Crocodile Tears


Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers corporate front group, has been running in eleven swing states an ad (video, below) in which former Obama supporters express their sadness that Barack Obama has failed to be the superstar they expected.  According to a Wall Street Journal blogger

“In 2008, I voted for President Obama with no reluctance,” says Richard, a silver-haired caucasian.  Talking about the deficit, Richard adds, “He inherited a bad situation, but he made it worse.”

A woman named Robin, wearing a Star of David around her neck, says, “I still believe in hope and change,” an Obama campaign slogan from 2008, “I just don’t think Obama’s the way to go for that.”

A woman named Maria says “I think he’s a great person, I don’t think feel is the right leader for our country, though.”

All three speak with a tone of sadness, not anger, which a Republican ad strategist says won’t “put off” independent and undecided voters.

Mitt Romney is sad, too, if his acceptance speech last night is any indication.   He lamented

This was the hope and change America voted for....Many of you felt that way on Election Day four years ago. Hope and Change had a powerful appeal.... When that hard fought election was over, when the yard signs came down and the television commercials finally came off the air, Americans were eager to go back to work, to live our lives the way Americans always have – optimistic and positive and confident in the future.

Romney added "I wish President Obama had succeeded because I want America to succeed.   But his promises gave way to disappointment and division.

Oh, boo hoo.      It's hard to believe the former Massachusetts governor, who on November 5, 2008 began his quest to become the 45th President of the United States, was secretly aching for Barack Obama to succeed.  Still, Romney was not in public office and could have little impact on the Obama presidency.

Not so Paul Ryan, then ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee.  Sam Stein reported in October

As President Barack Obama was celebrating his inauguration at various balls, top Republican lawmakers and strategists were conjuring up ways to submarine his presidency at a private dinner in Washington.

The event -- which provides a telling revelation for how quickly the post-election climate soured -- serves as the prologue of Robert Draper's much-discussed and heavily-reported new book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives."

According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 people in total) included Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). The non-lawmakers present included Newt Gingrich, several years removed from his presidential campaign, and Frank Luntz, the long-time Republican wordsmith. Notably absent were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) -- who, Draper writes, had an acrimonious relationship with Luntz.

For several hours in the Caucus Room (a high-end D.C. establishment), the book says they plotted out ways to not just win back political power, but to also put the brakes on Obama's legislative platform.

"If you act like you're the minority, you're going to stay in the minority," Draper quotes McCarthy as saying. "We've gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign."

We don't know whether Paul D. Ryan was a ringleader of the conspiracy to take down President Obama or a mere participant.   But "it's amusing," The New York Times' David Firestone writes, "to hear Mr. Romney declare that Americans should throw Mr. Obama out of office if every day isn't special or exciting."   And it's outrageous that now, after their party did all it could to sabotage the President, some Republicans are feigning sadness and despair that Obama has not been a combination of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.








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Hardly Bold



There it was- twice- in Paul Ryan's lecture acceptance speech (transcript, here) last night at the Repub National Convention in Tampa, Florida:   a reference to "responsibility."   Halfway in, Ryan remarked

Ladies and gentlemen, these past four years we have suffered no shortage of words in the White House. What's missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell, forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago— isn't it about time he assumed responsibility?

Near the end, Ryan used the word again, claiming "We will not duck the tough issues, we will lead. We will not spend four years blaming others, we will take responsibility."

After taking apart Mitt Romney as someone who "takes on the really tough issues," as Chris Christie put it the night before, Ezra Klein writes on his Wonkblog

But if you’re looking for a guy who doesn’t duck the tough issues, who never obscures the hard truths, who tells you the unpleasant facts you don’t want to hear, who isn’t deterred by the polls, Romney isn’t your guy. Christie or Ryan may be, but Romney isn’t.

That's being far too kind to the New Jersey Governor (he of the budgetary sleight-of-hand), but  Christie isn't running for anything this year.  Paul Ryan, tragically, is.    The Hill on August 21 reported

Paul Ryan attacked President Obama over looming cuts to the defense budget during a campaign stop at a helicopter museum in Pennsylvania on Tuesday afternoon, saying the president would be responsible for putting at risk "almost 44,000 jobs."

The vice presidential hopeful said "national defense is the first priority of the federal government," framing the sequestration deal as a failing of presidential leadership. The House Budget Committee chairman said Democrats wanted the GOP to choose between "tax hikes on small businesses" and cuts to the Pentagon.

"It's either lose defense related jobs in Pennsylvania or put small businesses further at a competitive disadvantage … I got a good idea – why don’t we take away President Obama’s job and create jobs for everybody no matter what industry they are in?" Ryan said.

In response, Talking Point Memo's Benjy Sarlin noted

Despite Ryan’s new attack, he not only voted for the bill containing the cuts, he went out of his way to tout just how difficult it is to undo them.

“What conservatives like me have been fighting for, for years, are statutory caps on spending, legal caps in law that says government agencies cannot spend over a set amount of money,” Ryan told FOX News’s Sean Hannity shortly after the agreement was reached last August. “And if they breach that amount across the board, sequester comes in to cut that spending, and you can’t turn that off without a super-majority vote. We got that in law.”

Like many Republicans who publicly praised the deal’s passage, Ryan has since joined in condemning the cuts and blaming Democrats for the bill they signed onto.

Even before the final bill, Ryan expressed willingness to put defense cuts on the table in order to bring down government spending.

“You can’t throw $700 billion at a government agency and not expect waste to occur,” Ryan said in January 2011.

It’s not the first time Ryan has attacked his own legislation on the trail in recent weeks. After including $716 billion in Medicare savings in his previous two House budgets, he now routinely condemns the cuts as a devastating blow to seniors in campaign speeches.

If we want someone to tell us unpleasant truths, it isn't Mitt Romney or Chris Christie.  And it surely isn't Paul Ryan, no matter how often he will tell you that is exactly what he's doing.

 


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Exceptionalism Misunderstood



Alex Pareene, blogging in Salon, notes

There’s obviously a weird contradiction between the “new American Century” talk and the “face up to the fact that we can’t spend money on things like education and infrastructure and entitlements” message but that’s just how Hard Truth-Tellers roll.

There is also a contradiction, one common to Republicans nowadays, in simultaneously claiming "exceptionalism" for America while denying its actual existence.

In his keynote address, Chris Christie targeted "an enormous government that has overtaxed, overspent and over-borrowed a great people into second-class citizenship."  Clearly, the Governor, arguing "we stand up once again for American greatness," believes the U.S.A. is not now great, apparently  because we are suffering under the yoke of an oppressive, Democratic government with a president who lacks "leadership."

Predictably, the confused governor does not cite as "great" such things as increasing opportunities for women and minorities in higher education and the workforce; the large numbers of individuals skilled in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduating from American colleges; a transportation network accessible to most citizens; or even the nation's unparalleled military strength buoyed by the sacrifice of (mostly) young men and women throughout the nation.

Instead, Governor Christie claims "Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths we need to hear to end the debacle of putting the world's greatest health care system in the hands of federal bureaucrats and putting those bureaucrats between an American citizen and her doctor." Obviously, the traditional service for fee, privately-based health care system places the insurance company between the citizen and his or her doctor.   Christie knows this, but exuding a crude gruffness has gained him an undeserved reputation for candor.

We now have information more current than the World Health Organization study in 2000 ranking the U.S.A. 37th in health care worldwide.   The Atlantic's Brian Fung explains

It's an uphill climb by any measure to argue that the United States has the world's best health-care system, bar none. If the claim were true, then under no circumstance should the United States find itself behind its peers. Under very few circumstances, at any rate, if we're being generous. And yet... Let's start by considering these two facts from the OECD: We spend at least -- at least -- 53 percent more on health care per capita than any other nation in the developed world. We also pay more than three times what the British or the French pay out of pocket per capita on health care -- that's the third-highest rate among all OECD nations.

You might think spending a lot leads to superior outcomes; that might be true in some instances, but certainly not in so many that we could claim first place overall. For instance, we've got the fourth worst rate for infant mortality in the OECD. The United States is third-to-last in terms of mortality for children under 20, and it's 12th from the bottom when it comes to child suicide. We have the second-highest teen birth rate in the OECD, we're eighth from last on overall life expectancy at birth, and we're tied with Slovenia for third-worst place in terms of doctor density -- a count of how many doctors are available per 1,000 citizens

In 2009, we were in fourth-to-last place in terms of health insurance coverage rates (Excel) -- ahead of Chile, Mexico, and Turkey, but behind the Slovak Republic, Estonia, and Poland. As a percentage of total health expenditures, we rank seventh when it comes to prioritizing preventive care; countries that spend more on preventive services include Canada, New Zealand, Slovenia, and Hungary. Our hospital admission rates for heart attack patients alone are astronomical; compared to other Western developed countries, Americans can expect to go back to the hospital after a myocardial infarction a whopping 68 percent more than their foreign-born peers.

Again, we're great in a lot of ways. America has some of the best doctors, the best technology, and an amazing repository of medical and scientific knowledge. But to have an intelligent conversation about the future of health care, we ought to be realistic about what the country has and hasn't accomplished.

Facts, however, don't matter, at least to a guy like Christie.  America, he implies, is great, but not now, a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of American exceptionalism. President Obama, the 112th Congress, or the federal judiciary as currently composed may not be great.   But if the U.S.A. is exceptional- which it probably is, though in ways the GOP does not recognize- it was yesterday, is today, and will be tomorrow, irrespective of the occupant of the White House, the party controlling Congress, or judges currently sitting on the federal bench.   It's a tough concept for those Republicans, such as Paul Ryan, Ann Romney, and Chris Christie, who believe America is great, but only when their guys run it.




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Copying Barack Obama



Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack (Kennedy).

I did not serve with Barack Obama, nor do I know him, and therefore he is no friend of mine.But I know Christopher J. Christie is no Barack Obama.

But Chris Christie thinks he will be Barack Obama II.    Salon's Alex Pareene states what is obvious, but cannot be stated enough:

Chris Christie’s keynote address at the Republican National Convention referenced “Darkness on the Edge of Town” because the thing about Chris Christie is that he is from New Jersey and he loves Bruce Springsteen. His keynote speech was a lengthy tribute to the greatness of Chris Christie, who is not on the ballot this year. I think the idea is to replicate an Obama in 2004 moment, but that moment depends on the nominee losing.

Chris Christie is all about Chris Christie, but in the age of Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and (especially) Paul Ryan, that is not so unusual. Words matter, even when they have little policy implication and are meant to appeal to emotion. On the occasion of his keynote speech (transcript, here) at a party convention in 2004, B.O. declared

It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family: "E pluribus unum," out of many, one.

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.

Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

Chris Christie tried (transcript, here) to emulate Barack Obama last night but his greatest rhetorical flourish was an uninspiring invocation of the technique of anaphora, in which he proclaimed

I won't be part of the generation that fails that test and neither will you.

It's now time to stand up. There's no time left to waste.

If you're willing to stand up with me for America's future, I will stand up with you.

If you're willing to fight with me for Mitt Romney, I will fight with you.

If you're willing to hear the truth about the hard road ahead, and the rewards for America that truth will bear, I'm here to begin with you this new era of truth-telling.

In other instances, Christie stated "we did it" four times in succession, a variation of "I was her son" five times, and "a second American century" five times four consecutive sentences.But all of it was weak tea compared to Obama's declaration

I believe that we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity.

I believe we can provide jobs for the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair.

I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs, and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices and meet the challenges that face us.

But though Christie's rhetoric was far surpassed by that of Barack Obama, the Governor exceeded the Senator in one area.     While Obama invoked the word "America" (as in "United States of America," "America," or "American people") 27 times, Christie did so a whopping 33 times.   No politician ever lost a vote referring to America, especially without clarifying it as the "United States of America," which would, uncomfortably, remind voters that there are such places as Central America, South America, and the North American continent.

There was, additionally, the obligatory family history, intended to portray the speaker as humble, and which serves to obscure the reality that the he or she now is wealthy and living a life of comfort and opulence.   For Obama, it was a father from a small village in Kenya, who attended school in a tin-roof shack, and a mother born in Kansas, a state that nearly cries "humility;" a grandfather who served under General Patton and a grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line.  For Christie, it was a father who "grew up in poverty," entered the army, and became "the first in his family to earn a college degree."  And of course his mother "also came from nothing," was "raised by a single mother who took three buses to get to work every day."   She was, though, "tough as nails and didn't suffer fools at all," which excited a GOP crowd for whom the only acceptable feminism is one manifested in aggressiveness and the ability to prevail over the meek.

Senator Obama's keynote speech was much longer on flowing rhetoric than on praise for his party's nominee, John Kerry.    Governor Christie took the same tack, referring to Mitt Romney a mere eight times, after which he returned to speaking about America and himself, between which he cannot distinguish.

The Governor's self-absorption extended to his portrayal of his stewardship of New Jersey. He inferred that he reversed a trend "that led to wealth, jobs, and people leaving the state" and "balanced (three) budgets with lower taxes."

But the New Jersey governor neglected to mention, as Democratic State Senator Barbara Buono has, that he vetoed a millionaires' tax and now wants to reduce income taxes across-the-board, giving the wealthy another huge gift, while residents have endured a 20% net increase in property taxes during his first two years in office.   Nor did he inform the conventioneers that he cut state aid for education, property tax relief for the elderly, and government worker pensions, all contrary to campaign promises.    It's not surprising that he never mentioned once the word "jobs," given that there are 175,000 fewer jobs in his state now than there were in December, 2007.  And New Jersey suffered the greatest employment loss, 12,000 jobs, s in the nation in July.  The state ranked 47th in the nation in economic growth in 2010 and 2011.

Generously, Buono omitted reference to the assault on women's health carried on by her state's chief executive.

Unlike Senator Obama, Governor Christie won't fulfill the objective of his keynote speech. Obviously, his path will be blocked in the unlikely event the guy he ignored last night, Mitt Romney, pulls off an upset in November. Otherwise, he will face opposition from any number of unexpected sources, the 2016 equivalent of Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain.   Or perhaps Republican primary voters or the GOP establishment will decide to bypass a belligerent, narcissistic blowhard.

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A Few Conservative Mouths


What is it with these celebrity conservatives?

(Way) over-the-hill rock performer Ted Nugent earned himself a visit from the Secret Service when in April he exclaimed at a National Rifle Association convention  “if Barack Obama becomes the president in November, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year."  Nugent added “If you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to clean house in this vile, evil, America-hating administration, I don’t even know what you’re made of."

(Way) over-the-hill actor (who nevertheless deserves credit for acknowledging his time is up) actor Jon Voight, in Tampa for the Gas and Oil Party convention, remarked "Hollywood community is historically conservative, All the people that I so admired growing up were very patriotic and loved the country.”  He says he got involved in left-wing "nonsense" in the 1960s but  “I’m quite ashamed of it, actually. . . I know as much as anybody about this stuff and I know how poisonous it is.”

Apparently, only conservatives are patriotic.   So it's good to know that Rush Limbaugh, who flatly stated "I hope Obama fails" (and later defended the remark); Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who flatly stated "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president"; and congressional Republicans, who engineered a downgrade of U.S. debt in pursuit of McConnell's goal, all are liberals.

Nugent and Voight serve merely (merely?) to move the conversation slightly more to the right and to remind the Tea Party and others on the far right that the GOP is theirs.    But (somewhat) over-the-hill comedian Dennis Miller has a conservative, Republican syndicated talk show.    And last night he told Jay Leno's Tonight Show audience

I don’t think the president does himself any service having that moron Joe Biden fronting for him out there.    They say Paul has six percent body fat. I guarantee Biden’s got eight between his ears....Biden’s so silly they ought to put one of those plastic dog collars they put around your neck, that they give your dog when they snip his balls so he doesn’t hurt himself.

Nothing says love of country more than calling the Vice President of the United States a "moron" who should be treated like a dog.   And then adding an obscenity.   And Miller will continue to be taken seriously by not only the Republican Party but Hollywood and the mainstream media.

There is, appallingly, not much of a disadvantage (or as they now say, "downside") to such outrageous statements.   Not when Mitt Romney spokesman, Andrea Saul, responding to the remark from Nugent investigated as a possible threat to the life of the President, responds "everyone needs to be civil... Divisive language is offensive no matter what side of the political aisle it comes from."

Such remarks, however, are far from uncivil or "divisive."     And they come far more from one "side of the political aisle" than from the other.





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No Concession Left Behind


The Christian Science Monitor noted in May

President Obama says he had already decided to endorse gay marriage sometime before the Democratic National Convention in September, but Vice President Joe Biden forced the issue last Sunday when he spoke out in favor of marriage equality.  
“He probably got out a little over his skis, but out of generosity of spirit,” Mr. Obama said in an interview that aired Thursday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “Would I have preferred to have done this in my own way on my own terms without, I think, there being a lot of notice to everybody? Of course. But all’s well that ends well.”

Obama’s declaration of support for gay marriage on Wednesday, when the ABC interview took place, capped a series of events that appeared to corner the president on a hot-button social issue. On Sunday, Mr. Biden stated, in response to a question, that he was “absolutely comfortable” with gay marriage – though making clear that he was speaking for himself and not the president. On Monday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who is close to Obama, also said for the first time publicly that he supports gay marriage.

It was an easy call for Obama to support the concept of same-sex marriage once his Vice-President and his loathsome Education Secretary came out for the idea (yes, pun intended).He had, after all, been "evolving" (isn't that just precious?) on the issue.   Not so on other issues.

On August 14, Vice-President Biden was speaking to a mostly over 60-crowd at The Coffee Break Cafe in Stuart, Virginia when a patron, as NBC News reported it, "expressed his relief that the Obama campaign wasn't talking about changing the popular entitlement program." Biden responded "Number one, I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security.  I flat guarantee you."

But when it comes to income maintenance and health care for the elderly, Obama is not so easily swayed.  On August 7, The New York Times reported (emphasis mine)

The news media have played a crucial role in Mr. Obama’s career, helping to make him a national star not long after he had been an anonymous state legislator. As president, however, he has come to believe the news media have had a role in frustrating his ambitions to change the terms of the country’s political discussion. He particularly believes that Democrats do not receive enough credit for their willingness to accept cuts in Medicare and Social Security, while Republicans oppose almost any tax increase to reduce the deficit.

Following a presidential press conference on August 20, we read in The Huffington Post

the biggest thing Congress could do for the economy is to reach a deal on "a sensible approach" to reducing the deficit, he said. Obama specifically urged congressional leaders to revisit the revenues and spending cuts that were on the table during last year's negotiations on the debt.

"I continue to be open to seeing Congress approach this with a balanced plan that has tough spending cuts, building on the $1 trillion worth of spending cuts we've already made, but also asks for additional revenue from folks like me, folks in the top 1 or 2 percent," said the president. That would give more "certainty" to families and small businesses.

Whether reducing the deficit would profoundly improve the economy in the long-term is plausible, though hardly certain. "Tough spending cuts" clearly are not the way to pull the U.S. economy out of the pit of a slump, notwithstanding Obama's perspective.  

Just so there is no confusion and the voters understand where he is going with this, the President in an interview on August 25 with the Silicon Valley Mercury News stated

I don’t think it would be a good idea to pursue an approach that voucherizes Medicare and raises taxes on middle-class families to give wealthy individuals a tax break. So if that’s the mandate that Republicans receive, then there’s still going to be some serious arguments here in Washington.

But what I’m offering the American people is a balanced approach that the majority agrees with, including a lot of Republicans. And for me to be able to say to the Republicans, the election is over; you no longer need to be focused on trying to beat me; what you need to be focused on and what you should have been focused on from the start is how do we advance the American economy—I’m prepared to make a whole range of compromises, some of which I get criticized from the Democratic Party on, in order to make progress. But we’re going to need compromise on your side as well. And the days of viewing compromise as a dirty word need to be over because the American people are tired of it.

The President suggests if Republicans "pursue an approach that voucherizes Medicare," he will recognize it as a "mandate that Republicans receive."   Therefore, he is not "poised to oppose their dangerous scheme" nor will he tell them to "hit the road."   Instead, Republicans beware:   we will hit you with "some serious arguments."

And Barack Obama will pursue a "balanced approach."    Congress approves the Budget Control Act of 2011, in which sequestration would provide a cut in spending of $917 billion in ten year, $487 billion in defense, the rest in non-discretionary social spending.    The GOP, not surprisingly, is fine with the reduction for the middle class and the poor but is squealing about the defense cuts.  But surveying the landscape, the President tells the Mercury-News his "message" will

resonate not with every Republican, but I think with a lot of fair-minded Republican legislators who probably feel somewhat discouraged about having served in one of the least productive Congresses in American history.

And I hear—not in public, but in private—that many of them would like to go ahead and get some stuff done because they recognize that our children and our grandchildren have a stake in us being able to get this work done.

Following the President's press conference of August 20, Digby commented

I don't have a clue how to stop this train.  Having the zombie eyed granny starver on the ticket hasn't changed their view that the Grand Bargain to slash 4 trillion in government programs in the middle of an epic slump is still great policy and even better politics.  But don't worry.  They'll ask millionaires to "pay a little more" so it's all good. I'm feeling more "confident" already.

Basically we have a choice between the Republicans dystopian hellscape or the Democrats' long slow jobless recovery with even more insecurity for the poor and middle class. Or actually, it's more likely to be a "compromise" between the two.  After all, these are the opening bids.

Barack Obama is either being dragged, kicking and screaming, into accepting the GOP agenda or he really aims to be a transformative President, like the 40th President he so admires.    And this is the better option in November.




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Fire From Heaven


Mike Huckabee is wiser than we- or even he- thought.  According to Politico

This could be a Mount Carmel moment," said the former Arkansas governor, referring to the holy battle between Elijah and the prophets of Baal in the book of Kings.  "You know, you bring your gods.  We'll bring ours.  We'll see whose God answers the prayers and brings fire from heaven.  That's kind of where I'm praying: that there will be fire from heaven, and we'll see it clearly, and everyone else will too."

Reverend Huckabee, who chose a reference to "fire from heaven" when speaking of Representative Todd Akin's remarks about abortion,  may have been speaking more literally than he thought.

The National Research Council has projected (map below) the increase in wildfires with a map which "shows the percent increase in expected wildlife burn areas" based on a conservative assumption of a 1% increase in global average temperatures and relative to the median area burning from 1950 to 2003.

Or perhaps the "fire from heaven" recognized by the ordained Southern Baptist minister is less literal, but more immediate, than wildfires breaking out at unprecedented levels fueled by drought brought on by climate change.  The Chicago Tribune reports

"Due to the severe weather reports for the Tampa Bay area, the Republican National Convention is going to convene on Monday August 27th and then immediately recess until Tuesday afternoon, August 28th," (chairman Reince) Priebus told reporters in a telephone briefing.

He said members of the RNC, the Romney staff and officals who are running the convention made the decision unanimously in light of the weather situation.

Tropical Storm Isaac storm has pummeled Haiti, killing at least four people and has now moved onto Cub.

Fueled by warm Gulf waters, Isaac was forecast to strengthen into a Category 2 hurricane with 100-mph (160-kph) winds and hit the U.S. coast somewhere between the Florida Pahandle and New Orleans around midweek.

In 2004, the GOP cut short its convention in St. Paul, Minnesota because of Hurricane Gustav in the Gulf.    Senator McCain recognized climate change and campaigned as a supporter of cap-and-trade.   Since then, however, Republicans have become increasingly suspicious of science and far fewer of their elected officials and political officeholders have acknowledged the existence of global warming, let alone the human contribution to it, than have denied reality.   This year's party platform is reputed to be silent on the issue.

One party, in the presence of increasing heat, drought, wildfires, and extreme weather events, pretends nothing is happening as it has been forced to change the schedule of its national convention for the second time in a row.   In the presence of increasing heat, drought, incidence of wildfires, and extreme weather events, it bows to its corporate benefactors and averts its eyes.   Politicians suspend belief and the national media looks the other way.    God, however, is not so blind, and not amused.


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