Abortion question booed at Republican debate
A question about abortion caused a flareup in the culture wars during the last Republican presidential debate before next week’s Arizona and Michigan primaries and “Super Tuesday.”
The question drew boos from the audience and impassioned statements from the four candidates on the stage in Mesa, Arizona, last night.
“Since birth control is the latest hot topic, which candidate believes in birth control , and if not why?,” was the question posed via cnnpolitics.com.
It sparked a lengthy discourse by the candidates on religious freedom, contraception, and family structure. None of the White House hopefuls directly responded to the question.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has taken on the media in previous debates, said it was a legitimate question before questioning CNN moderator John King and zeroing in on Democrat Barack Obama.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney provided backup, saying Obama had launched “the worst attack on religious conscience in the history of the United States.”
Hispanic activists protest Romney on Dream Act ahead of debate
Campaigning in Iowa late last year, Mitt Romney said he would veto a proposal granting U.S. citizenship to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children.
While turning his back on the so-called Dream Act won him support from grassroots conservatives in the Midwest, it brought out Hispanic activists in protest against him ahead of the debate on Wednesday.
“I just want a president who is going to be good for my community, for people who have a dream and want an education,” said Carla Uiquidi, one of a dozen or so protesters in the street opposite the Mesa Arts Center toting placards that read “Veto Romney Not the Dream Act.”
Under the Dream Act, which was brought up in the Senate in May, young undocumented immigrants who have lived most of their lives in the United States and graduate from U.S. high schools would be eligible for a conditional six-year “path to citizenship” if they earn a college degree or serve two years in the military.
Romney told caucus voters in Lemars, Iowa, in late December that he would secure the U.S.-Mexico border with a fence and enough Border Patrol agents to guard it.
His remarks there drew vigorous applause there and at a later appearance in Sioux City. Romney said he would eliminate the “magnet” that draws illegal immigrants by cracking down on employers who hire them. They didn’t impress Uiquidi on Wednesday.
Washington Extra – Tax time
If President Obama did indeed schedule the release of his corporate tax revamp Wednesday to steal the spotlight from Mitt Romney’s tax plan rollout – as some critics charge – it just might have worked. The Obama plan was the top story of the day.
But perhaps more importantly, Obama neutralized corporate taxes as an election year issue by aligning himself with Republican positions.
Sure, there may be differences in the tax rates each candidate backs – Obama at 28 percent, Romney 25 percent, Santorum 17.5 percent and Gingrich 12.5 percent.
But the message is the same: cut taxes on our corporations and especially domestic manufacturers to make the United States more competitive. That’s all voters are likely to hear.
The president also showed Corporate America – not his biggest fan – that he’s willing to talk with them, at least on the tax issue. Cutting the corporate tax rate has been a top goal of big businesses for many years.
Not that it will add up to much more than political messaging, at least this year, with elections coming in November. The odds of meaningful tax legislation in 2012 are slim to none.
But come 2013, tax reform could be the big show and Obama’s plan puts him at center stage.
Obama sings again, this time blues with B.B. King, Mick Jagger
President Barack Obama gave what appeared to be an impromptu performance of “Sweet Home Chicago” during a blues concert Tuesday night at the White House in celebration of Black History Month.
At the end of an evening of performances from the likes of B.B. King, Mick Jagger, Jeff Beck, Derek Trucks, Shemekia Copeland and others, Obama grabbed a mic from the stage and crooned, “Come on, baby don’t you wanna go,” part of the popular blues standard.
A month ago, Obama sang a little Al Green — a moment captured on video and viewed thousands of times over. It was seen as having added cool points to the president. Afterwards First Lady Michelle said Obama sings to her all the time.
Whether Tuesday’s performance was really impromptu, or staged as another way to help the president’s image during an election year, we may never know. One thing we do know is that Republican candidates like Mitt Romney have not had the same success in musical performance.
Obama called the blues “music with humble beginnings,” with roots in slavery and segregation in the United States.
Obama said, “Because their music teaches us that when we find ourselves at a crossroads, we don’t shy away from our problems. We own them. We face up to them. We deal with them. We sing about them. We turn them into art.”
See the video here from PBS. Obama sings at about 47 seconds.
Santorum explains “phony theology” comment
Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says he wasn’t questioning Barack Obama’s faith on Saturday when he said the Democratic president’s agenda was based on “some phony theology.”
Santorum explained his comments during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, saying he was questioning the president’s world view — not his faith.
“I accept the fact that the president’s Christian,” Santorum said. “I just said that when you have a world view that elevates the earth above man says that, you know, we can’t take those resources because we’re going to harm the earth by things that are frankly just not scientifically proven.”
A devout Roman Catholic and social conservative, Santorum brought up the theology issue a day earlier in Columbus, Ohio, as he addressed supporters of the conservative Tea Party movement. (Here’s the story from Reuters’ Sam Jacobs)
On ABC’s “This Week,” Robert Gibbs, a senior advisor to Obama’s re-election campaign said Santorum’s “phony theology” comment crosses a line and was dragging the presidential campaign down.
“I can’t help but think that those remarks are well over the line,” Gibbs said. “It’s wrong. It’s destructive. It makes it virtually impossible to solve the problems that we all face together as Americans.”
Here’s Santorum on “Face the Nation”
All these so-called “social conservatives” screamed bloody murder when it was rumored that Muslims were being granted a religious exemption to the individual mandate on PPACA. (Even though that was nothing more than a chain-email rumor.) Now these same wingnuts insist that if Obama doesn’t grant Catholics a religious exemption that he’s somehow violating the constitution. Which is it Republicons? Do your religious beliefs exempt you from following the law or don’t they? Or is it just YOUR religious beliefs that garner special privilege?
from Tax Break:
Obama touts Boeing, critics lament company tax breaks
Obama went to aircraft giant Boeing on Friday to tout U.S. manufacturing and to pitch changes in the U.S. tax code – including slashing tax deductions for corporations that shutter U.S. plants, and a new minimum tax on foreign profits earned in tax havens. “My attitude is every multinational company should have to pay a basic international tax. You should not have an advantage by building a plant over there, over somebody who is investing here and hiring American workers,” Obama said visiting a Boeing plant in Everett, Washington.
“And every penny of that minimum tax should go towards lowering taxes for companies like Boeing that choose to stay and hire here in the United States of America," he said.
Ironic, since most business groups are privately groaning about the idea of a basic minimum tax on foreign profits earned in low tax countries like the Cayman Islands.
Meanwhile, a left-leaning tax policy group cried foul about Obama's choice of venue. By their calculation Boeing has paid no net taxes over the past decade, using legal means that the group says are undermining the integrity of the U.S. tax code.
Citizens for Tax Justice, which is funded in part by labor unions, estimates that Boeing got money back from the U.S. government over the past decade – paying a negative 6.5 percent tax rate, even though it was profitable every year from 2002 through 2011. “Every time (Obama) sees a company that pays no taxes, he wants to be its best friend,” said Bob McIntyre, a veteran Washington D.C. tax activit who helped push changes that led to a 1986 overhaul of the tax code, which raised taxes on corporate America.
McIntyre may have been referring to General Electric, which McIntyre's group says also has paid no taxes in recent years, and whose Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt heads Obama’s advisory “Jobs Council.”
Boeing, for its part, says its effective tax rate over the past several years has been in the high 20-percent to low 30 percent range. One of the biggest tax breaks Boeing takes advantage of is the research and development tax credit, which is widely praised by lawmakers of both parties.
Santorum: backer’s contraceptives comment was bad joke
“It was a stupid joke,” Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says about a wealthy backer’s “aspirins for contraceptives” comment.
Whatever it was, Santorum — a staunch social conservative – said he’s not going to be responsible for what his supporters say.
“I’m not going to play that game,” the former Pennsylvania senator told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren Thursday night when asked about what Foster Friess said earlier in the day.
Friess, the chief donor to the pro-Santorum SuperPAC, was asked whether he had any concerns about the candidate’s views on social issues. Part of his response raised eyebrows.
“Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly,” he told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell.
Here’s video from the MSNBC interview:
I don’t know what is more scary. The fact that Santorum is running for president or the fact that he actually won 3 states so far.
Washington Extra – Peace by piece
Not since Vietnam has the United States sat down with an enemy it was fighting on the battlefield and negotiated an exit from war. That long-standing policy might end this year if a carefully choreographed diplomatic dance takes U.S. and Afghan officials to a negotiating table with the Taliban.
As Reuters Washington correspondent Missy Ryan explains, President Obama’s peace gambit has the potential to be a significant development for U.S. foreign policy. But it turns out it is a policy borne out of necessity: two years ago, the Pentagon thought the Taliban could be defeated militarily, and today, it’s all too clear they aren’t going away.
There are many hurdles and not insignificant push back here at home to overcome. And Obama may want to don a helmet for the incoming fire… from Capitol Hill. As soon as he notifies Congress of plans to move Taliban detainees from Guantanamo to get the ball rolling, he is sure to face a torrent of attacks.
If the idea of talking with a fundamentalist group known for its brutality and repression is just too hard to conceive, consider this: it could have well happened a decade ago and possibly ended the war in Afghanistan.
As a former U.N. official and advocate of peace talks told Ryan: “When people start to add up cost of war in Afghanistan over the last decade, they will ask how on earth the new Afghan leadership and U.S. officials failed to take advantage of these early overtures by the Taliban.”
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Romney’s misguided attack on the automotive bailout
Michigan’s upcoming GOP presidential primary lends itself to automotive analogies. So here’s one. If Mitt Romney were a car, he’d be the Mitt-subishi Eclipse.
That might well be the upshot of Romney’s op-ed in the Detroit News this week deriding the 2009 automotive bailout as “crony capitalism” and calling it a sop to the United Auto Workers union for supporting President Barack Obama’s campaign. Romney wins points here for courage and consistency (he has taken this position before), but not for political smarts or judgment.
Romney has found himself in the shaky position of defending Romneycare, the government-financed healthcare plan in Massachusetts, while criticizing the government-financed rescue of GM and Chrysler. It’s hard to see a consistent political philosophy in this, which is why conservatives don’t trust Romney. It’s also hard to understand why, on the eve of Michigan’s critical primary, Romney is criticizing the only Obama domestic-policy initiative that actually has worked.
Not surprisingly, the $81 billion bailout was, and remains, wildly popular in Michigan. But on a more fundamental level, the government bailout was the only way to save General Motors and Chrysler, and thus was a critical element in preventing the Great Recession from morphing into Great Depression II.
Recall that in November 2008, the month Obama was elected, the U.S. economy shed 533,000 jobs, the biggest monthly job loss in more than 30 years. That jolted George W. Bush, a Republican, into action. The first $25 billion in government bailout money was approved by the Bush administration before Obama took office.
While Romney asserts that a “managed bankruptcy” funded by private investors could have rescued General Motors, absolutely no private money was on the horizon in 2009 for either GM or Chrysler. Nobody was raising their hand to buy a used car company, and the frightened banks wouldn’t have financed it anyway. The only alternative to a government bailout was the outright liquidation of both companies. Maybe the U.S. economy could have survived that blow, but maybe not. What’s clear is that it would have been foolhardy to find out.
For both political and philosophical reasons, the Obama administration really didn’t want to bail out Detroit. The potential for accusing the administration of paying off the UAW, as Romney has done, was all too obvious. To the president and his aides, the bailout was sort of like changing a diaper — disgusting but necessary.
I bet $10,000 that Ingrassia is a Democrat voter.
The story is more of a hit job on Romney than an objective set of observations. And that is how Reuters is run: as an election machine for the Obama administration.
Gingrich offers “dream team” to supporters
For a $100 donation, this free poster of Newt Gingrich and his conservative “Dream Team” can be yours.
The poster — featuring the Republican presidential candidate flanked by endorsers of his White House bid — was offered to supporters Tuesday in a new fundraising appeal.
The Dream Team photo was unveiled at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington last week. The Gingrich campaign said it was hit, and now conservatives across the country are clamoring for a copy of their own.
We wondered whether the Gingrich folks were inspired by the reported success of rival Rick Santorum’s sweater vest campaign. But there was no immediate response to an email inquiry about the initial poster offering.
By its own account, the Santorum campaign’s “thank you” gift to small donors — supporters without SuperPAC money — has been a hit too.
The Santorum camp has “extended by popular demand” — for a limited time — its offer of the official Rick Santorum For President sweater vest, which can be had for a minimum contribution of $100. “It’s a great way to show your support for Rick,” the campaign says, describing the vest as 100 percent cotton, made in the USA, and grey (shouldn’t that be g-r-a-y?).
And that’s not even the biggest acknowledgement being offered to people willing to make small contributions to their favorite candidate.
oh man, part of that $100 goes to the guy that photoshopped 20 lbs of bacon fat off Newt’s neck. That’s great. It looks like some kind of poster for CSI: Ignorantville.
