blog advertising is good for you

Recent Posts

Wednesday briefing and open threadWednesday briefing and open thread

Happy Wednesday! Hail to the Victors. Ann Arbor makes the "most well-read cities" list: Ann Arbor has a lot of bookworms, according to a new list by Amazon.com. The online company on Tuesday released its annual list of 20 of the "Most Well-Read Cities in America," and Ann Arbor has… »

Effort to recall Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder faces opposition – FROM THE LEFTEffort to recall Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder faces opposition – FROM THE LEFT

With friends like these... The group working to recall Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, Michigan Rising missed a campaign finance report deadline by a few days this month. Though this isn't entirely uncommon given the unnecessarily complex and cumbersome reporting methods they use, it was still a… »

Teacher Job Satisfaction Suffering as New TV Attack Ads Set to AirTeacher Job Satisfaction Suffering as New TV Attack Ads Set to Air

According to a study by Metlife, as reported on in The Nation, job satisfaction is dropping amongst teachers.  Only 44 percent of teachers described themselves as “very satisfied,” and almost a third of teachers are considering leaving the profession.  This news comes as the conservative… »

Tuesday briefing and open threadTuesday briefing and open thread

Tuesdays are just plain sexy, aren't they? Let's start with some Great Lakes. First, here's the Hoekstra trying to trade our lakes for some oil: From the MDP release: “Even most Republicans have supported the ban on drilling in the Lakes because they recognize that a disaster… »

Tell Hoekstra and Romney NO on November 6Tell Hoekstra and Romney NO on November 6

As you know, the 2012 elections are less than six months from now and the stakes are higher than ever. Whoever wins this election will determine whether our nation will continue to move to a new tune or rewind the same old song. We want leaders who can relate to and implement measures that will… »

The Return of EAGTruth.comThe Return of EAGTruth.com

As many of you know, Kyle Olson has operated out of Michigan for 8 years now, working for secret funders to demonize public school unions. For years he focused on the MEA, but he has since gone national, parading as a school reformer in order to play the press and blame school employees for every… »

Monday briefing and open threadMonday briefing and open thread

Yes! I love Mondays! Let's brief! Julie Mack has an interesting observation on marriage equality: The fact is, it's hard to fashion a convincing case that gay marriage undermines American values or hurts society. If you accept the idea that homosexuality is a biological trait… »

Snyder to consider deregulation of 18 industriesSnyder to consider deregulation of 18 industries

I've chatted a little about the proposal to eliminate state licensing for certain professions. See here, here, and kinda here. Here's a little closer look at the subject. Let's start with how it started. The Michigan Office of Regulatory Reinvention (ORR) put together an advisory board of 14… »

Welcome


Tell Hoekstra and Romney NO on November 6

As you know, the 2012 elections are less than six months from now and the stakes are higher than ever. Whoever wins this election will determine whether our nation will continue to move to a new tune or rewind the same old song. We want leaders who can relate to and implement measures that will benefit the 99%.

We need good-paying jobs, corporations to pay their fair share in taxes, access to affordable health care and other services and a pathway for working immigrants to be granted citizenship.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Republican Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra have both made it clear that they are not for Michigan’s or the rest of the country’s working and middle-class. Take action and sign our petition against Hoekstra and Romney:

http://action.goodjobsnow.org/page/s/say-no-to-hoekstra-romney

Mitt Romney supports everything that has crippled America economically and socially including huge tax breaks for corporations, privatization of unemployment benefits and Social Security, cutting federally-funded programs and promise to repeal Healthcare Reform. While governor of Massachusetts, the state ranked 47th in job growth, he vetoed $11 million in job training funds and insurance costs rose more than 20 percent.

He claims to be “a son of Detroit,” but suggested to “let Detroit go bankrupt” and was did not support the auto bailout, which ultimately saved thousands of jobs and revitalized Michigan’s economy. Like many of the big-time corporations who make mega profits at the expense of tax payer dollars, Romney doesn’t pay his fair share in taxes. If he had to pay his fair share, Romney would owe the 99% $3.95 million.

Pete Hoekstra is running against current Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow. The former US Representative for Michigan’s 2nd district, recently referred to the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act as “a nuisance.” Voting against a measure that provides channels for women to receive equal pay for equal work not only continues the culture of gender discrimination, but hurts our economy.

It’s a nuisance when Hoekstra voted against a bill that closed $14 billion in tax loopholes for companies that shipped job overseas. It’s a nuisance when Hoekstra allowed CEOs of bailed-out [...]

Rmoney in Detroit today

Mitt Romney the RMoney candidate

There’s a great article at the Freep on Romney’s event today,

It won’t be hard to fit 1,200 members of the Detroit Economic Club into 65,000-seat Ford Field for today’s speech by GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.

What will be hard is making it look like Romney isn’t speaking to a nearly empty stadium.

The Romney campaign and the Economic Club think they’ve solved the problem. The guests will be seated at one end of the playing surface, roughly between the end zone and the 30-yard line, while Romney will speak from a stage in front of them.

Click through for a great pre-speech setup picture.

More pics from our boots on the ground:

jQuery(document).ready(function(){ jQuery(“#ngg-slideshow-15-12713-1″).nggSlideshow( {id: 15,fx:”fade”,width:320,height:240,domain: “http://bloggingformichigan.com/”,timeout:10000}); });  

Here’s the reaction from President Obama’s campaign:

 

For Immediate Release:

February 24, 2012

THE LIP SERVICE ROMNEY PAID TO THE MIDDLE CLASS WAS AS EMPTY AS THE STADIUM HE STOOD IN

“Mitt Romney today stood in the midst of a monument to an industry he would have let go bankrupt leading to the elimination of 1.4 million American jobs. Rather than introducing a plan that would restore economic security for the middle class, Mitt Romney has proposed a fiscally irresponsible plan that would increase the deficit by $5 trillion over the next decade, provide millionaires with tax breaks 800 percent larger than those for the middle class, hollow out retirement security and allow the wealthiest who earn their income off of investments to pay a lower tax rate than middle class Americans. The President has provided every working American with a tax break, and has put forward a plan to boost competitiveness, create jobs, ensure everyone pays their fair share and reduce the deficit by $4 trillion. The lip service Mitt Romney paid to the middle class today was as empty as the stadium he stood in.” — Ben LaBolt, Press Secretary

 

 

Michigan Republicans heavy on false narratives

It’s no secret that we humans are drawn to stories. It’s how we connect to each other; we share narratives from the Bible, we pass family stories from parent to child, and we build relationships based on our love for megastories like Star Wars and Harry Potter, or ministories like the Real Housewives. People who master the art of story-telling become our teachers, entertainers, and mentors.

Unfortunately conservatives have been very effective at tapping into our love for stories. It’s why the tea baggers think the Boston Tea Party was about socialism, and why so many Christians think Jesus was conservative. They cling to their stories so dearly that they will even try to re-write history to prove that Sarah Palin was right when she said Paul Revere was ringing bells to warn the British that Americans had guns. (Really?!??) And don’t even get me going on McDonald’s coffee lawsuit or Sean Hannity’s Libarro World.

Now we’ve got two more false narratives, this time coming right out of our beloved Michigan. The first is in the form of a fictional novel in which the world could be saved from a deadly virus if only Nancy Pelosi would get out of the way. Says the author John Bascom,

“I have strong political opinions—a conservative world view—and wanted to express them in an interesting way. At its core,Caine’s Pestilence is a cautionary story about the pitfalls of the liberal agenda with a path to hope and redemption for the story’s main characters and our country emerging at the end,” Bascom explains.

The book is obviously fiction, but that won’t stop conservatives from using the book to “prove” that we liberals are bad for the world. Heck, it’s probably already required reading for Paul Ryan’s staff.

Next we’ve got a campaign video from Mitt Romney in which Ryan King claims to represent “Obama’s Misery Index.” Mitt & Ryan aren’t so honest in this narrative. Ryan claims that he can’t find a job because everyone requires experience, and he can’t get experience because he can’t get a job, so he’s living off baloney sandwiches and we need a [...]