Jail the Gays – A Christmas Gift to the People of Uganda

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In its infinite wisdom the Ugandan parliament has removed the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” in the “watered down” version of its antigay legislation. Ugandan gays should be rejoicing at the prospect of merely facing jail (possibly a life sentence) rather than being put to death for being gay. (There really should be a sarcasm font.) Articles from the BBC and International Business Times:

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Uganda ‘set to pass anti-gay law’

Nov. 13, 2012

Uganda will pass a new law against homosexuality by the end of 2012 as a “Christmas gift” to its advocates, the speaker of parliament has said.

The AP news agency quoted Rebecca Kadaga as saying that Ugandans were “demanding” the law.

Homosexual acts are already illegal in Uganda, but the bill which is before parliament proposes tougher sentences for people convicted.

Foreign donors have threatened to cut aid if gay rights are not respected.

The bill, tabled by MP David Bahati, proposes jail terms for homosexual acts, including a life sentence in certain circumstances.

It prohibits the “promotion” of gay rights and calls for the punishment of anyone who “funds or sponsors homosexuality” or “abets homosexuality”.

[emphasis added]

But a clause which calls for the death penalty against people found guilty of “aggravated homosexuality” – defined as when one of the participants is a minor, HIV-positive, disabled or a “serial offender” – is to be dropped, Mr Bahati has said.

Diplomatic spat

The bill was strongly condemned last year by Western leaders, including US President Barack I who described it as “odious”.

International donors have threatened to cut off aid to Uganda if the country does not do more to protect the rights of gay people.

Ms Kadaga said she hoped the bill, first tabled in 2009 and now before a parliamentary committee, would be passed by the end of the year, Reuters news agency reports.

“Ugandans want that law as a Christmas gift. They have asked for it and we’ll give them that gift,” Ms Kadaga is quoted as saying.

Last month, Ms Kadaga was involved in a row with Canada’s Foreign Minister John Baird over gay rights at a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Quebec.

When Mr Bairn warned Uganda not to trample on people’s human rights, Ms Kadaga replied: “If homosexuality is a value for the people of Canada they should not seek to force Uganda to embrace it. We are not a colony or a protectorate of Canada.”

She received a rapturous welcome from several hundred anti-gay activists, including religious leaders, at Uganda’s Entebbe airport when she returned from her trip.

In June, Uganda’s Minister for Ethics and Integrity Simon Lokodo said 38 non-governmental rganizations which he accused of promoting homosexuality would be banned.

Clare Byarugaba, the co-ordinator of Uganda’s Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law, said the group would challenge the law in the constitutional court, Reuters reports.

“The international community supports us and we also believe in the constitution of our country which protects the rights and freedoms of everyone,” she is quoted as saying.

Correspondents say many Ugandans are deeply conservative, and say homosexuality is against their religious and cultural beliefs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20318436

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Uganda Revives ‘Kill The Gays’ Bill With Revisions

The speaker has been trying to get the Anti-Homosexuality bill passed since 2009, when it was introduced by David Bahati, a backbench lawmaker in President Yoweri Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement party.

The measure was called “odious” by U.S. President Barack I, and criticized by most of Europe. European countries threatened to withhold foreign aid from Uganda if the bill that at first called for the death sentence for “aggravated homosexuality” was passed.

The first draft never made it to the debating floor, but now Kadaga has revived an amended bill.

“They said I should stop the debate on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, but I assured them there is no way I can block a private member’s bill,” The Daily Monitor quoted Kadaga saying when spoke to religious leaders and journalists at Entebbe International Airport at the end of October.

“I will not accept to be intimidated or directed by any government in the world on matters of homosexuality,” she said.

“I was surprised when colleagues came and thanked me, saying that’s what they have always wanted to say but they had never gotten the courage to. That when it came to me that I had spoken for the whole of Africa, for the Arab world and Asians,” Kadaga said.

The death sentence clause has been taken out, along one with forcing Ugandans to report homosexuals to authorities in the “watered-own” second draft, Bahati told Reuters.

When asked about pro-gay-rights countries denying Ugandans entry visas and aid, Kadaga responded they could keep their money and visas.

The new bill prohibits the “promotion” of gay rights and punish anyone who “funds or sponsors homosexuality” or “abets homosexuality.”

The rise of the evangelical church in Uganda, with American church funding, is partly responsible for the anti-gay movement in the country.

“Would you accept that a thief should be licensed, that a prostitute should be licensed? There is no difference between a thief, a robber, a prostitute and a homosexual,” said Pastor Joseph Serwadda, a supporter of the “Kill the Gays” Bill. 

[emphasis added]

http://www.ibtimes.com/uganda-revives-kill-gays-bill-revisions-872930

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From Toms River, NJ: Sandy Survivor Bids Farewell

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Amazing story of survival after Toms River man leaves ‘farewell’ note

by Ron Recinto

Nov. 5, 2012

(WOBM)

A Toms River, N.J., man who didn't think he would survive Sandy's storm surge, broke into a stranger's house and left a farewell note asking her to "tell my Dad I love him."

Thankfully the letter writer, identified only as Mike, was reunited with his father, Tony. And both will have a lifetime to retell his tale of survival.

So will Christine Treglia, who found this unsettling note when she returned home, which she had evacuated before the storm:

Who ever reads this I'm DIEING — I'm 28 yrs old my name is Mike. I had to break in to your house. I took blankets off the couch. I have hypothermia. I didn't take any thing. A wave thru me out of my house down the block. I don't think I'm going to make it. The water outside is 10ft deep at least. There's no res[c]ue.

Tell my dad I love him and I tryed get[t]ing out. His number is ###-###-#### his name is Tony. I hope u can read this I'm in the dark. I took a black jacket too. Goodbye. God all mighty help me.

Treglia posted this response on Facebook along with a link to the story about the note:

"This was my house that Mike found refuge in. We found this letter and 2 others in our home along with "help me" signs posted to our windows. We called immediately and were so relieved that Mike was safe and made his way home."

In an interview with Justin Lewis of WOBM radio, Mike, who still seemed amazed by his ordeal, shared the story behind his frantic note.

He said he was at his home in the Green Island community of Toms River when his kitchen was swept away, so he walked out of his house and was swept up in the current. He said he was pulled a half-mile into the bay and then spent about four hours trying to swim back home.

"Well, the current took me to somewhere, which I didn't even know where I was, and it threw me back into the bay. And I tried to swim back to my house for some reason," Mike said. "You know, sometimes you don't think."

He said he ended up across the bay at "some lady's house."

"She had towels on the couch. I just wrapped my body with the towels. ... I was so thirsty because I drank so much salt water. I didn't think I was gonna make it."

He penned the note in the dark.

"I just wanted to have that note to tell my father I tried. You know, I wasn't a baby about it. I tried, I did my thing." Mike told WOBM.

"I was swimming for so long. ... I was so cold, I thought I was just going to freeze right there," he said, "But that lady, I felt like for some reason, she knew someone was going to be in that house. She had these wool blankets all over the place. And I just wrapped myself in them."

After a few hours inside in the dark, Mike ventured back out into the waters.

"In the street there was about eight feet of water, and I'm like, I ain't dying like this, after all this, I ain't dying like this."

He said he was picked up by someone named Frank on a personal watercraft. Frank took in Mike and warmed him by a gas stove and gave him hot chocolate.

On Facebook, "Frank" Vicendese  of Green Island writes of Mike, "He was very thankful to be alive and warm, also very emotional after warming up by my stove after it started to sink in what happened."

Mike's journey took him to a friend's house in Kettle Creek, and then his dad came and picked him up. "I told my dad when I got home, you follow me" wherever I go, he said.

Mike says in his conversation with Treglia he apologized for entering her home and said, "There was money on the table, I didn't take nothing. I just took something that would keep me warm."

Treglia did not respond to a request for an interview.

Some people on social media have called Mike's survival a miracle.

He may not believe he stole anything during his ordeal. But certainly he was given a most valuable gift—his life.

To be honest with you, I'm afraid of the dark now. I was in the dark for so long with at least 15 to 20 foot waves that with the bay crashing over me. I couldn't even breathe.

I told my dad when I got home, you follow me everywhere you go.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/amazing-story-survival-toms-river-man-leaves-farewell-165046433.html

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Shell-Shocked on Election Day

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Romney Adviser Says Romney & Campaign Team Shocked By Loss

Boston, Mass. (CBS) -- Mitt Romney's campaign got its first hint something was wrong on the afternoon of Election Day, when state campaign workers on the ground began reporting huge turnout in areas favorable to President Obama: northeastern Ohio, northern Virginia, central Florida and Miami-Dade.

Then came the early exit polls that also were favorable to the president.

But it wasn't until the polls closed that concern turned into alarm. They expected North Carolina to be called early. It wasn't. They expected Pennsylvania to be up in the air all night; it went early for the President.

After Ohio went for Mr. Obama, it was over, but senior advisers say no one could process it.

"We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory," said one senior adviser. "I don't think there was one person who saw this coming."

They just couldn't believe they had been so wrong. And maybe they weren't: There was Karl Rove on Fox saying Ohio wasn't settled, so campaign aides decided to wait. They didn't want to have to withdraw their concession, like Al Gore did in 2000, and they thought maybe the suburbs of Columbus and Cincinnati, which hadn't been reported, could make a difference.

But then came Colorado for the president and Florida also was looking tougher than anyone had imagined.

"We just felt, 'where's our path?'" said a senior adviser. "There wasn't one."

Romney then said what they knew: it was over.

His personal assistant, Garrett Jackson, called his counterpart on Mr. Obama's staff, Marvin Nicholson. "Is your boss available?" Jackson asked.

Romney was stoic as he talked the president, an aide said, but his wife Ann cried. Running mate Paul Ryan seemed genuinely shocked, the adviser said. Ryan's wife Janna also was shaken and cried softly.

"There's nothing worse than when you think you're going to win, and you don't," said another adviser. "It was like a sucker punch."

Their emotion was visible on their faces when they walked on stage after Romney finished his remarks, which Romney had hastily composed, knowing he had to say something.

Both wives looked stricken, and Ryan himself seemed grim. They all were thrust on that stage without understanding what had just happened.

"He was shellshocked," one adviser said of Romney.

Romney and his campaign had gone into the evening confident they had a good path to victory, for emotional and intellectual reasons. The huge and enthusiastic crowds in swing state after swing state in recent weeks - not only for Romney but also for Paul Ryan - bolstered what they believed intellectually: that Obama would not get the kind of turnout he had in 2008.

They thought intensity and enthusiasm were on their side this time - poll after poll showed Republicans were more motivated to vote than Democrats - and that would translate into votes for Romney.

As a result, they believed the public/media polls were skewed - they thought those polls oversampled Democrats and didn't reflect Republican enthusiasm. They based their own internal polls on turnout levels more favorable to Romney. That was a grave miscalculation, as they would see on election night.

Those assumptions drove their campaign strategy: their internal polling showed them leading in key states, so they decided to make a play for a broad victory: go to places like Pennsylvania while also playing it safe in the last two weeks.

Those assessments were wrong.

They made three key miscalculations, in part because this race bucked historical trends:

1. They misread turnout. They expected it to be between 2004 and 2008 levels, with a plus-2 or plus-3 Democratic electorate, instead of plus-7 as it was in 2008. Their assumptions were wrong on both sides: The president's base turned out and Romney's did not. More African-Americans voted in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida than in 2008. And fewer Republicans did: Romney got just over 2 million fewer votes than John McCain.

2. Independents. State polls showed Romney winning big among independents. Historically, any candidate polling that well among independents wins. But as it turned out, many of those independents were former Republicans who now self-identify as independents. The state polls weren't oversampling Democrats and undersampling Republicans - there just weren't as many Republicans this time because they were calling themselves independents.

3. Undecided voters. The perception is they always break for the challenger, since people know the incumbent and would have decided already if they were backing him. Romney was counting on that trend to continue. Instead, exit polls show Mr. Obama won among people who made up their minds on Election Day and in the few days before the election. So maybe Romney, after running for six years, was in the same position as the incumbent.

The campaign before the election had expressed confidence in its calculations, and insisted the Obama campaign, with its own confidence and a completely different analysis, was wrong. In the end, it the other way around.

"They were right," a Romney campaign senior adviser said of the Obama campaign's assessments. "And if they were right, we lose."

Written By: Jan Crawford, CBS News

http://www.digtriad.com/news/local/article/253535/57/Adviser-Romney-ShellShocked-By-Loss

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Now That I’m Back

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Having been in the direct path of superstorm Sandy, I lost power for 4 days and regular Internet access for 10 days. It’s taking me a while to absorb all that has happened since that last weekend of October 2012. To cover all in one post would be unfair to these monumental events. For now a few blurbs.

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Sandy

Frankenstorm, superstorm, hurricane, tropical cyclone Sandy – however it’ll be remembered – was the most devastating natural disaster I’ve lived through. And my partner Jorge & I weren’t nearly as bad off as so many others in New Jersey and the NYC metro area. Yeah, we lost power for 4 days – very strange living without electricity. But thanks to our apartment building’s backup generators we had hot & cold water, one elevator and power in the hallways.

Losing cable service for 10 days meant no TV or regular Internet access. I listened to more radio over those 10 days than the last 40 years put together, including the election returns. Jorge & I shared a wireless card with 3G/4G service – when available. Learned a couple of things about the wireless card (geek alert): 3G service is like not being on line at all; 4G is decent. 4G reception is impossible to get between 5-8 PM. On my desktop PC the default LAN had to be disabled as not to conflict with the LAN created by the card.

We take so much for granted in our daily lives that was simply unavailable during the storm. It takes a lot of adjustment and adaptability to get through such life-altering disruptions. I have studiously refrained from complaining about such inconveniences as millions were, are and will be far worse off. How do you adapt or adjust to losing your home and everything you own? The courage and fortitude of the people hit by Sandy will live forever in my memory.

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The Utility Companies

We were lucky – only 4 days without power. As of today, 2 weeks later, there are still thousands without power. Most are at the mercy of the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA). Long Island residents are demonstrating against LIPA as their only means of expressing rage against the utility’s abject failure to respond to the emergency. LIPA is always the worst culprit but other utilities aren’t far behind. NY Governor Andrew Cuomo mirrored my and others’ rage in one of his daily status briefings: Yes this was a brutal storm creating exigent circumstances for the utilities. But customers pay for service and part of that should be preparation for exactly such exigent circumstances. They weren’t and never have been. Storm after storm, year after year they’re not prepared and politicians do much blathering about accountability. Then it’s forgotten until the next time. And it just continues storm after storm. Is there no way to force utilities to be prepared with a better storm emergency strategy than one that leaves millions in the dark for lengthy periods of time? If Cuomo just fines them as has been done in the past it’s cheaper for the utilities to pay the fines rather than reform their preparedness procedures for when their services are most needed.

11/14/12 Update: LIPA CEO Michael Hervey tendered his resignation in the face of withering criticism of LIPA's response to superstorm Sandy outages.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/boss-ny-utility-panned-sandy-response-quits-17712250#.UKOcbofAdv4

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The Election

Being such a political junkie I was amazed to find that Sandy threw me off track for the run up to Election Day. Those who know me also know that speaks volumes. The reelection of President Obama bolstered my faith in the American electorate which refused to buy Mitt Romney’s vague platitudes and promises. It took sophistication not to choose a guy running on the assumption that Obama was so despised it would be a cake walk to the White House. Americans rejected Republican obstructionism, electing more Democrats to the Senate as well as giving the president a 2nd term.

How did team Obama sneak up to crush team Romney despite polling showing such a close race? Two words: ground game. The Obama campaign micro-targeted districts in swing states, the voters in which came out in droves much to the shock of the Romney campaign. (See http://aboutnothing-doug.blogspot.com/2012/11/shell-shocked-on-election-day.html) Shock & disbelief for team Romney as team Obama proved itself to be one of the greatest campaign operations in American history.

Onward, upward and forward.

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Romney-Ryan Plays Healthcare Dodge Ball

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Twisting the Facts About Health Care

OCT. 20, 2012

The outcome of the presidential election will determine which of two opposing paths the nation will follow on health care for all Americans. If voters re-elect President Obama, he will protect the health care reforms that are his signature domestic achievement. If they elect Mitt Romney, they will be choosing a man who has pledged to repeal the reform law and replace it with — who knows what?

The competing visions are often difficult to evaluate because the Republican candidates — Mr. Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan — have become so artful about obfuscating their plans for Medicare, Medicaid and what they will do to reform the whole system. Almost nothing the Republican candidates say on these or other health care issues can be taken at face value.

Here are some of their bigger evasions:

REPLACING OBAMACARE Although Mr. Romney has said he wants to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, he has provided few details on what he would replace it with. When challenged to do so at the first presidential debate, Mr. Romney never quite answered and made some egregious misstatements along the way, some of which were repeated by Mr. Ryan in the vice-presidential debate.

Mr. Romney asserted that his plans had already been laid out in “a lengthy description,” implying that anyone could read the whole story by turning to his campaign Web site. As it turns out, the site has a page-and-a-half statement that says he would rely on private markets and state leadership but gives no hint of what it would cost or who would pay. A one-page list of frequently asked questions about his Medicare plan assures us that “Mitt continues to work on refining the details.”

He continues to assert that his plan would cover people with pre-existing conditions when it clearly would not. People who have pre-existing conditions — and are not already covered by insurance — are often refused coverage or charged exorbitant rates by private insurers. Starting in 2014, the reform law will require insurers to accept all applicants and charge them without regard to health status. By contrast, Mr. Romney has simply pledged to protect people who had insurance but then lost it, provided they take out a new policy within a short time. But this protection is already required by law and offers absolutely nothing for millions of people who can’t get or can’t afford private insurance.

He has also implied that the reform law created an unelected board that’s “ultimately” going to tell people what treatments they can have. The advisory board is specifically precluded by the law from recommending cuts in benefits or eligibility; its job is to propose cuts in payments to providers and insurers if necessary to meet budget targets.

A major goal of the law was to cover some 30 million more people by expanding Medicaid and subsidizing coverage for middle-income people. That goal would be lost if the law was repealed. The Republicans, of course, have no plans for covering the uninsured beyond assuming they can use emergency rooms, leaving the problem to the states.

MEDICARE Mr. Romney has misrepresented what would happen to both current beneficiaries and future generations under his proposals. He says his plans would have no effect on people now on Medicare or nearing eligibility. But if he succeeded in repealing the reform law, which has many provisions that hold down costs for Medicare enrollees, most beneficiaries would see their annual premiums and cost-sharing go up. The average beneficiary in traditional Medicare would pay about $5,000 more through 2022, and heavy users of prescription drugs about $18,000 more over the same period, if the act is repealed, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Department of Health and Human Services.

Mr. Romney also argues that the reform law will weaken Medicare because it cuts some $716 billion from future Medicare spending by slowing the rate of increase over the next decade. Of course, that is essentially the same amount of Medicare cuts in Mr. Ryan’s budget resolutions, approved this year and last year by House Republicans.

The reform law justifiably reduces the excessive subsidies to private plans (known as Medicare Advantage) that enroll many beneficiaries. It also lowers the annual rate of increase in payments to providers, like hospitals, nursing homes and home care agencies, to force them to become more efficient. Mr. Romney wants to keep overpaying the plans and providers simply to pander to elderly voters.

For future generations, the Romney-Ryan ticket would turn Medicare into a premium-support — or voucher — program in which the federal government provides a fixed amount of money to beneficiaries each year and allows it to grow by a small amount annually, which may not keep pace with medical costs. The whole point of turning to vouchers is to reduce federal spending on Medicare, so it seems likely that many beneficiaries would end up worse off than now. (At the vice-presidential debate, Mr. Ryan tried to pretend his premium-support proposal was bipartisan, but the sole Democrat who backed an early version — Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon — has disavowed his plan.)

Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan insist that the magic of competition among health insurers — both private plans and a public option like Medicare — will bring down premiums. But if competition fails to do that, beneficiaries would almost certainly get socked with added payments or fewer benefits.

They say that lower-income beneficiaries would get more-generous premium support and wealthier individuals would receive less support. But, of course, they provide no numbers on what those support levels might be.

MEDICAID The Republicans want to repeal the reform law’s expansion of Medicaid to cover millions of low- and middle-income people and instead shrink federal funding by turning Medicaid into a block grant. States would be given a fixed amount of money equal to what they had been getting in federal payments for Medicaid, and that grant would then grow at a rate tied to inflation. If those increases failed to keep up with medical costs, states — faced with the necessity of balancing their budgets every year — would probably have to cut enrollments or benefits or payments to providers. That could include cuts to coverage for long-term and nursing home care that millions depend on.

The block grant proposal in Mr. Ryan’s budget resolution would reduce federal Medicaid payments to the states by more than $800 billion over 10 years and would cut federal funding by a third in 2022, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Mr. Romney blithely said that if a state got into trouble “Why, we could step in and see if we could find a way to help them.” Or maybe not. It’s another of those vague promises.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/opinion/sunday/the-republican-ticket-twists-the-facts-about-health-care.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121021&pagewanted=all

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Golly Gee! Back to the 50s with Mittisms

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Gosh, Who Talks Like That Now? Romney Does

by Michael Barbaro and Ashley Parker

OCT. 20, 2012

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — At a campaign stop in Rockford, Ill., not long ago, Mitt Romney sought to convey his feelings for his wife, Ann. “Smitten,” he said.

Not merely in love.

“Yeah, smitten,” he said. “Mitt was smitten.”

It was a classic Mittism, as friends and advisers call the verbal quirks of the Republican presidential candidate. In Romneyspeak, passengers do not get off airplanes, they “disembark.” People do not laugh, they “guffaw.” Criminals do not go to jail, they land in the “big house.” Insults are not hurled, “brickbats” are.

As he seeks the office of commander in chief, Mr. Romney can sometimes seem like an editor in chief, employing a language all his own. It is polite, formal and at times anachronistic, linguistically setting apart a man who frequently struggles to sell himself to the American electorate.

It is most pronounced when he is on the stump and off the cuff, not on the stuffy and rehearsed debate stage. But Mr. Romney offered voters a dose of it during his face-off with President Obama last week, when he coined the infelicitous phrase “binders full of women.”

Mr. Romney’s unique style of speaking has distinguished him throughout his career, influencing the word choices of those who work with and especially for him. Should he reach the White House, friends and advisers concede, the trait could be a defining feature of his public image, as memorable as Lyndon B. Johnson’s foul-mouthed utterances or the first President Bush’s tortured syntax.

Mr. Romney, 65, has spent four decades inside the corridors of high finance and state politics, where indecorous diction and vulgarisms abound. But he has emerged as if in a rhetorical time capsule from a well-mannered era of soda fountains and AMC Ramblers, someone whose idea of swearing is to let loose with the phrase “H-E-double hockey sticks.”

“He actually said that,” recalled Thomas Finneran, the speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives when Mr. Romney was governor. “As in, go to ‘H-E-double hockey sticks.’ I would think to myself, ‘Who talks like that?’ ”

Mr. Romney, quite proudly. In fact, he seems puzzled by the fascination with something as instinctive (and immutable) as how he talks, as if somebody were asking how he breathes. “It’s like someone who speaks with an accent,” he said in an interview. “You don’t hear the accent.”

His Mormon faith frowns on salty language, and so does he. A man of relentless self-discipline, he made clear to lawmakers in Boston and colleagues in business that even in matters of vocabulary, he “held himself to a high standard of behavior,” said Geoffrey Rehnert, a former executive at Bain Capital, the firm Mr. Romney started in the 1980s. Mr. Romney’s father, George, whom he idolized, shared the same style of refined and restrained speech.

Those around him are so accustomed to his verbal tics that they describe them in shorthand. “Old-timey,” said one aide. “His 1950s language,” explained another. “The Gomer Pyle routine,” said a third.

Asked about his boss’s word preferences, Eric Fehrnstrom, a veteran Romney adviser, responded knowingly: “You mean like ‘gosh, golly, darn’?”

For Democratic strategists, Mr. Romney’s throwback vocabulary feeds into their portrayal of a man ill-equipped for the mores and challenges of the modern age. David Axelrod, a top adviser for an Obama campaign that has adopted “Forward” as its slogan, once quipped that Mr. Romney “must watch ‘Mad Men,’ ” the hit television show set in Manhattan in the 1960s, “and think it’s the evening news.”

His exclamations can sound jarring to the contemporary ear — or charming, depending on whom you ask. Midway into a critique of Mr. Obama’s economic policies a few months ago, Mr. Romney declared: “They’ve scared the dickens out of banks,” he said. “They’ve scared the dickens out of insurance companies.”

He declared, “To heck with it!” while urging reporters to use their fingers to dig into a box of pastries he was passing around on a plane. “Darn good question,” he replied to a voter in Kalamazoo, Mich., who asked how he would work with Congress if elected. (His wife also got the “darn” treatment in Michigan, when he enthused, “Gosh, darn, she is amazing!”) “Thank heavens” is another favorite.

For people used to peppering their speech with four-letter words, time with Mr. Romney can prove an exercise in self-control. A half-dozen people recalled the precise moment when they swore — almost always accidentally — in his presence.

When Robert Travaglini, then the Democratic president of the Massachusetts State Senate, would curse in front of Mr. Romney, the governor would frown and interject, “Well, I wouldn’t choose that diction,” Mr. Travaglini recalled.

Mr. Rehnert, the former Bain executive, was mortified when a potential client he took into Mr. Romney’s office promptly dropped a string of profanities. “Mitt wanted to know what cats and dogs I was dragging in here,” Mr. Rehnert said.

His cussing colleagues said Mr. Romney took pains not to judge them publicly. “He did not impose his language preferences on us,” Mr. Finneran said. “But I wonder if we became a little bit more restrained because we knew this about him.”

Mr. Travaglini recalled lawmakers’ discussing how Mr. Romney “should be more in tune with the vernacular of the day and express himself more passionately.”

“But,” he added, “that’s not who he is.”

Mr. Romney does have his own distinctly G-rated arsenal of angry expressions — “Good grief,” “flippin’,” “good heavens” and even the occasional “crap.”

Perhaps the most intriguing of these is “grunt.” Most people just grunt. Mr. Romney, however, talks about grunting. “Grunt” he says, onomatopoetically, when annoyed with a last-minute change in his campaign schedule.

Many of Mr. Romney’s verbal habits can sound like those of a hyper-literate graduate student who never left school. (In college, he majored in English.) He favors the gentlemanly qualifier “if you will,” which he invoked three times during a recent speech.

On how to reduce the debt: “You have to start accumulating, if you will, reserves.”

On speaking to a group of soldiers: “The cadets were all lined up and sitting at attention, if you will.”

On his business background: “I’ve had the experience of working in the real world, if you will.”

In interviews, voters expressed an equal measure of admiration for and curiosity about his quaint dialect, which many described as a conspicuous break from the normally harsh tone of politicians.

“It’s a wonderful change,” said Irene Sperling, a retiree from Allentown, Pa. “He’s a gentleman.”

Wendy Tonn, 63, a Romney supporter who splits her time between Michigan and Florida, said she found comfort in his vocabulary, comparing it to the simple innocence of “Leave It to Beaver.” “We are of that era, and we’d like to be returned to that kind of era,” she said. [emphasis added]

Even Dennis Miller, the comedian, has weighed in, suggesting that after four years of having a “hipster president” in the White House, Americans craved a “gosh president.”

A few acquaintances have tried to drag him linguistically into the 21st century. Mr. Finneran, an admitted serial curser, said that after years of working closely with Mr. Romney, he began to fantasize about provoking him to utter a particularly crude word.

“It got to the point where I started to think that my greatest achievement of all time would be if I somehow or other got him to say the word,” he said.

Once, Mr. Romney seemed on the cusp of fulfilling that wish during a heated discussion. But he caught himself. “And I thought, ‘Oh, God, my closest moment ever,’ ” Mr. Finneran said. “But it’s not going to happen.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/us/politics/romneys-throwback-language-his-mittisms.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121021&pagewanted=all

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Romney’s BS on Job Creation

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Snow Job on Jobs

by Paul Krugman

OCT. 18, 2012

Mitt Romney talks a lot about jobs. But does he have a plan to create any?

You can defend President Obama’s jobs record — recovery from a severe financial crisis is always difficult, and especially so when the opposition party does its best to block every policy initiative you propose. And things have definitely improved over the past year. Still, unemployment remains high after all these years, and a candidate with a real plan to make things better could make a strong case for his election.

But Mr. Romney, it turns out, doesn’t have a plan; he’s just faking it. In saying that, I don’t mean that I disagree with his economic philosophy; I do, but that’s a separate point. I mean, instead, that Mr. Romney’s campaign is telling lies: claiming that its numbers add up when they don’t, claiming that independent studies support its position when those studies do no such thing.

Before I get there, however, let me take a minute to talk about Mr. Romney’s claim that he knows how to fix the economy because he’s been a successful businessman. That would be a dubious claim even if he were honestly representing his business career, because the skills needed to run a business and those needed to manage economic policy are very different. In any case, however, his portrait of his own experience is so misleading that it takes your breath away.

For Mr. Romney, who started as a business consultant and then moved into the heady world of private equity, insists on portraying himself as a plucky small businessman.

I am not making this up. In Tuesday’s debate, he declared, “I came through small business. I understand how hard it is to start a small business.” In his speech at the Republican convention, he declared, “When I was 37, I helped start a small company.”

Ahem. It’s true that when Bain Capital started, it had only a handful of employees. But it had $37 million in funds, raised from sources that included wealthy Europeans investing through Panamanian shell companies and Central American oligarchs living in Miami while death squads associated with their families ravaged their home nations. Hey, doesn’t every plucky little start-up have access to that kind of financing?

But back to the Romney jobs plan. As many people have noted, the plan has five points but contains no specifics. Loosely speaking, however, it calls for a return to Bushonomics: tax cuts for the wealthy plus weaker environmental protection. And Mr. Romney says that the plan would create 12 million jobs over the next four years.

Where does that number come from? When pressed, the campaign cited three studies that it claimed supported its assertions. In fact, however, those studies did no such thing.

Just for the record, one study concluded that America might gain two million jobs if China stopped infringing on U.S. patents and other intellectual property; this would be nice, but Mr. Romney hasn’t proposed anything that would bring about that outcome. Another study suggested that growth in the energy sector might add three million jobs in the next few years — but these were predicted gains under current policy, that is, they would happen no matter who wins the election, not as a consequence of the Romney plan.

Finally, a third study examined the effects of the Romney tax plan and argued (implausibly, but that’s another issue) that it would lead to a large increase in the number of Americans who want to work. But how does that help cure a situation in which there are already millions more Americans seeking work than there are jobs available? It’s irrelevant to Mr. Romney’s claims.

So when the campaign says that these three studies support its claims about jobs, it is, to use the technical term, lying — just as it is when it says that six independent studies support its claims about taxes (they don’t).

What do Mr. Romney’s economic advisers actually believe? As best as I can tell, they’re placing their faith in the confidence fairy, in the belief that their candidate’s victory would inspire an employment boom without the need for any real change in policy. In fact, in his infamous Boca Raton “47 percent” remarks, Mr. Romney himself asserted that he would give a big boost to the economy simply by being elected, “without actually doing anything.” And what about the overwhelming evidence that our weak economy isn’t about confidence, it’s about the hangover from a terrible financial crisis? Never mind.

To summarize, then, the true Romney plan is to create an economic boom through the sheer power of Mr. Romney’s personal awesomeness. But the campaign doesn’t dare say that, for fear that voters would (rightly) consider it ridiculous. So what we’re getting instead is an attempt to brazen it out with nakedly false claims. There’s no jobs plan; just a plan for a snow job on the American people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/opinion/krugman-snow-job-on-jobs.html?src=me&ref=general

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