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Election

Pro-GOP Chamber Of Commerce Ad Extols Bipartisanship, Implies Obama Re-Election

By Josh Israel and Scott Keyes on May 11, 2012 at 5:23 pm

Former Gov. Linda Lingle (R-HI)

Former Gov. Linda Lingle (R-HI)

The Chamber of Commerce has released 21 new May 2012 “independent” political ads — 20 of which either attack Democrats or praise Republicans. But while most of the ads take partisan swipes at Democrats and Obamacare, the Chamber’s ads in solidly Democratic Hawaii improbably endorse bipartisanship.

The narration for the 30-second spot in support of former Gov. Linda Lingle (R-HI) reads:

Working together to create jobs will bring Hawaii’s economy back. That’s the independent record that Linda Lingle has built. Governor Lingle believes in a bipartisan plan for increasing tourism, working across the aisle with President Obama, finding solutions to boost our local economy for more opportunity. She understands tourism, will create jobs for Hawaii and our economy. Call Linda, tell her to keep supporting tourism and putting jobs above partisanship. Paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 100 years standing up for American enterprise.

Watch the ad:

Another ad from the Chamber — which has defended Mitt Romney and frequently attacked President Obama’s legislative agenda — hits a Democratic candidate in Florida over the mere possibility that she might support Obamacare.

But in the Aloha State, the group abruptly takes a pro-compromise position.

Amusingly, Republic Report noted, the on-screen citation for the claim that Lingle is a bipartisan leader is a newspaper reprinting of a press release from Lingle’s own campaign.

More subtle is an implied concession to President Obama’s home state that Lingle and the Chamber believe Obama will be re-elected. Lingle, if elected in November, would take office in January 2012 — meaning that for her “bipartisan plan” for “working across the aisle with President Obama” to really work, President Obama too would have to win this November.

Or perhaps they simply wanted to inform voters that Lingle would diligently seek bipartisan solutions with President Obama for the 16 days between when she took office and Mitt Romney’s possible inauguration — but in that case, she had better be prepared to move very quickly indeed.

NEWS FLASH

Colorado Appeals Court Strikes Down Gubernatorial Colorado Day of Prayer Proclamations | A unanimous three judge panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals held yesterday the eight year-old practice of Colorado governors issuing day of prayer proclamations violates the state’s constitution: “A reasonable observer would conclude that these proclamations send the message that those who pray are favored members of Colorado’s political community, and that those who do not pray do not enjoy that favored status.”

Alyssa

From Kitty Pryde to Azealia Banks, Why Girl Pop Beats the Boy Bands

By Alyssa Rosenberg on May 11, 2012 at 5:07 pm

I may not be a huge fan of today’s boy bands. But while that phenomenon has come and gone, I feel like it’s been an awesome couple of years for young female solo artists to roll out weird pop love songs that are full of ambiguity, hedging, and occasional joy, to be silly, and self-aware. So because it’s Friday, have a mix tape.

Most recently, there’s rapper Kitty Pryde, who, if her name wasn’t awesome enough, riffs on and undermines the sentiment in popular songs and laces them with sips of Bud Light Lime and cigarette smoke in “Okay Cupid”:

I’ve mentioned my love for Carly Rae Jepsen’s video for “Call Me Maybe,” but the lyrics are also charmingly ambiguous about loving the idea of someone more than you actually care for the person obscured by those ideas—and the prospect that you might not want to disturb that idea with actual contact:

Both of these songs, of course, are kin to what will probably the best Miley Cyrus song of all time, the “Sunglasses at Night”-biting, best-song-about-awkwardness-to-dance-to “See You Again”:

Then there’s Rye Rye, who remains my favorite new rapper despite having not actually released an album, does the impossible and revitalizes the Venga Boys back catalogue while turning herself into a victorious video game avatar in “Boom Boom,” where she talks about watching porn—or lying in the grass and watching clouds go by—with her chosen guy:

Adele’s voice is incredible, but she’s not the only young Brit turning out fun love songs. I’m partial to Little Boots, particularly when she gets her romantic sci-fi on:

If you’re in a goofier mode, hang out with Ke$ha, who was dismissed as an embarrassment but who I think is a lot more self-aware creation, a critique of the kind of thing Rihanna does when she slaps on a bunch of harem pants and tries to pretend she can dance:

But if you prefer your critiques of pop tarts to be sincere and gorgeous (and want your sincere white girls to cover something other than hip-hop) rather than goofy, there’s always Ingrid Michaelson’s gorgeous a capella cover of “We Found Love”:

And in her inimitable, filthy (and I really do mean filthy) way, Azealia Banks is having way more fun than the rest of us:

Economy

Romney Blames Obama For Foreclosures After Telling Homeowners Not To ‘Try To Stop The Foreclosure Process’

By Travis Waldron on May 11, 2012 at 5:00 pm

President Obama outlined three proposals to address America’s struggling housing market today in Nevada, the state with the nation’s second highest foreclosure rate. Ahead of the speech, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney circulated a release hitting Obama’s housing record, including a graphic criticizing the president for roughly the 3 million foreclosures and a high unemployment rate that have occurred since he took office in 2009:

Romney’s criticism is odd, considering the candidate’s only elucidated housing proposal was telling homeowners, “Don’t try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit bottom.” That Romney said it in Nevada, a state that has been among the tops for foreclosures since the crisis, made his policy prescription even more remarkable — and it earned him strong rebukes from Nevada’s Republican governor and several of the state’s Republican lawmakers. And even though Romney’s economic plan had 59 points — none was related to housing.

The foreclosure crisis Romney blames on Obama, meanwhile, started well before he took office, culminating in the 2008 financial crisis that started the Great Recession. High unemployment — which Romney again blames on Obama — was largely a result of that crisis, and though Romney has continually slammed Obama for making the economy worse, he and his campaign have yet to substantiate those claims.

LGBT

National Action Alliance For Suicide Prevention Tackles LGBT Suicide

By Guest Blogger on May 11, 2012 at 4:50 pm

Our guest bloggers are Kellan Baker, health care analyst for LGBT Progress and Josh Garcia, intern for LGBT Progress. This post was originally published by the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention.

Joseph Jefferson

Before he completed suicide at the age of 26 in 2010, Joseph Jefferson recorded his final words on Facebook: “I could not bear the burden of living as a gay man of color in a world grown cold and hateful towards those of us who live and love differently than the so-called ‘social mainstream.’”

Though LGBT suicide is frequently portrayed as a wholly youth phenomenon, Joseph was an LGBT activist who had built a life for himself as an adult after getting through what many people assume to be the only tough part of an LGBT person’s life — adolescence.

The National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, the public-private partnership aimed at saving the more than 34,000 lives in the United States lost every year to suicide, has taken a lead in changing public misperceptions about LGBT suicide. In particular, the Action Alliance task force that concentrates on the LGBT population has changed its name from the LGBT Youth Task Force to the LGBT Populations Task Force, acknowledging the struggles with suicide ideation, suicide attempts, and death by suicide that many LGBT people confront at different points in their lives.

The reasons that suicide is a lifelong concern for many LGBT people are complex and dynamic. These risk factors include family rejection, lack of social support, lack of access to culturally competent healthcare providers, and the stress of living with discrimination and prejudice.

Because of family or employment obligations, many LGBT adults, like most LGBT youth, do not get to choose where they live and work—often leaving them trapped in hostile environments with family members, co-workers, or neighbors who do not accept them.

Certain protective factors may mitigate these risks. Such factors include family acceptance, affirming and culturally competent mental and behavioral health services, and policies that extend legal protections and promote acceptance.
Read more

NEWS FLASH

Illinois Governor Comes Out For Marriage Equality | Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) is the latest Democratic leader to follow in President Obama’s footsteps and express his support for marriage equality. Earlier this year when a same-sex marriage bill was introduced in the Illinois, Quinn said he was “not sure” if he supported it. According to his spokeswoman, he now “looks forward to working on this issue in the future with the General Assembly.”

Health

Kansas Senate Stops Anti-Abortion Bill That Would Have Required Doctors To Give False Information

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on May 11, 2012 at 4:15 pm

Kansas Senate President Steve Morris (R) effectively killed an anti-abortion bill by sending it back to a Senate committee that is unlikely to bring it up for a vote before the legislative session ends today. “It is prudent for the Senate to have more time to consider the proposal,” he said.

In a last-ditch effort, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lance Kinzer (R) said the bill’s supporters are trying to pull the bill from committee onto the floor, but they would need 24 votes in the 40-member Senate and it is unclear if they would succeed.

The far-reaching legislation, which the House had passed and governor had promised to sign, would have defined a fetus as a human being, required women to hear the fetal heartbeat prior to undergoing an abortion, forced doctors to warn women that abortions cause breast cancer — even though scientific studies have disputed the claim. Morris said he was concerned about a provision in the 69-page bill that would have affected the accreditation of the University of Kansas Medical Center because it would have banned state employees, including residents who need the training, from performing abortions.

Health

House GOP Protects Defense Budget At The Expense Of America’s Most Vulnerable

By Guest Blogger on May 11, 2012 at 4:15 pm

The U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday to rescind $110 billion in mandated cuts to the Pentagon’s budget by pushing these reductions onto domestic programs like Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and other mandatory social programs, which are already facing substantial budget cuts.

Led by House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), House Republicans approved the Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act of 2012, with 16 Republicans defecting on the issue. The new measure further advances the GOP’s contentious revision of billions in cuts to military spending, which were mandated after the congressional debt commission’s super committee failed to agree on where to trim $1.2 trillion from the federal budget. The Republican bill would shift the cuts away from defense instead:

The Republican bill now would leave these $12 billion in cuts from mandatory programs in place — with the exception of defense. And the real focus of the rewrite is on the appropriations side of the ledger, where the Pentagon faces a $55 billion, or 10 percent, cut.

The House plan would shield the Pentagon from any reduction and, in fact, holds out the promise of an $8 billion increase for defense above the caps set last summer. Domestic programs would also share in some of the protection, but given the cuts already ordered under Ryan’s plan, the sums at stake are far less.

While the measure completely exempts defense cuts, it includes provisions to repeal the Affordable Care Act and takes away about $36 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which the association said would eliminate benefits to about 2 million Americans. Undoubtedly, low-income Americans would be hit the hardest, specifically the long-term unemployed, single-mother households and working-class immigrant families.

Given that the Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act is expected to die in the Senate, the measure is nothing more than a declaration of partisan principle. It raises the question of precisely what the GOP hopes to gain in the face of this potential legislative deadlock by pushing a budget destined to go no where.

– Fatima Najiy

Justice

Richard Mourdock Wants His Own Senate Race To Be Unconstitutional

By Ian Millhiser on May 11, 2012 at 4:10 pm

Indiana U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, the Tea Party candidate who proclaimed that “bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view” shortly after defeating longtime incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), does not think he should be elected to the U.S. Senate. Indeed, he believes that it should be unconstitutional for anyone to run for the Senate. At a campaign event last February, the Tea Party candidate came out against the Seventeenth Amendment, which ensures that senators will be chosen by elections and not by state legislatures:

You know the issue of the 17th amendment is so troubling to me, our founding fathers, again those geniuses, made the point that the House of Representatives was there to represent the people. The Senate was there to represent the states. In other words the government of the states. . . . You know I think most senators if they had to come back every two years and by the way that would solve another problem. It would solve the idea that Senators move out of their state and never return. But it would cause those senators to have much greater contact with their states. You know just think of this. In today’s you see millions and millions of dollars spent on Senate campaigns. Two years ago, in 2010, Sharon Angle out in Nevada spent 31 million dollars, just herself. How much money would be spent in federal senate races if the state legislators were electing those people. You just took the money out of politics. Is that a bad thing?

Watch it:

Mourdock is certainly right that eliminating U.S. Senate elections would end the practice of corporations and wealthy individuals throwing millions of dollars to change the result of those elections. Indeed, under Mourdock’s logic there’s no reason to stop there. If we simply named someone the hereditary monarch of the United States — King Mitt I — then no one would ever spend money to influence an American election again!

Mourdock is dead wrong, however, to suggest that ending Senate elections would eliminate corruption. Rather, one of the primary forces driving the Seventeenth Amendment’s ratification was the fact that the old system led to a kind of Citizens United on steroids:

[T]he system led to rampant and blatant corruption, letting corporations and other moneyed interests effectively buy U.S. Senators, and tied state legislatures up in numerous, lengthy deadlocks over whom to send to Washington, leaving those bodies with far less time to devote to the job of enacting the laws their states needed for the welfare of the people.

Sadly, Mourdock is not the first major Republican to say that the American people should not be allowed to elect their own senators. Texas Gov. Rick Perry believes this, as does Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Justice Antonin Scalia.

NEWS FLASH

POLL: 51 Percent Agree With Obama On Marriage Equality | A new USA TODAY/Gallup poll shows that 51 percent of voters approve President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality, while 45 percent disapprove. It seems the President may lose some support to Mitt Romney, suggesting that those who oppose marriage equality feel more strongly about the issue than those who support it. According to the survey, though, 60 percent say Obama’s support for the freedom to marry will have no bearing on how they vote in the November election. For the past two years, polling has consistently shown that a majority of voters approve of same-sex marriage, particularly among Democrats and Independents.

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