Blue Mass Group

Borowitz:

In Possible Gaffe, Romney Says Poor People ‘Taste Like Chicken’: Awkward Moment at Ohio Wrestling Event

TOLEDO (The Borowitz Report)) – In what some political observers are calling a possible gaffe on the part of the former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney told a crowd gathered for a World Wrestling Entertainment event in Ohio today, “I love poor people. They taste like chicken.”

After an awkward silence from the crowd and a smattering of boos, Mr. Romney added, “Really, you should try them someday. They go well with a nice Sancerre.”

The GOP frontrunner’s latest faux pas came just two days after Mr. Romney’s big win in the Michigan primary, in which he narrowly defeated a mental patient in a sweater vest.

In Michigan, Mr. Romney had spoken to workers at a GM plant, saying, “I love cars. I’m like a car. I was conceived in Michigan and my microcircuitry is from Japan.” …

In other campaign news, former Senator Rick Santorum addressed the controversy over contraception, telling a crowd in Dayton, “The best form of contraception will always be underwear with a picture of me on the crotch.”

Santorum Proposes Replacing Church, State with New Entity Called ‘Sturch’: Would Offer Salvation, Motor Vehicle Renewals on Sunday

LANSING (The Borowitz Report) – Telling a crowd of supporters that the separation of church and state “makes me want to throw up,” GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum today proposed replacing church and state with a new entity he called “sturch.”

“Merging church and state into sturch will benefit all Americans,” he said. “Except maybe Jews.”

Mr. Santorum said that the combined entity would offer greater convenience to the American people than the separation of church and state currently does, since Americans would be able to get salvation and motor vehicle renewals at the same place every Sunday. …

In other campaign news … [a]n upbeat Mr. Romney visited the Daytona 500, where he told a reporter, “I love this stuff. I’ve always been a big NASDAQ fan.”

Onion:

Voters Slowly Realizing Santorum Believes Every Deranged Word That Comes Out Of His Mouth

WASHINGTON—As Rick Santorum has emerged to become Mitt Romney’s leading opponent for the Republican presidential nomination, the American electorate said Monday it had slowly begun to realize that the former Pennsylvania senator sincerely believes every deranged word that exits his mouth.

Uneasy voters told reporters it was becoming more and more evident that comments from Santorum defending sodomy laws as acceptable restrictions on “wants and passions” and characterizing pregnancy occurring through rape as a “gift” from God were not politically calculated but were, in fact, spoken out of sincere, startling conviction.

“I honestly thought he was just playing up to the far-right voters, because that’s what Republicans are supposed to do in the primaries,” said Grand Rapids, MI resident Dan Banks, who explained he had dismissed as manipulative campaign rhetoric Santorum’s assertion that President Obama would send Christians to the guillotine. “But now it’s dawning on me that this guy means it, all of it. Every single thing he says is an accurate depiction of how he sees the world.”

“So, when he said that Satan was currently attacking the United States, he meant exactly that,” added Banks. “Satan, the devil himself, is attacking the United States. Rick Santorum believes this is a real thing that is actually happening. I…wow. Just wow.”

Gallup polls taken during the campaign show an evolving awareness among voters that Santorum is not lying about any of the horrifying things he says. For example, in August of last year, 96 percent of voters said they thought Santorum could not possibly be serious when he said gay marriage was “an issue just like 9/11,” compared with only 9 percent today. And in that same time span, the number of voters who believe Santorum was not at all kidding when he said the president had a “deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions” has increased more than tenfold.

While few voters said they had been following Santorum long enough to have read the 2002 Catholic Online article in which he attributed sexual abuse in Boston-area Catholic churches to the “academic, political, and cultural liberalism” of the region, all agreed his performance in the current campaign was more than adequate to drive home the difference between the candidate’s authentic lunacy and the obvious pandering of his primary opponents. …

Daniel Kurtzman:

“Mitt Romney won in Michigan last night. It was certainly a close race — a real nail-biter or, in Romney’s case, a real manicure.” –David Letterman

“They went crazy celebrating. A friend of mine who was in campaign headquarters said that after he won and the lights were turned off and people were going home, Romney took off his jacket and chugged a glass of tap water.” –David Letterman

“Rick Santorum is saying the kids that go to college are snobs. Rick Santorum has a new program for children. It’s called Every Child Left Behind.” –David Letterman

“Ron Paul looks like the guy you see in the horse-racing movies on the back stretch with a stopwatch.” –David Letterman

“Ron Paul announced earlier today his campaign is the only one that’s entirely financed by moonshine.” –David Letterman

“Today is the 100th anniversary of the Oreo cookie. For New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, it’s a holy day.” –David Letterman

“Mitt Romney accused the other GOP candidates of pandering to voters to get support. Romney was like, ‘I would never pander to voters. I mean, unless you guys want me to.’” –Jimmy Fallon

David Letterman’s “Top Ten Other Things Mitt Romney Says He Likes About Michigan’s Trees”

10. “I seem less wooden standing next to one”
9. “In a pinch, sap makes a great hair gel”
8. “They’re also just the right width”
7. “It’s fun hiring illegal immigrants to rake up their leaves”
6. “They’re not gay, like palm trees”
5. “They don’t shed their foliage as quickly as those slutty Rhode Island trees”
4. “They look great next to my wife’s Cadillacs”
3. “Trees don’t whine when strapped to your car roof”
2. “They’re not afraid to stand up to the auto industry”
1. “Like me, they lean whichever way the wind blows”

“Yeah, what a snob. Obama thinks everybody should go to college like he did. Some of us weren’t handed a ticket to Harvard by being the biracial son of a single mother on food stamps. Must be nice.” –Stephen Colbert on Rick Santorum calling Obama a snob for suggesting that kids should go to college

What advice would Mitt give to unenrolled left-leaning voters in Massachusetts?

It’s pretty clear that there is now, and has been for many years, one prevailing narrative in the United States about how to grow the American economy. It says that what is needed is simply less taxation, less regulation, less government and less unionization. A number of people, including Governor Patrick and me, find this narrative troubling for at least two reasons. One, we don’t think that it is true. Two, it almost inevitably pits the success of the US economy as a whole against the success of working class and middle class families.

This prevailing narrative has become so successfully ingrained into people’s thinking that someone can not only make an unfounded assertion like this:

“For all the talk about the so-called 99% vs 1%, one of the largest reasons the disparities exist is due to government regulation of private capital markets. “

but they feel comfortable in doing so without even bothering to offer to provide a shred of supporting argument or evidence when they do. But it’s important to keep in mind that despite the casualness or even sloppiness that current purveyors of the prevailing narrative routinely demonstrate (like simply repeating that lower tax rates raise more revenue, which is clearly false), in fact the prevailing narrative got where it is today based on a tremendous amount of serious time and effort over many years, if not decades, including through the creation of the Heritage Foundation and other conservative think tanks.

A lesson to be learned from this experience is that we probably need to go beyond criticizing the prevailing narrative, and pointing out its many flaws, by developing with the same patience and effort a new, alternative narrative of what will make the American economy successful in a competitive global marketplace in the 21st century.

Governor Patrick and I and others in the Patrick-Murray Administration have been working to develop such a strategy for Massachusetts over the last five years and we think that what has been working for Massachusetts has relevance for the US as a whole.  Our economic development strategy centers on making long-term investments in education, innovation and infrastructure.  In education, that means maintaining our place as the national leader in K-12 education, even in a down economy, while addressing the continuing achievement gap between students in different communities.  In innovation, it means providing support to our growing world-class clusters in the life sciences, clean energy and technology.  In infrastructure, it means both fixing our deteriorating roads and bridges, but also extending reliable broadband internet service to every city and town in the state.

We have some credibility in telling this story because our Massachusetts economy has performed better than the rest of the country over the last five years (we didn’t fall as hard in the downtown and we have been recovering stronger and faster since), and we are especially outperforming many of the states that are true believers in the prevailing narrative.

But we are interested in what you are seeing and hearing.  Have we begun to gain some traction with an economic development strategy based on education, innovation and infrastructure, or is this the first you are hearing of it?  Are there others around the state or the country who are creating an alternative narrative in a powerful way?  Let us know.

Enjoy the view from the end of the world — cheer it on!
Raw Video: Huge Glacier Collapse in Argentina – YouTube.

And we’ve got a “truly exceptional” outbreak of deadly tornadoes. Weather on steroids. No, no one weather event can be attributed to global warming, but to ignore the broad context of these extreme events would be blind and stupid.

Ocean acidification (caused by CO₂ dissolving in ocean water, creating carbonic acid) is increasing at the highest rate in 300 million years, with disastrous effects for ocean life and the food chain generally — and we may be on our way to a mass extinction seen only five times before in 540 million years of multicellular life.

And we’re in denial. Sure, the right denies that it’s real, which is mule-headed and monstrous. But give them credit — climate denial is a priority to them. On the other hand, the left simply fails to make it a priority. It’s not a main priority on the major lefty blogs — Kos, etc. The Occupy folks, who have done an immense amount of good, are mostly fixated on pocketbook/class issues,m and hardly mention climate. In calling for cleaner energy, the President doesn’t even mention global warming and its likely consequences — flooding, starvation, political instability (war), entire regions and industries decimated by drought or flood, and so forth.

We are in denial, in Massachusetts. The local effects of climate change will likely not be brought into our Senate race. Why? No one wants to hear about it. Too depressing. We want to hear about foreclosures and the middle class and the political horse races, because it’s pressing stuff, and maybe we can do something about it. The climate seems to fit into the important-not-urgent square, ie. the place to be ignored and pushed off: Too depressing.

I read that certain churches have suggested a carbon fast as a Lenten discipline. On one hand, it’s good to be made aware on a personal basis what one does with one’s carbon to get through the day. But I also think it misses the point. Personal virtue and atomized action will not prevent disaster, because personal evil didn’t cause the problem. It’s political dysfunction that’s driving us into the ditch: Capture of our politicians, our elections, and our public discourse by those whose revenue streams depend on the continuation and expansion of a fossil fuel economy.

On this blog, there are only a handful of people interested enough to blog or comment on these issues. Personally, I find it so discouraging that I can only bring myself to post on it every once in a while. That’s weak and unacceptable.

And sometimes I hear that screaming bloody murder about this issue simply turns people off. Change the subject to something more positive — like jobs, and clean energy. Gray skies are gonna clear up!

Sorry, I have no use for that line of reasoning. If the buliding’s on fire, I yell “FIRE”! I don’t suggest to people that it’s a lovely day outside and wouldn’t it be nice to go for a stroll? If my kid steps into traffic, I don’t try to coax him to come back to the sidewalk with soothing words. I don’t hear those who are concerned with terrorism or foreign military threats pulling their rhetorical punches in such a way. If something is dangerous, you damn well say so. That’s common sense.

Christ, do you you want your kids to grow up in a world of catastrophe and strife? The future gets here whether you’re prepared for it or not. We can’t control what happens or when; but we can decide not to go down without a fight — yes, one with a lot of [metaphorical] blood and teeth on the floor.

We need to wake the hell up.

Fred Thys for WBUR:

At the same time, David Kravitz, co-founder of Blue Mass Group, a Democratic political blog,wrote that Brown is now stuck with what Kravitz called “his foolish vote.”

“It’s an intensely personal issue, and it’s something that a lot of people feel very strongly about, so I think it could stick around and it could haunt him in November,” Kravitz said later in an interview with WBUR.

Especially if Blue Mass Group has anything to say on the subject.

Here is some recently discovered video of Senator Brown deciding to allow employers to decide what medical coverage their employees can get on “moral grounds” (i.e., whatever they dream up as the spirit moves them), panicking when he realized his position cast him as some freakish advocate of corporate power trying to remake Massachusetts into a Paulville subdivision, making up ridiculous claims that Ted Kennedy was aligned with Roy Blunt (R-Christian Coalition, government should not have created Medicare and Medicaid, etc.), and then actually voting for this measure to put ideology and religion before health on Friday:

Kudos to the SJC for recognizing the changing nature of the media:

The state’s highest court today updated its rules for media coverage of trials and other court proceedings in response to changes in technology used by the media and the rise of bloggers and citizen journalism….

The rules permit electronics — such as laptops — in the courtroom but also require anyone seeking to use the high-tech gear to register with the SJC’s Public Information Office.

To qualify for a press pass, people must show they “are regularly engaged in the reporting and publishing of news or information about matters of public interest. This would include citizen journalists who meet this standard,” the court said.

The new rules allow a third camera in a courtroom — a video camera potentially being used by a citizen journalist — in addition to the cameras from television stations and newspapers that have been permitted in courtrooms for years.

Now if the federal courts would finally let a camera in the door, we’d be all set.

Rest. In. Peace. He didn’t have it — or give much of it out — while he was among the living. Every human has infinite dignity and worth, but inasmuch as his death is an opportunity to review someone’s legacy … well, his legacy is terrible. He brought an immense amount of nastiness and dishonesty to politics and made people feel good about it. And now that he’s gone, he’ll be replaced by someone else who loves the spotlight and the insults. Great.

I was made to think of Yeats’ now-hackneyed line:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Maybe that’s more of a definition than a complaint. The ability to monitor oneself, to doubt oneself; to admit one’s own inability to see clearly; to consider good-faith criticism and offer the same; to not buy into one’s own hype — these are part of being a good person. They are a part of being reasonable, honest, and ethical.

And we have a politics and a media culture that seems to have left little room for that.

Rest in peace.

If the news of Mitt Romney having utterly flip-flopped on earmarks wasn’t bad enough, this new item is potentially devastating for his entire candidacy.  You know how Romney, when asked about the MA health care law, keeps saying that the law in general, and the individual mandate in particular, was a solution that was appropriate for Massachusetts, but that he totally, absolutely, completely, utterly disagrees with imposing that solution on the entire country?

You only have to go back two and a half years to find him opining the exact opposite on the op-ed page of USA Today.  It’s remarkable, actually, that this one hasn’t come out before, but leave it to the indefatigable Andrew Kaczynski to dig it out.

There’s a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it….

Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn’t have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn’t cost the government a single dollar.

That, friends, is precisely the argument for an individual mandate at the national level.  The discovery of this op-ed has righty bloggers like Erick Erickson of RedState literally sounding the alarm – his post features a flashing red light at the top.  The text of the whole op-ed is on the flip (here’s an alternate link, this one to the USA Today site), lest there be any concern that I’m misquoting Romney or taking him out of context.

ABC News dug up some video of Romney’s 2002 gubernatorial campaign … and it shows that, once again, he has completely changed his tune on an important topic. This time, it’s earmarks.

I mean, there’s just nothing he can say about that. Mitt Romney has got to be one of the worst presidential candidates in decades. The fact that he remains the odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination, well, that’s just sad.

Oh yeah:

I think that it is accurate for me to say that not many people are paying attention to the Democratic State Committee races. There are a number of elections on the ballot; most of these are uncontested.  I am in one of the races where there is a contest. These races are about as below the radar as you can get. If you know people in Acton, Ayer, Boxborough, Harvard, Hudson, Littleton, Marlborough, Maynard, Northborough (partial), Shirley, Southborough, Stow, Sudbury (partial), and Westborough and you think that I should be re-elected to the DSC, please ask friends to vote for me. The election is part of the Democratic Presidential primary. You can learn more about me on this post from last month.

There are 80 people elected on the ballot for the Democratic State Committee. One man and one woman are elected from each state senate district. There are an additional 80 Democrats elected through a process that gives the members of the Democratic town and ward committees a voice.  In districts where more than one person is running there will be senate district conferences in March.

I know that there are BMG folks involved in some of these races.  It would be interesting to hear your thoughts if you have time.  I’d like to hear what other people are hearing about these races, whether or not you are involved.

Kate Donaghue, candidate for re-election, Middlesex and Worcester District.

This just in, according to the Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio.  He has just released, via a live-streamed press conference, the results of his “investigation” into the long-form birth certificate released by President Obama a while back.  Arpaio has concluded that it’s a fake, you’ll be shocked to learn.  Also, interestingly, Fox News (of all people) debunked that very theory months ago.

One has to wonder whether Arpaio is a secret mole for the Democrats.  Because the only thing that could make this week worse for the Republican party – after the failure of the Blunt Amendment, the retirement of Senator Snowe, the announcement that Bob Kerrey will run for Senate in NE, and the emerging consensus that MI and other rust-belt states are, as a result of the GOP primary battles there, rapidly becoming unwinnable for the GOP this fall – would be the full-scale re-emergence of birtherism from a Republican elected official.  And that’s exactly what Joe Arpaio just handed us.

Interestingly, Joe Arpaio was born and raised in Springfield, MA.  Also of note: Arpaio endorsed Mitt Romney in 2008.  Reportedly, Romney has been actively seeking his endorsement again this year; one wonders whether today’s events will dampen Romney’s enthusiasm.

Here’s the best tweet I’ve yet seen on this new craziness (and there have been lots of good ones).

Now that the Senate has rejected the crazy Blunt/Brown Amendment, Elizabeth Warren is well-positioned to declare victory on that issue and move on.  She would be well-advised to do so, as Joan Vennochi convincingly argues.

Democrats are thrilled that birth control is a major issue not only in the presidential election, but in Senate contests across the country.

But be careful what you wish for, especially if you are a woman running for the US Senate in Massachusetts….

Warren’s problem isn’t so much about policy. While Massachusetts has a large Catholic population, the general population is socially liberal. It’s more about the danger of morphing into the “woman’s candidate” in a state that has big problems electing women to higher office, whether they are Republicans or Democrats.

Warren entered the race with a purely economic message. She was the consumer protection angel who would fight Wall Street and protect middle-class interests and values. Not to sound like an alarmist – although it’s hard to resist, given the weight of political history in this state – but there’s risk in allowing the public to start viewing her primarily as the Bay State’s protector of reproductive rights in Washington.

It didn’t help Martha Coakley, the last woman to run against Brown….

Warren should reclaim the economic turf. That’s what the election is really about.

I think this is generally good advice.  The Blunt Amendment is dead.  It will remain a problem for Brown (his foolish embrace of it was, as I’ve already said, a “political own-goal”), but Warren needn’t and shouldn’t overplay it.  It’s fair game to remind voters where Brown stood, but it’s much more important to keep the race focused on which candidate is the more effective advocate for the middle class, and who is the candidate of Wall Street.