Hell Freezes Over As Mitt Romney Marches in DC w/ Evangelicals For Black Lives Matter!

By DoctorWho

That’s it folks, embrace the Rapture and Lizard Overlords and get your best winter coat ‘cause End Times are here:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/7/1951304/-BREAKING-Hell-Freezes-Over-As-Mitt-Romney-Marches-in-DC-w-Evangelicals-For-Black-Lives-Matter

The Internet Howls With Laughter At Mitt Romney's Fake Twitter Account

Foreign Diplomats Call Trump A Laughing Stock Who Is Obsessed With Obama

According to a new report, foreign diplomats visiting the United States are less than impressed with Donald Trump. In fact, they can’t seem to stop laughing about how pathetic he really is, and about the fact that he won’t shut up about his predecessor, Barack Obama.



When other countries are laughing, we should probably reevaluate our choices.

According to a new report, European diplomats do not have a very flattering image of Donald Trump. In fact, according to these European diplomats, who interviewed with BuzzFeed on the condition of anonymity, they actually view Donald Trump as most Europeans do, as a complete laughingstock. The latest available polls show us that 79% of people living in Europe do not trust Donald Trump. They do not think he is an effective leader, and they think he is an embarrassment for the United States, and as a U.S. citizen, you're absolutely right. We agree with you on this.

But the fact that these diplomats, who do have the job of having to meet with Donald Trump, having to work with him when he goes on these overseas trips, the fact that they see him as a laughingstock is not anything that people in the United States should be laughing at. That is a very dangerous situation when nobody among your ally countries respects your leader, that they do not view him as a very serious person, and more important as the interview states, they don't view him as an intelligent person. One of the diplomats said that they actually play a form of word bingo when the president is around because he always uses the same words, over and over, like it's great, it's very, very good, it's tremendous. They say he has such a limited vocabulary, that is one of the sources of ridicule among the other diplomats.

Furthermore, and one of the most dangerous about him they said was that the man is clearly obsessed with President Obama. During meetings, they said Trump would not want to debate issues. He would ask if it was something Obama had supported. If the answer was yes, Obama supported it, Trump would blindly and blankly say, then I do not support it. No debate, no discussion, no understanding at all of what they were actually talking about. He just wanted to be opposed to anything that Barack Obama was for, and that is one of the biggest problems that they see over in Europe. Donald Trump is too obsessed with Obama to be an effective leader.

According to these diplomats, it appears that Donald Trump's only policy goals for the United States are to undo the accomplishments of Barack Obama. And to be honest, from what we've seen so far coming out of the Oval Office, that does appear to be his only agenda. He doesn't care about creating jobs. He doesn't care about protecting the environment or anything having to do with anything related to Americans. He just wants to roll back every single thing President Obama did so that four, eight years down the road, Obama can't look at this country and say, oh, that was the program I put in place, because Donald Trump wants to destroy it all.

And he's not only destroying things over here in the United States, as we see from this story. He's also destroying our image that Barack Obama had rebuilt amongst our allies in Europe, and maybe that's Trump's plan, since everyone in Europe really seemed to like Barack Obama, especially after eight years of Bush and our image overseas declined tremendously. Barack Obama repaired that. So I guess Donald Trump destroying that is just another part of his let's undo all of Obama's accomplishments policy.

Why Is Chaffetz Resigning? It Will All Come Out In The Laundering

Soon we hope to bid a gleeful farewell to Jason Chaffetz (R-Disgraced). To say that he’ll be leaving under a cloud would be to understate the case. He’s in trouble with both his religion and the Law which is quite an accomplishment for a mediocre House republican.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/4/21/1654905/-Why-Did-Chaffetz-Resign-It-Will-All-Come-Out-in-the-Laundering

Next Stop, The Twilight Zone: Romney Says Trump Disqualified For Not Releasing Tax Returns

By Jason Easley

Mitt Romney, of all people, is claiming that Donald Trump has disqualified himself from the presidency by refusing to release his tax returns.

After Trump announced that he won’t be releasing any of his tax returns until after the election, Romney wrote on Facebook:

It is disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee to refuse to release tax returns to the voters, especially one who has not been subject to public scrutiny in either military or public service. Tax returns provide the public with its sole confirmation of the veracity of a candidate’s representations regarding charities, priorities, wealth, tax conformance, and conflicts of interest. Further, while not a likely circumstance, the potential for hidden inappropriate associations with foreign entities, criminal organizations, or other unsavory groups is simply too great a risk to ignore for someone who is seeking to become commander-in-chief.

Mr. Trump says he is being audited. So? There is nothing that prevents releasing tax returns that are being audited. Further, he could release returns for the years immediately prior to the years under audit. There is only one logical explanation for Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his returns: there is a bombshell in them. Given Mr. Trump’s equanimity with other flaws in his history, we can only assume it’s a bombshell of unusual size.

(Anticipating inquiries regarding my own tax release history, I released my 2010 tax returns in January of 2012 and I released my 2011 tax returns as soon as they were completed, in September of 2012.)

Mitt Romney, who stalled, made up excuses, and refused to release a full disclosure of his tax returns is running around claiming that Trump can’t be president because he won’t release his tax returns.

Birthers, like Donald Trump, attempted to demand Obama’s college transcripts in exchange for Romney’s tax returns.  As the presumptive Republican nominee, Romney blamed Obama for his refusal to release his tax returns. Romney refused to release even five years of tax returns.

Mitt Romney is not the person to be making the argument that Donald Trump is disqualified from the presidency because he won’t release his tax returns. In fact, Romney is one of the last people in the world who should be discussing releasing tax returns.

The Republicans have dragged the American people into some kind of bizarre Twilight Zone where Mitt Romney is the moral compass of the GOP. The last thing that Republicans needed was their former tax dodging nominee telling their current tax dodging nominee that he has disqualified himself by not releasing his tax returns.

Every single day, the Republican Party manages to find a new way to make things worse for themselves.

We really have entered a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man, and it is called The Republican Zone.

Orrin Hatch very disturbed his lunch was disrupted by Supreme Court protesters

By Joan McCarter  

Monday Mar 28, 2016 · 12:34 PM EST

Those radical hippies who think that the Senate should hold confirmation hearings on a new Supreme Court justice after a sitting one dies have gone too far for Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch. They interrupted his lunch, he writes in an op-ed for Bloomberg. And they had signs.

Recently, I was invited by a well-respected legal organization to speak at their monthly lunch meeting. As a group of 200 Washington-area lawyers sat eating in a packed Chinatown restaurant, I began to share my thoughts regarding the current vacancy on the Supreme Court caused by the untimely death of my friend, Justice Antonin Scalia.  

Midway through my remarks, a group of protesters rose from their seats near the front of the room and began shouting “Do your Job!” As these disrupters stood chanting and holding professionally printed signs, it reinforced my belief that by deferring the confirmation process until after this toxic election season, the Senate is doing exactly what it should: We are doing our job.

This was all so disturbing that the very senior senator from Utah was compelled to write some more, this time in The New York Times, about how this simple unprecedented blockade by Republicans of a Supreme Court nominee has been turned into a totally political thing by Democrats. Republicans simply wanted to let the people decide, see? Because the overwhelming decision of the people in 2012 to have Barack Obama for president for four more years doesn't count.

The only thing that counts, Hatch says, is that Democrats were mean to Robert Bork and then retaliated by changing filibuster rules when Republicans were doing their totally non-political blockade of almost all of President Obama's judicial nominees. There are people with "professionally printed signs" now, which just demonstrates that "Democrats have no credibility in lecturing Republicans on how to conduct the current confirmation process" because "liberal pressure tactics belie any commitment to keeping politics out of the confirmation process."

And, of course, there's not a smidgeon of politics in the Republican blockade. The millions being spent by far-right groups to intimidate Republicans and smear the nominee proves it.

Please donate $3 today to help turn the Senate blue. The future of the Supreme Court depends on it.

Harry Reid Slams Mitt Romney’s Hypocrisy on Tax Returns

By Taegan Goddard

Sen. Harry Reid told CNN that he’s stunned to see Mitt Romney demanding Donald Trump’s tax returns.

Said Reid: “All I know, I can’t imagine Romney having the gall coming after anybody’s returns. Let’s look at his. He never gave us his tax returns. Who was the brainchild who got him to do that?

Romney never gave us his tax returns. He did not — he gave us his summary, he didn’t give us our tax returns.”

Ancestry.com Caught Sharing Customer DNA Data With Police With No Warrant

By Jay Syrmopoulos

Idaho Falls, Idaho – Would you find it frightening— perhaps even downright Orwellian — to know that a DNA swab that you sent to a company for recreational purposes would surface years later in the hands of police? What if it caused your child to end up in a police interrogation room as the primary suspect in a murder investigation?

In an extremely troubling case out of Idaho Falls, that’s exactly what happened.

Police investigating the 1996 murder of Angie Dodge targeted the wrong man as the suspect, after looking to Ancestry.com owned Sorensen Database labs for help. The labs look for familial matches between the murderers DNA and DNA submitted for genealogical testing after failing to find a match using traditional methods.

According to The Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The cops chose to use a lab linked to a private collection of genetic genealogical data called the Sorenson Database (now owned by Ancestry.com), which claims it’s “the foremost collection of genetic genealogy data in the world.” The reason the Sorenson Database can make such an audacious claim is because it has obtained its more than 100,000 DNA samples and documented multi-generational family histories from “volunteers in more than 100 countries around the world.” Some of these volunteers were encouraged by the Mormon Church—well-known for its interest in genealogy—to provide their genetic material to the database. Sorenson promised volunteers their genetic data would only be used for “genealogical services, including the determination of family migration patterns and geographic origins” and would not be shared outside Sorenson.

Its consent form states:

The only individuals who will have access to the codes and genealogy information will be the principal investigator and the others specifically authorized by the Principal Investigator, including the SMGF research staff.

Despite this promise, Sorenson shared its vast collection of data with the Idaho police.

Without a warrant or court order, investigators asked the lab to run the crime scene DNA against Sorenson’s private genealogical DNA database. Sorenson found 41 potential familial matches, one of which matched on 34 out of 35 alleles—a very close match that would generally indicate a close familial relationship. The cops then asked, not only for the “protected” name associated with that profile, but also for all “all information including full names, date of births, date and other information pertaining to the original donor to the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy project.”

Ancestry.com failed to respond to questions about how frequently it receives court orders in criminal investigations or if the company attempts to resist law enforcement requests for peoples’ private genetic information, according to The New Orleans Advocate.

This is when things become even more convoluted. The DNA from the Ancestry.com database linked a man, Michael Usry, to the case that didn’t fit the police profile, as he was born in 1952.

The cops then used the genetic information and traced his line of male descendants, ultimately finding his son Michael Usry Jr., born in 1979, which much more closely fit the police profile of the killer.

Once they had targeted Ursy Jr. as the suspect, they began to scour his Facebook page looking for connections to Idaho, finding a couple of Facebook friends that lived in the area of Idaho Falls.

Police then, by Google searching, realized that Usry Jr. was a filmmaker and had done some short films containing murder scenes. Law enforcement subsequently got a warrant for Usry Jr.’s DNA based upon the completely circumstantial evidence presented by Idaho investigators.

The cops then called Usry Jr. and asked him to meet them, under the guise that they were investigating a hit-and-run accident. Thinking he “had nothing to hide,” he agreed to meet with the investigators, without an attorney present. He was subsequently taken to an interrogation room where he eventually allowed them to collect his DNA.

Despite the flimsy circumstantial evidence used to get the warrant, ultimately the test showed that although there were a number of familial alleles shared with the murderers sample, Usry Jr.’s DNA did not conclusively match the killers.

This case is particularly troubling as it seems to decimate an individual’s right to privacy in the name of “public safety,” while allowing the police to run roughshod over people’s civil rights.

“It’s not very common to see this sort of thing, and I frankly hope it doesn’t become very common because an awful lot of people won’t bother testing” their DNA, Judy G. Russell, a genealogist and attorney who writes The Legal Genealogist blog, told The New Orleans Advocate.

There is one key difference between traditional DNA testing and familial testing. The traditional method consists of taking a sample and looking for a specific match with a given database, such as the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, while familial searching looks for common alleles, or gene variants.

According to Voices of Liberty:

Proponents argue familial searching is a harmless way for police to crack otherwise unsolvable cases. The closest partial matches can steer investigators toward a criminal’s family members, whose DNA profiles closely resemble those of a convicted or incarcerated relative.

Skeptics like Murphy, the NYU law professor, warn that the technique drastically expands DNA testing beyond the function envisioned by states that compel criminal defendants to submit DNA samples upon arrest. Many states lack formal legal rules governing the use of familial searching by law enforcement, while Maryland has explicitly outlawed the practice.

This case exposes the very real danger posed to privacy and civil liberties by familial DNA searches and by private, unregulated DNA databases.This case only serves as a glimpse into the dystopian reality we will soon find ourselves living in, according to The Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“This risk will increase further as state and local law enforcement agencies begin to use Rapid DNA analyzers—portable machines that can process DNA in less than an hour. These machines will make it much easier for police to collect and analyze DNA on their own outside a lab. Currently, because forensic DNA analysis in a lab takes so long, we generally see its use limited to high-level felonies like rape and murder. However, Rapid DNA manufacturers are now encouraging local police agencies to analyze DNA found at the scene of low-level property crimes. This means much more DNA will be collected and stored, often in under-regulated local DNA databases. And, because most of the forensic DNA found at property crime scenes is likely to be touch DNA—this only increases the risk that people will be implicated in crimes they didn’t commit.”

Is this really the kind of future we want to create for our children? Shouldn’t we be able to research and learn about our family’s genealogical ancestry without fear that police will be reviewing our genetic information without our consent?

This case makes it clear that even when a private business states in writing that your data will be held as private and safe from prying eyes, that may very well not be what transpires.

Jay Syrmopoulos is an investigative journalist, freethinker, researcher, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs. Jay’s work has previously been published on BenSwann.com and WeAreChange.org.

You can follow him on Twitter @sirmetropolis, on Facebook at Sir Metropolis and now on tsu.

No, America Has Never Been a Christian Country - Why Does the Myth Persist?

A historian challenges conservative claims that the U.S. has a single religious heritage.

By Laura Miller, Salon

As Peter Manseau, author of “One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History,”would have it, nothing has done more damage to the ideal of American religious pluralism than the “stubborn persistence of words spoken more than a century before the United States was a nation at all.” Those words are “a city upon a hill,” preached by the Puritan John Winthrop to his fellow colonists as they prepared to leave their ship at Massachusetts Bay in 1630.

Most strenuously invoked by Ronald Reagan, the city on the hill, according to Manseau, has for the past 50 years “dominated presidential rhetoric about the nation’s self-understanding, causing an image borrowed from the Gospels to become a tenet of faith in America’s civil religion.”

The incessant citation of Winthrop’s metaphor — which envisioned the fledgling colony as a shining example set up to inspire the world but also to invite its comprehensive moral scrutiny — keeps reinforcing the assumption that the United States is fundamentally Christian. There’s more behind that stubborn belief than just rhetoric, of course, but when even ostensibly pluralistic presidents like John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama conjure up Winthrop’s biblical metaphor, it starts to take on the aura of an unquestioned truth.

Well, Manseau certainly questions it with “One Nation, Under Gods,” an unusual work of history meant to revive the idea that the U.S. is a “land shaped and informed by internal religious diversity — some of it obvious, some of it hidden.” Most key points in our national narrative involve a non-Christian element if you look closely, he maintains. “One Nation, Under Gods” is less a continuous narrative itself than a series of isolated snapshots, each chapter telling the story of a person considered a heretic, blasphemer, atheist or heathen, who nevertheless helped in some way to shape the course of American history.

A few of Manseau’s examples are familiar, particularly Thomas Jefferson, the founding father often branded an atheist in his own time and whose Deism today’s Christian conservatives strategically overlook. In a deft move, Manseau captures Jefferson’s heterodox status by relating how, as an old man, the third president offered to sell 6,000 volumes from his own personal library to the nation. (These books remain the core collection of the Library of Congress.) It was a controversial proposal, as some critics complained that Jefferson’s library “abounded with productions of atheistical, irreligious and immoral character,” and some were even “in the original French”! In examining Jefferson’s own cataloging system, Manseau finds evidence of the Sage of Monticello’s conviction that “religious systems inevitably and necessarily interact with each other in ways at once contentious, intimate and transformative.”

Some of the stories in “One Nation, Under Gods” are more surprising. “It is perhaps the greatest of forgotten influences on American life and culture,” Manseau writes, that some 20 percent or more of Africans living in America around the time of the Revolutionary War were Muslims, a quantity that “dwarfed the number of Roman Catholics or Jews.” The majority of enslaved Africans did practice such Western African religions as Yoruba and Obeah, all of which contributed to the distinctive customs of African-American Christianity. But we also have a handful of stories of African Muslims abducted to the U.S., where, as in the case of one Omar ibn Said, they astonished the natives by writing fluently in a strange alphabet (Arabic) and impressed, if also bewildered, everyone with their abstemious piety.

Tituba, a slave, was the first person accused in the Salem Witch Trials, and although often depicted as African, she was most likely an “Indian” from South America, by way of Barbados. She had made a “witch cake” (a nasty concoction of rye flour and urine) for divinatory purposes, and in doing so was probably tapping into multiple folk traditions, including those of the colonists’ own native England.

Manseau believes such practices, though forbidden, were anything but rare in the colonies and should be thought of as “a kind of spiritual equalizer, providing religious authority outside social structures that were inevitably defined at times by class and gender.” Tituba herself quickly figured out that the best course of action when called up before the court was to “confess” every lurid detail the magistrates wanted to hear, including the visits she received from the devil, his commands that she serve him, and the culpability of her two co-defendants (unpopular village women) in casting spells on children. As a result, Tituba was the only one of the three to escape execution. Long before the advent of modern-day spin doctors, she grasped the advantage of getting ahead of the story.

Then there is the network of Jewish merchants extending from Pennsylvania to Amsterdam by way of the island of St. Eustatius, in the Caribbean, a major conduit of supplies and funds through the British blockade during the Revolutionary War. One Polish Jew, Haym Solomon, gave so much money to the cause of independence that he died penniless. He and his co-religionists, driven from one European nation to another in a roundelay of persecution, hoped and believed they could finally find refuge in the fledgling nation.

It was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s brilliant, irascible Aunt Mary, a “prototypical American eccentric,” who first introduced her nephew and intellectual protégé to the concepts and iconography of Hindu mythology after she met “a Visitor here from India” in 1822. Their correspondence on these and other spiritual matters would inform Transcendentalism and in turn the Eastern-infused philosophies of generations to come. (Manseau provides a survey of Hindu beliefs and stories cropping up in the work of Thoreau and even Melville, as well as a persistent interest in Indian religion on the part of American feminists like Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Margaret Fuller.)

But perhaps the most fascinating chapter in “One Nation, Under Gods” explores recent theories about the influence of a syncretic Native American revival movement on Joseph Smith and his Book of Mormon. The young half-brother of a Seneca chief, Handsome Lake, was an aging, ne’er-do-well hunter who experienced a revelation during a near-fatal illness. What was revealed to him fused Iroquois mythology with Quaker-like morality into a re-imagined creation story explaining how the Iroquois had fallen so low in their own land. Handsome Lake died when Smith was 10, but a Mormon scholar has pointed out that only weeks before Smith’s own visions commenced, Handsome Lake’s nephew spoke at a public gathering in Smith’s town of Palmyra, New York.

The Code of Handsome Lake, like the Mormon story of the Native Americans as a lost tribe of Israel, is “a tale of white and Indian unity interrupted by evils brought across the sea.” Both creeds stressed sobriety and involved the manifestation of three angelic presences charged with guiding the inhabitants of the New World to a better future. Both were born during a period of intense, innovative religious activity known as the Second Great Awakening and arose in a region of Western New York state dubbed “the Burned-Over District” for the fervor that seemed to consume everyone in the vicinity. Shakers, utopian communities, millenarians and spiritualists were just some of the unorthodox and fractious believers who flourished there.

But even the idea that Winthrop’s little community represented a unified city on a hill is an illusion, as the Puritan dissidents Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson could testify. The Pilgrims might have all called themselves Christians, but some differences among them were seen by their theocratic leaders as profound threats to the spiritual survival of the community. Both Williams and Hutchinson were cast out and created communities of their own. There was literally never a point in the history of the colonies or the U.S. when all or most Americans genuinely shared the same faith. “The true gospel of the American experience,” Manseau writes, “is not religious agreement but dissent.”

Mitt Romney's Terrible Timing

For the third election cycle in a row, the former Massachusetts governor was in the right place at the wrong time.

By David A. Graham

Everyone's got a theory for why Mitt Romney never made it to the White House. Too stiff. Too rich. Bad staff. Too many flip-flops. Prejudice against Mormons. A failure to convey the real Mitt. But more than anything, Romney's problem might have been bad timing.

During a call with staffers Friday morning, Romney told them he wouldn't run for president in 2016, ending a period of intense speculation, as the prospect of a third Romney campaign went from improbable rumor to widely held expectation.

"After putting considerable thought into making another run for president, I’ve decided it is best to give other leaders in the Party the opportunity to become our next nominee," he said, according to a prepared statement obtained by Hugh Hewitt. "I believe a Republican winning back the White House is essential for our country, and I will do whatever I can to make that happen."

Once again, it seems Romney has ended up in the right place at the wrong time. As I noted a couple weeks ago, when the Romney boomlet began, he ran in 2008 as a true conservative candidate. But after the disappointments of the George W. Bush's second term, a conservative former governor simply wasn't what his party wanted. If Romney had beaten John McCain in the GOP primary, he might have been perfectly poised to win the White House: With the economy collapsing, a turnaround whiz from the private sector could have appealed to many Americans. But it was too late for that. McCain floundered, and Barack Obama won.

The best time for Romney to run for president was probably in 2011, when President Obama's standing was still battered by the recession and the backlash to the Affordable Care Act. It was the right moment for a guy who could sell himself as a business leader with a track-record of fixing troubled enterprises. Unfortunately for him, the economy improved enough over the course of the following year to help Obama win reelection in November 2012 by a solid margin.

So why not 2016? Romney suggested in his statement that he believed he could win the nomination, but worried that he would lose the general election. "I am convinced that with the help of the people on this call, we could win the nomination," he said. "Our finance calls made it clear that we would have enough funding to be more than competitive. With few exceptions, our field political leadership is ready and enthusiastic about a new race. And the reaction of Republican voters across the country was both surprising and heartening."

Nevertheless, he added, "I do not want to make it more difficult for someone else to emerge who may have a better chance of becoming that president."

One could argue he's got that backwards. The natural pattern of presidential elections suggests that Democrats are the underdogs in the 2016 race—a party seldom holds on to the White House after two terms, and Nate Cohn notes that current economic models would suggest a Democratic popular vote of 48.5 percent. If Romney could have won the Republican nomination, he might have been able to realize his dream of becoming commander in chief.

But just as circumstances seemed to conspire to produce the perfect moment for Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush pulled the rug out from under him. In mid-December, Bush announced his decision to run, assuming the mantle of moderate, establishment candidate from Romney. Since then, some of the people who staffed Romney's campaign, and many of those who helped fund it, have attached themselves to a Bush campaign. On Thursday, operative David Kochel, who ran Romney's Iowa strategy in both previous campaigns, went to work for Bush in a presumptive campaign-manager role. NBC News even reports that some of the people invited to join Romney's Friday call were already committed to work for Bush.

Winning the nomination with Bush in the race would have been very challenging for Romney, despite his sanguine statement. Romney holds a commanding lead in RealClearPolitics' average for the Republican primaries, and a breathtaking 16-point edge on HuffPost Pollster's average. But as political watchers have noted, polling at this stage isn't a reliable gauge of very much. Given Romney's name-recognition and the fact that most people aren't tuned into the race—it's only January 2015, after all—it's only mildly surprising that he rose to the top. Many leading Republicans, including RNC Chair Reince Priebus, tried to throw cold water on the idea of third Romney campaign.

Watching presidential dreams die is always bittersweet, and it must feel especially poignant for Romney. He'd been effectively running for president since he announced that he wouldn't run for reelection as Massachusetts governor in December 2005—a nearly decade-long effort. In some ways, the roots of his candidacy stretched much further, back to his father George Romney's own unsuccessful 1968 campaign. And Romney's aides and family members truly believed in the cause. What others derided as constant reinvention, Mark Halperin notes, Romney's circle viewed as a single, consistent effort to show the American public that Mitt was the right man for the job—a principled, hardworking, competent, decent guy who would be great as president. Romney's aides bridled at the idea that he was "rebranding": Each of these different motifs was just a different way to try to get people to see the Real Mitt, who hadn't changed.

Toward the end of his statement, Romney encouraged those on the call to find a presidential campaign and work to restore Republican control of the White House. With an enormous, crowded field, they should have no trouble finding a spot to land. But for the true believers who thought all Romney needed to win over the American people was a stretch of good luck, that may be little consolation. Once again, Mitt Romney's timing just wasn't quite right.

Mitt To The Future III

GOP Strategist Mocks Mitt Romney Trying To Run On Poverty While Owning Car Elevators

By John Amato

Mitt Romney has intimated that he's hoping the third time is the charm as he makes the case that he may enter into the 2016 presidential race.

Mitt Romney began to more forcefully articulate his case for a third run for the presidency Friday, telling a crowd of Republican activists and power brokers that the party needs to emphasize a more robust foreign policy, opportunity for all, and a fight against poverty.

This had Republican strategist Matthew Dowd shaking his head on ABC's This Week when asked about the prospects of another Mitt Romney run.

RADDATZ: OK, but look at -- look at Mitt Romney. And you saw him sort of lay out where he would go with this if he does it -- heavy on foreign policy, looking out to -- to solve the poverty question.
Does he risk having people say who is this guy?

DOWD: Well, I think that's a huge risk for Mitt Romney. And it's in -- it's not only a risk, it's a reality for Mitt Romney. He ran one campaign in 2008, a different campaign in 2012. And to me, this campaign he's now developing -- obviously, he should be talking about foreign policy. We have, as you led into all of this, we have huge foreign policy concerns.

I think it's very problematic for Mitt Romney, who has car elevators, to run a campaign on poverty. I think you want to be authentic and genuine on it. And that's not to say wealthy people can't talk about those issues.

It's difficult.

Wealthy people can of course run on an an anti-poverty platform, just not ones like Mitt Romney that have mocked the middle class by calling 47% of the country moochers.

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.

That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax..."[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Romney to GOP donors: ‘I want to be President.’

By Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Matea Gold

In this July 2, 2014, file photo, former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney addresses a crowd of supporters in New Hampshire. Romney told a small group of donors that he's considering a third run at the White House. (Charles Krupa/AP)

Mitt Romney forcefully declared his interest in a third presidential run to a room full of powerful Republican donors Friday, disrupting the fluid 2016 GOP field as would-be rival Jeb Bush was moving swiftly to consolidate establishment support.

Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, has been mulling another campaign for several months, but his comments Friday marked a clear step forward in his thinking and come amid mounting tensions between the Romney and Bush camps.

“I want to be president,” Romney told about 30 donors in New York. He said that his wife, Ann — who last fall said she was emphatically against a run — had changed her mind and was now “very encouraging,” although their five sons remain split, according to multiple attendees.

Advisers said Romney discussed the race with his family over the holidays, when they spent time skiing in Park City, Utah, but he insisted that he has not made up his mind whether to run. Advisers said he recognizes that he would not be able to waltz into the nomination and that the intra-party competition is shaping up to be stiffer in next year’s primaries than it was in 2012.

Bush’s sudden focus on the race in recent weeks has put pressure on Romney to decide soon.

Romney has been in regular conversations with major donors, some of whom are pushing him to run again, but confidants have also warned him that his window of opportunity could shut if he does not declare his intentions within 30 to 60 days.

Romney’s comments at Friday’s meeting, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, electrified the world of Republican financiers, who are being courted aggressively by Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and other hopefuls. Romney’s dalliance could freeze enough donors to spoil Bush’s plan to post an intimidatingly huge first-quarter fundraising haul this spring.

“What he has said to me before is, ‘I am preserving my options.’ What he is now saying is, ‘I am seriously considering a run,’ ” said Bobbie Kilberg, a top donor from Virginia who raised millions of dollars for Romney’s 2012 bid. She was briefed by attendees on Romney’s Friday comments. “And he said that in a room with 30 people. That is a different degree of intensity.”

Striving to keep his network intact, Romney on Friday also e-mailed his donors with invitations to his fourth annual policy summit in Park City, scheduled for June 11-13. Called the E2 Summit, the event is billed as an “intimate” gathering of Wall Street titans, politicos and former government officials.

Romney’s associates said that he has become restless since conceding to President Obama on a cold night in Boston two years ago. Romney’s motivation to run again stems from a lingering dissatisfaction with Obama’s policies, both economic and foreign, and a belief that he would have set the country on a better course.

Romney also harbors doubts that Bush and other Republican contenders can defeat likely Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, advisers said, and is wary in particular about Bush’s political skills.

“I believe Mitt Romney is too much of a patriot to sit on the sidelines and concede the presidency to Hillary Clinton or [Massachusetts Sen.] Elizabeth Warren when he knows that he can fix the country,” said Spencer Zwick, Romney’s 2012 national finance chairman, who accompanied Romney to Friday’s New York meeting.

“I think, at the end of the day, he believes he could actually make a difference,” Zwick said. “He won’t make a decision to run for president based on who else is in the race. He will make a decision based on his own desire and his own abilities.”

Romney’s advisers said he is approaching the decision pragmatically. “He does not go into things looking through rose-colored glasses,” said one Romney adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk candidly.

This adviser said Romney is far from having his mind made up: “He knows he’ll have to earn it, and he believes in that; that the presidency is too important to hand it over to somebody. He doesn’t talk like that at all. He wants to go out and make his case to the American people and see what happens. But he’s not that far.”

One immediate hurdle Romney would face is that many of the prominent donors that backed his last campaign, as well as some senior operatives who worked for him before, have already been scooped up by Bush or other candidates. GOP lawyer Charlie Spies, who co-founded the pro-Romney super PAC Restore our Future, is now representing Bush’s leadership committee, the Right to Rise PAC, as well as a pro-Bush super PAC of the same name.

Some Republicans have sharply criticized him since 2012 over his missteps on the campaign trail and his final performance — he lost every swing state except North Carolina and finished with 206 electoral votes to Obama’s 332. Democrats successfully cast him as out of touch with the middle class after he was caught on video telling wealthy donors that 47 percent of Americans do not take personal responsibility for their lives.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), a 2016 presidential hopeful, assailed Romney shortly after the 2012 election: “We have to stop dividing the American voters. We need to go after 100 percent of the votes, not 53 percent.” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), also eyeing a 2016 run, wrote in his 2013 book that Romney did a “lousy job” talking about the economy “in a way that is relevant to people’s lives.”

Friday’s declaration of interest by Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and businessman, was not welcomed by all of his former allies — especially those close to the Bush family.

“Frankly, he has been bypassed by Jeb,” said Doug Gross, Romney’s 2008 Iowa campaign chairman and longtime Bush ally. “The time for Governor Romney has probably passed. He has already lost twice. The jury is very much out on whether Republican voters would go with him again.”

Romney’s relationship with Bush’s orbit has evolved from warm to strained in recent months.

Bush’s chief political strategist is Mike Murphy, who also is close to Romney and advised his successful 2002 gubernatorial campaign. Last year, Murphy helped Romney on TV ads for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, shooting on a California set that bore more than a passing resemblance to the Oval Office.

But as Bush has ramped up his own efforts, Romney’s coziness with Murphy has dissipated. They last met shortly before Christmas, when Romney asked Murphy about preparations for Bush’s campaign and told Murphy he had not ruled out a bid of his own, according to Romney backers with knowledge of the conversation.

Romney has been talking frequently with Stuart Stevens, his top 2012 strategist and a Murphy rival, while keeping a watchful eye on Bush’s moves to woo Romney’s former supporters. On Friday, Bush was in Boston, Romney’s home base where he headquartered his past campaigns, trying to persuade Romney donors to get behind his effort.

Veteran GOP consultant Ed Rollins said, “Romney knows that he can block donors from going to Bush if he sends a clear enough message.”
 
“If you put Romney and Bush head to head, I think Romney probably wins that fight,” Rollins said. “Nobody is wholesale walking away from him. The donor base and operatives are still there. Bush thought he’d have an open field to easily beat Christie. Romney, if he gets in, changes that plan.”

On Wednesday, Romney lectured at Stanford University in a class titled “Understanding the 2016 Campaign from Start to Finish,” which is taught by his former policy director, Lanhee Chen.

Romney later had dinner in Menlo Park, Calif., with Chen, former spokeswoman Andrea Saul and former campaign lawyers Ben Ginsberg and Katie Biber Chen.

Romney has remained close to such power brokers as New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, a Republican fundraiser who co-chaired Romney’s 2012 campaign and who attended Friday’s meeting.

“When I walked into Woody’s box a few weeks ago, Romney was sitting there in a turtleneck,” recalled former New Jersey governor Tom Kean. “He was in good spirits.”

Dan Balz contributed to this report.

 

Robert Costa is a national political reporter at The Washington Post.

 

Matea Gold covers money in politics for The Washington Post.

Mitt Romney’s Epic Irony On Losing An Election Will Make You Spit Your Coffee

On Sunday, former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney sat down with CBS Face the Nation to criticize the president’s handling of the battle against ISIS forces, as well as his potential executive action on immigration.

Romney reiterated his belief that the president has been “inept” on Middle East policy, asserting that it was a mistake to declare “no boots on the ground” in the region. “It is not acceptable for ISIS to present the kind of threat it does to the world,” the former governor said after suggesting the “no boots” remark will necessarily prove contradictory.

“If it takes our own troops” to destroy ISIS, Romney said, then “you don’t take that off the table.”

As for the possibility of Obama taking executive action to overhaul policy and protect millions of undocumented immigrants currently in the states, Romney said: “The president has got to learn that he lost this last election round. The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

Validating Marriott's low wage exploitation

Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

 

As an old popular song asks, what do you get if you "work your fingers right down to the bone?"

Boney fingers.

As housekeepers in the sprawling Marriott chain of hotels know, that's more than a cute lyric, it's the truth. These "room attendants," as they're called, are paid barely $8 an hour to perform a very hard, physical job, suffering the highest injury rate in the so-called "hospitality" industry. Some two-thirds of them take pain medication just to get through their day of heaving 100-pound mattresses, stooping to clean floors, and twisting to readjust furniture in 15 to 20 rooms per shift.

Yet, Marriott's CEO publicly hails the very women he exploits as "the heart of the house," saying his chain likes to express its appreciation to them with "special recognition events" during International Housekeepers Week. Yes, exploited room attendants are not rewarded with a living wage, but with a congratulatory week – how great is that?

This year, housekeeper week came with "a new tipping initiative" – a scheme created by multimillionaire Maria Shriver, urging Marriott's customers "to express their gratitude by leaving tips and notes of thanks for hotel room attendants." Shriver says she hopes the voluntary tips "will make these women feel validated." Is that sweet or what?

Does she at least urge that this tip be the standard 15-20 percent we give at restaurants? No, one-to-five bucks per night's stay is recommended. Let's see, at about $250 a day for a Marriott room, even $5 is a sad two percent expression of "gratitude." As for customers leaving a little thank-you note, imagine trying to buy a baloney sandwich with that.

How about this:  

Instead of paying $9 million a year to Marriott's CEO, make him rely on customer tips – and see how validated he feels.

"House Keeping Can Be Dangerous Work," Unite Here.

"Compensation up for Marriott, Hilton CEOs," www.bizjournal.com, April 8, 2014.

"Marriott: Company Information," www.news.marriott.com, September 1, 2014.

"Marriott's New Envelope For Room Tips Stirs Debate," www.npr.org, September 16, 2014.

"Hotel Chain Will Leave Envelopes In Rooms To Encourage Guests To Tip Housekeepers," www.thinkprogress.org

Please Proceed: Republicans Hysterically Decide To Make Mitt Romney The Face of 2014

By Sarah Jones

Fooled again.

That CNN poll showing that Romney would beat Obama today in a hypothetical match really got Republicans dreaming. They ignore that Romney would lose in a hypothetical match against former secretary of state Hillary Clinton by 55 percent to 42 percent, and instead focus on how Romney would beat Obama in a hypothetical match. So they’re trying to sell Romney fever again. Romney is so popular, they tell us, that he’s out stumping for Republicans, while they claim no one wants to be seen with Obama.

So there, Obama! Take your 2012 mandate and shove it, because in a hypothetical match up, Romney totally unskewed that election!

Republican whisperer Robert Costa at the Washington Post reported that Mitt Romney is “emerging as one of the Republican Party’s most in-demand campaign surrogates.” He contrasted this with the fact that many Democrats are avoiding an “unpopular” President Obama. Since this is happening in areas where Republicans like Mitch McConnell are desperately trying to run against President Obama because his constituents conveniently believe the Republican lies about this President, it’s not hard to understand. But get back to me when Republicans use Mitt Romney to campaign in the inner city or hardcore Democratic areas. That’s apples to apples.

At any rate, the Mittpalooza is on, babies! Ro-mentum is real. 2016 is riiiight there. Per Costa:

Over three days in mid-August, Romney will campaign for GOP Senate and gubernatorial candidates in West Virginia, North Carolina and Arkansas, aides said. In September, he is planning visits to the presidential swing states of Colorado and Virginia.

Romney is filling up his October schedule, as well. Senate hopefuls in Iowa and New Hampshire are eager for him to return before November’s midterms, while Romney is weighing trips to other Senate battlegrounds. At least one high-profile Senate campaign said it has produced a television advertisement featuring Romney ready to air in the fall.

“Democrats don’t want to be associated with Barack Obama right now, but Republicans are dying to be associated with Mitt Romney,” said Spencer Zwick, a longtime Romney confidant who chaired his national finance council.

He added: “Candidates, campaigns and donors in competitive races are calling saying, ‘Can we get Mitt here?’ They say, ‘We’ve looked at the polling, and Mitt Romney moves the needle for us.’ That’s somewhat unexpected for someone who lost the election.”

Republicans will believe anything, apparently, except reality. No science, no medicine, no physics, no history — but Ro-mentum! All of this because of one poll. As if it weren’t skewed, inaccurate polls that got them into this mess in the first place. Get back to us when Republicans use him in Los Angeles, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, or any other Democratic stronghold.

But really. A hypothetical poll of an existing entity versus a fantasy entity is sort of like believing that the fantasy partner one has never had is a viable, better alternative to someone with whom one is in a long term relationship. It’s juvenile, childish and predictable, because people believe the grass is greener in their imagination.

Reality check: If there were an actual election right now with Mitt Romney in it, he would be in the news, and being in the news was never a positive thing for Mitt Romney. Thus, the public would be reminded of his out-of-touch cluelessness and his snide, sneering contempt for them. His wife would be lecturing them about the Romneys’ entitlement. The people would not be happy with the Royals.

As it is, the public has been beaten over the head with phony Obama scandals and a DC that is not working, disturbing foreign policy issues and not enough good paying jobs.

None of these things would be fixed with Mitt Romney at the helm.

Republicans might want to note that the CNN poll was heavy on landlines (622 to 350 on cells), which favors the older, typically Republican voter, and that still, Democratic Congressional candidates were consistently ahead of Republicans. That is the only election actually coming up in reality, and therefor the only election that is relevant. But it’s also relevant that Republicans continue to believe that Obama is massively unpopular. They believed this going into 2012. The media believed it, too. They had polls to back up their beliefs. But those polls were skewed Republican.

Right now, Congressional Democrats are raising money off of Republican attacks on President Obama. They ask supporters to have Obama’s back. They are getting Obama voters motivated to go to the polls — people who usually stay home in midterms. They would not be doing that if Obama were massively unpopular. The midterms favor Republicans, but Republicans are doing everything in their power do destroy their advantage, including attaching themselves to Mitt Romney. The Democrats only need five seconds to remind the public of why they chose Obama.

Does the public fantasize about a different person in the White House magically making Republicans do their jobs and thus changing things? Of course they do. That’s the entire point of the Republican obstruction. But only the very childish believe in comparing fantasy to reality. So, that means that Republicans are giddily shoving Mitt Romney out there.

The echoes of President Obama should warn them as Democrats smile, “Please proceed.”

Please Proceed: Republicans Hysterically Decide To Make Mitt Romney The Face of 2014 was written by Sarah Jones for PoliticusUSA.

Hey, Mitt - about that victory lap...

Mitt Romney and his fellow failed candidates can't resist patting themselves on the back over Putin's move in Ukraine.

 

Sore loser Ann Romney STILL simply cannot accept the fact that her corporate mannequin of a husband lost to Obama

By Michael Hayne

Ann Romney is no stranger to publicly scolding voters like they were the hired help at one of her galas.  For example,  she previously blamed them for the government shutdown earlier this year.

Once again, she’s proving that she’s the washed up mean girl who married money and now makes fun of you behind your back.

Ann Romney ‘explains’ why America messed up in 2012.

While plugging the Netflix documentary about her husband and his presidential run, Ann Romney stated how she always felt her husband would be elected and was totally shocked when he wasn’t.

And wanting to maintain a pretense of Stepford wife pleasantness, Mrs. Romney claimed the “country lost” but refrained from laying into the president.

I really believe this,”Ann Romney said, “We lost, but truly the country lost by not having Mitt as president.”

“How do you think President Obama’s doing?” Fox News’ Bill Hemmer asked.
“I think I’ll be polite and nice and not comment on that,” Romney replied. (Mediaite)

Here’s the video.



Well, Ann– maybe if Mitt wasn’t  essentially a crappy Christmas sweater that republicans had to feign enthusiasm for;  maybe if he wasn’t  a stiff, out-of touch patrician with a freaking car elevator and sordid background in vulture capitalism; and maybe if didn’t he always stuck a silver foot in his mouth, voters might have given him a chance.

For instance, maybe if we saw more of the guy who slow jammed the news with Fallon, as opposed to the corporate creep on the cover of the Just For Men box, Mitt might have squeezed out a win. Say what you will about the Bush family, but Laura Bush — and even Cindy McCain — have remained classy and come to grips with their husband’s failures.

Copyright As Censorship: Using The DMCA To Take Down Websites For Accurately Calling Out Racist Comments

By Mike Masnick

While some still believe that copyright can never be used to censor, we see it happen all the time. Here's just the latest example. The websites for both the Center for a Stateless Society and the Students for a Stateless Society have been taken down by Bluehost, an ISP with a history of taking down entire sites based on single DMCA claims (i.e.: don't ever use Bluehost as a hosting company). Why? Apparently because of a DMCA takedown notice sent by lawyer JD Obenberger on behalf of his client, Olivier Janssens (though, in the DMCA notice, Obenberger refers to him as Oliver, not Olivier).

What "copyright" did these sites violate? Well, it turns out that the sites were somewhat (reasonably) annoyed by comments by some members of Students for a Stateless Society in Belgium, and so they highlighted some comments which they felt were inappropriate, calling attention to the fact that these sorts of comments were inappropriate and at odds with the views and goals of the organization. One of those whose comments were called out was (you guessed it) Olivier Janssens. You can read the comments at the link above, which S4SS argued were Islamophobic, which they felt went against their basic principles, and then the group officially disassociated itself with the chapter to which Janssens and others belonged.

Then came the DMCA notice from Obenberger, which is really quite a thing to read. On my first read, I wondered if it was fake, because not only is it completely over the top, in it, Obenberger more or less admits that the takedown has little to do with copyright, but is to try to hide the (accurately reported) words of Janssens, and makes a statement that I still can't believe anyone has ever said in seriousness (bolded below):

I am the attorney for Oliver Janssens who is the victim of copyright infringement and a particularly dangerous violation of his right to privacy which affects his personal safety and security. In other words, what follows is not your typical DMCA letter about whose porn is being bootlegged by which pirate.

Your hosting customer, who operates http://s4ss.org, decided to embarrass Oliver Janssens in the worst and most effective way - by words out of his own mouth. Words of his own creation which, when reduced to the tangible medium of a FaceBook page, acquired a copyright recognized by the United States Copyright Act and international conventions concerning copyright. And because the words he wrote, in what he imagined to be a close discussion among like-minded persons in a FaceBook page, reflected heterodox social and political views about Muslims in Europe, its further publication on your servers presents certain practical dangers to the safety and well-being of Mr. Janssens, who lives and works in that part of Europe in which violence is so routinely applied by Islamic Extremists to those who oppose them, that it seldom makes the news here when its victims are nailed into coffins and buried.

Mr. Janssens participated in a harsh social/political discussion with several other per­sons in a FaceBook group and his comments may be understood as antagonistic to Muslims, at the risk of understatement. I'm sure that, if he could see how they would be published via your servers to the entire world, he'd pull them back. It is too late for regrets. But it is not too late to try to put a tourniquet on this bleeding by stopping the further illegal dissemination of his property.

I am writing this letter in an effort to reduce the chances that Mr. Janssens may become a target for violence and harassment. I am writing to you because, when Mr. Janssens appealed to the operator of the site, your hosting customer, with a request for a takedown of this material, his own private words written among friends, his own intellectual property, your customer operating the site told him to"pound sand" yesterday, on September 19.

He has not authorized anyone to repost his words, yet a user of your web hosting services, S4SS Admin, has posted them on the S4SS website, specifically on the web page indicated below. Further, Oliver Jannsens has not authorized the translation into English of the writings, which your hosting customer also publishes at the same page.

By providing hosting services to that site and its operator, you materially assist the infringement of the exclusive copyright that Mr. Janssens possesses in those words of his authorship, a copyright created under the Berne Convention and American law at the moment he typed them and pressed the Return Button. Should Mr. Janssens become the victim of an assault or murder traceable to this infringement, should he be harassed and ridiculed and run out of his employment or lose his terrified family, committed by a person who targeted him, the embarrassment to Bluehost/Hostmonster would be enormous. And the potential damages, should you disregard this request and demand under the DMCA, and should Mr. Janssens become the target of retaliation inflicted upon him in Europe by a religious zealot who read about him on the website in question, stagger the imagination.

*I would demand, on behalf of my client, that you 1) immediately terminate the hosting of these files, 2) delete their contents from your servers and all other media, 3) advise us of the identity of the uploader, and 4) inform the posters and your hosting client that their illegal conduct jeopardizes not only them, but you as well.

The letter seemed so preposterous that I emailed Obenberger asking for confirmation that he'd actually written and sent it, but as of publishing have received no reply (well over 24 hours since I emailed). Not only is that bolded line such an incredible statement -- saying that it's somehow unfair to actually quote the words someone said -- his further explanation appears to be a rather blatant admission that the takedown here was not for anything having to do with copyright at all, but some random, unsupported worry that Janssens' actual statements might reflect poorly on Janssens. Because they do.

Obenberger, by the way, claims to be a strong First Amendment defender. His website is littered with claims about his strong belief in free speech and the First Amendment, and how he goes to great lengths to protect that right. That's kind of funny as he's now taking down an entire site via an incredibly questionable DMCA claim. And there's a very good chance he knows that his DMCA notice is highly questionable. As the On Alliance blog points out, Obenberger himself has written about filing DMCA notices in which he goes into great detail, including noting that you shouldn't file a threat of a lawsuit if the copyright holder hasn't registered the copyright with the US government prior to the alleged infringement. Somehow that seems quite unlikely here, and yet he still sent the takedown.

While it's entirely possible (though quite a stretch) that Janssens could face the consequences of his words in a manner suggested by Obenberger, that's the nature of free speech. You are free to say what you want, but it does not make you free from the consequences of your speech. Furthermore, copyright has nothing to do with that. You don't get to claim that it's a copyright violation because someone's words might legitimately be used against them. That's the point in which the DMCA letter slips into admitting that this has nothing to do with copyright at all, but rather is an attempt to abuse the DMCA process to silence Students for a Stateless Society for calling out Janssens' statements.

Furthermore, even if there was a copyright issue here, this is about as slam dunk a fair use claim as you could possibly imagine. S4SS quoted a few brief snippets of a Facebook discussion to call certain people out on their statements. The idea that there's a legitimate copyright claim there is preposterous. At the very least the use was clearly fair use. It was used for commentary and criticism. It was not used for commercial purposes (at all). The nature of the "copyrighted work" (already a stretch) was some bigoted Facebook comments (which were unlikely to be registered prior to the alleged "infringement"). There is no market for the works, so the impact on the market was nil. Instead, it seems clear (and, Obenberger more or less admits this in the DMCA letter itself), the entire purpose was to censor the site that called out the statement of his client.

If anything, it makes you wonder if Obenberger and Janssens may have opened themselves up to a significant DMCA 512(f) issue in arguing that such obviously non-infringing content was infringing.

I asked folks associated with C4SS and S4SS for more details about this as well, and was forwarded Jenssen's original threat email demanding that the content be removed (before he got Obenberger involved), and it's equally ridiculous. It claims that "you do not have my permission to repost my opinions" and claims it's an "official cease and desist letter," and if they don't comply he'll sue. Of course, it's difficult to see how he has any grounds, whatsoever, to sue. Of course, S4SS has the right to repost his opinions, especially in the manner in which the organization did so.

After C4SS and S4SS published the bogus takedown notice again, Jenssen sent yet another email, though somewhat more conciliatory, saying that it wasn't his intention to have the entirety of both sites taken down, and that as an "anarchist-libertarian" he's "not exactly in support of copyright." Of course, he probably should have thought of that before hiring a lawyer to send a highly questionable DMCA takedown notice that is entirely hinged on copyright law. He does apologize for the takedown, and tries to explain his initial comments which got him into the mess in the first place, claiming that he went too far in his comments, believing (incorrectly) that it was a private group. Again, this isn't fully convincing, because he did make those comments.

And, of course, you have to wonder how apologetic he is, when after "apologizing" and giving his side of the story, he immediately adds the following:

If you continue this, I will have no other choice than to continue protecting my person by having it removed, and additionally I will also start pressing personal charges to the persons doing so (for endangering my life/family intentionally). I have a practically unlimited budget to do so, but obviously this is not what I want.

Again, I'm curious as to what legal basis there is to press charges against someone for quoting someone else accurately. That would make for an interesting lawsuit as well.

In the meantime, however, we've got a bogus DMCA notice that has completely taken down the sites of two organizations, and threats of further lawsuits, even from someone who claims he doesn't believe in copyright law. But, no, copyright could never possibly be used for censorship.

How Romney Finally Got Black People To Like Him

By Elisabeth Parker

Mitt Romney’s supporters may not be able to send President Barack Obama “back to” Kenya, but left-over Romney T-shirts from the 2012 campaign are fair game. Benny Johnson from BuzzFeed gleefully reports that “the Romney campaign is still strong in Africa,” thanks to a serendipitous donation to the Orbit Village project, an orphanage and K-12 school located in Nairobi, Kenya. The Founder of the Tennessee-based charity, Cyndy Waters, told BuzzFeed that the T-shirts came from her nephew, who served as a county director for Romney’s presidential campaign. She then added:

“A T-shirt might seem a small thing to an American teen with a drawer full of many T-shirts, but we work all year collecting clothing, school supplies, and gifts for our students. The gift of several hundred T-shirts and hats from the Romney campaign was a real blessing to us.”

Photo from Orbit Village Project, a Baptist-run orphanage, K-12 school, and evangelical church in Nairobi, Kenya: “Send a child to school, lead a child to Christ.”

This is probably the largest group of young black people we’ll ever see wearing Romney T-shirts and smiling while doing it. Unfortunately for the GOP, these kids are in Africa. It remains highly unlikely that Romney will ever enjoy wide appeal to blacks in the good old US of A,. After all, his Republican party promotes policies that hurt people of color, and his Mormon church only recently granted equal status to black people. Although the gushing BuzzFeed article insists that Waters “will accept any donation of any campaign swag,” we can make a fairly educated guess as to where her political sympathies lie … and not just based on her nephew’s occupation. A quick visit to the Orbit Village Project’s web site reveals that the charity is affiliated with an evangelical Christian group that has “planted” a Baptist church on the site. It is no secret that American evangelical Christian groups have taken hold in Africa, spreading their vile message of ignorance, homophobia, and hate.

 

Waters burbles about how the kids love America:

“Kenyan students love to talk about politics and very much admire the way Americans handle elections [...] We thought it would be a great way to celebrate the 4th of July and the political system by giving the shirts out on that day.”

But of course she doesn’t mention how Romney’s party has been manipulating our elections and doing everything possible to keep American blacks and other people of color from voting.

Waters then snidely works in a dig against Obama:

“President Obama was not on the best of terms with many Kenyans for choosing to visit Tanzania instead of Kenya in his recent visit to Africa, and that made many of the kids even more excited to receive the shirts.”

So … let’s send her a few hundred Obama, Wendy Davis and Elizabeth Warren T-shirts and see what happens. Their mailing address is:

The Orbit Village Project
118 Cedar Hills Road
Sevierville, TN 37862-3809

And in case you’re curious about what these kids are learning in this orphanage/school/church, here’s the video:



Ironically, while these kids are enjoying this bonanza, it turns out that Romney’s supporters in Virginia couldn’t seem to get their hands on any Romney T-shirts or lawn signs during the 2012 election, according to Christopher Bedford’s disgusted post-mortem in his “What the hell is the point of the Virginia GOP?” op-ed piece for the Daily Caller.

Author: Elisabeth Parker Elisabeth Parker is a writer, Web designer, mom, political junkie, and dilettante. Come visit her at ElisabethParker.Com, "like" her on facebook, "friend" her on facebook, follow her on Twitter, or check out her Pinterest boards. For more Addicting Info articles by Elisabeth, click here.