The following guest post is by Chad Cyrowski and my good pals at Progress Michigan. They have done the research and put together a fine voters guide for some of the ballot initiatives on the Michigan 2012 ballot along with a new website to help you get informed. I endorse their selections.

– Chris

31 myths in 41 minutes.

That’s how many times Mitt Romney lied, stretched, and fabricated his own truth in the last debate. He even lied about his infamous “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” prescription for Michigan’s auto industry.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In Michigan, well-heeled special interests backed by large corporations and wealthy individuals will spend millions of dollars on slick TV ads to get your support. So the Michigan League of Responsible Voters is taking their case directly to Michigan’s voters with a no-nonsense ballot proposal guide. Be responsible. Get informed. Check it out at LeagueOfResponsibleVoters.org.

Much more after the jump.

There’s someone on the ticket who is more anti-women than Mitt Romney. It’s Paul Ryan.

Mitt Romney’s insulting, anti-woman positions are enough to disqualify him from the presidency for most thinking people. The fact that he can’t even be arsed to tell us whether or not he would have supported the Lily Ledbetter Act had he been president in 2009 tells you absolutely everything you need to know.

But there’s another person on the 2012 ticket who is even worse on women’s issues than Mitt Romney. That’s Paul Ryan.

Information about the hard conversation you will need to have with your daughters if Romney & Ryan are elected after the jump.

Like father, like son. Only worse.

I’m a firm believer that you can tell a lot about a parent by looking at their kids. In the case of Tagg Romney, eldest son of Mitt Romney, the story is very telling.

Yesterday, when asked how he felt about watching President Obama go after his father during the last debate, Tagg Romney said he wanted to, “jump out of [his] seat and … to rush down the debate stage and take a swing at him”.

Victims of an $8 billion Ponzi scheme run by Tagg’s business associates, however, may want to take a swing at him.

Full details after the jump.

“I’m a participant in life.”

Fred Upton has been in Congress since 1987 representing the parts of southwestern Michigan. During that time, the Whirlpool heir has distinguished himself as a far-right conservative Republican on nearly every issue you could name.

Mike O’Brien, a former Marine and Missouri farmer, is challenging Fred Upton in Michigan’s 6th Congressional District. The gridlock imposed on Congress by Republicans unable and unwilling to compromise to affect change combined with Upton’s anti-environment, anti-women, anti-senior votes over the past several years, O’Brien felt there was both a need for change and a real possibility of victory. According to recent polling done by his campaign, he’s absolutely right.

My interview with Mike O’Brien after the jump.

Well, that didn’t help…

A recent poll showed that Mitt Romney had closed the gap with American women voters. Not too many serious observers believed it but, whether it was true or not, he completely reversed any movement toward him by women in his debate with President Obama last night.

From his “binder full of women” gaffe to his comment about women needing to get home to make dinner, Romney seemed to almost go out of his way to offend women.

Much more after the jump.

Keep following the money, folks

Second in a series on the ballot proposals on Michigan’s November 6, 2012 ballot. Read them all HERE.

Proposal 4 — the Keep Home Care a Safe Choice ballot initiative — is all but a no-brainer for me. It will protect both patients and those who care for them. It goes without saying that our home health care providers are doing yeoman’s work caring for our most vulnerable citizens. These unsung heroes do the hard and indescribably valuable and necessary work to keep patients receiving home care comfortable and able to stay in their own homes. Not only that, they do it for a relative pittance while saving our health care system an enormous amount of money.

Details on why you should VOTE YES! ON PROPOSAL 4 ON THE NON-PARTISAN SECTION OF THE NOVEMBER BALLOT after the jump.

Finally, a website where you can learn about the Romney Tax Plan

This is big. There is finally a website where you can click through to learn details about the Romney/Ryan tax plan and how they have figured out how to cut taxes by $5 trillion without raising taxes on the middle class or worsening our national debt. It’s called RomneyTaxPlan.com.

Click the image below to visit this excellent new site:

WARNING: The videos on this post feature some NSFW language Yesterday, I joked that President Obama would probably set the world’s record for listening to Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’ in the next 24 hours. No song better sums up the pressure of facing a do-or-die moment where everything depends on your performance. You remember: Business Insider‘s The Stalwart — a great […]

Follow the money

Changing energy policy in our country is very, very difficult. There are many things that make it so hard but the main impediment is the staggering amount of money that Big Oil companies and utility companies spend to fight any change from the status quo.

Nowhere is this more true at the moment than the fight against Proposal 3 – a ballot proposal to increase Michigan’s use of renewable energy to 25% by 2025. When you vote on November 6th, you should turn the ballot over to vote in the nonpartisan section and VOTE YES ON PROPOSAL 3.

All the details after the jump.

The last of the truly reasonable Michigan Republicans…

When I was just a lad and an aspiring activist, I volunteered for a group called “The Three O’Clock Lobby”. It was a youth-run, youth advocacy group and we endeavored to make sure the voice of young people was represented in policy-making, law-making, and government in general.

It was during my time there that I first met Governor William Milliken when I and another young person asked him to wear a button saying “I support youth participation” at a celebration of the International Year of the Child (this event is actually mentioned in the Wikipedia article.) Milliken was not only a really nice and sweet man, he was a listener and he was reasonable. Considered a moderate, a man with his approach to leadership and governance would have no home in the Republican Party today, especially not in Michigan. William Milliken was willing to compromise and there’s no compromising in today’s Republican Party.

Today, Professor Bridget McCormack, candidate for the Michigan Supreme Court, announced that she has received the endorsement of William Milliken. It’s a clear sign of where things are in Michigan today, politically-speaking.

More after the jump.

For the next few weeks, act like a Republican Republicans must be nervous. Just as he did before the Ryan/Biden debate, Matt Drudge is going after the moderator of the next debate. This is what Republicans do. They do everything to raise doubts when they may lose and, when they lose, they never admit defeat. As Joe Biden was walloping […]