Presidential?

Romney's Cruel Canine Vacation

The reporter intended the anecdote that opened part four of the Boston Globe's profile of Mitt Romney to illustrate, as the story said, "emotion-free crisis management": Father deals with minor — but gross — incident during a 1983 family vacation, and saves the day. But the details of the event are more than unseemly — they may, in fact, be illegal.

The incident: dog excrement found on the roof and windows of the Romney station wagon. How it got there: Romney strapped a dog carrier — with the family dog Seamus, an Irish Setter, in it — to the roof of the family station wagon for a twelve hour drive from Boston to Ontario, which the family apparently completed, despite Seamus's rather visceral protest.
Massachusetts's animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit anyone from carrying an animal "in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon." An officer for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals responded to a description of the situation saying "it's definitely something I'd want to check out." The officer, Nadia Branca, declined to give a definitive opinion on whether Romney broke the law but did definitive opinion on whether Romney broke the law but did note that it's against state law to have a dog in an open bed of a pick-up truck, and "if the dog was being carried in a way that endangers it, that would be illegal." And while it appears that the statute of limitations has probably passed, Stacey Wolf, attorney and legislative director for the ASPCA, said "even if it turns out to not be against the law at the time, in the district, we'd hope that people would use common sense...Any manner of transporting a dog that places the animal in serious danger is something that we'd think is inappropriate...I can't speak to the accuracy of the case, but it raises concerns about the judgment used in this particular situation."
Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was less circumspect. PETA does not have a position on Romney's candidacy per se, but Newkirk called the incident "a lesson in cruelty that was ... wrong for [his children] to witness...Thinking of the wind, the weather, the speed, the vulnerability, the isolation on the roof, it is commonsense that any dog who's under extreme stress might show that stress by losing control of his bowels: that alone should have been sufficient indication that the dog was, basically, being tortured." Romney, of course, has expressed support for the use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques when it comes to terrorists; his campaign did not return repeated calls and emails about the treatment of his dog.
As organizer of the Salt Lake City Olympic Games, Romney came under fire from some animal welfare groups for including a rodeo exhibition as part of the Games' festivities. At the time, he told protesters, "We are working hard to make this as safe a rodeo for cowboys and animals as is humanly possible."
Contact Romney here: info@mittromney.com
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If anything catches the carnage and mayhem that was once the nation of Iraq, it might be a comment by the head of the Arab League, Amr Mussa, in 2004. He warned: "The gates of hell are open in Iraq." At the very least, the "gates of hell" should now officially be considered miles behind us on the half-destroyed, well-mined highway of Iraqi life. Who knows what IEDs lie ahead? We are, after all, in the underworld.
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Marty Kaplan
Before everyone goes all misty-eyed about the courage it took for Indiana's Republican Senator Richard Lugar to express gentlemanly doubts about the surge -- after all, he also said he had no intention of "voting with Democrats, particularly in their efforts to limit war funding or set a timetable for withdrawal" -- look instead to Mari K. Oye, a high school senior from Wellesley, Massachusetts, who at the White House this week presented President Bush a handwritten letter, signed by her and 49 other Presidential Scholars, protesting his Administration's use of torture.
When these Presidential Scholars from all over the country met one another in Washington, they discovered how many of them felt so strongly about the issue, and about seizing the opportunity to be heard. As Leah Libresco, a Scholar from Mineola, Long Island, New York, said the next day on CNN, the view among many of them was that torture is a non-partisan issue: "I don't think this is a controversial issue. I don't think human dignity and human rights is a controversial issue, so once we started talking to people about the idea of speaking up, people kept coming forward and saying yes, this is important."
So Mari and Leah and others drafted a thoughtful statement to hand to the President when it came time for their big moment with him in front of their parents and the press.
"We brought up some very specific points in the letter about the treatment of detainees, even those designated as enemy combatants," Mari Oye told John Roberts, "and we strongly believe that all of these detainees should be treated, according to the principles of the Geneva Convention... I asked him to remove the signing statement attached to the anti-torture bill, which would have allowed presidential power to make exemptions to the ban on torture."
Mari's own background -- her grandparents were interned during World War II, simply for being Japanese-American -- played a part in her views. So did something her mother, also a Presidential Scholar, told her: Ever since her own White House ceremony in 1968, she has regretted not saying something to Lyndon Johnson about the Vietnam war. "That's something that weighed heavy on my mind," said Mari, "and I wanted to think about how we would feel 40 years from now if we had the opportunity to speak, and also the privilege to speak to the President of the United States, and to not use that privilege in order to make a difference."
So the Scholars lined up for their photo-op. Bush arrived. According to Colin McSwiggen, a senior from Cincinnati, the President "said that it's important to treat others as you wish to be treated, and he said that we really need to think about the choices that we make in our lives." What a cue! "As he lined up to take the photo with us," Colin continued, "Mari handed him the note, and said, 'Mr. President, some of us have made a choice, and we want you to have this.'"
Bush took the letter, and he read it. How did he respond? "We agree. Americans do not use torture." He tells the kids to treat others as you want to be treated yourself -- the essence of the Geneva Conventions, which he and Cheney and Gonzales have contemptuously reconstrued as the Swiss Suggestions. The Bush family black sheep, who to this day evinces not a shred of intellectual curiosity, lectures these amazing students about the choices we make in our lives -- and proceeds with no sense of embarrassment or cognitive dissonance to illustrate his own choices of deceit over honesty, propaganda over transparency, and contempt for the very Golden Rule to which he just paid pretty lip service.
Wait - it gets worse. He then uses these students as the human backdrop for a speech promoting the reauthorization and expansion of No Child Left Behind. Over and over, he says, "No Child Left Behind is working. In other words, we're making good progress." No matter that the some of the top Education Department officials once charged with implementing that Act have bailed on Bush now that they're no longer in office, or that hundreds of Republicans on the Hill and around the country have declared that No Child -- the single "accomplishment" that six years of Bush has delivered -- has been a disaster. "It's working" -- like "we don't use torture" -- is Bush's lie, and he's sticking to it.
I wonder if Bush secretly wanted to waterboard these kids, who dared dissent from his policies. Or if not to torture them, at least to suspend them.
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2008: 6/27 straw poll results
by kos
Wed Jun 27, 2007 at 09:56:55 PM PDT
dKos Reader Poll. 6/27. 17,382 respondents (as of 6.27.07 9:44 p.m. PT)
__________2007 2006 2005
______Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan Dec Jul May Mar Jan Nov
Edwards 40 39 42 38 26 35 28 15 8 7 8 12
Obama 22 24 25 26 25 28 28
Other 9 6 5 9 8 * * 3 6 3 6 2
H. Clinton 6 6 3 3 4 4 5 2 2 2 3 6
Richardson 5 8 13 8 6 5 4 2 1 2 3 5
Kucinich 3 2 2 2 4
Gravel 1 3 0 0 0 0 0
Dodd 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Biden 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 3

But in short, the Gravel boomlet is over. Richardson continues to tank. He had his own serious boomlet here while his poll numbers were non existent. Now, as his candidacy gains steam in the early states, he fades here. I'm surprised Obama isn't doing better than this and I suspect his numbers will improve. Still, the Daily Kos primary is a two-man race.
Oh, and 516 people don't care that Kucinich has become Fox News strongest defender.