August 2012
Mitt Romney’s `just trust me’ campaign, explained. →
washingtonpost.com
This is now the third area in which Romney has refused to share specifics on the explicit grounds that so doing would be bad politically for him. Romney has repeatedly said he won’t release his tax returns because Democrats will find things in them to attack. And he has vowed to eliminate whole government agencies, but has confirmed that he won’t specify which ones precisely because his failed Senate bid taught him that getting too specific puts him at risk of losing. As Jonathan Chait has written, this is akin to saying: “One of the things I have found in previous elections is that announcing my plans makes people want to vote against me.”
(Emphasis mine.)
Do your job, media.
Do your job, reporters.
Do your job, cable news.
Do your job, newspapers.
Inform voters clearly and without the “both sides do it” false equivalency, that the Romney campaign is deliberately hiding what a Romney presidency would mean for the country, because the campaign knows that they will lose if voters find out their actual policy plans.
It is absolutely staggering to me that it is possible in this country for a person seeking to be the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES can completely hide everything that person would do if elected and expect voters to be totally fine with that.
The cable news and national network news programs have a responsibility to clearly explain this to voters: Mitt Romney won’t tell you what he plans to do if you elect him, because he believes that if you knew, you wouldn’t vote for him.
That’s just astonishing to me.
“
After a recent Romney rally, a woman in the crowd said this to a radio news reporter: “I will not help those people.” She was referring to “welfare” recipients, who, according to Mr. Romney, would no longer be required to work or to look for work to qualify for these public benefits. She uttered the words “those people” with the absolute certainty that she or anyone she cares about would never be one of them. As a social scientist who studies issues directly related to race, I know that in the context of implicit racial bias, she is most likely referring to African Americans, the “racialized other” in her mind, and this is precisely what Mr. Romney and his tea party cohorts want her to do.
Every reputable fact checker, including the New York Times, has said that Romney’s campaign ad about the President’s welfare reform is either grossly distorted or an out-and-out lie. And yet, just yesterday, this ad was aired four times within sixty minutes on one of my local television stations. Romney and his people are keenly aware of the racialized mythology about who gets welfare and why (most welfare recipients are not Black). Heightened reaction to this myth channels cognition away from more fundamental issues like who will pay for tax breaks for the wealthy or who rode shotgun over the bankers who are responsible for the subprime lending crisis or who is sending American jobs overseas to increase profit, shareholder dividends and executive bonuses.
Did Romney play the race card? Yes he did, and he is likely to do it again and again as the election approaches.
” —Todd Rudd, “Did Romney Play The Race Card?,” Race-Talk 8/24/12 (via racialicious)
Study: Phrase ‘That’s So Gay’ Causes Lasting Harm →
detroit.cbslocal.com
The study, done by University of Michigan is published on the current issue of Journal of American College Health.
The resulting data found that LGBT students who heard the phrase frequently were more likely to feel isolated and experience headaches, poor appetite or eating problems than those who didn’t. Still, the study also revealed another troubling statistic: a mere 14 respondents (13 percent) hadn’t heard “that’s so gay” at all throughout the duration of the survey.
Click on the link to read more.
1) Um, DUH?
2) Avoid the comments section, I didn’t see a single one that WASN’T homophobic.
