Doubting Thomas fundies give Romney another once-over

Reporting from the Values (sic) Voters tent revival summit:

They know they’re not crazy about Mitt Romney. But if the cultural conservatives gathered at a Values Voters Summit this weekend split among Rick Perry and other contenders they do like, it could wind up benefiting the front-running White House hopeful who troubles rather than excites them.

That scenario, playing out on the campaign trail, is on display at the gathering of conservatives who care deeply about abortion, gay marriage and other social issues.

[...]

For the conservative voters at the conference, Romney has a problematic history. He supported abortion rights earlier in his political career and has struggled to explain why he now opposes abortion. He once vowed to be a strong advocate for gays and lesbians – stronger than Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., whom he was then running against. Now, he’s signed a pledge from the National Organization for Marriage to work to pass a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Romney is also a Mormon, a faith that has sparked suspicion among some evangelical conservatives.

“Personally, I know Romney isn’t one of my choices. We saw him four years ago and decided against him,” said Dan Goddu, a software engineer from Nashua, N.H., who attended the Values Voters Summit.

Mittens gets his turn on the podium today. At some point this weekend there will be yet another straw poll. Perry, Santorum, and Cain all took their shots gave their sermons pandered like bears yesterday.

Drawing distinctions from Romney, Texas Gov. Perry told the crowd on Friday, “For some candidates, pro-life is an election-year slogan to follow the prevailing political winds.”

Likewise, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum declared, “You know that I have never put social issues and values voters on the back burner. I have been out there fighting and leading the charge.”

Later, the crowd reacted more strongly to former pizza company CEO Herman Cain’s speech than to any of the other candidates. Attendees stood up repeatedly to cheer.

“You can pursue liberty all you want to as long as you don’t tread on somebody else’s life, and that includes the life of the unborn,” he said. Cain also said he was now being criticized because national polls have showed him joining the top tier of candidates.

His reception, Santorum’s pitch and the other conservative candidates’ appearances underscored the problem for Perry, Romney’s chief challenger on the right. The Texan is not the only GOP candidate who can make a plausible case to evangelical Christian conservatives.

That's accurate: Bachmann and Gingrich are going to get an at-bat at some point. I suspect they will do their best Ryan Howard - A-Rod impersonation.

Thus many Doubting Thomas fundavangelicals, in the wake of Perry's implosion and ahead of the field in confronting the reality of the Republican electoral dilemma, are reluctantly kicking Romney's tires again. The real morons -- the mostly secular, libertarian conservatives usually referred to as the Tea Party -- have flocked to Flavor of the Week "Herb" Cain. And they'll stampede like lemmings away from him soon enough.

Can the TP overlook Mitt's many flip-flops? Republicans of all persuasions seem completely capable of ignoring hypocrisy, so I believe the answer is probably yes. Romney-Rubio 2012. (But he'd put Bachmann on the ticket if he had any stones).

And Ron Paul for President on the Libertarian ticket. And Michele Bachmann for President on the Constitution Party ticket.

We need more "third" parties, and we need more people with the courage and conviction to vote FOR third parties.

It's the only way the two-party duopoly will ever change.

How's that for burying the lede?

Occupy Houston yesterday

Wore my black suit, my white shirt, and picked out a tie that I would be most likely not to be upset about if it got ruined -- you know, mud or blood or something -- and jumped the train downtown early yesterday morning to join the march by 8:30 a.m.

I counted about 200 people at the assembly area, walked over to say hello to Richard Shaw of the AFL-CIO, and gave a lengthy interview to a Bloomberg.com reporter who furiously took notes (no camera). She asked me my age, where I was from, what I did for a living, my tax bracket, my annual income ... and whether that was a Hermes tie I was wearing. I said, "I don't think so," and turned it over to look at the label. Neiman Marcus. *heavy sigh*

The march began at nine and we stopped just a few blocks away in front of the Chase tower, chanted "They got bailed out, we got sold out" and some other things while people in the building came out and took pictures of us. There were about 50 yards of empty plaza between us, with a handful of HPD spaced appropriately between. A good video of that scene from FOX 26:



On to City Hall and the reflecting pool grounds in front, where we scaled the steps and got a little louder at the front door before moving back to the top-step staging area. I estimated the crowd at around 500 by now; several people spoke and more announcements about the continuing occupation were made. Around 10:30 a single conservative disruptor with a sign that said "Blame Yourselves!" waded in to the assembly, was surrounded quickly by maybe six HPD officers, escorted several feet back and  maintained his self-appointed police security while a handful of people exchanged vocal pleasantries with him. I left the protest at 11 a.m. with a gritty slime around my neck that was assembling itself to trickle down my back. By the time I made it to the Main Street light rail station in front of the Foley's/Macy's and boarded the southbound, I was whipped. Sore feet, sore back, sweated all the way through the collar to the afore-mentioned neckwear.

I was interviewed by ABC-13, FOX 26, some radio station whose call letters I didn't catch, and the Bloomberg.com reporter mentioned previously (must have been the suit). But I don't appear to have survived any video edits Pardon me. FOX 26 did give me some airtime here (about 1:05 in). I am however also seen but not heard in this one, giving my radio interview starting about the :50 mark.



As previously linked, the Houston FOX affiliate's reporting was thorough and fair and balanced. Really. No, really; they did a good job. More local coverage:

Chron: Protesters target bank, City Hall as Occupation spreads to Houston. With short video and 14 photos. I'm in #9 (number 9, number 9 ... that's odd. Must be the Herman Cain Effect, who was also in town to pimp his book and bad-mouth the protestors' First Amendment exercise. Speaking of exercise, Herm ...) Update: They have added some photos to the slideshow; I'm now #13 of 18.

KTRK: Occupy Wall Street spin-offs come to Texas, including Houston. Houston's ABC affiliate had the best coverage by far. Excellent video report, tying in with the beatdowns in New York. Two more raw videos, one long from the overhead chopper, one short on the ground. 79 photos.

Houston Community Newspapers: OccupyHouston puts ‘civility’ in civil unrest at downtown protest. Nice touch pointing out the kindler, gentler part. The pre-march announcement from the legal team -- about 6-10 green-hatted volunteers -- coached the crowd, emphasizing the "non-violent, non-disruptive" nature of the protest. Since the organizers didn't have a permit, we would repeat instructions to 'stay out of the street and cross in the crosswalk' at the ten or so intersections we navigated between Market Square Park and City Hall. I did this myself, making sure to stand close to the horse-mounted HPD officer so he could hear me as I cautioned the marchers. More than once, a horse stretched his muzzle over to me and sniffed my arm or nibbled at my shirt.

News 2 Houston: Houstonians Protest Big Business. The NBC affiliate locally provides a weak headline, a dry account, and an antiseptic (3b and 4a) video.

If you see any more reports, video, or audio, please add them in the comments.

Update: More from Neil.

Nobody can predict the moment of revolution

Memo to the Super Rich, your high-paid lobbyists and your no-compromise political puppets whose sole mission is destroying the presidency: Yes, you are succeeding. You’re also killing the economy.

Thanks to your self-destructive ideology, America is now in the second of back-to-back Lost Decades. A new one on the heels of the 2000-2010 Lost Decade where Wall Street lost more than 20% inflation-adjusted. Get it? You guys launched America’s second Lost Decade of 21st century.

Yes, two consecutive job-killing Lost Decades. The first created by Wall Street’s obsessive greed. The new one triggered by the widening wealth gap that’s feeding endless partisan political wars powered by super rich conservatives hellbent on re-establishing the same free-market, trickle-down Reaganomics policies that have been sabotaging America for the last generation.

Unfortunately, the new one gets worse. Why? The coming Lost Decade is a backdrop for a wave of class warfare destined to trigger a historic revolution in American politics, bigger than the ‘29 Crash and Great Depression.

The cavalry has arrived in Lower Manhattan. Representatives from no fewer than 15 of the country's largest labor unions will join the Occupy Wall Street protesters for a mass rally and march today in New York City.

The AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers, and Transit Workers' Union are among the groups expected to stand in solidarity with the hundreds of mostly young men and women who have spent the better part of three weeks sleeping, eating, and organizing from Zuccotti Square.

Their arrival is being touted as a watershed moment for the "Occupy" movement, which has now seen copycat protests spring up across the country. And while the specific demands of the "occupiers" remain wide-ranging, the presence of the unions – implicitly inclined to making more direct demands – may sharpen their focus.

Actually, they have more in common with the tea party movement than the hippie dream, with one key difference: They’re smart enough to recognize the nation’s problems aren’t simply about taxes and the deficit.

They want jobs. They want the generation in power to acknowledge them. They want political change. They want responsibility in a culture that abdicates it. They want a decent future of opportunity.

If that isn’t American, then what is?

Another key difference between today’s kids and their hippie forefathers: They’re willing to gut it out.

The press seems confused. There were signs about Afghanistan, taxes, Wall Street greed, corporate responsibility and just about every pet cause out there. But what some decry as a lack of focus is really about them not getting it: This movement is about money. It’s about wasting money. It’s about greed for money guiding those in power. It’s about the inequitable distribution of money.

Most of all, it’s about process. In a “general assembly” meeting Saturday, Occupy Wall Street came up with its first official document. It is a powerful summation of grievances, not just of the young, but of many Americans: home foreclosures, workers rights, Internet privacy, health care and bailouts.

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.

Occupy.

Everybody has a piece of advice for the protesters at Occupy Wall Street. They should put their clothes on. They should stop raising their fists. They should fact-check their handwritten signs. They should appoint leaders who can give pithy quotes to reporters. They should get with an electoral program. Nicholas Kristof even offered to help them out with a neat list of demands, in case those holding signs saying “We Are the 99%” just needed to have the unfairness of the carried interest rule explained to them. [...]

It’s not that the demands being suggested by OWS’s volunteer policy advisors in the blogosphere are not worthy ideas. At a time when we desperately need to rein in financial speculation and change the incentives on Wall Street, a financial transactions tax is a terrific policy proposal. Dean Baker has been talking about it for years. The thing is, we on the left don’t have a scarcity of policy ideas. We are positively bursting with them. Create a housing trust fund! A national infrastructure bank! And, yes, sure, eliminate the carried interest loophole so fat cats don’t get a bigger tax break than working people. (Some even have more radical ideas, which are quite sensible too.) But at best, we get a polite hearing for these ideas, which then fade away or are hopelessly watered down. We simply lack the power to put them into practice.

What do the powerless have left to do when the powerful have taken everything else away from them? Protest.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. -- John F. Kennedy

Yes, the revolution is coming. And as you have long been told, it won't be seen on your television (due primarily to corporate media corruption, greed, and fear). It WILL however be Facebooked, Tweeted, blogged, streamed, uploaded, shared, and experienced live in Houston and many cities across the country and even around the world, in the streets by the other 99%, unfiltered by the powers that be.

No television coverage that makes any sense whatsoever to those who mostly watch Dancing With the Stars and/or Fox News ... unless the police again try to provoke civil disobedience into violent confrontation, like they did in New York and like they have done in Houston previously.

Violence always gets televised. Let's not let that happen.

Niggerhead, Jap Road, Washington Redskins, Ill Eagles ... *update*

The media loves to fan flames like these. And it's burning right now like a Texas wildfire ... or a Waxahachie chemical plant. Conservatives kooks are howling while we liberals are laughing behind our hands.

Cooler heads, however; Wayne Slater said on Hardball earlier today that he was convinced -- after years of covering him in Austin -- Rick Perry wasn't a racist. Michael Steele said it (the lack of tolerance, particularly by conservative writers/talkers) points up the fundamental problem the GOP has in recruiting African-Americans. I believe those are both true and accurate statements.

But Steele's observation couldn't have been helped by Cain's "brainwashing"contention last week.

I don't give a shit how The Rock Affair turns out; I will just note that this is Perry's second week -- almost third, since his poor debate performances -- of daily bad news. He's in quicksand up to his chin. At this point I'm just hoping Christie Creme jumps in the race. And immediately gets into a shouting match with some TeaBaggers over gun control or immigration or something else, and has to be rushed to the hospital with heart palpitations.

Never forget, no matter how much or how little progress we have made in the past few years with respect to tolerance: ageism and fat bias never go out of style.

More context from Balloon Juice:

Back when I was a boy and didn’t know any better and didn’t have any sense and shouldn’t be held responsible for anything I did, said or thought, my daddy procured some land, and we used it for hunting and other manly activities involving guns. On that property, there was a rock that looked an awful lot like a bearded man sodomizing a Irish Setter, and some person from far in the past had painted “Jesus Buttfucking Big Red” on it.

Now, for reasons that are very complicated about the history of the region where I grew up, it was once acceptable to point out that rocks or other objects sometimes looked like our Savior engaging in bestiality with a variety of animals. While I think that’s vile and condemn it, it was also part of the culture of our area, and it’s in the past, and we can all forget about it. Even so, and even though we were just leasing that property and didn’t really own it, which means that rock wasn’t really even ours to change, we definitely painted over that rock as soon as we we got round to it, sometime in the 80’s.

So, I have to dispute the claim by seven different people that it took my family a long time to paint over that rock, written on by others, long ago, that had an “insensitive and offensive” message on it. But, man, you really did have to see that rock to believe how much it looked like the Son of God screwing the pooch.

Update: Rick Perry now has an entire Civil War on his hands, and here's two more responses to the flare-up: one from the conservatives, one from Jon Stewart.

You might have anticipated that Perry would face a firestorm for being associated with the property, but it's Cain whose remarks are drawing the most criticism from the right. At RedState, Erick Erickson concluded, "It also seems to be a slander Herman Cain is picking up and running with as a way to get into second place." Glenn Reynolds remarked that until now, Cain's "big appeal is that he's not just another black race-card-playing politician." Over at the Daily Caller, Matt Lewis called Cain's remarks "a cheap shot, and, perhaps a signal that Cain is willing to play the race card against a fellow Republican when it benefits him."

The key phrase here is "fellow Republican." Because, you see, no one thought Cain was "playing the race card" when he said in the same program that black people are "brainwashed" into voting for Democrats and suggested that black people who vote Republican are "thinking for themselves." Cain wasn't rebuked by conservatives when he previously suggested President Barack Obama was not "a strong black man," implied liberals were out to commit genocide against blacks through support for abortion rights, and said he wouldn't appoint a Muslim to his cabinet.

Stewart began with the first sign that things were amiss for Perry, his unsatisfactory debate performance, in which Stewart joked one could see “a squadron of tiny little men inside his head, trying to find the right paper, one of them drops coffee on the control panel…”

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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He then turned to the controversy at hand, and just the name of the ranch made the audience laugh and applaud. “Let the record show,” Stewart joked, “that our audience will fucking cheer anything at times.” He abstained from making a Republican debate audience, joke, however, and instead turned to Cenac, live from “Nigger Lake,” a real place until New York finally got around to renaming it. He then listed a number of very racist, real places that to him proved “there aren’t no black people making maps,” before indulging in a rendition of the “lost verses” of “America the Beautiful” that reflect these map changes.

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Jon Stewart has the remarkable ability to make me both laugh and feel ashamed at the same time. Richard Pryor used to be able to do that.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance calls your attention to a week full of progressive activism throughout the state, from "Move to Amend" events to "Occupy" demonstrations as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff notes that the federal court in San Antonio has issued an injunction preventing the state from implementing its new redistricting maps, and that until preclearance is granted it will draw its own maps to use for next year.

CitizenAndy has joined the dark side with his new blog Darth Politico. He'd appreciate if you checked out the new site, liked Darth Politico on Facebook, and subscribed to his feed. He's especially proud to have The Ghost of Sam Houston blogging at his site.

Letters From Texas explains why conservative pundits' Perry problems perpetually persist. Perfect.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson points out that while Governor Perry and the Texas GOP think all is well with the Texas economy that's far from reality: 2012 revenue estimate for Texas will be “Flattish", dedicated funds trickery.

The "Move to Amend" Texas tour -- the effort to repeal the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision by constitutional amendment -- has stops scheduled in Bryan-College Station, Houston, San Antonio, Bastrop, Austin, and Corpus this week. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has the details.

Over at TexasKaos, Liberal Texan has his say about Texas' latest assault on women: Family Unplanned: Texas Cuts Funding for Women's Reproductive Health Care. Check it out.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme tries on crazy shoes and rates the main GOP presidential candidates.

Bay Area Houston shows why Perry is weak and wrong on immigration.

Neil at Texas Liberal commented on welding and on the different ways that things are brought together based on a picture he took at the Houston Ship Channel.

McBlogger was a little surprised to learn from Rick Perry that Warren Buffett is clueless about the private sector.

Sunday Funnies