sorgere del sole

"When you have 40 percent of kids being born out of wedlock, and among certain ethnic groups the vast majority being born out of wedlock, you ask yourself, how are we going to have a society in the future? Because these kids are raised in poverty in many cases, they’re in abusive settings. The likelihood of them being able to finish high school or college drops dramatically in single-family homes. And we haven’t been willing to talk about this."

—

Mitt Romney, at Wednesday’s CNN debate in Arizona. 

Hey, you know what prevents unwanted pregnancy? This.

Love the insinuation that poverty IS child abuse. And the racism. That throwaway remark is quite possibly one of the worst things to come out of last night’s debate.

I could say more, but Elon James White said it much better than I ever could:

I salute you, sir.

(via cognitivedissonance)

Elon James - consistently one of the few reasons I consider returning to Twitter (via angryfuckingliberal)

The GOP are the fucking KINGS of not understanding that correlation is not causation. Why do people swallow this bullshit? “Because so many kids are born out of wedlock, they are abused and raised in poverty and don’t finish high school.” Let’s pretend that the strength of the good old nuclear family will displace hunger, abuse and drop out rates so we don’t actually have to face any of the legitimate problems. Marriage will fix everything!! Especially for those black people!!!!!

thedailywhat:

Humorous Juxtaposition of the Day: Does what it says on the on-screen program guide.

[thewednesdaysellout.]

sugar-flanagan:

Take your pick.

pantslessprogressive:

Stephen Hill, Gay Soldier Booed At GOP Debate, Shares Reaction

[…] Hill says the fact that he just outed himself on national television had barely registered when he absorbed the boos and Santorum’s answer followed by applause.

“When the actual booing occurred, my gut dropped out, because my first inclination was, did I just do something wrong?” he said. “The answer, obviously, wasn’t very supportive of gay people, and there was a lot of fear of how the Army would take the question.”

He did not have to wait long to find out. At breakfast later that morning, the segment was playing on the chow hall television. Hill immediately tracked down his commander, who told him she had no problem with what he’d done but that she would need to run it up the chain of command. She later relayed the response.

“She said, `What the military’s most concerned with is that you are OK, because it’s a lot of pressure on you and we want to make sure if there is anything we can do to help,’” he recalled. […]

What Hill remembers most was that a presidential candidate defined his marriage and military service in terms of sex. He holds that up against the times he hid Snyder’s photograph because Army buddies were coming over to play video games, introduced his husband as his roommate or brother, and the legal vows they exchanged at the grave of Air Force Sgt. Leonard Matlovich, who was discharged in 1975 after becoming the first gay service member to challenge the U.S. military’s ban on gay troops. [read more]

pantslessprogressive:

Republican Coma Candidate Dominates GOP Debate

Analysts are hailing the performance of candidate John Clarkson in last Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate as a clear victory for the former Colorado representative, who following a car crash eight years ago entered a coma from which he has yet to emerge. “The entire time he was on stage, Clarkson clearly displayed a level of poise, professionalism, and real charisma that, say, a Rick Perry or Mitt Romney simply fails to match,” said NPR commentator Cokie Roberts, adding that the hypnotic beeping noises of Clarkson’s life-support system offered an appealing contrast to Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan.

“At no point did Clarkson stray from his central message, talk down to the audience, or commit any sort of glaring gaffe or tactical error, and I think that clearly set him apart from every other GOP hopeful.” While some blasted Clarkson after the debate for his silence on health care, other pundits praised his strategy, saying it is to the candidate’s advantage to let Mitt Romney get in as many words as possible on this issue.

The GOP presidential candidates who would walk away from a deal that was 10 to 1 spending cuts to tax increases. 

(Hint: it’s all of them.)

Obama, whose greatest fault in office has been a misplaced faith in the GOP’s capacity for reasonableness, went on television and chided the party for this stance. Apparently, this struck Halperin as unreasonable. His response embodies all that’s rotten and shallow about D.C.’s pundit class, which fetishizes bipartisanship even as it only demands it of one political party. 

GOP Debate Drinking Game 

thingsandschemes:

If any of the candidates become President, we drink for four years.

"

Republicans are resting their political hopes on three things: anger, apathy and amnesia. ‘Looks like a winning combination.

Anger (and example of how to create it): Mitch McConnell appeared on ABC’s “This Week” last month, and railed against the “extreme” government of “the last year and a half,” citing its takeover of banks as his first example. That this was utter fiction — the takeover took place two years ago, before Obama was president, with McConnell voting for it. Another example: Republicans claim this administration is somehow committed to the destruction of American capitalism. Never mind that Obama’s top economic adviser worked at a hedge fund, his Treasury Secretary ran the New York Fed, and his administration’s ranks are filled by veterans of McKinsey, Wall Street and corporate law firms.

Apathy: 4 million jobs lost before President Obama was sworn in, 750,000 the month he was sworn in, 600,000 in each of the following 2 months - most of the job losses happened before the Obama team’s efforts came into effect - We have had private sector job growth for 6 consecutive months now. That is beginning to dent the damage done in the past decade… so Republicans capitalize on slow process and attribute it to the current administration - and this message is exploiting unease in the workplace.

Amnesia: The 2005 Energy Policy Act provided $6 billion in subsidies for oil and gas development, ostensibly leading to the unattainable goal of “energy security.” The bill also provided $1.5 billion in direct payments to drill deepwater wells. Nobody was screaming about “socialized” oil while renewable technology development was being castrated by successful lobbying for oil subsidies.

Contemplate for a moment the abyss that Obama’s leadership steered us away from — where we would be today if laissez-faire Republican radicals had succeeded in allowing the economic collapse to take its course. According to a study by economists from Princeton and Moody’s, more than 16 million jobs would have been lost without the interventions of TARP, the Recovery Act and the Federal Reserve — double the damage actually suffered. Unemployment would have spiked to 16.5 percent, and next year’s federal deficit would have more than doubled, to $2.6 trillion. “With outright deflation in prices and wages,” the study concludes, “this dark scenario constitutes a 1930s-like depression.”

The Republicans offer NO substantive ideas but claim the Democrats have it all wrong. Amnesia is a big ally of the Republican push today.

"

— Yangzone, Timesperson