Obama's economic and foreign policy is abject failure. He must step down and refuse to seek a second term.

Those who agree, please forward your thoughts.

OMG: Obama Must Go!

Good question. He'll need to appoint Obama to his cabinet so he'll always have someone toward whom to point his righteous trembling finger.

Not only is Romney "defending" free speech this morning, he's out there on the stump proclaiming that America must impose our Constitutional values upon other nations--particularly Middle Eastern nations.

Has anybody noticed how that trick still hasn't worked in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Romney has chosen 17 former Bush/Cheney neo-con, "let's invade Iraq no matter what" foreign advisors as his foreign policy staff. Hey, guys--if we can't learn from our disastrous history, we're condemned to repeat it. Vote Democratic 2012. Let's win the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Let's restore sanity to our government and to our nation.

I agree. As a corporate CEO, Romney is not accustomed to taking criticism. The corporate culture allows those at the top to be shielded from negative remarks and not have to learn to deal with them. This says a lot about the leadership style that Romney would bring to the position if elected. But we're electing a President, not a CEO. Big difference.

Sorry, press. You are lucky Anne didn't get up there and tell you people a thing or two.

It's also a testament to the character of both men, our current President has it, and Robme is one.

Absolutely right. Today we saw President Obama and Hillary Clinton lead the nation.

Mitt Romney poured gasoline onto the raging fire.

You're an idiot.

Yes. It just goes to show you that money can't buy class, or good judgment.

Today, President Obama exhibited patience, good judgement and leadership. He gathered all the facts and responded to a crisis. Now he will take appropriate action.

Mitt Romney reacted as impulsively as an emotionally disturbed teenager, erupting violently and irrationally without learning the facts and ascertaining their meaning.

Romney the CEO knows how to bully people. He certainly doesn't know how to lead or inspire.

It shouldn't be boycotted. Mitt's words show us repeatedly what we are fighting against, and why each and every one of our individual votes are so important.

It is essential that we bear witness to Romney's irrational reactions to international tragedy. We have witnessed a clear and important contrast between leadership and political opportunism.

Initially, Romney failed to express sympathy for the dead, concern for the injured, or interest in how the survivors fared. His primary and primal irrational response was to a "tweet" from the embassy in Cairo sent hours before the actual attacks had begun. Members of that embassy were trying to calm the situation. Romney, however, doesn't understand anything about diplomacy. To Romney, diplomacy equals weakness.

Romney belligerantly blurted his condemnation of President Obama before knowing any of the facts about what was happening in either Egypt or Libya. Having no knowledge of or interest in foreign policy, Romney saw and seized upon what he believed to be an opportunity to score political points among the most blood thirsty of the Republican party.

Look now to see who is coming to Romney's defense: Michele Bachman; Jim DeMint; Joe Walsh; Allen West. Now you can realistically assess Romney's lack of character, judgement and leadership,

He knows more facts now, but is still blurting the same thing. Facts just don't seem to adjust this man's verbal trajectory.

It seemed to me that they were fatally wounded after the fiasco of GOP control of the presidency and Congress during Bush II. Romney's robotic gait is the tell of the walking dead kept artificially alive. But lets move the discussion forward to a look over the hill. I am optimistic about our chances of taking the House back, but coming from a deep blue state, I see a different sort of opportunity for real electoral reform of the two party system.

Already I hear the memes of disenfranchisement from the right. Ingraham started the week with the proposal to wipe the GOP slate clean and replace all candidates.

Mike, I keep going back to our discussion last spring about whether we preferred Romney or Gingrich as the GOP nominee. It was clear to both of us it would be a choice election, and as I recall you preferred Romney as the opponent because repudiation of him would be a repudiation of Wall Street. I preferred Gingrich as a repudiation of the Gingrich's politics of incivility and dysfunctional governance.

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It is becoming obvious there will be no repudiation with Romney as the candidate because no one accepts him as their standard bearer. Already you can see the Right forming their arguments about how Romney betrayed their principles.

Sadly, the right wing will learn nothing from this.

Nothing.

That may be good for Dems tactically, but bad for politics in general because as Rachel pointed out last night about foreign policy, lack of opposition is not a good thing. This radical polarization of a two party system means that not only does the left have no where else to go but there will be nowhere else for the center to go. There will be no Colin Powell or Huntsman candidates to force Dems to compete for their votes.

If the GOP is intent on self destruction and permanent minority status, then we are moving towards a dictatorship of a dominant centrist party? We have already seen the splintering of small ones who only give the semblance of unity under the GOP banner. Their candidate is emblematic of that incoherent confusion of balkanised ideologies. The Ron Paul faction does not appear to have reflected much on the utter failure of their strategy of insurgency in the GOP. Perhaps they can be persuaded to support electoral form that would allow third parties true representation in US government. With libertarians and Greens with sizeable blocks in congress, no longer would the middle dictate policy. There would be a real chance of ending the debacle of the drug wars and the incarceration culture. Both the Greens and the Libertarians agree on several issues- substantial reduction of the military industrial establishment, and decriminalization of drugs.

Are these out of the mainstream? Not necessarily because they are at their root values issues. For example, I have 6 kids and I know that drug laws are not protecting them. What will protect them are strong values such as being suspicious of self indulgence, narcissism or surrendering to escapism. The common sense of a Kansas farmer can see that, and its why they voted in the 40s and 50s for progressives. Such a Green - Libertarian block is not a movement of the new atheists. Ron Paul for example self identifies as a Christian, and this appears weird at first because of so much of the association of Rand with libertarian rationalist thought. The scriptural principle is that in fact the fundamentalist would be legislators of morality are in fact the atheists because they are attempting to use the power of Caeasar to lord over people's moral behavior. I suppose this is the wrong forum to show how that is theologically equivalent to atheism, but that is a Christian libertarian view.

The particular electoral reform we need on this score is national proportional representation for minority parties.

But it won't happen if the fringes on the far Left and Right do not unite on the common cause of fighting for representation.

Because really, this is the true vote rigging of this election. The part where the only voters that matter to the candidates are those in 8 states. The ones in the center.

No candidate has ever had to compete for my vote. The Dem candidate know I have no where else to go. Similarly those on the far right know that they have to suck it up and vote for what ever centrist milquetoast gets served up to them. That anger at their disenfranchisement could form the basis of an activist fervor that could drive electoral reform.

I do not suspect Angry White Guy talk radio hosts will relish an alliance of necessity with Left parties to push such electoral reforms through.

Usually when a party has moved to the extreme fringe, the elections will "correct" the situation. But if Romney loses the election and Republicans do not lose a large number of seats in the upcoming elections, I see the Republicans doubling down on the crazy. The Republican party is splintering into factions: the Tea Party which is the radical fringe being nurtured by the Koch Bros. and others, the not so very large Libertarian wing which is close to the fringe which is being nurtured by Ron and Rand Paul, and the regular Republicans who see what is happening to the party but are helpless to stop it. It is the Tea Party that will destroy the Republican party as was constituted by the Reagan coalition. Republicans may be reduced to local parties in some states which will hurt the electoral process. I believe that the regular Republicans will be the faction that will push the electoral reform if the Republican party can no longer function on a national level because they cannot stop the TP, the Koch Bros., et al.

"Regular" republicans like Huntsman and Powell are marginalized, and their country club followers are constitutionally disinclined to engage in the intense political activism necessary for getting behind reforms that would make third parties politically viable. For example:

1. preferential voting so that third parties would no longer be spoiler votes, and votes in primaries would no longer represent the quashing of dissenting views on either end of the spectrum.
2. Proportional representation of third parties in Congress. If 10% of the vote in the US is Green, and 10% libertarian, then the greens and the libertarians should have between them 20% of the representatives.
   Only then will people with heterodox viewpoints ever have fair representation.

The marginalized Republicans are not going to go further to the right and they are not going to become Dems. That leaves them as a minority within their own party. Without electoral reform and/or major election losses, the marginalized Republicans have no where to go except local parties which are not big enough to field a national candidate when they are competing with the TP. If the regular Republicans join electoral reform and get behind a constitutional amendment, they could begin to rebuild. The only other way is for the TP to be destroyed by the elections, but Republicans will still be competing with and fighting the Koch Bros. as a political force. Electoral reform could curtail their funding of radical groups and individuals.

The primary rules can be changed by the Republican party to reflect delegates in accordance with the votes for candidates. I don't know if they can achieve that on a national basis but may be feasible as a local party policy. The regular Republicans control most of the state politics since the TP is not large enough to wholly take over any individual state government.

Proportional representation in Congress would necessitate a constitutional amendment and that is very difficult to do. I think election reform is the best vehicle for leveling the playing field for all candidates. It could be through campaign contribution limits, primaries reformed for both parties, ad limits and ending PAC's. It might even be federal funding for all candidates regardless of party with all outside spending prohibited by the candidates and PAC's. That would force candidates to debate rather than rely on campaign contributions and ads. I am not sure but I believe the states may have the option for voting for the House reps on an at large basis if the state so chooses. There is nothing in the US Constitution that forces a state to divide its reps by districts; it only provides for the number of reps for each state. That could also be the way to get proportional representation without an amendment.

Excellent excellent point. You are a wise man Mike.

I agree it is highly implausible that any amendment even on the more moderate reforms you suggest would pass congress let alone be ratified by a sufficient number of states.

But the idea of State's experimenting with an idea and then having it go national is a practical path. California is large enough for such a proportional mix, and they have a mechanism of direct democracy so that the reform could be made through initiative. The GOP there feel especially disenfranchised so maybe there would be enough on the right to get the proportional representation in that way. It could be a hybrid mix of course- for example half proportional by percent of the vote, and half by district. They have a huge number of representatives, so that might give a practical prototype for the nation.

Eliminating Congressional districts ends gerrymandering and the fights over redistricting. Each party would be helped and hurt by at large voting because red states would now get Dems in Congress and blue states would have Republicans in proportion to votes. The only problems with at large are the small states with only one rep, but that is not many states.

Rushbo and others have already said that if Obama wins, they need to kill the Republican Party and create a third party that is truly Conservative (i.e., a for-real NSDAP)

It's not just that.

It was his terror in the news conference as he abruptly terminated it. The visuals were real real bad. Just in technical political terms, turning tail looks really bad, especially in this context. There were many ways to exit the Q&A, eg- now is the time to lift up those who have fallen, and so on... then acknowledge to the press they have some legitimate questions that he is eager to address, but he asks that for now, we just should be focusing on those who have lost their lives in this terrible tragedy.

Instead, he looks like the kid who grabs his ball and leaves the playing field when people are not cheering for him.

Not very pretty.

The YouTube video was posted by a fellow who identified himself as Sam Bacile. According to the AP, there really is a Sam Bacile, and he really did make a full-length anti-Muhammad movie. Or at least, that's what a man identifying himself as Sam Bacile said in a phone interview to an AP reporter. According to Bacile, the complete film has only been screened once. Bacile claimed that the film had a $5,000,000 budget, although the bits and pieces that I watched on YouTube (I couldn't bring myself to watch the whole 15-minute thing) suggest that the real budget was more like $50. (Personally, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that the 15-minute YouTube clip is all that exists.)

See the AP story by Shaya Tayefe Mohajer, "Anti-Islam Filmmaker in Hiding After Protests."

The plot thickens. CNN has published a statement from the actors who made the movie, to the effect that they were duped, and Gawker has published an interview with one of the performers. The actors claim that the script used at the shoot contained no references to Muhammad or Islam. They thought they were shooting a film about ancient Egypt--references to Islam were added in post-production.

The claim is plausible. I actually did finally sit down and watch the whole thing, and the clumsy, Kung Fu/Godzilla-quality overdubbing was painfully obvious.

The Gawker article contains links to the CNN report and to a list (from the On the Media website) of some of the insults that were overdubbed into the film. See Adrien Chen, "'It Makes Me Sick': Actress in Muhammad Movie Says She Was Deceived, Had No Idea It Was About Islam."

Nope, Ryan is grand-standing as well.

Paul Ryan's position it that what we need now is "American strength." But no one knows what that means. It is, of course, code implying that President Obama has weakend America's military strength, thereby encouraging such attacks against our embassy. Ryan can't say this outright because it is blatantly false.

Here's a fact about what's going on with the US military. Our troops who have served and continue to serve since 9/11 have amounted to a mere .75 percent of the American population. Even adding in the military families that must also experience grave sacrifice, only about 1% of Americans are and have been directly affected by the Bush/Cheney policy of aggression and invasion that plunged us into two decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The right-wing is perfectly content with this horrifically unfair situation. In fact, as we listen to Romney's sabre rattling, we understand quite well that he has no qualms about expanding military operations in Afghanistan as well as in other Middle Eastern nations.

To Romney and the Republicans, the American men and women who have served, now serve, and will serve in our Armed Forces are expendable. They are like parts of a machine that when worn out or broken can be replaced by other expendable parts.

To me, "American strength" suggest the strength of character required to lead and inspire our troops, not to use and discard them as the Republicans will do. American strength is the strength of character required to face a crisis, learn the facts, weigh those facts, formulate an appropriate response and implement that response logically and rationally. Mitt Romney is a shoot from the hip, act without information, fly off the handle, and act irrationally no matter what the consequence kind of guy. He lacks the "right-stuff" to be Commander-in-Chief.

Today, we saw President Obama lead and inspire.

Romney poured gasoline onto the raging fire.

Of course the US is going to postpone any aid to Egypt and this was decided right after the Egyptian elections. Morsi is walking a tightrope between the military and the people and we are not going to feed either Egypt or Libya with military aid. At best, only humanitarian aid will be given. The second part of this equation is that all Western countries are doing the same until they see where the two governments are going from a political standpoint. Our response will be to withdraw ambassadors where there is a potential for violence across the region and all the way to Pakistan. This will depend on whether each government is going to provide security for our embassy and people, but most nonessential personnel will be withdrawn. It is also a question of trust for each government which will dictate our actions.

Our Marines are given instructions to defend the embassy and when they see a mob, the embassy staff is moved to safe areas within the compound. There are not enough Marines to fend off big mobs or those armed with sophisticated arms. Usually, when that happens, the country of location is supposed to respond to the emergency. But what happens is dictated by the security of the safe area. Marines will prevent anyone from entering that area and that includes deadly force.

Distraction 102: Keep the Focus Fuzzy: Romney may approve of this message: But here's the deal for the self-condemned:

A California-based property developer who claims to be responsible for “Innocence of Muslims,” a provocative film about the Prophet Muhammad, which sparked Tuesday’s deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Libya and further protests in Egypt, has gone into hiding, The Associated Press reported.

Speaking by phone from an undisclosed location, Israeli-American writer and director Sam Bacile, 56, remained defiant, saying that he intended his film to be a political statement condemning the religion, the AP said.

The Code of Hammurabi King of Babylon, About 2500 B.C. , by Hammurabi, translated by Robert Francis Harper, 1904.

1. If a man bring an accusation against a man, and charge him with a (capital) crime, but cannot prove it, he, the accuser, shall be put to death.

2. If a man charge a man with sorcery, and cannot prove it, he who is charged with sorcery shall go to the river, into the river he shall throw himself and if the river overcome him, his accuser shall take to himself his house (estate). If the river show that man to be innocent and he come forth unharmed, he who charged him with sorcery shall be put to death. He who threw himself into the river shall take to himself the house of his accuser.

3. If a man, in a case (pending judgment), bear false (threatening) witness, or do not establish the testimony that he has given, if that case be a case involving life, that man shall be put to death.

4. If a man (in a case) bear witness for grain or money (as a bribe), he shall himself bear the penalty imposed in that case.

5. If a judge pronounce a judgment, render a decision, deliver a verdict duly signed and sealed and afterward alter his judgment, they shall call that judge to account for the alteration of the judgment which he had pronounced, and he shall pay twelve-fold the penalty which was in said judgment; and, in the assembly, they shall expel him from his seat of judgment, and he shall not return, and with the judges in a case he shall not take his seat.

6. If a man steal the property of a god (temple) or palace, that man shall be put to death; and he who receives from his hand the stolen (property) shall also be put to death.

7. If a man purchase silver or gold, manservant or maid servant, ox, sheep or ass, or anything else from a man's son, or a man's servant without witnesses or contracts, or if he receive (the same) in trust, that man shall be put to death as a thief.

8. If a man steal ox or sheep, ass or pig, or boat—if it be from a god (temple) or a palace, he shall restore thirtyfold; if it be from a freeman, he shall render tenfold. If the thief have nothing wherewith to pay he shall be put to death.

... 282.

This is one early reference to causing the death of another by lying.