Saturday Open Thread: We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite

Yep…..Eliot Spitzer, we watching you too. In a Reuter’s interview he said this:

“He has been on Wall Street’s side since day one.”
– Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D), in a Reuters interview, on President Obama’s “minimal steps” to regulate banks.

http://www.reuters.com/video/2012/04/13/reuters-tv-eliot-spitzer-says-president-barack-obam?videoId=233247078&videoChannel=117851

pril 13, 2012, 1:02 pm
Wars: Imagined and Real
By ANDREW ROSENTHAL

Politicians are always declaring a “war” on something. Often the conflict is entirely in their imaginations– like the War on Christmas and the War on Religion. Sometimes it’s a label designed to lend a sense of urgency to a problem they are not going to fix – like the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs.

On rare occasions there actually is a war going on, like the War on Women, by which I mean the increasingly aggressive Republican-led assault on women’s rights, starting with access to abortion and contraceptives.

Just yesterday, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed a law banning abortions after 20 weeks except in life-threatening medical emergencies, and requiring ultrasounds before abortions.

Those on the right try to separate birth control issues from the broader spectrum of women’s issues, but they’re inextricably linked. I thought Gail Collins put it well in a recent installment of “The Conversation” with David Brooks:

If you look back on what’s happened to women over the last half-century – how the world has opened up for them to have adventures, pursue careers, make choices about the kind of lives they want to live – it all goes back to effective contraception. Before the birth control pill came along, a woman who wanted to pursue a life that involved a lot of education, or a long climb up a career ladder, pretty much had to be willing to devote herself to perpetual celibacy. That’s what contraception means to women.

These, of course, are not the only issues women care about or vote on. Basic economic issues are just as important and, guess what, Republicans want to slash every kind of program there is that helps working people house, feed, clothe and educate their children. They have even opposed the re-authorization of the Violence Against Woman Act because it would help non-citizens and people in same-sex relationships.

So we are indeed in the midst of a war, waged from the right, which has lately entered a new stage. First Republicans picked the fight. Next they admitted nothing and denied everything (earlier this month, the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, called the war “a fiction” and compared it to a “war on caterpillars.”). Now they’ve moved onto counterattacks.

“The real war on women has been waged by the Obama administration’s failure on the economy,” Mitt Romney said recently, claiming “92.3 percent of the job losses during the Obama years has been women who’ve lost those jobs.”

That’s highly misleading.

As several journalistic fact-checking sources have noted, Mr. Romney’s claim depends on starting the job-loss count in January, 2009, when Mr. Obama took office, and ignoring the fact that the Great Recession began in December, 2007, when George W. Bush was still president. Adding in the additional 13 months, it’s clear that men lost far more jobs than women.

Women have not recovered their jobs as quickly because, as ABC News pointed out, they’re more likely to work in retail or have government jobs. Retail has been slow to bounce back. As for government jobs, the Republicans have been cutting them right and left and aspire to cut many, many more.

http://loyalopposition.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/wars-imagined-and-real/?ref=politics

Mitt Romney delays filing 2011 income tax return

By Seema Mehta

April 13, 2012, 5:37 p.m.
Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney asked for an extension Friday to file his 2011 tax return.

The former Massachusetts governor and his wife, Ann, expect not to owe any further taxes, having estimated $3.2 million in liability and made $3.4 million in payments, according to the documents filed.

Romney will file his return prior to the November election, according to a spokeswoman.

Romney’s taxes have been a continual cause of controversy in the 2012 presidential campaign because of his reluctance to release details. Under pressure from his Republican primary rivals, he released his 2010 returns in January, which showed he paid about $3 million on nearly $22 million of income.

He also contributed about $3 million to charity, reducing his effective tax rate to less than 14%.

The disclosures prompted additional controversy, because some investments listed on the tax returns, such as a now-closed Swiss bank account and other overseas funds, were not explicitly disclosed in a personal financial disclosure statement Romney filed in August.

President Obama’s campaign as well as his GOP primary rivals have called on the multimillionaire to release more years of returns, notably from when he headed the private equity firm Bain Capital and when he was governor.

They point out that he released 23 years of returns to Sen. John McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, when he was under consideration to be his running mate; that his father, George, released 12 years of returns publicly during his presidential bid; and that former President George W. Bush released 17 years.

“Mitt Romney’s defiance of decades of precedent set by presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle, including his own father, begs the question — what does he have to hide?” said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina in a statement Friday. “Did he exploit loopholes in the tax code by keeping his investments offshore and is that why he’s protecting those loopholes now? Why did he open a Swiss bank account instead of an American bank account and establish a corporation in Bermuda instead of on our shores? Did he pay a lower income tax rate than the 13.9% he paid in 2010, and is that why he opposes the Buffett Rule to ensure millionaires don’t pay less taxes than middle-class families?”

“Gov. Romney may try once again to play by his own set of rules, but Americans will hold him accountable for trying to hide his record,” Messina said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-romney-delays-filing-2011-taxes-expects-to-pay-32-million-20120413,0,4296566.story

This is some funny ish, but POU already knew this….there was nothing ever serious about “the 99 movement.” Even the author, who is critiquing the misguided views of the “99 movement”, is still clueless as you read his last sentence. I am almost certain this writer has been one of the ones writing PBO=Bush……you truly reap what you sow..hehe

Only sectarian factionalism can save us now
by J.A. Myerson

Most Occupiers I’ve asked (and it’s not just one or two) agree that the 99% Spring is at best cool and at worst harmless, but you would never know it from the hue and cry clogging up my inbox.

Two examples:

AdBusters issued another exhilarating ”Tactical Briefing” (what an exquisitely self-congratulatory name) from “Culture Jammers HQ” (see previous parenthetical observation), issuing strict marching orders to take up the “battle” for the “soul” of OWS against the “cabal” not of Wall Street, K Street and the Pentagon but MoveOn, The Nation and Ben & Jerry’s. These are the forces of the “old left” which are out to destroy the “new, vibrant, horizontal left.” How a commitment to horizontalism squares with instructions handed down from “HQ” goes unexplained. We have to fight the “old left,” says AdBusters, or risk going the way of “Paris ’68.”

CounterPunch valiantly calls our attention to the true villains: AlterNet, Truth Out, The Nation (again!) and the television shows of Bill Moyers, Thom Hartmann and Chris Hayes (Disclosure: I have appeared on or in all but Moyers’ show).

…. The 99% Spring, we are told, is “merely a front group” for the Democratic Party, though it remains unclear how the 7-hour milquetoast direct action training is supposed to coerce participants into campaigning for President Obama. The article is so breathless in its rapid-fire associations (Bank of America! ALEC! President Obama! Mother Jones!) that it proclaims the whole affair “A Shakespearean tragedy, to say the least.” Well, in Titus Andronicus, Lavinia, who has been raped and her hands and tongue severed, picks up the freshly severed hand of her father in her still-bleeding mouth. In the 99% Spring, people watch a clip from a movie and meet other activists. Parity?

How does this make more sense than pounding away at the corporate state? Why isn’t the battle with bankers, polluters and warmongers but instead the United States’ finest publications and broadcasts? A revolution is a massive social consensus that sweeps aside the institutions of power. Mubarak only fell after more than 10% of the Egyptian population took to the streets, and that wasn’t even enough to get rid of the Egyptian social order. For something like that, you need an absolutely overwhelming show of people power. Deliberately alienating supporters is exactly the wrong way of going about generating such a thing — how is this not obvious? Without recruiting liberals and progressives, attempting to radicalize them and train them in the skills necessary for successful protest, Occupy Wall Street becomes what the corporate media want us to be: a bunch of hippies and anarchists, whining and drumming, talking to one another self-righteously, without analysis or tactical sophistication.

As someone who has been madly in love with Occupy Wall Street since its earliest moments, I decline CounterPunch and AdBusters’ offer of protection from the “old left.” Right now is the time to build the movement, to engineer solidarity, to teach and share and radicalize and do what is done at general assemblies everywhere: enlist democratic support for a series of proposals. No working group has ever gotten a GA to consent to a measure by vilifying and fear-mongering about other working groups.

We have a really big job ahead of us, confronting global neo-liberal corporate capital and the disastrous effects it has wrought on everything in its path. Can we please get serious about organizing our defense?

http://jamyerson.com/2012/04/14/only-sectarian-factionalism-can-save-us-now/

POU FAM – –Gotta “bounce” – -VOTER REGISTRATION ACTIVITY. Woo Hoo! – -

Missin’ U/Carryin’ U — In MY♥. Back soon. :>)

Really sweet letter, and well said!

“She is a caring mother, she’s a loving wife, while at the same time, she is the FIRST LADY!!!!” Beyonce wrote. “No matter the pressure, and the stress of being under the microscope – she’s humble, loving and sincere. She builds and nurtures her family while also looking out for so many millions in so many ways.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31749_162-57413783-10391698/beyonce-writes-public-thank-you-to-michelle-obama/

Really sweet handwritten note of appreciation. Terrorist fist bumps to Beyonce Knowles-Carter.

Chronicling Mitt’s Mendacity, Vol. XIII
By Steve Benen
–
Fri Apr 13, 2012 2:00 PM EDT

Mitt Romney recently felt comfortable lecturing journalists about, of all things, “quality control” when sharing the news with the American public.

As Ed Kilgore joked, “Now I suppose when you have already developed a reputation for towering mendacity on subjects large and small, a medium-sized lie about your views on media accuracy is as easy as changing those jeans and a lot easier than changing your entire political persona on a regular basis. But you might think at some point the man would fear being struck down by a thunderbolt right on the spot if he lectures the media — old or new — about ‘sourcing’ and ‘quality control.’”

If the presumptive Republican nominee has any such fears, he’s not showing it. Those looking for proof need only consider the 13th installment of my weekly series, chronicling Mitt’s mendacity.

1. Romney told voters about the cost of the Affordable Care Act, “[W]e’ve just learned from the CBO, it’s not a trillion dollars. It’s more like double that…. Obamacare is massively more expensive than had been originally estimated.”

That’s not even close to being true.

2. On the same subject, Romney argued, “Thirty percent of employers said they are going to drop the coverage for their employees when Obamacare is installed.”

Actually, no, they didn’t say that at all.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/13/11184541-chronicling-mitts-mendacity-vol-xiii?lite