From the author of a fictional world where seasons can last for years, a critique of tactics employed in our present world … where an election season can last for decades:
“I would be remiss if I do not at least make passing mention of how depressed, disgusted, and, yes, angry I’ve become as I watch the ongoing attempts at voter suppression in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Iowa, and other states where Republicans and their Teabagger allies control key seats of power,” George R.R. Martin wrote on his blog on Saturday.
“It is one thing to attempt to win elections,” he continued. “But trying to do so by denying the most basic and important right of any American citizen to hundreds and thousands of people, on entirely spurious grounds… that goes beyond reprehensible. That is despicable.”
Ryan Touts Medicare Program He Wants To End At Florida Rally.
Paul Ryan doubled down on the GOP’s strategy of staying on offense against criticisms of his plan to partially privatize the Medicare program for future retirees and defended the proposal during an appearance with his 78-year-old mother in The Villages, Florida Saturday morning.
Without explaining how the program would change for the next generation, Ryan rallied the mostly 55-and-older crowd by pledging to protect the existing government-run program that his plan would radically restructure and criticizing President Obama for cutting $716 billion out of Medicare. The House Budget Committee Chairman and most House Republicans actually voted to preserve the $716 billion in savings in the GOP budget, though Romney and Ryan promised to restore the cuts to Medicare earlier this week.
Iran’s president fanned the flames of confrontation with Israel on Friday, calling the Israeli government “an insult to humankind” in a speech on the annual Iranian holiday that calls for the Palestinian reclamation of Jerusalem from Israel’s control.
The speech by the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has become known for his baldly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic remarks, came as tensions had been intensifying with Israel, which regards Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat.
Speculation has raged in the Israeli press about whether the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to order a military strike on uranium enrichment sites in Iran that Israel suspects are part of a clandestine effort to build nuclear weapons. Iran contends that its uranium enrichment is peaceful.
Anxiety is rising in Washington about the big cuts to military spending slated to go into effect in January unless Congress takes action.
Republicans, defense industry executives, and some Democrats are arguing hard against the automatic cuts, which were the result of last summer's deal to raise the debt ceiling and would also cut nondefense spending equally. Multiple members of Congress have warned that slashing defense spending by $600 billion would devastate the military, with Sen. Lindsey Graham this month predicting the cuts would deal "a death blow to our ability to defend ourselves."
Ofer Biton, an Israeli man who traveled around the New York region with Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) to raise money for his 2010 congressional campaign, has been arrested by the FBI.
As first reported by the New York Daily News, Biton has been arrested for lying on immigration documents. The case does not appear to be directly related to his fundraising efforts for the Grimm campaign, which are under FBI investigation.
Capitalizing on the opportunity to continue exploiting a tragedy, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins extended blame for the shooting from the Southern Poverty Law Center onto President Obama’s administration. Speaking with Rick Santorum on Washington Watch Weekly, Perkins claimed “his administration’s indifference towards religious freedom has really created an open season all across this country”:
PERKINS: Well I think as we witnessed this past week at the Family Research Council, clearly linked to that same atmosphere of hostility that’s created by the public policies of an administration that’s indifferent or hostile to religious freedom and groups like as I mentioned the Southern Poverty Law Center that recklessly throws around labels giving people like this gunman who came into our building a license to take innocent life.
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