Video: The Romney Bunch

Read the rest of this post...

Romney-Ryan tax plan gives an additional $2.3 billion in tax cuts to Big Oil

Government for the 1% by the 1%. This is government corporate welfare for those least in need and it needs to stop. If the Big Oil industry can't figure out how to make money on their own all of these years, it may be time for them to close shop and move on.

The world’s five biggest public oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell—would keep special tax breaks worth $2.4 billion each year. And by cutting corporate tax rates, the Romney plan could lower the companies’ annual tax bill by another $2.3 billion, based on an analysis of the companies’ tax expense for 2011. The special tax breaks, supplemented by Gov. Romney’s lower corporate rates, could benefit the oil companies by more than $4 billion annually.

As we will show, these five companies are hardly in need of a tax cut: They earned a combined record profit of $137 billion in 2011 due to high oil and gasoline prices.

Read the rest of this post...

Today is the anniversary of the liberation of Paris

To the memory of Michel Varin de la Bruneliere.
Cross of War. Drafted at 18 y.o.
Died for France. The 25th of August 1944.

One of the things you notice around Paris, if you pay close attention, are all the small plaques, here and there, on the sides of this and that building - maybe a school here, an office there - commemorating someone who died fighting the Nazi occupation during World War II.

Often the plaques will honor Jewish students - only teenagers, or worse - who attended that school and were taken away by the Nazis, never to be seen again.

(There's an exhibit at the Hotel de Ville in Paris, about the Nazi deportation of Jewish kids - I couldn't get in, lines were too long, but it's free and worth a look if you go any time in the next month or so.)

Michel Varin de la Bruneliere

I came upon one such plaque, actually several of them in a row, a few years back near the Place de la Concorde (you'll see them right next to the Concorde Metro exit on the south side of the Rue de Rivoli along a long white wall). They're dedicated to 9 Frenchmen, including an 18 year old boy, Michel Varin de la Bruneliere, a number of whom were lined up and shot by the Germans against this very wall during the liberation of Paris.

Apparently, the Pont de la Concorde, a bridge near the Place de la Concorde, was one of the only Parisian bridges the Nazis hadn't yet blown up, keeping it as a potential strategic retreat.  There was heavy fighting near the bridge, machine gun fire everywhere, and the young rifleman decided to help.  He was soon shot dead.

I still get chills imaging an 18 year old having the gumption to step up and help defend his city (then again, our soldiers are 18), and at the thought that he's still remembered with flowers nearly 70 years later.

Here's a short video from the Daily Beast that shows that particular memorial among others.



I'm usually in Paris today, the 25th of August, finishing up my house-sitting for Chris and his wife (and my medical tourism), and I always liked going by that monument near the Place de la Concorde and seeing all the flowers left at each plaque to commemorate, and remember, people who died nearly 70 years ago.

In researching this particular wall of plaques, I came upon these tremendous photos of the Liberation of Paris, many from famed photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson - I've always loved his photos, but didn't realize he had photographed the liberation. I found several particular amazing (they're a mix of photographers, including Robert Capa, who's also very good).  I can't link directly to the photos, so have a look - there aren't too many, but several are really neat ones I'd never seen, including one from inside the destroyed French Foreign Ministry looking at the Eiffel Tower. Read the rest of this post...

Romney's latest excuse for not releasing taxes: I'm a Mormon

Seriously?

Besides making his Mormon faith now an issue in the campaign, Romney is ignoring both his own recent history of releasing a few years of returns as well as the precedent that his own father set when he released twelve years of tax returns.

Were Mitt Romney and his own father bad Mormons when they previously released tax documents, and if it was fine with their religion before why is it not fine now?  Did the Mormons change their minds in order to influence the 2012 election?

Then again, considering what's already been found in the Bain tax document, the more likely explanation for hiding his returns is that Romney would prefer that voters not know how much he has gamed the tax system. If people saw the full returns, there would surely be even more questions and more unpleasant surprises for voters. The tax filings may or may not be legal (though there is a strong argument that they were not legal), but they're also everything that is wrong about the one-sided tax law written for the Romney Class.

Once again, what is Mitt Romney hiding?  From Salon:

After months stonewalling on releasing more tax returns, Mitt Romney invoked a brand-new explanation for demurring in an interview with Parade magazine set to hit newsstands this weekend: religion. “Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given [to the LDS Church]. This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church,” Romney told the magazine when asked about his returns, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Note from John: Well that's interesting. What else won't his religion permit a President Romney to do? It's one thing to invoke your religion in private life, but to suggest that America should change the way it elects presidents because the Mormons don't like it, is quite another. Mitt Romney, in a very real way, is forcing the rest of America to live by Mormon standards - he's telling us that we are no longer permitted to have a full vetting of our presidential candidates because the Mormons don't like it.

As a gay man, I'm accustomed to the Mormon leadership trying to jam its religion down my throat and force me to live my life according to their rules. So perhaps it's not a surprise that now America at large is expected to permit the Mormons to change the rules of our electoral process in order to suit their needs.

Of course, Mitt Romney is lying. This has nothing to do with his being a Mormon, or his father, who was even higher in the Mormon faith than Mitt, would never have released so many years of his taxes when he ran for president.

This latest episode does show one thing: Mitt Romney is desperate to do anything to stop the release of his taxes. If Romney is now invoking his Mormon faith, a topic he's avoided like the plague during this campaign, then his taxes must contain something pretty awful for Romney to now "go there." Read the rest of this post...

OBL-killing Navy SEAL, outed by Fox, now targeted by Al Qaeda

It's not an overstatement to say that Fox News has endangered the life of a Navy SEAL and his family, an American hero who led the successful raid to kill Osama bin Laden.

It's now a real problem, with serious life-or-death consequences.  From NBC News:

Users on several militant Islamic websites affiliated with al-Qaida have posted the name and photo of a former Navy SEAL identified as the author of an upcoming book on the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The posts called for his "destruction" in revenge for the al-Qaida founder’s killing.

"We pray to Allah for his destruction sooner rather than later," said one of the posts.

"Oh Allah, make an example of him for the whole world and give him dark days ahead," read another.

Among the website publishing the death threats was the "Al-Fidaa" web forum, which al-Qaida uses to distribute its media and public communications, said Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News consultant and a terrorism analyst at Flashpoint Partners, a global security firm.

And we have Fox News to thank for endangering this American heroes life:

Fox News on Thursday identified the author of the book, which is titled "No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden," as a 36-year-old former SEAL from Wrangell, Alaska. The Associated Press later said it had confirmed the author’s identity. (NBC News is not identifying the former SEAL.)

Note from John: As Chris noted yesterday, Fox, which is a GOP propaganda outfit, could have been motivated by a desire to help Mitt Romney (ya think?).

Romney decided recently to use the killing of bin Laden as a "negative" for President Obama. This is a typical GOP election ploy - going after their opponent's strengths. An example was when Republicans mocked John Kerry, for having received a purple heart for being injured while saving a number of US service members in Vietnam, by putting fake little bandages on their faces during prime time at the GOP convention - and no one in the GOP stopped them, in fact they apparently facilitated it.

This time, Romney and the GOP are mocking the killing of Osama bin Laden and how President Obama handled it (apparently, killing OBL, a few years into office, when GWB couldn't pull it off (and basically gave up shortly after 9/11 - Bush actually called off the hunt for bin Laden only six months after September 11) is a "bad" thing).

Keep in mind that Mitt Romney, following in George Bush's footsteps, said he would have never ordered the successful raid against bin Laden in Pakistan.

The only problem? This Navy SEAL, who led the raid on bin Laden, was writing a book about the raid that most likely would have shown the world exactly how President Obama handled the raid (excellently, per the admiral who oversaw the operation).  So the Navy SEAL, this American hero, had to be stopped at all costs, lest he undercut Mitt Romney's apparently embarrassment over the US - over President Obama - having killed bin Laden when Romney said he would have let bin Laden go.

So what happens next?  Fox "magically" gets the name of the SEAL and leaks it, knowing full well that Al Qaeda would threaten to kill this man and his family.  And voila, only 24 hours later, Al Qaeda has now threatened him.

Mitt Romney made this happen.  It was Romney's initial decision to let bin Laden go, and it was Romney's decision to mock the commander in chief, President Obama, for having caught bin Laden.  And as a result, the GOP noise machine went into full gear to take down anyone who stood in the way of Romney's smear on the commander in chief and our troops.

So now an American hero and his family are in danger because Mitt Romney didn't have the guts to order the raid on bin Laden.

Read the rest of this post...

Romney considering 1 term, wants to enact Ryan's Medicare-eliminating budget

Via Politico we learn why the Romney people don't like doing media - because their candidate is a little unhinged.

ARTICLE OF THE DAY -- JON WARD in Huffington magazine (available today on iPad; article posts Monday), “The One-Termer? Thinking Bold Thoughts With Team Romney”: “Matt Rhoades is guarded and intense … [W]hen I met him in mid-July, in a bohemian coffee shop in Boston’s North End, the 37-year-old manager of Mitt Romney’s campaign was hesitant to speculate about what the Republican candidate would do as president, and how. … But when I asked Rhoades … what Romney might do with the budget and entitlement reform plans Ryan had already outlined, Rhoades’ eyes lit up. He gave me a name: James Polk. … Rhoades and the rest of the members of Romney’s inner circle think a Romney presidency could look much like the White House tenure of the 11th U.S. president.
“Polk, who served from 1845 to 1849, presided over the expansion of the U.S. into a coast-to-coast nation, annexing Texas and winning the Mexican-American war for territories that also included New Mexico and California. He reduced trade barriers and strengthened the Treasury system. And he was a one-term president. Polk is an allegory for Rhoades: He did great things, and then exited the scene, and few remember him. That, Rhoades suggested, could be Romney’s legacy as well. … Multiple senior Romney advisers assured me that they had had conversations with the candidate in which he conveyed a depth of conviction about the need to try to enact something like Ryan’s controversial budget and entitlement reforms. Romney, they said, was willing to count the cost politically in order to achieve it.”

Read the rest of this post...

Squeeze - Cool for Cats

This week was cat week over here. Sushi needed a checkup after his recent intervention for his thyroid problem. The results look good so far so everyone is happy about that. Cat girl (Nasdaq) also needed a visit but she was not being cooperative. She bolted in the morning and went into the garden and kept running when I tried approaching her.

She's generally the easy one but the day we arrived back home, I had picked her up and was walking on the terrace when I slipped on algae that was growing on the stone. (This year has been wet, so the algae never went away.) During the fall, she scrambled as I fell into a chair. She then was convinced that after almost 15 years, I was now on a mission to throw her. (Cat logic is never very simple.)

I eventually rounded her up, squeezed her into the cat carrier and transported her across town to see the vet. Looks like the old girl has a small tumor on her neck so she's back for surgery on Tuesday. The potentially positive news is that she's lost around 2.5 pounds in the last year, so her diet does seem to be working some. Read the rest of this post...

FRC calls all of Islam "fanatical religion" - pot meet kettle

They don't call em a "hate group" for nothin'. Read the rest of this post...