What you don’t know about Mitt Romney could cost you your Medicare For someone who has betrayed every political position he’s ever taken and lies about nearly everything, Mitt Romney has been incredibly consistent about one thing: Secrecy. Mitt won’t detail his policy plans. He won’t even let Bain Capital tell you when he actually left the company. And though […]

Who’s in charge of this party anyway?

Senate Candidate Todd Akin is now running away from his odious comment about “legitimate rape” and, in the process, proving he doesn’t have a damn clue about why it was so offensive in the first place. He’s now saying that he meant to say “forcible rape”, completely missing the point that nobody but completely out-of-touch conservatives believes that women rarely get pregnant from rape. The statistics show otherwise.

Akin’s not-so-subtle implication is that, if a women gets pregnant from rape, she must have enjoyed it.

This week the Republicans will put the finishing touches on their party platform. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have suddenly Etch-A-Sketched their positions on abortion being legal in the case of rape and now say they now support an exception being made when a woman is raped so that they are not forced to bear the child of their rapist if they choose not to. The question is how they square this with their own Party’s platform that is sure to be absent of that exception.

Let’s ask them.

Much more after the jump.

When you’re in the news this much, something is wrong

It’s not unusual for a state Attorney General to be in the news from time to time. If they are doing their job, that’s part of the job description. But Michigan AG Bill Schuette finds himself at the center of not one, but TWO big news stories. What his involvement in these two stories shows is that Bill Schuette is using his position as the Attorney General of Michigan to pursue a hardcore right wing, anti-labor agenda that benefits his political allies and harms his political foes.

Details after the jump.

They could have asked US…

The New York Times published a rather fawning review of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder on Saturday that suggests he’s a centrist leader who basically isn’t afraid to piss off and on anyone, no matter what their political persuasion. And, while it’s true that there are those on both the right and the left that are less than happy with the Tough Nerd, the NYT piece is noticeably free from some of the essential facts about his governorship.

My friend and fellow Michigander Marcy Wheeler from emptywheel has an elegant fisking of the article. It’s so good, rather than write one of my own, I will simply highlight some of the better parts of her essay, “The Gray Lady Falls Off the Balance Beam”, and point you to it to read the entire thing. Which you absolutely should do.

More after the jump.

Hard to believe we STILL have to fight the War on Women

the Republican War on Women in full swing, including an anti-women Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, Planned Parenthood is launching a Women are Watching battleground state bus tour to educate and mobilize voters in 11 states over 17 days.

The tour with their iconic “Big Pink Bus” lands in Canton, Michigan TOMORROW, Tuesday, August 21, 2012. It’s no surprise. Women are under attack more profoundly in our state than in most others. Republicans in our state legislature are on a course to roll back nearly every gain in women’s reproductive freedoms that we’ve made.

Details after the jump.

Your “freedom” doesn’t include the right to tell women how their bodies work. When Todd Akin said that a woman’s body would not allow a pregnancy during a “legitimate rape,” he didn’t just betray a stunning ignorance of a woman’s biology. The American Journal of Preventative Medicine estimates over 25,000 pregnancies a year are a result of rape. Akin also […]

Taking our country back…to the Stone Age

It’s astonishing in this day and age to find people that think so backward, so last century, that they feel perfectly comfortable making a statement like this in public:

First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.

That’s Congressman Tom Akin, who is running for Senate in Missouri, on Fox KTVI-TV over the weekend.

Lots more after the jump.

Take my advice: do NOT miss this

This Thursday WEDNESDAY, August 22nd, 2012, Vice President Joe Biden will visit the metro Detroit area.

UPDATE: I now have further information about the event as well as updated information as to where to pick up tickets. See below. It is no longer necessary to go through me. Instead, you should go to one of the field offices as listed below (after the jump.)

After having watched the Vice President deliver a speech at the AFT convention a few weeks ago, I can say unequivocally that this is an event you will not want to miss.

So much for charging up the base…

Although the Romney campaign clearly hoped the selection of Super and True Conservative Paul Ryan as his running mate would fire up his base and, more importantly, fire up his polling numbers, the truth is, it hasn’t.

Reuters reports that only 26 percent of people they polled view Romney more favorably after his choice of Ryan for Vice President. Gallup polling shows that his support number went from 46% to 47% among registered voters after the VP announcement.

Splat.

So much for that.

Much more after the jump.

By killing Medicare we make it stronger. And by “it,” I mean Mitt Romney’s tax breaks. There it was, on Facebook. A smiling picture of Mitt with a caption, “Your Mom likes Mitt Romney.” A promoted ad purchased by the Romney campaign to use my Facebook connection to get me to “like” the Republican nominee for president. A nominee who […]

If you have to lie, you’ve already lost

Mitt Romney has launched a desperate, two-fold plan these past two weeks. Part 1: Lie, lie, lie, lie. The only way he can change the discussion about President Obama’s record is to lie and, as we’ve pointed out already (HERE and HERE), he’s perfectly willing to go down as the biggest, most blatant liar to run for president in modern times.

Part 2: Whine about how mean and low and angry and divisive President Obama is. This guy is trying to characterize “No Drama Obama” as the Angry Black Man Republicans are well known for exploiting. They will lie and call the President all sorts of things and then turn around and accuse HIM of being low and mean and divisive. The fact is, and this has to be clear to anyone paying attention, the Romney campaign is built around a core of creating an “Us vs. Them”, “They are just jealous of you” divisive messaging.

The recent lies and scare-mongering on Medicare bring all of this into sharp focus. Romney dumbed down his dumb message even more by drawing out his lies on a white board, a la Glenn Beck. The Obama campaign responded today with another awesome video from Stephanie Cutter, the Deputy Campaign Manager for Obama for America.

Enjoy it and their latest television ad after the jump.