The Thread Needler

The New York Times describes the proposal, which uses the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s famous “chickens coming home to roost” quote as the central motif in a racist, preposterous attack ad.

A group of high-profile Republican strategists is working with a conservative billionaire on a proposal to mount one of the most provocative campaigns of the “super PAC” era and attack President Obama in ways that Republicans have so far shied away from.
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Timed to upend the Democratic National Convention in September, the plan would “do exactly what John McCain would not let us do,” the strategists wrote.

The plan, which is awaiting approval, calls for running commercials linking Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.

“The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way,” says the proposal, which was overseen by Fred Davis and commissioned by Joe Ricketts, the founder of the brokerage firm TD Ameritrade. Mr. Ricketts is increasingly putting his fortune to work in conservative politics.

The $10 million plan, one of several being studied by Mr. Ricketts, includes preparations for how to respond to the charges of race-baiting it envisions if it highlights Mr. Obama’s former ties to Mr. Wright, who espouses what is known as “black liberation theology.”

You can read the whole pitch here. The document, put together by a group of GOP strategists, includes an admission that the content of the proposed ad is racist (emphasis mine).

“The second way we will lessen their ability to attack from a racist angle is to carefully utilize a series of focus groups. First on the storyboards, then on a rough cut of the final film, making fine-tuning adjustments in wording and visuals to increase the impact, while lessening any elements that could reasonably be deemed “racist.”

There you have it: The proposed ad would include “elements that could reasonably be deemed ‘racist.’”

Their words. Note in particular, “reasonably.”

Sure, those racist elements would be “lessened.” But that means obscured, not removed. Obvious racism transformed into subliminal racism is still racism.

And these guys put their names on it.

The billionaire who was tapped to fund this racist ad announced this afternoon that it represents “an approach to politics that [he] rejects and it was never a plan to be accepted but only a suggestion for a direction to take.”

NPR:

Patty Akrouche says she’s “never been prouder” of her 9-year-old son Josef Miles than she was this past weekend.

As Akrouche wrote on her Facebook page, she and Josef were on the campus of Washburn University in Topeka when they encountered some of the protesters from the tiny Westboro Baptist Church [...]

“Josef was determined to make his own statement so we went to the car and with pencil and his sketch pad, he made up his own little sign that reads ‘GOD HATES NO ONE,’ ” his mom wrote. “Those people are scary but he stood strong, was respectful and stood by his convictions. He will be a good man, I have no doubt. I got my Mothers Day present early.”

This is so inappropriate and irrelevent: Massachusetts Republicans are demanding proof of Elizabeth Warren’s Native American ancestry.

The controversy over Elizabeth Warren’s claim to Native American ancestry shows no signs of dying down, and is now threatening to derail her campaign for Republican Scott Brown’s Massachusetts Senate seat.

Politico reporter Maggie Haberman has now uncovered Pa 1997 piece from the Fordham Law Review that refers to Warren as “the first woman of color” hired by Harvard Law School.

The piece cites as its source Harvard Law spokesman Michael Chmura, the same spokesman who bragged about Warren’s Native American heritage to the Harvard Crimson in 1996.

Warren has so far dismissed the story, which first surfaced when the Boston Herald uncovered the Crimson article. She has said that she did not know Harvard was billing her as a minority professor, although identified herself as a minority on law professor listings until around 1995, and was also identified as a minority faculty member when she worked at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Brown campaign has seized the story, and is demanding that Warren release her law school personnel records to show whether her minority background had anything to do with her hiring.

“The question here is not about Elizabeth Warren’s credentials, so much as it is about Elizabeth Warren’s integrity and truthfulness and willingness to be transparent,’’ Brown’s campaign manager Jim Barnett told reporters yesterday.

Conservatives have also demanded that proof that Warren is 1/32 Cherokee, as she claims.

Business Insider and other publications are also at fault; treating this troubling racial inquisition as a “controversey” grants it far too much credibility.

What century is this again?

Natural gas drillers overextended themselves: They leased land to frack, that they won’t be able to frack. How sad for them.

With all the restrictions in proposed state regulations and local bans, gas companies say about half of their lease holdings in the lucrative Marcellus Shale region in New York state will be off-limits or inaccessible to drilling if the state gives the green light to developers this year. [...]

“Industry estimates that when you look at the cumulative effect of prohibitions and setbacks, 40 to 60 percent of their leasehold is effectively undevelopable,” said Tom West, an Albany lawyer representing gas companies. [...]

About 25 municipalities have enacted bans on gas drilling, and about 75 others have enacted moratoriums. Dozens of other communities are considering them. That amounts to 1,015 square miles of the Marcellus region under local bans, 2,171 square miles under moratorium and more than 2,400 square miles under consideration for a ban or moratorium, said Karen Edelstein, a geographic information systems consultant in Ithaca who closely follows the oil and gas industry and serves as a consultant for environmental groups.

Drillers and their right-wing supporters have a top-down solution to this problem: Overturn local, democratically-enacted laws that ban fracking.

The Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, which represents about 70,000 landowners seeking to lease land for gas drilling, is working to counter the push for municipal bans. The group has drafted a resolution supporting gas drilling, and several town boards have adopted it. Members of the coalition also have lobbied in towns considering bans and have had some success blocking them.

“We maintain that these local bans are illegal under New York law and that they will be overturned in court,” said Karen Moreau, executive director of the New York State Petroleum Council.

The gas industry maintains it should have the right to drill anywhere in New York State, regardless of the concerns of local residents.

Yet it is local residents will experience the many negative externalities of fracking: polluted water; carcinogenic byproducts; destruction of wilderness; wear and tear on infrastructure; air pollution; massively increased traffic; unsustainable, temporary economic growth; and the risk of a catastrophic spill.

Local residents will face these costly consequences if fracking goes forward. So shouldn’t local residents – not judges; not lobbyists – be trusted to make the final decision?

Mitt Romney made hundreds of millions of dollars as CEO of Bain Capital by firing workers, cutting wages and siphoning money from failing companies (companies that in many cases later declared bankruptcy, voiding their employee’s pensions and health care benefits).

This ad from the Obama campaign personalizes the plight of workers whose careers and livelihoods were collateral damage to Bain’s value-extraction.

Romney is the wealthy, callous villain in this story – and a familiar one, in the mold of Mr. Burns, Cruella de Vil or Daniel Plainview. Simply by evoking this archetype, the Obama campaign will gravely damage Mitt Romney’s chances.

Is it fair characterization? Not really. If Romney and company hadn’t extracted the surplus value of failing companies like GST Steel, others would have. Romney was only a suit – as replaceable as any other employee at Bain-owned companies. To explain lost jobs, it’s vital to look at the structural trends that induced CEOs like Romney to fire workers, like the availability of cheap labor overseas, rather than blame the suits personally.

Still, that doesn’t mean we should elect a suit President!

Besides, this is politics. Presidential elections are contests of character, and a person’s character is reflected profoundly in his or her career. So, in my view, Romney’s record at Bain is fair game.

Which is why Romney’s response to Obama’s new ad is baffling. His argument is, “Well Obama fired workers too!”

Conservative columnist Byron York previewed on Monday what he claimed was Romney officials’ long-prepared counterattack to the Bain story: Obama likes to fire people, too.

Given that Republicans usually complain the White House hires too many people, this is not an angle you hear often. Their logic: As part of the 2009 auto bailout, General Motors and Chrysler were forced to cut costs and produce a new plan to return to profitability with a leaner business. One area where the White House pushed them to find savings was in getting rid of hundreds of car dealerships. A report by the TARP inspector general found that this process was handled sloppily and resulted in the tens of thousands of lost jobs. Republicans complained that more of the savings should have come from unionized auto workers, who made their own concessions, instead. York says this proves that given the same circumstances Romney faced at Bain Capital after buying a troubled company like GST Steel, Obama will end up pursuing the same ugly downsizing that he did out of necessity.

Do Romney’s advisers really think he has a chance to win a campaign defined by the question, “Who has fired more workers?” Because he does not.

Maybe even better than “Oh Susannah.” I can’t get enough of this stuff!

Next, Neil Young should make a Christmas album.

Mitt Romney thinks you’re too young to understand the economy.

Mitt Romney said the protesters rallying against Bank of America in Charlotte this week are too young “to really understand how the economy works.”

“Unfortunately, a lot of young folks haven’t had the opportunity to really understand how the economy works, and what it takes to put people to work in real jobs, and why we have banks, and what banks do,” Romney told WBTV in Charlotte, according to National Journal. “It’s a very understandable sentiment if you don’t find a job, and you can’t see rising incomes. You’re going to be angry and looking at someone to blame.”

Right on, Mitt. “Young folks” oppose job-killing, austerity economics because we’re “angry and looking at someone to blame.” [eds. note: interesting word choice, "at" - a hell of a freudian slip.] We certainly don’t oppose austerity because it would slow job growth, reduce our wages and end government services that we rely on – like low-cost student loans, food stamps and subsidized health insurance - only to benefit major corporations and the 1%.

No, I’m sure you’re right: If only we understood “why we have banks, and what banks do,” then we could fathom why an entire generation of Americans must be sacrificed on the altar of austerity.

Speaking of banks, it was only a few years ago that we saved the banks by opening a $700 billion line of credit on their behalf (a bailout you supported, Mitt).

Banks must really be important, to be worth $700 billion!

Whereas a generation of young Americans is worth a negative sum in your book, Mitt. You’d take money from us, and give it to wealthy bankers.

No hard feelings though. When you say that’s “how the economy works,” we respect your wisdom, honesty and compassion.

Tom Tomorrow’s latest cartoon depicts austerians as violent, malevolent interlopers from space. Head to Daily Kos for the whole strip.

It seems unfair that the austerians get to be the aliens; they should be the drab ones in suits.

The Daily Dish excerpts today’s Washington Post story.

Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

Teenagers do a lot of dumb things, and normally I’d dismiss stories of teenage indiscretions. Romney is an adult now, and he probably feels an enormous amount of guilt over this; it would help him to say so, instead of implausibly claiming he doesn’t remember the incident. (It’s not the kind of thing you forget.)

This assault, however, was too brutal to simply dismiss.

Also troubling is Romney’s defense: That he didn’t realize the young man he assaulted was gay.

“The people involved didn’t come out of the closet until years later,” he noted. “The idea that this is something that was known by me … is obviously absurd. I had no idea that this person might have been gay.”

“I don’t remember that incident and I’ll tell you I certainly don’t believe that I, I can’t speak for other people of course, thought the fellow was homosexual,” he said earlier in the interview. “That was the furthest thing from my mind back in the 1960s, so that was not the case. But as to pranks that were played back then, I don’t remember them all, but again, high school days, if I did stupid things, why I’m afraid I got to say sorry for it.”

Why does Romney fixate on the question of whether his victim was gay? Does Mitt Romney think it’s okay to attack someone for their hair style if that person is not gay?

update: some style changes

In the coming weeks, the State Assembly has the opportunity to extend to transgendered New Yorkers the same protections against discrimination that most New Yorkers already enjoy. The legislation is called GENDA and, as Jeremy Redlien explains, it’s long overdue.

Transgender/Transsexual individuals (even when compared to gays and lesbians) are more likely to be fired from their jobs, be denied housing, or have to deal regularly with the threat of extreme violence. SONDA already exists to protect people from being fired or denied housing based upon sexual orientation, but there exists no such laws to protect against those issues based upon gender identity. That is, it is illegal to deny housing or fire an employee for reasons related to their sexual orientation but perfectly legal to do so based upon gender identity.

Yesterday, supporters of GENDA held a well-attended rally at the Capitol. Hopefully this will convince the Assembly to finally pass the bill, after numerous failed attempts. Governor Cuomo is on board.

Empire State Pride Agenda, a civil rights and advocacy organization, held a rally and lobbying day at the Capitol Tuesday. At the top of their agenda is a bill that would ban discrimination against transgendered people, those whose outward appearance often does not match with the sex that appears on their birth certificates. The bill is known as the “gender expression non-discrimination act” or GENDA. State Senator Daniel Squadron is the Senate sponsor.

Squadron said, “Marriage equality is an enormous, historic achievement, but it doesn’t mean that we’ve achieved complete equality that we need across this state.”

Governor Cuomo pushed hard for gay marriage last year.

“The governor has publicly committed to supporting GENDA and ending discrimination against transgendered people. He has stated that he will sign the bill when it comes to his desk,” said Lynn Faria of Empire State Pride Agenda.