* Norquist to Romney: Ryan owns you: Another telling nugget from the Times story: “Grover Norquist, the Republican strategist who heads Americans for Tax Reform, said in an interview that he did not expect Mr. Romney to lead as president. He just wants him to sign the bills that put Mr. Ryan’s vision into practice.”

MORE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/30/us/politics/paul-ryans-kinetic-rise-in-gop.html?_r=1&ref=politics

Gov. Jerry Brown: Republican Party like a cult

On CBS News’ Face the Nation Sunday morning, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said that politics had changed a “hell of a lot” since he started his career as a public official.

“It’s more polarized, the money is more centrally collected and distributed by the two major parties, there is — particularly on the Republican side — an enforcement of discipline that’s ideological,” he explained. “And as was mentioned today in The Washington Post, it takes on the quality of a cult.”

“We’re in a much more adversarial environment,” Brown continued. “We always had it historically, but now it is ramped up several degrees, as evidenced by the filibusters and the holds on nominations. A great power can’t government itself with this kind of dysfunction.”

.............

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/29/gov-jerry-brown-republican-party-like-a-cult/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%20TheRawStory%20(The%20Raw%20Story)

Source: Talking Points Memo

Gibbs: Romney’s Message Is ‘You Didn’t Clean Up Our Mess Fast Enough’


Top Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs said on Meet the Press Sunday that the “biggest idea” of Obama’s reelection campaign would be a message of continuing “moving in the right direction of fixing this economy.”

“We know this about Mitt Romney,” Gibbs said, “he’s not a job creator. When he was governor of Massachusetts, they were 47th out of 50 in job creation. His experiences in downsizing and outsourcing jobs and bankrupting companies and walking away with a lot of money for himself. His economic ideas are the failed economic ideas that we tried for eight years.”

Gibbs responded to another question about women voters and the economy, saying, “David, their message is: You didn’t clean up our mess fast enough.”

Read more: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/gibbs-romneys-message-is-you-didnt-clean-up?ref=fpb

THE LATEST REPUBLICAN PLAN to reconcile the budget and preserve defense spending extracts even deeper cuts from programs to help the poor and Americans still reeling from the recession. Although spending levels for the budget were set in the Budget Control Act passed last summer in the deal to raise the nation’s debt limit, Republicans are pushing ahead with another plan that cuts more while trying to prevent the beginning of $600 billion in cuts over 10 years to the growth of the defense budget.

MORE:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/food-stamps-military-republican-budget_n_1457020.html?ref=politics
http://underthemountainbunker.com/2012/04/29/morning-bunker-report-sunday-4-29-2012/

Remember how those massive budget cuts in the Romney/Ryan plan fall primarily on poor Americans? The Center for American Progress has a new report detailing how those cuts in turn will affect children:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/04/cuts_to_kids.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/26/1086714/-At-least-22-million-would-go-hungry-under-Ryan-Romney-budget-

How excited are young voters? Compare the Romney audience & the Obama audience at two colleges
Posted on April 28, 2012

Romney gave a speech at Otterbein University in Ohio today, and the crowd was…less than enthralled. It did however provide a stark contrast to President Obama’s recent college appearances, including one just yesterday at the University of Iowa. Compare the two events below:

http://underthemountainbunker.com/2012/04/28/how-excited-are-young-voters-compare-the-romney-audience-the-obama-audience-at-two-colleges/

MARK MORFORD

How Do You Solve a Problem Like The Uppity Nuns?

................

......... Females starting to think for themselves? Showing a modicum of spirit, fire, individuality? This will not do. This way anarchy lies. What's next, lesbianism? Birth control? Acknowledging the Virgin Mary was a nasty myth designed to suppress 10,000 years of hotly fertile, goddess-based pagan belief? Oh wait.

Time for some changes. Time for the angry manhammer of fear to come down. The Vatican has given the LCWR five years to shape up, and it put a man in charge of the process. Because, being mere women, they obviously cannot think, act or figure it out by themselves. And God simply does not abide uppity females. Just ask Eve.

Is it not sort of amazing? Is it not all flavors of classic and timeless in its barely veiled misogyny? It's like 1884 all over again. Or was that 1484? 484? When were the witch trials? When was Hypatia beaten to death for liking math? I get confused.

To be perfectly honest, I can sympathize with the Vatican. Women are dangerous things. Unnerving. They can mess with your head, overwhelm the body, make you feel all sticky and tingly inside, like you just ate a giant chocolate cake made of lighting and orchids and MDMA. They throw you for a loop and take you for a ride and confuse all reality, so much so you can't help but see something as inane as organized religion as completely idiotic and small. It's something about their smell.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-morford/how-to-properly-spank-a-nun_b_1451122.html

FRI APR 27, 2012 AT 09:55 PM PDT
I could have just borrowed half a million from my parents?!
by Anton Bursch



If only I had heard this a decade ago when I was killing myself struggling to work my way into developing video games! Borrow money from my parents! It's just so obvious that I feel stupid for not thinking of it myself! "Mom and Dad, can I borrow half a million dollars to develop a small scale independent video game?"

Oh, wait... right... my parents didn't have half a million dollars for me to borrow from them. Half a million dollars is half of what my dad earned over the course of decades working a good union labor job. Mom and Dad had savings of course, but not enough to loan me start up capital for my own business.

I swear to god. Romney truly is completely out of touch with life for most people living in this country (not to mention the entire world). I knew Romney was running for President out of nothing more than pure selfish ambition, but I haven't seen anyone running for office who was this trapped in their own bubble since... well, the idiot who handed the Mass Senate seat to Scott Brown because she wasn't going to stand "outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?".

....................................

UPDATE:

I believe in encouraging young people to have the guts and tenacity to make their dreams come true in America. I live the belief. Which is why Romney's comment strikes a nerve in me. Romney and his kids will never understand the American dream, because the American dream is something you achieve not something you get handed to you on a silver platter by your super rich parents. You work hard to make sure your kids have more opportunity than you did, but you don't buy them success or kick the ladders of of opportunity out from underneath kids who's parents can't buy them success. That kind of nepotism is the antithesis of the American dream. I just hope enough voters believe in America as the land of opportunity for everyone and have the good sense to vote for President Obama again.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/28/1087092/-I-could-have-just-borrowed-half-a-million-from-my-parents-