Archive for ‘Election 2012’

February 8th, 2012

National GOP in Disarray; President Obama Consolidating Message, Support, & Resources

by PaulM

Since I’m not a party member, I’ve been watching the Republican presidential nomination contest as an interested audience member—it has been a show, but one with profound consequences. Hearing the morning radio news about former US Sen Rick Santorum winning three states last night confirmed was I was sensing from reading various sources on the ‘net. The national GOP is in disarray. Mitt Romney keeps saying, “I’m it,” and the voters keep tagging somebody else.

On the other hand, it looks like President Obama’s re-election team will have the message, organization, and money in place by the summer convention to wage a strong campaign against whomever the GOP sends forward. The stock market and employment numbers are trending in a better direction for the President. The Clint Eastwood ad for Chrysler aired during the Super Bowl could have been a preview of the Obama for America campaign movie, othewise why all the angst in some quarters of the GOP establishment? Romney said don’t interfere with federal government support; let the carmakers fail. Bad call.

I’ll go back to what I wrote here some months ago. I don’t understand why the national Republicans didn’t start with stronger potential opponents to the President. Well, actually, I think I do understand. The “A Team” didn’t think the President could be beat, not really. Why else was there so much oxygen available for jokers like Trump and Cain? So now they have what they have, and the pundits are jabbering about drafting a new standard bearer.

Of course, Republican activists can say the Democrats were in disarray in 2008, with Hillary and Barack beating each other up through the late stages of the primary and caucus season. That was a horror show for weeks, but the Obama team steadily built its delegate count. In the public arena, the Democratic Party was working through an identity crisis. I think it turned out well, but that’s one voter speaking.

“It’s halftime in America. And our second half is about to begin.” A poet wrote that ad copy, I learned yesterday. Nice work.

 

CategoryCulture, Current Events, Election 2012, History, Lowell | CommentNo Comments »

February 3rd, 2012

President’s Veterans Job Corps

by Marie

President Obama has had an ongoing focus on helping veterans and their families. In his State of the Union remarks last week President Obama  announced his plan for American Jobs Act to spur police and firefighter hiring in 2012. This action as well as a plan patterned on FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps are targeted towards helping veterans. Today the details will be revealed  for a $1 billion Veterans Job Corps that the White House says “will put up to 20,000 veterans to work over the next five years on projects to preserve and restore national parks and other federal, state and local lands.”

According to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar the Civilian Conservation Corps - established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Depression to put hundreds of thousands of the unemployed to work on projects in government parks and lands - serves as a “very good indicator” of what the administration hopes to accomplish with the Veterans Job Corps.

Read more here at the washingtonpost.com.

Read the White House press statement “President Obama’s Plan to Put Veterans Back to Work” here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room

CategoryElection 2012, Politics | CommentNo Comments »

February 3rd, 2012

Paul Krugman Puts Romney’s Lack of Concern for the Poor “In Context”

by Marie

In today’s New York Times op-ed colummist Paul Krugman puts former Massachusetts Governor and GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s lack of concern for the poor “in context.” His statement: “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.” has yet again got the pundits and his opponents all stirred-up. You can read Krugman’s take  here and make your own “contextual” evaluation.

CategoryElection 2012, Politics | CommentNo Comments »

January 24th, 2012

State of the Union

by PaulM

Looking forward to the President’s State of the Union address tonight. Remembering January 2009 and the massive gathering on the National Mall for the Inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Here’s a look at the scene by Susan Walsh, a photographer from the Associated Press (web photo courtesy of boston.com)

Here’s a link to more photographs from the Inauguration, including a huge overhead image of the crowd.

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January 22nd, 2012

In Tewksbury ~ Change of Voting Locations and Precinct Maps

by Marie

 Town Library  – Precincts 4 & 4A   (photo from Town of Tewksbury website)

In a move announced by mail by the Town Clerk and sanctioned by the Board of Selectmen, some Tewksbury voters will again be moving to a new location to cast their ballots. The former Town Clerk had consolidated the voting sites to two handicapped-accessible sites – the new Senior Center on Chandler Street and the fairly new Public Library also on Chandler Street but adjacent to Route 38. It was a move that proved to be controversial with some and did see a bit of a log-jam with snow piles and an outpouring of voters for the special election for the U. S. Senate back in January, 2010.

 Tewksbury Senior Center – Precincts 1 & 2 (photo from the Tewksbury Patch)

In an information sheet tucked into the 2012 Census Form envelope, voters learned that Precincts 3 and 3A will be casting ballots at the Lowell Assembly of God Church on Andover Street/Rte. 133 and Precincts 2 and 2A will vote at the Recreation Center on Livingston Street.  Added to the Clerk’s voter information notice - with redistricting at the most local level completed – was a list of fifty streets that have precinct changes.

Tewksbury residents and registered voters need to carefully check the Census mailer for this important information. Also, mail back the Census form ASAP.

 Recreation Center – Precincts 2 & 2A (photo from the Tewksbury Patch)

 Lowell Assembly of God Church – Precincts 3 & 3A (photo from church website)

 

 

CategoryElection 2012, Greater Lowell, History, Politics | Comment1 Comment »

January 22nd, 2012

A Look Through the Red Base Window

by PaulM

What about that Gingrich win? Read this from the Red State blog, courtesy of realclearpolitics.com.

And don’t you think it’s strange that the national GOP got tagged with the “red” label, given all the anti-socialist talk coming from those megaphones? Which art director at which national TV network first decided to color code the electoral maps red and blue—and did he or she ever get credit for that sorting decision?

CategoryCurrent Events, Election 2012, History, Lowell | CommentNo Comments »

January 20th, 2012

‘Lamestream’

by PaulM

I don’t know why I’ve been watching as much TV news coverage of the Republican Party contest for the presidential nomination. I avoid Fox, but even on CNN and MSNBC and what we used to call the “network news” the reporting is staggeringly shallow.

All the talk today, and this extends to public radio broadcasting, was about Newt’s “fury” last night in batting back a question from the debate moderator when John King of CNN asked Newt to respond to his ex-wife’s statements about their marriage or lack thereof. This was considered the top story of the day and the indignant reply was supposed to demonstrate Newt’s power as a political figure, I guess. It was good theater if you like that kind of thing. More interesting to me has been the red-meat audiences in the GOP debate halls this week. It was like the Orcs in “The Lord of the Rings” saying the Age of Men (read: Romneyites) is over. King, himself, was an embarrassment to the profession as he sat and took the tongue-lashing without pressing his right to question Gingrich on this “values” issue. Consider the difference in the following encounter between CBS newsman Dan Rather and President Richard Nixon during the tumultuous 1970s:

Because of his aggressiveness and effectiveness as a reporter, Rather was not  well-liked in the Nixon White house. He was a controversial figure for  television viewers, as well. News watchers either loved him or hated him,  depending on which side of the political fence they sat. During this period,  Rather made news himself thanks to an exchange he had with Nixon during a press  conference at a National Association of Broadcasters convention in Houston. When  Rather rose to ask a question, colleagues spontaneously reacted by either  applauding or booing him. The surprising display caused Nixon to ask him, “Are  you running for something?” Rather quickly replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are  you?” Many saw that as a demonstration of inexcusable arrogance. CBS even  considered firing Rather. (Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/dan-rather#ixzz1k3VrDjRn)

The reporting on Stephen Colbert’s mock rally in South Carolina that was somehow linked to the disgraced but chuckling Herman Cain took the whole business over the absurd cliff. One broadcaster said the 3,000 people in Colbert’s crowd was bigger than he had seen for any of the actual candidates. This is what we get in a democratic republic. It’s a free-for-all. That’s OK, but I still expect the “press” or “media” to do the reality check and sort out fact from fiction. Too often it seems that the political reporters are simply paraphrasing what has been said. Even commentary programs like Chris Matthews’ daily grill spend too much time on distractions. They show up for the show instead of revealing an alternative narrative that might explain why the voters are either satisfied or not with what is going on. They accept the unreality that Trump and Cain and Gingrich represent as fuel for the fire that they want to keep us watching. I’m not happy that they get me over and over when I should know better.

 

CategoryElection 2012, History, Lowell | Comment1 Comment »

January 16th, 2012

Elizabeth Warren in Mother Jones

by Marie

Elizabeth Warren in Lowell, November 2011

In the January/February edition of Mother Jones Magazine, writer Tim Murphy talks about the revenge of Wall Street and its target Elizabeth Warren and her campaign for the U. S. Senate in Massachusetts. For her sin of taking on the banks, Warren is unrepentant and unbowed by the attack-mode and notes:

“I’ve  gone toe-to-toe with some of the most powerful corporations out there in  this country,” she says. “Toe-to-toe with the largest financial  institutions. And toe-to-toe with people in our own government.” She  pauses for effect and gives the table a light rap with her fist. “I  don’t plan to stop. Ever.”

Read the full article here at  motherjones.com.

CategoryElection 2012, History, Lowell, Politics | CommentNo Comments »

January 15th, 2012

‘Checking the Property’

by PaulM

With Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. being remembered tomorrow in a special way across the nation, I went back to a prose poem written after a family visit to Washington, D.C., in the early summer of 2004, another presidential election year. We were months away from seeing Barack Obama make news with a speech at the Democratic Party’s convention in Boston, and the extraordinary memorial for Dr. King was yet to be installed on the National Mall. — PM

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Checking the Property

My nine-year-old son says, “I’m going to read the ‘Gettysburg Address’”—on the other side is the lesser-known second inaugural speech. What’s the Lincoln shorthand? Freed the slaves; saved the union. People crowd the marble steps at dusk. A sign asks for silence. When he sees my wife lining up a snapshot, a guy in a straw cowboy hat offers to take a picture of my brother’s family, my wife, son, and me in the glow of the civic temple. Climbing the steps, I caught sight of the figure set behind the columns, and then lost him because of the steep ascent, only to come upon the sculpture again near the top, where visitors gaze at the huge seated president, whose massive square-toed boot juts out, looking as if it could kick Jeff Davis’ football the length of the Reflecting Pool and onto the white spike of the Washington Monument, which, in the after-supper hour reflects sun along its narrow western face, a mighty glo-stik on the national common, a staunch obelisk, a big white numeral standing for the first president, who set the constitutional republic in motion, the stone blocks a different shade on the top half, marking a stop in work and resumption, the monument telling its own story, one in which protesters rolled cut stones into the drink, foreshadowing later protests and rallies and comings together, like the 1963 March on Washington that brought Martin Luther King to these same steps to declare his dream of a nation at last free for all, the same steps where Joan Baez and Bob Dylan sang for justice and where Dylan returned to sing for Bill Clinton’s booming inaugural, the same steps movie-land Vietnam vet Forrest Gump spoke from and from which he spotted his life-long love and source of ache splashing toward him, the same pool in which the spaceship crashed in the Planet of the Apes remake, this electric stretch of public land without timber or copper, a wide open space in which to make a verb of America—to recall and celebrate and to do democratic research and development in this red clay-lined lab, bordered and crowded with evidence of the ongoing experiment, and bearing key formulas and equations inscribed in stone.

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—Paul Marion (c) 2004

 

CategoryCulture, Election 2012, History, Lowell, Poetry | CommentNo Comments »

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January 12th, 2012

Bill Moyers Back on TV

by PaulM

From truth-out.org, I picked up news that Bill Moyers has a new TV program. He keeps coming back, I think, because nobody else has figured out how to do the kinds of shows he is so well known for, mixing high-minded thinking, compassionate political ideas, and entertaining broadcast methods. Read about his new show here.

 

CategoryCulture, Election 2012, History, Lowell | Comment1 Comment »

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