Several polls show former Senator Rick Santorum ahead of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Romney’s home former home state of Michigan. Conservatives seem to be continuing to look for the perfect anti-Romney. They seem to be singing a variation of this song.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is starting to get lots of attention on You Tube. We’ll post some on Barack Obama and others at later dates. But here’s a sampling of some Romney videos, some funny, some critical some favorable. He gets interviewed by a high profile historical international celebrity (this is part of the increasing number of videos featuring this monster of history but they still are funny): A musical number: A celebrity endorsement: A Polisci 101 Project: The...

As a historian of the 19th century United States, with a focus primarily on the Civil War era in the Upper and Border South, I’ve found the sesquicentennial to be an exciting time to help reorient the focus of the Civil War on to the “great middle” between the industrial North and the plantation South. Most of the war was fought in that heartland, including especially Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri. My book Rebels on the Border explores the transformation of grassroots...

Why is Democratic political maven David Axelrod smiling? Are Republicans actively working with Barack Obama’s senior compaign strategist David Axelrod to lose the votes of many women voters? To be sure, the GOP will always have its die-hard followers, and people of both sexes who will sincerely see things via it’s prism. But two tidbits today are not going to enhance the image of some GOPers and their party. For instance, Foster Freiss, the big-buxer business man bankrolling a portion...

A reader/commentator on my previous TMV post stated a preference that I include footnotes, references, and citations to outside source materials to justify my various statements of fact. That’s just not going to happen very often because I’m not writing an article for a peer-review scientific, legal or academic forum. In most TMV articles/posts/submissions, these types of citations and annotations are rarely found – and this applies to most opinion pieces in Op/Ed forums across the blogosphere...

Those who read my posts know I am pretty easy going when it comes to politics. I don’t care if you’re a right wing reactionary or a left wing marxist. I don’t care if you’re brilliant or idiotic. As long as you are reasonably tolerant of other views then I don’t really care what you say, that’s part of a free society. But I am amazed at the abilities of Glenn Beck and Ed Shultz. I don’t really care for either and I am not a regular viewer of either program....

Writer comment: For some reason this and some other posts of mine showed up without the ability to comment so I am reposting them in case someone wants to. My local mornng radio show hosts were on break last week and so they broadcast some best of episodes. One involved them discussing the issue of children and family. One of the hosts had gone to Washington DC and was relating his experience touring the various sites. One place that he went was Arlington National Cemetery and he discussed an incident...

For me, the drug methotrexate is the difference between discomfort and comfort. For children with certain forms of leukemia, it is the difference between life and death. And yet another cautionary tale about regulation of the profit-greedy American drug industry. Methotrexate has been around for six decades and has long proved to be effective against acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), which strikes thousand children each year, as well as osteogenic sarcoma. In injectable preservative-free form,...

When asked about polls that suggest former Senator Rick Santorum is poised to be Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in the upcoming Republican presidential Michigan primary, Romney flatly says: “That won’t happen.” But the latest poll suggests former Massachusetts Governor whose father served as Michigan my have to repeat it often to be severely convincing: Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has a slim lead over Mitt Romney, an indication the Michigan native son has yet to...

The Republican establishment has its candidate. Mitt Romney. But angry Tea Partiers and social conservatives just won’t go along, and keep falling in behind one unelectable candidate after another… Nervous Old Guard Republicans The Republican old guard is nervous, ‘Bout groups Rick Santorum would service; These old line conservatives cringe, Viewing nutty ideas from this fringe. But all know when hearing this tune, What goes around comes around soon; You get into bed with these...

Secretary Clinton is welcomed to Munich conference by host Wolfgang Ischinger. State Dept Image (Feb 04, 2012) WASHINGTON – It’s the Hillary Effect. An event that occurs or when something important is impacted because of Hillary Clinton’s presence, her power and strength of persuasion that is built entirely upon purpose. Pres. Obama’s 2013 budget… Provides $51.6 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development...

CADILLAC 16 CONCEPT CAR If Mitt Romney had gotten his way, General Motors would not be reporting its largest profit ever today. The automaker, which has wrested the title of world’s largest back from Toyota, made $7.6 billion in 2011, up 62 percent from 2010. Full-year revenue rose 11 percent to $105 billion. There was one dark cloud: G.M. lost $747 million in Europe, where it is speeding up a restructuring of its Opel brand. The company says union workers will get $7,000 profit-sharing...

I have struggled for years to concisely explain why a two-party system is an inevitability in the United States. The primary reason for this is our voting system, which is known as “First Past the Post” or “Winner Take All.” With a few exceptions in a few states, virtually all of America does it this way, which is the simple rule that you don’t have to get a majority of votes to win, you just need more votes than anyone else. C.G.P. Grey’s wonderful video explains...

There is no doubt that Rick Santorum is crazy, but to the distress of Mitt Romney and Karl Rove and other Republican Party elders, he is crazy like a fox. I have yet to read a plausible scenario through which this right-wing upstart can beat President Obama. He wouldn’t even be able to win Pennsylvania, where as an incumbent U.S. Senator he got throttled by 16 percentage points in 2006, the largest losing margin for a Senate incumbent in history. But grabbing the Republican nomination no...

UPDATED BELOW I have to start with my ethics, because I’ve spent more than 48 hours wrestling with whether what I’m about to do is the RIGHT thing to do. Right as in “correct,” and “proper,” and not as politics, as is in common parlance. George Washington statue at Independence Hall, Philadelphia You see, I posted three hours of a radio interview into six years of investigative reporting that’s been recognized by outlets from PBS’ “NOW”...

I heard a heartbreaking story today. A story which I am sure I have heard a number of times, but today it has followed me like an ugly familiar shadow. It is a story about an ambitious young lady in her early 20’s. She did the right things; she did her GCSE’s, her A-Levels (UK high-school exams), she went to University and she came back home with a degree. She did the right things. But what she found when she got home was rejection. She applied for 200 vacancies. 200. She couldn’t find 1 job...

DES MOINES, Iowa — The plate clatter grows around dinner time at Spaghetti Works here in Des Moines’ historical district. A family enters with two young boys. I look at them and my eyes tear up. A couple comes in with a teenage son. I think about what I read months ago about an ill-fated teen and feel a huge sense of grief. I’m thinking of the horrific final moments of some kids who didn’t deserve to die or die before they reached adulthood. They didn’t deserve their unspeakably...

As the GOP wannabe dogfight gets uglier, the actual President is on a winning streak that parallels Linsanity in the sports world. In eye-to-eye confrontation, John Boehner has just blinked after more than a year of being held hostage by his Tea Party caucus, backing not only a bill to extend a $100 billion payroll tax rollback without spending cuts to pay for it but agreeing to extend unemployment benefits and prevent a large slash in reimbursements to doctors who accept Medicare. In addition, the...

WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney has lost his central asset. It is no longer obvious that he is the Republican with the best chance of defeating President Obama. Romney was never fully trusted or liked by the staunchest conservatives, a rather large Republican constituency. But until now, enough of them have been willing to swallow their doubts at critical moments because they believed the former Massachusetts governor was the one potential nominee who could win the election. This...

China’s Xi Jinping, comes across as a down home personality with a soft spot for rural values and the agricultural economy. But he has a mind steeped in Chinese nationalism devoted to making his country an equal of the United States. The Vice President, who is expected to succeed President Hu Jintao in late 2012, has given little away during his five-day visit to the US. But his style has raised hopes that he will try to file down rough edges in China’s relationships with America and Europe....

There is a lot not to like about MEP Nigel Farage but when he is right he’s right: For the actual people of Greece there is only one solution – default and leaving the Eurozone.  The attempts at “bailout” are designed to bail out the big banks and give Germany an economic occupation of Greece.  The austerity being forced on the Greeks only guarantees that the country will officially slip into depression followed by civil war and the debts will never be re-payed. ...

Interesting article in today’s New York Times http://nyti.ms/x77odY of the way Republicans and Democrats completely reversed their positions on the individual mandate since the concept was formulated by conservative economists in the early 1990s. Republicans in Congress, including Newt Gingrich, supported the idea and the Democrats were opposed. Subsequently, there’s been a 180 degree change in the parties’ positions. This is emblematic of Washington’s culture- if one party...

The fabricated contraceptive debate that has raged in certain quarters of Washington DC, in various places across the US, and within the blogosphere and our hyper-partisan political system, is another diversion from reality. I had hoped saner minds would have emerged by now, but unfortunately we are left with a narrow analysis of HHS guidelines and the various arguments by a plethora of viewpoints that completely miss the big picture. With over 7 billion humans competing for limited resources on...

While questions — and controversy — abound on the issue of whether, and when, to have a national ticker-tape parade for our Iraq War veterans, the Obama administration is proceeding with plans to hold a formal dinner honoring those troops at the White House on February 29. When the White House first announced plans for this dinner a week ago Monday, few details were known as to who would receive the coveted invites. Only that representatives from both the enlisted and officer ranks...

Mitt Romney is severely conservative. He announced it at a CPAC meeting last week, perhaps trying to convince other conservatives that his conservatism was unbounded. In that context, it was an unusual use of the word ‘severe’ and one wonders whether there might have been a hidden meaning in that statement. Webster’s 20th century dictionary provides several definitions for severe. 1) harsh or strict, unsparing, stern. 2) serious, grave, forbidding 3) conforming strictly to a rule or standard....

The Daily Show with Jon StewartGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook WASHINGTON – Jon Stewart proves again why he’s seen as indispensable to the American public, especially young people who have no interest in the elite media babble. Whether it’s Joe Scarborough’s implosion with me, or Liz Trotta’s Fox News Channel weirdness about women in the military, across the media spectrum Rick Santorum is benefiting...

WASHINGTON — At ease, Christian soldiers. There is no “war on religion,” no assault on the Catholic Church. A faith that has endured for thousands of years will survive even Nicki Minaj. It never occurred to me to evaluate the Grammy Awards show on theological rectitude, but apparently we’re supposed to be outraged at the over-the-top “exorcism” Minaj performed Sunday night. The hip-hop diva, who writhed and cavorted amid a riot of religious iconography,...

Roman Catholic bishops oppose birth control. Many Republican congressfolk and some Democrats oppose birth control. All of the Republican presidential candidates, to one degree or another, oppose birth control. All this despite the fact that a strong majority of Americans are adamant about having the right to decide whether to use birth control and what method to use, and support the Obama administration’s requirement that health insurance plans cover the cost of contraceptives for religiously-affiliated...

An encounter with an antiques appraiser brings an epiphany about what may be happening to us all now. Downsizing life for very old age has brought not only inevitable scaling back of inner expectations but the physical world that can no longer be managed with effortless ease. Parting piece by piece with what gave comfort over a lifetime is saddening, but there was anticipation of passing on and even profiting from their increased value with age, just as earlier generations had when I sought them...

Pakistan’s former ISI chief General Ziauddin Khawaja, also known as Ziauddin Butt (head of the ISI, 1997-1999), claims that then President Pervez Musharraf knew about Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. Even if this news is true, it is not shocking. What the world would be eager to know is whether the then American President George W. Bush, the CIA and the Pentagon were in the know about this ugly fact. President Pervez Musharraf was not only the favourite of President Bush and...

Ok folks time to start your day out with an awwwwwwww

India’s security agencies are worried. Initial investigations have revealed that the modus operandi employed by the person who attacked Israeli embassy staff in New Delhi – by fixing bomb to a car – “mirrored the method used by Mossad earlier to assassinate Iranian scientists.” (Meanwhile, the Israeli diplomat’s wife who was in the car when the explosion took place in New Delhi on Monday is still critical. Tal Yehoshua-Koren, 40, was on her way to pick up her...

A new CBS News/New York Times poll finds big support for mandating contraception coverage – including among Catholics: Amid continued controversy surrounding an Obama administration policy mandating that women working at religiously-affiliated institutions be provided with free access to contraceptive health care, a new CBS News/New York Times poll shows that most Americans – including Catholics – appear to support the rule. According to a survey, conducted between Feb. 8-13, 61...

Enjoy Valentine’s Day. And this little e-card from the CDC, I guess, intended to ruin it for you. The timing is opportunistic without being opportune. No lunar pizza here; your eyes are safe. Thats amoré – Dean Martin Amor is a venerable word for the kind of love that we celebrate today. Even if we don’t particularly “get” it and the more you look into it the more confusing it gets….

ANNUAL VALENTINE’S STORY: The Underlying Meaning of Valentine’s Day………….. Valentine’s Day Alert, Anywhere USA: A woman punches another woman to seize the last red-flocked candy box at the drug store. Children fear going to school for they might not get as many valentine cards as some other kids. What used to be honorable behavior during an onslaught of the citadel, has become ‘aggression normale’ in Buy-Me-Land. What used to be a place of learning for the...

Another UPDATE (Not so romantic this time): The Washington Post reports that Newt not only has plummeted in the GOP presidential race but that “he may be the most unpopular person in American politics right now.” Two new polls show him with “an absolutely atrocious favorability rating”: A CNN/Opinion Research poll on Monday showed 63 percent of All Americans viewed Gingrich unfavorably, compared to just 25 percent who saw him in a positive light. And today, a new CBS News/New York Times...

WASHINGTON – Clint Eastwood called it. The Good Guys have won a couple. I like it. By Good Guys I mean the American people, which includes determined stiffs like Attorney General Beau Biden, then there is A.G. Eric Schneiderman and A.G. Koster of Missouri. Attorney General Chris Koster recently announced a 136-count indictment against DOCX, which a Boone, Cty. grand jury delivered in the town where I was born. A grand jury in Columbia, Missouri, handed down the 136- count indictment against...

A new breeding program will: “[I]solate the few remaining specimens of moderate Republicans, mate them in captivity, and then safely release these rare and precious creatures back into the electorate. Within our safe, enclosed habitats, these middle-of-the-road Republican Party members can freely support increased funding for public education and even gay rights without being threatened by the far-right subgenus.” More here on this promising endeavor.

Face Dancer: A Face Dancer is a type of human in Frank Herbert‘s science fiction Dune universe. A servant caste of the Bene Tleilax, Face Dancers are shapeshifters, and their name is derived from their ability to change their physical appearance at will. Of course in Romney’s case it’s an ability to change his ideological appearance at will.  As David Frum reports this is how Grover Norquist sees Romney. Norquist: Romney Will Do As Told The most quoted speech at CPAC this year...

The attack on Israeli embassy staff in New Delhi on Monday has brought into sharp focus India’s growing dilemma. While India has strong ties with Israel, it has robust trade ties with Iran owing to its growing energy needs, and is one of Iran’s largest crude oil customers New Delhi also has burgeoning ties with Israel to tend to, reports The Wall Street Journal. “India’s defense purchases from Israel — part of a high-priority modernization of the country’s armed...

I’m still scratching my head on this one. I’m sitting here in my motel in Darlington, Wisconsin, and was just about to put a political Quote of the Day up on TMV when I visited a few websites and saw THIS. This underscores why Mitt Romney a)is having trouble with conservatives because to many he seems to be someone who says whatever he thinks he needs to say to get votes, b)will have trouble and be almost a political candystore to Team Obama. Our political Quote of the Day is for the...

And so we come — perhaps inevitably — to the moment in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination when party elders begin to suggest that settling for less than the best isn’t so bad if the guy can somehow beat President Obama. This pearl of wisdom comes from Grover Norquist, one of the key players in the marginalization of the GOP as a national force. Speaking last weekend at the annual CPAC sitdown in Washington, D.C., the head of the Americans for Tax Reform advocacy...

The Rick Santorum surge continues — as does the Newt Gingrich collapse. What’s important in polling is whether various polls show a trend. And this one is the latest to show Santorum gaining steam, fast: Rick Santorum has pulled slightly ahead of Mitt Romney in Republican primary voters’ preference for the presidential nomination, a national CBS News/New York Times Poll shows. Ron Paul is now in third, followed by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. More than ever, Gingrich...

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune Is Santorum the Jeremy Lin of Politics? by Jan Ting Rick Santorum, the defeated former senator from Pennsylvania, was given no chance when he announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. Rejected by the Republican establishment supporting Mitt Romney, he waged a lonely and underfunded grassroots effort that ultimately gave him the edge in the Iowa caucuses. This past Tuesday he won all three primaries in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, and now...

Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

(Photo courtesy AP) A 5-member Israeli team, including 2 MOSSAD members, has arrived in New Delhi to help in the investigations following a deadly attack near the Israeli embassy in which Ms Tal Yehoshua-Koren, a staffer of the Israeli embassy’s accounts department, was seriously injured. She was on her way from office to the American Embassy School to pick up her children. Tal Yehoshua’s condition is stable after having undergone two surgeries at a hospital in New Delhi’s diplomatic...

It is a tragic fact that in every war the civilian population pays a very high price. Afghanistan is no exception. According to the UN mission in Afghanistan’s (UNAMA) annual report, a total of 3,021 civilian died in 2011 in Afghanistan — an eight percent increase in the number of civilians (2,790) who died in 2010. According to the same grim report — “Afghanistan Annual Report 2011: Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict” — a total of 11,864 civilian lives have been...

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com Two new polls suggest former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney now has big problem. In the “Wizard of Oz” Dorothy thinks if she an say “There’s no place like home” she can return home. At this weekend’s big conservative CPAC powwow in Washington Romney seemed to believe that if he used the word “conservative” more than two dozen times and said he was a “severely conservative” governor it would convince his party’s...

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Hmm. It appears that a group called Americans Elect is making a serious aim to put a third national candidate on the ballot in November. They look fairly well-funded: I get a strong feeling of deja-vu every time this sort of thing comes up. Are these people really so naive? Independent candidates sound sooooooo attractive, until you have to take a close look at one. Then the luster tends to fade pretty fast. First let’s get this out of the way: I am by most definitions a centrist. I have issues...

Make no mistake about it. If former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney loses the Michigan Republican Presidential primary he is in big trouble. It’ll be a body blow to his imagery, will likely mean an even greater infusion of money into the candidacy of his chief rival former Sen. Rick Santorum. And no matter how many times he says the word “conservative” or says he was “severely conservative” as Governor, the party’s conservative base and Tea Partiers will continue...

Anne Richards, the late Governor of Texas, once said that the man who succeeded her — George W. Bush — was born “with a silver foot in his mouth.” Mitt Romney suffers from the same disease. Over the weekend, he told the Conservative Political Action Conference that he was a “severely conservative governor.” It was an interesting choice of words. And as awkward as the phrase might be, it surely describes today’s Republican Party. Jeffrey Simpson reminds his...

The Citizen’s United ruling by the Supreme Court two years ago, equating donations of money with free speech, changed the political landscape for campaign fundraising, fostering the emergence of SuperPACs as the main conduit for wealthy contributors. President Obama’s recent change of heart regarding the pursuit of funds for Democratic SuperPACs to compete with Republican entities has provided another issue that allows him to be skewered by his opponents. The latter, of course, who are collecting...

Barack Obama takes a step back on campaign finance. “We will not play by two sets of rules,” say his managers, announcing a superPAC to offset Republican money to defeat the President, despite his denunciation of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that unleashed tons of hard-to-identify funds for negative ads. As Mitt (“Corporations are people”) Romney edges closer to the GOP nomination, an Obama official explains the reversal: “We’ve been watching…the Republican primary...

If you are a U.S. citizen and wondered why back in the fall when the U.S. signed the agreement in Tokyo you didn’t hear anything about ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, it might be because U.S. media ignored the event. Newspapers Reporting On ACTA, Sept 1 - Nov 1, 2011According to LexisNexis[1], only 13 newspapers covered the story between September 1 and November 1, 2011; the agreement was signed on October 1. Do you recognize any of them? From January 1 to September 1, there...