office, as I recall.

The sharp conservative turn against climate was part and parcel of the Tea Party phenomenon. When Obama and congressional Democrats championed legislation to address climate change — legislation not that different from what McCain championed in 2008 — the right immediately aligned against it, like a school of fish. Once cap-and-trade failed spectacularly, the issue went underground. The right is united in implacable opposition to all solutions. Burdened with so many coal states, the Dem coalition doesn’t have the votes to overcome the right’s opposition. So there’s just nothing to say. There’s no margin in talking about it. It doesn’t get Dems any votes they don’t already have. It doesn’t — despite the festival of self-delusion going on lately — move any independent or undecided votes. And it activates furious right-wing activism. So … who has incentive to talk about it? No one. As [Chris] Hayes says, Obama can’t single-handedly change this dynamic, no matter how many times he says the words “climate change.”

And so nothing will happen because the right will forever oppose anything a Democrat wants to see passed.   This goes times ten for Barack Obama.  The Earth will burn because of petulant children and corporate greed.

But of course, that's just humanity reverting to form.

Why Would Republicans Investigate Voter Registration Fraud By Republicans?

Seems like an obvious question with an even more obvious answer, but not one Republican will say anything about the continuing problems with the firms the GOP has outsourced they registration to.

The Virginia State Board of Elections announced Friday that it will not ask the state’s attorney general to investigate the Republican operative accused of tossing out eight completed voter registration forms, rejecting Democratic-led efforts at a full investigation into the alleged tampering.

State Senator and chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus Donald McEachin had called for a complete investigation of the incident, in which 31-year-old Colin Small is accused of deliberately discarding valid voter registration forms. 

“This is simply too serious an issue,” McEachin said in a statement. “Voting is the bedrock of our democracy and we, as Virginians, deserve to know exactly what happened, how widespread the abuse and under whose orders, if any, the individual in question acted.”

Yet the board decided not to request a formal investigation by Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, leaving the matter up to local authorities. A spokesman for Cuccinelli’s office told the Washington Post that the attorney general could only review the case if the State Board of Elections asked him to do so.

There's no fraud here, because ACORN and New Black Panthers.  Please ignore our actual, documented voter registration fraud while we continue to push laws making it harder for Democrats to vote and we buy voting machine companies with questionable software security, all while blaming Democrats.

Boston Buzzing Over Vibrator Giveaway

Condom maker Trojan, which gave away 10,000 vibrators in the streets of New York City in August, is having trouble bringing the same promotion to Boston.

The company had requested a permit for a giveaway in Boston’s City Hall Plaza. But the mayor’s office sent Trojan a letter, asking it to find an “alternative site.”

Michael Galvin, the chief of property management in the Mayor Tom Menino’s office, wrote, ”I am told the public nature of the plaza affords you legal protection to distribute these products should you insist against our objections, but I would tell you in the strongest terms allowable that I feel this is an inappropriate and irresponsible use for the plaza.”

The mayor’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.

Bruce Weiss, vice president of marketing for Trojan Sexual Health, said, the company will continue to work with the city to find the right location to host the Trojan vibrator giveaway.

So Trojan showed class and is working with the city.  They have the legal upper hand in every regard, but are at least exploring options that will work for everyone.  Meanwhile, the mayor's office has made a mountain out of a molehill.

The Importance Of Voting

(CNN) - A photo of World War II veteran Frank Tanabe casting what will likely be his final ballot in a presidential election has gone viral –and captured the hearts of thousands.

Tanabe, 93, is in the final stages of inoperable liver cancer and is currently at home receiving hospice care, surrounded by his wife and children in Honolulu.

He has always been a true patriot, his daughters said. In 2010 he was among a group of Japanese-Americans who were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal as part of the Military Intelligence Service Unit during World War II.

According to his daughters, Frank has never missed a presidential election, and wasn't about to let his illness deter him from voting this time around.

When his absentee ballot arrived on Wednesday, his daughter, Barbara, sat at his bedside and read aloud the candidates and issues.

"I helped him. He either nodded 'yes' or shook his head 'no'," Barbara said. "He didn't always vote for my candidate."

Nonetheless, she followed his directions and mailed in the completed form. He hasn't been able to speak since.

When you face death, every  moment is precious.  This is important enough to spend his time on, to use his last words for.  He held on to make sure his vote was counted, and if that doesn't make you appreciate our right to be heard, nothing will.

Debate Deblogging

The round up of analysis from last night's debate shows a pretty clear win for President Obama, and a near Palin-like indifference to foreign policy on the part of Mitt Romney. My scoring is here, as I thought it was a clear blowout for the President last night.  Pretty much the rest of the pundit class either agreed, or was more likely dumbfounded by just how simply impossible it was to ignore just how awful Romney was last night.

The collected wisdom of the Village, as it is, after the jump.

The Donald's Game Changer?

Donald Trump has a "big announcement" about President Obama.  I wonder if he's donating his hairpiece to science.

Conservative reality star and business mogul Donald Trump appeared on Fox & Friends this morning to hype what he’s calling a “big announcement” about President Barack Obama.

The Romney backer says intends to share his revelation on Wednesday, the same day the president will be appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

“Will it change the election?” asked Fox host Gretchen Carlson.

“Possibly,” Trump replied.

“Is it personal, or is it how he governs?” co-host Brian Kilmeade asked.

“It’s all in one,” said Trump. “Everything. It’s very big. Bigger than anybody would know.”

Oh please let this be such a tinfoil pile of overtly racist stupid that The Donald is run out of town finally.  Please, please, please.

StupidiNews!

• A major outage of Amazon's cloud computing services knocked out Reddit, Foursquare, and several other web giants on Monday for hours.
• Louisiana police say an African-American woman was set on fire by three men in white hoods who painted "KKK" on the hood of her car.
• Columbia's vice president, Angelino Garzon, announced Monday he is suffering from prostate cancer and will undergo chemotherapy.
• After just three weeks on the job, Japanese Justice Minister Keishu Tanaka has resigned for health reasons after being tied to organized crime.
• US immigration officials will drop some 21,000 Blackberry units in favor of iPhones, further damaging the already embattled Canadian firm RIM.

Last Call

And the final debate is in the books.  My initial thoughts:

Mitt Romney spent 80% of the debate agreeing with President Obama's foreign policy.  That was really the entire debate.  The other 20% was Mitt whining about the economy.

The details follow below the jump.

The Wrong Kind

Some four years after he was elected, after two books and numerous speeches and affirmations of his faith, major news organizations are still asking why major news organizations are baffled as to how anyone in America, including Barack Obama, can be both a social liberal and a Christian.

Obama is a progressive Christian who blends the emotional fire of the African-American church, the ecumenical outlook of contemporary Protestantism, and the activism of the Social Gospel, a late 19th-century movement whose leaders faulted American churches for focusing too much on personal salvation while ignoring the conditions that led to pervasive poverty. 

No other president has shared the hybrid faith that Obama displays, says Diana Butler Bass, a historian and author of “Christianity after Religion.” 

“The kind of faith that Obama articulates is not the sort of Christianity that’s understood by the media or by a large swath of Christians in the U.S.,” says Bass, a progressive Christian. “He’s a different kind of Christian, and the media and the public awareness needs to reawaken to that fact.”

Even though millions of liberal Christians exist, from Joe Biden to the Nuns on the Bus or my own family where I grew up, CNN is acting like this is a revelation, that the millions of Catholic, Protestant, Baptist and other flavors of liberal, progressive "I am my brother's keeper" Christians, who view the teachings of Jesus as lessons of social tolerance for all, respect for other's beliefs, compassion for those less fortunate and love of others to help them improve themselves, are some sort of insane cult.  They can't possibly be "real" Christians.  Real Christians are much more interested in telling you what you can't do, not what you can do.  It's the reason I don't subscribe to any organized religion anymore, because "be excellent to each other" and "don't be a douchebag" is way too simple a personal code to live by, apparently.

How hard is that to understand?

Some Christians, however, still see Obama as the “other.” He doesn’t act or talk like other Christians, says the Rev. Gary Cass, a conservative Christian president of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission.

“I just don’t see or hear in his accounts the kind of things that I’ve heard as a minister for over 25 years coming from the mouths of people who have genuinely converted to Christianity,” says Cass, pastor of Christ Church in San Diego.

Cass says he’s never heard Obama say he’s “born-again.” There’s no emotional conversion story to hang onto.

Obama talks about his faith and attends church, but Cass says that doesn’t mean he’s a Christian.

“Joining a church doesn’t mean you’re a Christian. “You can put me in the garage, but that doesn’t turn me into a car.”

Translation:  we don't want someone like him polluting our "Christianity".  That's why millions of asshole "Christians" believe the President is a Muslim, or atheist, or worships the Lords of Kobol or anything but a Christian, because that would be admitting that liberal Christianity exists.  It's a bit more than just racism, but otherism as well, and it's long been a big fat schism in American Christianity.

To admit that this brand of Christianity exists blows a huge hole in the whole religion as a cudgel thing.  To admit that President Barack Obama is a Christian is, to millions of Christians, admission that there are some uncomfortable political overtones to where Christianity has gone over the last 30 years in America.

We can't have that.  Better to call him a secret Muslim and be done with it.

Todd Akin: Analogy Fail

So, Todd Akin's wife compares the GOP calling for him to step down as being like a rape.

Akin compounds his "legitimate rape" stupidity by comparing McCaskill to a "wildcat" who had "been let out of her cage."  Oh yeah, he's a regular comedian.

Let's enjoy his newest statement, shall we?

With a little more than two weeks until Election Day, GOP Senate candidate Todd Akin's Saturday fundraiser was highlighted by a questionable analogy.

Two months after his "legitimate rape" comments sparked a firestorm of criticism, PoliticMo captured audio of Akin in Springfield, Mo., comparing Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill's work in office to that of a dog.

“She goes to Washington, D.C., it’s a little bit like one of those dogs, you know ‘fetch,’” Akin said. “She goes to Washington, D.C., and get all of these taxes and red tape and bureaucracy and executive orders and agencies and she brings all of this stuff and dumps it on us in Missouri.”

She's not very ladylike in Akin's estimation.  Now he's called her a bitch and she has so far refused to stoop to his level to answer.  She has to be giddy as he continues to make an ass of himself and the big day draws nearer.

Driving Kids Crazy

The school bus driver arrested Wednesday on charges of driving drunk when he brought a student from the Perkins School for the Blind home was hired by the bus company ­despite a record that includes seven prior ­license suspensions and two previous arrests on suspicion of driving under the influence.

Michael A. Tantillo, 41, of Leominster also lacked the proper pupil transport license.

It was the second time in 10 months that the company, Ride-Rite Medi-Van Inc. in Leominster, has raised concerns by allowing an unlicensed operator to drive a school bus. The company is now facing suspension or ­revocation of its school transportation license plates.

Let's not get too worried here.  They're just blind kids, right?  I mean, seven prior license suspensions surely skidded through a routine background check.  Right?

Those idiots.

How Lohan Can You Go?

Michael Lohan was NOT ALONE in orchestrating an emergency intervention on Lindsay Friday -- and TMZ has seen emails proving that her ENTIRE team, including her lawyers and her manager ... were 100% on board. 

The emails are between Michael, Evan Hainey (LiLo's manager) Dave Feldman (entertainment lawyer) and Shawn Holley (criminal defense lawyer). The emails were sent between Sept. 23rd and Oct. 18th (the day before  Michael's intervention). 

Michael emailed Evan and Shawn on Sept. 23rd, claiming he had been informed by several people Lindsay was "drinking between a bottle and a bottle and a half of vodka per day" adding, "I have seen the empty bottles and even cocaine in her room at Chateau."

Michael Lohan may be one of the worst dads ever, and he is alarmed for  his daughter.  Right now he does seem to be the one making the most sense.  Dina Lohan can't even carry on a conversation.  Lindsay can't get her act together because her mother enables her to justify her own insane behavior.  While he's a total schmuck in most regards, Lindsay's father really does seem to care and be on the side of those in the know.

The Huckleberry Hounds Of War

Sen. Lidnsey Graham doesn't actually have a solution for Iran right now, but he knows that goshdarnit, it can't involve any of that diplomacy crap.

Well I think the Iranians are trying to take advantage of our election cycle to continue to talk. As we talk with the Iranians whether it’s bilaterally or unilaterally, they continue to enrich. And the vice president and the president said we will do nothing without coordinating with Israel. So we’ve talked with them in Moscow. We’ve talked with them in Baghdad. They continue to enrich. I think the time for talking is over. We should be demanding transparency and access to their nuclear program. They’ve doubled their centrifuges so I think this is a ploy by the Iranians. I hope we’re talking to the Israelis and as we continue to talk, they continue to enrich and they’re trying to break apart the coalition. 

Yes, let's forget diplomacy, let's threaten them with "or else" stuff.  And actually, our crippling economic sanctions have gotten Iran in a near panic as it is.  You can certainly bet a President Romney would be making sure that "or else" is military action.  After all, if we're going to be spending two trillion more on the Pentagon under Mittens, we might as well have another costly and awful ground war or three to show for it, right?

There seems to be plenty of appetite for that in the Senate.  Perhaps we should elect more crazy Republicans into office so we can have ourselves another decade-long quagmire.  Sure seems like about half the country is cool with that.

Mitt May Win Where It Counts

It's looking more and more like the Presidential election in 15 days may be decided by Ohio, and as I've said before, Ohio may be decided by Hamilton County and Cincinnati.  But it turns out Hamilton County may be really decided by the voting machine company Hart Intercivic...a company that has numerous ties and direct donations to the Romney campaign and Romney's son, Josh.  Hart Intercivic is owned at least in part by capital firm HIG, and from there, the story gets ugly, according to Forbes writer Lee Ungar.

Numerous media sources, including Truthout, are reporting that Solamere Capital—the investment firm run by Mitt Romney’s son, Tagg, and the home of money put into the closely held firm by Tagg’s uncle Scott, mother Anne and, of course, the dad who might just be the next President of the United States—depending upon how the vote count turns out, in our little tale, in the State of Ohio—have shared business interests with H.I.G. either directly or via Solamere Advisors which is owned, in part, by Solamere Capital, including a reported investment in H.I.G. by either Solamere Capital or Solamere Advisors.

Lee Fang, in his piece for The Nation exploring the government related activities of various companies in which Solamere has an interest writes-

“Meanwhile, HIG Capital—one of the largest Solamere partners, with nearly $10 billion of equity capital—owns a number of other firms that are closely monitoring the federal government. ”

While the Cincinnati scenario is —at this point—fiction, the rest of this story is all too true, including the part where the voting machines to be used in Hamilton County will be those provided by Hart Intercivic.

And while I am not suggesting conspiracies or that anyone would get involved in any foul play here, most particularly the GOP candidate for President, how is it possible that so many people could exercise so much bad judgment?

Gosh, that's an excellent question, you would think.  At best case, Josh Romney's involvement in HIG and Hart Intercivic represents a massive conflict of interest, especially given HIG's direct contributions to the Romney campaign as Hart Intercivic's partial owner.

Tony Tamer, H.I.G.’s founder, turns out to be a major bundler for the Mitt Romney campaign,  along with three other directors of H.I.G. who are also big-time money raisers for Romney.

Indeed, as fate would have it, two of those directors—Douglas Berman and Brian Schwartz— were actually in attendance at the now infamous “47 percent” fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida.

All this seems awfully convenient.   We'll see where things are in the final stretch, but if Ohio comes down to a recount, you can bet this will become the story of the election.  Keep an eye on it.

StupidiNews!

• Former South Dakota Democratic senator and 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern has passed at the age of 90 according to family.
• An armed gunman identified as Radcliffe Haughton his killed himself after killing 3 others and wounding 4 at a Wisconsin hair salon in a mall near Brookfield.
• Pope Benedict XVI has promised a new focus on respect for the culture of Native American tribes at this weekend's canonization of Kateri Tekakwitha.
• Japan's economic condition has worsened in 2012 as a 10% drop in exports in September represents the biggest decline since the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami.
• Brazilian newspapers want Google to pay up for news headline content or else they'll cut the search giant's news service off.