Elections 2012

Ohio is a key state to the White House. The Democrats know this and so does the Republicans. That's why it is no shock that Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, John Husted, has stopped at nothing to try and give Romney an advantage in the Buckeye State. Well that latest attempt has now been turned down by the right leaning Supreme Court of the United States:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned aside a request from Ohio to hear a case in which a lower court ruled the state couldn't stop early voting during the three-day period before the election. The decision is a victory for the Obama campaign, which had successfully argued that Ohio could not allow military and overseas voters to vote during the three day period unless that opportunity was available to all voters.

Secretary of State Jon Husted announced he was appealing the case to the Supreme Court last week, arguing the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decision didn't make legal or practical sense.

By SCOTUS turning down the request, that means the ruling of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals stands. The opinion (PDF) written by the 6th Circuit concludes that all persons should have the same amount of time and availability to ballots.

This has opinion was the very merits that the Obama campaign argued all along. You may remember when this first surfaced a few months ago and Mitt Romney and the right wing talking heads said it was Obama trying to not let our military vote. That was one of the biggest lies told this year. It had nothing to do with "not" letting our military vote, but rather letting every citizen of Ohio have the same access to ballots.

Yesterday Chris Wallace challenged Romney adviser Ed Gillespie on rather Romney's tax cut plans were feasible. At issue was the "six independent studies" that the Romney campaign has been touting. Here's the exchange from Think Progress:

GILLESPIE: Six different studies have said this is entirely doable.

WALLACE: Those are very questionable. Some of them are blogs, some of them are from AEI, an independent group.

GILLESPIE: These are very credible sources.

WALLACE: One of them is a blog from a guy who was a top adviser for George W. Bush. These are hardly non-partisan studies.

GILLESPIE: Look Chris these AEI and other studies are very credible sources of analysis

So to Romney, an adviser to George Bush is non-partisan.

It's also amazing that the hundreds of other analysis that have come out, which say there is no way that Romney can cut the top earners tax rate by 20% without significantly raising taxes on the middle class, is just impossible. Instead Romney has chosen the very few studies that say it can be done.

But there is something even more interesting in this exchange. It's something I have hammered Romney on before - a lack of plan. Well Gillespie offers more insight into that. It shows that Mitt Romney is a man not worried about country, but worried about only him:

Ed Gillespie went on TV this morning and said Mitt Romney would only reveal the details of his tax plan after he’s sworn into office as President.

Ann Romney is back on the trail for Mitt and she gave a rather bleak assessment to a Nevada radio station this week of what problems might face a President Romney:

Ann Romney's biggest concern if her husband becomes president would be his ability to maintain his "mental well-being," she said in an interview Thursday with KTVN in Reno, Nev.

Asked what her primary worry would be should her husband succeed in defeating President Obama on Nov. 6, Mrs. Romney replied, "You know, I think my biggest concern, obviously, would just be for his mental well-being."

I've been closely following politics since 1988 and this has to be one of the weirdest statements I have ever heard from a potential first lady or even surrogate.

And if Ann if concerned about her husband's "mental well-being", then perhaps she should consult one former President about it. Here's George Bush in a debate against John Kerry in 2004. In this video, Bush tells everyone 11 times how hard it is to be President.

So do we really want a President who might have a breakdown? It's not like we are talking about being the boss of a big company, where you can easily fire people who are against you. We are talking about the President of the United States, where you will have close to half of the country upset with you and replacing administration officials becomes a big deal, not only with the media but also with the Senate.

Have you been to the emergency room lately? Waits are long. Why? Because they have become the doctor's office for the uninsured. Well Mitt Romney thinks that is actually a good idea:

Downplaying the need for the government to ensure that every person has health insurance, Mitt Romney on Sunday suggested that emergency room care suffices as a substitute for the uninsured.

"Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance," he said in an interview with Scott Pelley of CBS's "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday night. "If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care."

The problem with this approach is the lack of preventive care. People can't go for regular check-ups, so things like blood pressure and cholesterol get out of control. When they finally reach the boiling point, people go to the ER with a full blown heart attack, and now what would have been a cheap visit turns into a very expensive one.

Now this brings us to the second problem - costs. One of the biggest contributors to rising healthcare costs is the uninsured. Hospitals are businesses. Businesses exist to make money. When uninsured people come into the ER and can't pay, the hospital is left with costs. Remember, they still have to pay doctors, technicians, laboratories, specialists, etc. Do the hospitals just eat these costs? No, they absorb them into their overall operational costs, which means higher bills for the insured. Sure you might not really see this, but the insurance companies do and now they need to recoup those costs by increasing your premiums.

It's really bad for Mitt Romney when even John Boehner won't defend him:

Even as he joked "I just hope I survive," House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) declined to defend Mitt Romney's now-infamous 47 percent remarks Thursday, and insisted the Republican ticket can still win.

Boehner wouldn't be joking like that if a little part of him isn't saying that they may lose the House this fall.

Here's something Republicans need to seriously consider. Romney has had one of the most gaffed filled campaigns in modern history. How will his presidency be? If it's the same thing, then come 2016, the Republicans may end up being a long-time minority. In other words, Mitt Romney risks hurting the GOP for years to come.

Are you Republicans ready to take that gamble? Think about that when you go in to vote this year.

Kansas is the latest to try and steal the election for Romney:

The Kansas State Objections Board is considering removing President Barack Obama from the November ballot because of doubts over his place of birth, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal.

The panel of Republicans, which consists of Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, received a complaint from a resident who claimed Obama was not a natural born citizen and therefore ineligible to be president.

Obama has been dogged by questions about his eligibility to serve as President of the United States since 2008. Some of the so-called “birthers” believe Obama is not a natural born citizen because his father was a British subject.

“As for Mr. Obama’s citizenship, there are many doubts,” said Joe Montgomery, who filed the ballot challenge. “Doing the right thing can be hard and unpopular.”

The only doubts are those manufactured by the racists on the right. But as I pointed out yesterday, the right cares nothing about fact. Instead they chose to only believe in fiction and conspiracy.

From Think Progress:

“A citizen has a constitutionally protected right to participate in elections on an equal basis with other citizens in the jurisdiction.” In Ohio, that right to participate equally has been abridged by Ohio Revised Code ‘ 3509.03 and the Ohio Secretary of State’s further interpretation of that statute with regard to in-person early voting. In 2005, Ohio expanded participation in absentee balloting and in-person early voting to include all registered Ohio voters. Now, “in-person early voting” has been redefined by the Ohio legislature to limit Plaintiffs’ access to the polls. This Court must determine whether preliminary injunctive relief should be granted to Plaintiffs on their claim that Ohio’s restriction of in-person early voting deprives them of their fundamental right to vote. Following Supreme Court precedent, this Court concludes that Plaintiffs have stated a constitutional claim that is likely to succeed on the merits. As a result—and as explained below—this Court grants Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction.

This is from the case that Republicans turned into a big lie, claiming that the Obama campaign was trying to prevent military from voting. That was not the case. The Obama campaign was simply saying that everyone should have the same access to voting, regardless. The judge sided with the Obama campaign and actually used a very ironic precedent in his ruling, Gore -v- Bush.

The Grand Old Pale club finally had their convention start yesterday. While the media was all over the speeches, one thing that you won't really see covered much is something that happened on the floor:

Two people were removed from the Republican National Convention Tuesday after they threw nuts at an African-American CNN camera operator and said, “This is how we feed animals.”

Multiple witnesses observed the exchange and RNC security and police immediately removed the two people from the Tampa Bay Times Forum.

This is racism pure and simple. There is absolutely no way you can spin it in another direction. Of course there should be no shock here. In 2008, at the RNC convention, bumper stickers were being sold that says "It's called the White House".