Election Day

Men and women of this once glorious country, I call upon you to do your civic duty and given right to cast your vote for the United States Presidential Election today, November 6th 2012.

Now I know I have been very critical of Gov. Romney and his running-mate Paul Ryan, and trust me I will continue to be as long as they remain in politics. But in all honestly and fairness I wish both Republicans, Democrats, and Independent runners the best of luck and that God, Allah, Buddha or what ever forces may be bless you in your endeavors. I personally will be voting for our current Commander in Chef, Barack Obama, but no matter who you support just remember to get out there and cast your ballot.

And to you out there that have no plans on participating in the election, I don't want to hear your complaining about whomever gets elected. If it's so important to you then you should have gotten up off your butt and voted.

Pinocchio for President

Over last weekend Gov. Mitt Romney began airing a political ad in Ohio specifically focusing on the auto industry, one of Ohio's biggest career areas. Now to most folks this is fairly commonplace during presidential  election time, but the thing that's got everyone's attention is the wonderful little morsel that Romney set before us but didn't think we'd notice. His incredibly blatant lie to Ohioans about their own industry. In a tv spot ad Romney has been stating that, "Obama sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China". However Chairman and CEO of Chrysler, Sergio Marchionne, gave a reply to local papers and news stations stating that Chrysler has "no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China". Well now, you'd think to save his rear end Romney would correct himself and move on to his next political agenda. But no, what does he do? Romney goes on to make several more radio and television ads stating the same lie. Mr. Marchionne stated again to the press saying "I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from North America to China", and what does Romney do? He releases another radio ad stating the lie over again and saying the auto industry is a huge failure. Now that Romney shoved the entire auto industry into the same pile General Moters felt Romney targeting them too and their spokesman stated "We've clearly entered some parallel universe... campaign politics at its cynical worst" and "At this stage, we're looking at Hubble telescope-length distance between campaign ads and reality". Now see it's one thing if Romney was lying about Medicare or Welfare, but he's lying to people who work in the auto industry in the heart of that industry's territory and as Rachel Meddow of The Rachel Meddow Show said: "You can tell Romney's lie about Jeep isn't going to work in Ohio in part because Ohio voters follow the car industry like it's the local football team". So it's obvious Romney is getting scared that he's losing the election if he's pulling stunts like this in a hail mary-esk attempt to snag Ohio voters. Honestly, do we really want a president that lies so horribly that he trips over it in public?

Binders Full of Women

And – and so we – we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women's groups and said: "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women.

  

This is the infamous quote that left Romney’s lips yesterday, October 16^th 2012, that made women across the country scowl at the presidential hopeful. In the second presidential debate, women's issues finally came up. And Mitt Romney had an opportunity to show female voters he cared. But from his bullying of moderator Candy Crowley to his dismissive description of his hiring practices, he fumbled the chance. “Binders full of women”, his badly chosen phrase became the meme of the night and will likely haunt him past Halloween.

An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men. And I – and I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are – are all men." They said: "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications."

Now I don’t know about you but last I check in 2003 (when Romney was building said cabinet) there were plenty of highly educated and more then qualified women he could have had placed onto his cabinet. This isn't the 1800's when women didn't even go to college.

But why did the phrase “Binders full of women” resonate? Because it was tone deaf, condescending and out of touch with the actual economic issues that women are so bothered about. The phrase objectified and dehumanized women. It played right into the perception that so many women have feared about a Romney administration – that a president Romney would be sexist and set women back. Because of Romeny and Ryan the rights of women are in jeopardy and the country is becoming more and more aware of it.

Segments and paraphrasing used from The Guardian

Welcome Aboard

Greetings and salutations ladies and gents. I'm Jon, your snarky political moderator. I like to think of myself as an unaffiliated political party member, due to the fact that I find both the Democratic and Republican parties incompetent a majority of the time. This blog is where I'll bring you the facts of news and politics and where I'll also bitch on occasion about particular issues that strike an unpleasant cord with me. I hope you enjoy and become informed with the information I place before you, and please, give your feed back. Agree, disagree, argue, defend.


Sincerely Yours,
Jon W.