The VP delivered “Boxes of Joe” and donuts to an Obama field office in Orlando on Saturday. “This is what you call interfering with productivity.”

Source: instagram.com  /  via: @rodney_cbsnj

Here's the pool report from Biden's visit

VPOTUS dropped in on an Obama/Biden campaign field office at 516 East Colonial Ave in Orlando. It was on the second floor, a warren of small rooms with tables of volunteers making phone calls. Lots of signs on the walls: Hispanics for Obama, LGBT for Obama, Women for Obama. Per the campaign, this field office is regional hq for East Central Florida and a hub for reaching out to the growing Hispanic population in the area. It has been open for more than a year.

VPOTUS and his daughter, Ashley Biden, arrived with large brown “Boxes of Joe’’ from Dunkin Donuts. In addition, VPOTUS carried a large white bag of donuts.

As VPOTUS entered, people applauded, and he told the room, “This is what you call interfering with productivity.’’

“We wanted to come to the epicenter of the epicenter, man,’’ he continued. “Forida, you guys produce, we win Florida, we win Florida, this is all history, man.

“Thank you so much, thank you so much for what you’re doing,’’ he continued. “Barak and I can’t tell you how much we appreciate, for real.’’

“I’ll tell you what, I’m feeling good,’’ he said.

“From here we’re going to, where am I going? I’m going to Ohio. Back to Ohio. I’ve been living in Ohio. We’re going to win Ohio.’’

The volunteers cheered and applauded.

“Now you guys push Florida over, this thing becomes not close,’’ VPOTUS said.

“Thank you so much. I just wanted to come by say hi.’’

“I’m interrupting, like I said. Getting out there cavasisng, is that what people are doing today? Look it’s amazing, I actually wrote the numbers down.’’

He pulled a card out of his pocked and read statistics about the camaign’s field operation in the state.

“We’ve got 104 offices here,’’ he said. “You’ve alread done over 20,000, not countin this morning, phone banks. 20,000 statewide. 14,263 voter registrations. You guys are amazing. Really. Look. The reason we’re going to win, I mean this sincerely, the reason were going to win is because of you.’’

“The single most signifcant thing we can do to counter the incredible money they have and these godawful super Pacs is you,’’ he said. “It’s the only counter.’’

VPOTUS removed his blazer and folded it. A volunteer seated in front of him took it for him.

“Thank you,’’ VPOTUS told her. He rolled up the sleeves of his blue-striped dress shirt.

“But seriously,’’ he continued, telling volunteers that to counter “those scurrilous ads you’ve seen from one of their super PACS” is to have “you folks knocking on the door. Seriosly, it’s one of your folks knocking on the door and saying look I vouch for these guys.’’

“I come from a state where you campaign door to door,’’ he said. “It matters. The thing that matters the most, when you show up at the door you’re not just asking vote for us, you’re vouching for us. That’s the thing I want to thank you most for. The hardest thing for a man or woman to do in my opinion is to associeate themselves, to say I vouch for you.’’

VPOTUS hugged a young woman who was smiling at him, Marissa Priceman, 17. She started to cry.

“Thank you,’’ she said through her tears.

“The reason we win this elecection is we have the best ground game in the history of presidential politics,’’ VPOTUS went on.

The volunteers and staff applauded.

“I tell you what,’’ VPOTUS said. “We’ve got a lot of press here. I wanted them to see you guys.’’ (Press included just CNN and CBS embeds and your pooler). “But one of the thing is, you guys deserve answers to questions. Things you may have in your mind. So I tell you what, if we can, I don’t know if I’im allowed to do this, ask the press to go eat some donuts.’’

“By the way, these guys have been great,’’ he added, meaning the press. “They’ve picked up every mistake we’ve all made.’’

The room laughed.

“Of course you know I never make any mistakes,’’ VPOTUS said.

At that point pooler was escorted out. He was not offered a donut.

VPOTUS stayed in the field office for about 30 more minutes.

“A gift for Mitt.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, center is escorted by technicians during a tour of Tehran's research reactor centre.

Image by Iranian President's Office / AP

The New York Times report Saturday that the U.S. is on the verge of opening direct talks with Iran on the country's nuclear program will return the presidential campaign foreign policy debate, in its final days, to the regional conflict that has been at its center for most of the year: Iran and Israel.

The rise of China, the bloody drug wars on America's southern border, the teetering European currency, and even the Arab Spring have all faded in the politics of 2012 behind President Obama's chilly relations with the Israeli government and his determination not to go to war with Iran. In recent weeks, the assassination of an American ambassador in Libya and the Administration's murky response to it had turned the campaign toward, in broad strokes, questions over the meaning of change in the Muslim world and some conservatives' doubts about whether democracy will produce chaos and extremism.

But Governor Mitt Romney has struggled to make that argument stick without looking crassly political or, in last week's debate, botching a detail in a way that undermined his argument, and his own camp is conflicted about Muslim democracy.

Iran, however, is one arena in which Republicans believe they have a strong case to make. Neither Obama's early, extended hand, nor his later push toward sanctions, appear to have stopped the country's nuclear program, which Iran asserts — to international skepticism — is peaceful.

Romney's campaign had no comment Saturday, but Republicans said they expect Iran, and Saturday's news, to take center stage in the final debate of the presidential cycle Monday, which will focus on foreign policy.

"This whole thing should be a gift for Mitt," said a Republican operative who works on foreign policy. "It's an embarrassing reminder
of how little progress they've made on Iran and it comes on the eve of the foreign policy debate."

"It's a big opportunity, but there is a lot of risk after Tuesday night," said another Republican, who is close to the campaign, referring to Romney's Libya stumble last week.

The Times reported Saturday that "the United States and Iran have agreed for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, according to Obama administration officials, setting the stage for what could be a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran."

The White House immediately challenged the claim, with National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor emailing reporters:

It’s not true that the United States and Iran have agreed to one-on-one talks or any meeting after the American elections. We continue to work with the P5+1* on a diplomatic solution and have said from the outset that we would be prepared to meet bilaterally. The President has made clear that he will prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and we will do what we must to achieve that. It has always been our goal for sanctions to pressure Iran to come in line with its obligations. The onus is on the Iranians to do so, otherwise they will continue to face crippling sanctions and increased pressure.

And the Times then amended its story to add the caveat "in principle" — but an Administration official did not dispute that there has been movement in ongoing talks with Iran, though the official said it remains unclear whether its Iranian interlocutors are willing or able to make a deal.

It's "unclear what it all means — except that Iran is under pressure and working to find a path out," said Heather Hurlburt, the executive director of the National Security Network, a Democratic group.

"It's sort of well known that if Iran meets its obligations we will meet with them," said another Washington, D.C. foreign policy observer. "That's code for 'Roll over and stop enriching.'"

What is clearer is that the ambiguous report inserted Iran back in the center of the political conversation 48 hours before the foreign policy debate in Florida Monday night, the last debate of the campaign.

And the Iranian situation — complex and maddening in its details — offers in broad strokes a real glimpse at the difference between the parties' foreign policy postures. For all the talk of plans, Romney does not offer a clear alternative beyond a promise to project strength; he has not promised air strikes. But foreign policy is more a matter of reaction and instinct than of planning, and Iran and the Middle East peace process have been the two most visible arenas in which Obama's belief in the power of his own leadership, and of a new White House posture toward the Muslim world, fell short.

President Obama promised an extended hand — he even said, on the campaign trail in 2008, that he would meet the leader of Iran, something that never occurred. Obama was slow to forcefully support the Iranian opposition during the 2009 "Green Revolution," and held out hope of a diplomatic breakthrough that hasn't come.

It's a notable failure in a foreign policy marked by the end of the war in Iraq, an increase in drone strikes on suspected terrorists and crowned by the killing of Osama bin Laden — things Obama is far more eager to discuss Monday night.

"This has played so big in the campaign this year because the GOP sees it as their best counter-narrative to the death of Osama bin Laden and dramatic weakening of Al Qaeda," said Hurlburt.

Romney has, however, stopped short of promising an attack on Iran — a recognition of how reluctant the American public is to engage in another war in the Muslim world — and Democrats see the lack of a clear alternative beyond "strength" as Obama's best defense.

"It has not played so big, interestingly, because Romney has an alternative strategy — he doesn't," Hurlburt said.

More sensitive phrasing from the man who brought you “legitimate rape.” Claire McCaskill “fetches” government from Washington, he says. (Via PoliticMO )

Source: youtube.com  /  via: politicmo.com

(h/t Huffington Post)

The last remaining white Democratic Congressman from the Deep South is, literally, locked and loaded for November.

The incumbent seems...tense this cycle. Maybe because it's the first election using new state district boundaries. Maybe it's because his Republican opponent, Les Anderson, is a farmer and a Deacon, and is endorsed by Georgia Right to Life.

I want to know if that little Smith & Wesson is always tucked into his pants.

Source: adverveblog.com

A man of principle — and politics.

I have great respect and admiration for Geoffrey Kabaservice, whose book Rule and Ruin is among the best of this year. He writes a thoughtful rejoinder to my George Romney article over at David Frum's Daily Beast hangout. I happen to believe that the George Romney depicted in Kabaservice's book and the one in my article are conceivably the same guy, with the emphases on different aspects. Kabaservice tells more of George's advocacy and later political career, and writes little of his 1962 and 1964 campaigns, except to say he had a "lone-wolf reputation," imagery borrowed from Bob Novak. My research intended to explore this reputation, which I suspected Kabaservice did not have the opportunity to delve into while writing his excellent and wide-ranging book. He insists that he had.

Kabaservice writes that "most historians, as opposed to journalists, already knew that George Romney didn’t walk out of the 1964 GOP convention." That certainly ought to be true, but it is curious how silent these knowledgeable historians — including Kabaservice — have chosen to be on this question. Kabaservice did not correct the record in the New York Times Book Review when he praised "The Real Romney" — which repeats the falsehood multiple times — for its "bloodhound thoroughness." Nor did he mention this widely disseminated inaccuracy in his commentary on the Mitt-George relationship in recent months.

Kabaservice thinks I'm a Mitt apologist, and I think he's too set in the view he laid out earlier this year, that it's "too kind" to say that George is merely "turning over in his grave." To sum up the complaints, Kabaservice says I downplay how bad Barry Goldwater was, overlook how virtuous George Romney could be, and am "misleading" on Romney in the context of Republican politics in the 1960s. I take exception only to the last point. In fact, one of the very things my piece adds is careful evaluation of Romney's positioning in Republican politics in 1964.

Kabaservice explains why moderate Republicans were so up in arms about the conservative takeover of the party. If my article suggests they had no right to be upset with Goldwater and the 1964 platform, it is unintentional. What it does intend is to document how George Romney acted that June through November in relation to his fellow moderates. He did not, as is popularly believed, fight shoulder-to-shoulder with moderate Republicans in opposition to Goldwater, but in fact distanced himself. He broke away to draft separate platform amendments that made more concessions to placate the conservative wing, and then stood by while other moderates waged the fight and some walked out. Whether he did this to advance civil rights principles with a compromise platform or position himself as a neutral alternative in a deadlocked convention is open to interpretation, but the broader point is that he was not just another moderate like Nelson Rockefeller, Bill Scranton or Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. Romney even criticized these men to Goldwater in the very letter Kabaservice cites. This complexity had been completely lost in the modern retelling.

Kabaservice later writes: "Bohrer sees Romney’s delay in separating himself from Goldwater’s candidacy as evidence of vacillation and poll-watching, but a more charitable explanation is that Romney acted on the assumption that Goldwater and the conservatives could be reasoned with until events proved him mistaken."

Perhaps. But the difference between my explanation and Kabaservice's is that I provide evidence.

Romney should have had little reason to believe that Goldwater could be "reasoned with." I write that Goldwater had given "plainspoken" answers to Romney at the June 1964 delegation meeting not to say, as Kabaservice interprets, that Goldwater's rhetoric lacked racist subtext. Rather, it is to emphasize that Goldwater had made his stance clear and firm. Romney claiming to still have "questions" immediately after the meeting was purely vacillation. The conservatives' take-no-prisoners attitude at the convention should have been even more evidence of their resolve. Though Goldwater made small rhetorical concessions to the moderates in the weeks after the convention, it was always clear what he was going to campaign on.

Even if one believes, as some do, that George Romney was naive or slow on the pickup, Kabaservice does not identify the "events [that] proved Romney mistaken." The final event that Romney pointed to in his December 1964 letter to Goldwater was the "failed" Hershey unity summit, which he called an "inadequate opportunity for discussion." This December 1964 statement could serve as compelling evidence if only Romney had not said in August 1964, "The meeting in Hershey was helpful in clarifying Goldwater’s views" while pledging support for "the entire ticket." That's one of several self-serving mischaracterizations Romney makes in that letter. I further question Kabaservice's charitable sentiment since it was not shared by Romney's colleagues at the time. Even among the moderate Republicans who later supported his 1968 presidential bid, what they praised most was his ability to win — not his ideological virtue. Sound familiar?

Kabaservice continues: "Romney’s eventual decision to withhold his endorsement of Goldwater and to downplay his Republican affiliation in his gubernatorial reelection campaign was prudent. He needed no polls to know how unpopular Goldwater was and how disastrous association with him would be in the election."

I agree that Romney did not need polls (though polls he had — including one to suss out a racist backlash), but what is also missing is how Romney distanced himself not just from Goldwater, but from all Republicans — including the ones he agreed with — in blatant and hurtful ways. Elly Peterson, who loved George Romney for later making her the first female Republican state chairman in American history, was so affected by her treatment on October 17, 1964 that decades later, she recounted in her unpublished memoir how angry the traveling press was with George for snubbing her, "as they knew how hard I had been working." Through this conduct, Romney showed he valued his own political gain over leading moderate Republicans.

That is why, with all due respect to Kabaservice, it is more misleading to simply cast Romney as a generic moderate in 1964 than to look at his position relative to others.

Kabaservice concludes that, "Bohrer isn’t wrong about Romney’s flaws, but doesn’t sufficiently recognize what remains appealing about him," and lists attributes that ought to be present in our modern politicians, including a willingness to reevaluate and change positions. Again, I see his point. After all, isn't that what moderate and pragmatic politicians build their entire careers around? Yet George Romney based his political identity not on pragmatism but a surface rejection of politics and insistence that unlike others, he was guided only by principle. This is well documented in the piece and why the reporters who covered him and the moderate Republicans who served with him found him to be self-aggrandizing.

Look, opportunistic behavior in campaigns does not negate all the good things a person does. I agree with Kabaservice that my article could do more to spell out George Romney's virtues — he had many. The thing is, all we've heard about George Romney are his virtues. The last few years of news reports, profiles and commentary have left a rose on his pillow practically every day. If people want to read what was appealing about George Romney, they can read certain sections of my article or basically every other thing that's been written about him this century.

Of course George Romney was a man of principle. He had many admirable qualities and distinguished accomplishments won through hardship and risk. Yet, he was also a man in politics — not floating above it, as he liked to think and many have depicted him in recent years. My exploration of his campaign conduct is a necessary addition to the story of George, and a way to deepen our understanding of how Mitt became who he is.

George McGovern has passed away at age 90. The former senator was earnestly devoted to liberal ideals for his entire life, even after he lost the 1972 presidential race to Richard Nixon.

Image by The Associated Press / AP

Via: npr.org

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The Republican nominee makes a Chris Christie joke, but ducks a question on negotiations with Iran.

Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney takes part in a coin toss for a touch football game in Delray Beach, Florida, October 21, 2012.

Image by Jim Young / Reuters

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. — Top aides to Mitt Romney faced off against his traveling press corps Sunday morning in a game of flag football, with the Republican nominee conducting the coin toss to start play.

Among the Romney aides playing: debate sparring partner Sen. Rob Portman, communications director Gail Gitcho, best friend Bob White, senior advisers Eric Fehrnstrom and Ron Kaufman, and a host of junior staffers.

The aides wore red t-shirts emblazoned with the line: "I Built My Business, Mr. President."

Romney walked down a sand path to the beach not far from the hotel where he is conducting preparations before his third and final debate with President Barack Obama Monday night for the coin toss, changing into shorts and a t-shirt after attending church Sunday morning.

After the coin toss, reporters asked Romney questions on Iran, his readiness for tomorrow night's debate, and recent polling showing him tied with Obama, but the former Massachusetts governor ducked them.

Source: @dgjackson

From the pool report:

“Let’s see look at the captain, Gail’s a captain is that right? Got a bracelet for you.This is a clear eyes full heart America can’t lose. All right?" Romney said to communications adviser Gail Gitcho at the 50-yard marker on the beach, handing her a rubber bracelet with the logo.

"Ashley’s a captain. There ya go look at that," Romney said to The New York Times Ashley Parker.

"There ya go shake hands, shake hands," Romney told Gitcho and Parker.

Gitcho and Parker shook hands, and then Romney asked Parker if she was going to call the flip in the air.

"You’re going to call it really? You want it to hit the ground?” he asked her.

“You can catch if you want," Parker said.

Romney decided to throw it up and let it drop, and Parker called tails, and after searching for the coin in the sand, Gitcho found it and announced that it was tails.

“Tails it is! That’s the last call you guys are getting," Romney said.

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DNC blasts Republicans for relationship with company.

Image by Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Strategic Allied Consulting, LLC, the firm run by embattled GOP consultant Nathan Sproul, was paid more than $400,000 in September by the Republican National Committee for "management consulting services," Federal Election Commission filings show.

The firm, which was conducing voter registrations for the party in Florida and other states across the nation, was fired three weeks ago after Florida election officials discovered apparent fraud in registrations handled by the firm.

FEC records show the company was paid $416,665 by the national party in two installments in September. The payments came before ties between the party and the company were severed.

Oddly the company is "Strategic Allies Consultants, LLC" on the party's disclosure forms, though the address given matches the one on file with the Virginia State Corporation Commission.

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz criticized the RNC's association with the firm in a statement to BuzzFeed, citing a "lengthy history" of voter registration fraud accusations

Despite their public renunciation of Strategic Allied Consulting, the Republican National Committee did not actually break ties with this sketchy firm. The RNC’s continued ties to this company, despite revelations of its lengthy history of being accused of voter registration fraud and whose activities on behalf of the RNC in my home state of Florida this cycle are the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation, show a complete lack of willingness to protect the fundamental right to vote.

“The RNC’s decision to continue to employ a consulting firm with a well-known history of registration fraud and other election-related irregularities is unconscionable, and it is a clear breach of public trust.

“Unfortunately, this is nothing new. Firms led by Sproul have long been associated with allegations of election fraud – including destroying Democratic voter registrations as far back as 2004. Yet RNC Chairman Reince Priebus continues to hire Sproul, showing his disdain for an honest electoral process.

“These allegations undermine our free and open elections. It’s clear that Republicans cannot be trusted with voter registrations at any point in the process. The Democratic Party will call out these deceptive practices at every turn and continue to ensure elections are accessible and secure.

The campaign quickly pushed back against claims by former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown they had a conference call featuring the President's controversial former pastor.

The Obama campaign Sunday denied a claim Sunday by former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown that President Obama held a conference call with black pastors, among them his former controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright in an effort to get out the vote in the black community.

Brown wrote:

If Obama looks as if he's going black, he could turn off white people. So he's largely been lying low on the race issues - visibly pushing for the Latino vote, the gay vote, the women's vote, but not the black vote.

But last weekend, he held a conference call with a collection of black preachers that included his old pastor, Jeremiah Wright. He wanted to talk to them about getting out the vote.

An Obama campaign spokeswomen Lis Smith told BuzzFeed that the "report is false.”

Just four. They seem to have something in common. Looks like they were researching for this story. Update Forbes has unfavorited the tweets.

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The Florida congressman loves the attention, and welcomes the press. “What is there for me to apologize for?”

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Palm City, Florida’s Fall Fest is like any other small county fair in America, but like most things around here, a bit weirder. A minihorse named Rosalind roamed the swampy field where the event was being held under clear, cruelly hot skies. There was a psychic tent. A group of men had brought their old-fashioned, refurbished muscle cars onto the mud and popped the hoods, showing off the engines to other middle-aged men. A troupe of little girls sang Cee-Lo Green’s pop hit “Fuck You,” changing it to “forget you,” from a makeshift stage.

Into this mix strode Allen West, the area’s congressman, wearing a U.S. House of Representatives polo shirt tucked into a pair of jeans. His biceps bulged out of his short sleeves. He was accompanied only by his wife and his campaign manager, Tim Edson, a Virginia native complaining of the heat. West's mini-entourage emerged onto the scene without warning — no one apart from the friendly old ladies giving out bumper stickers in his campaign tent knew he was coming — but people flocked to him anyway.

West made a short, almost entirely football-focused speech to the crowd, and walked around shaking hands, lingering longer than most politicians on a campaign schedule would.

“I’m not going to sit at home and eat popcorn,” he remarked to BuzzFeed. The remark came across as more intimidating than friendly.

West, 51, served in the Army for 22 years, taking tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel. He never ascended higher because he shot a pistol next to the head of an Iraqi prisoner during an interrogation session, an act for which West was relieved of his command and nearly court-martialed. West moved his family to Florida, where he launched an unsuccessful bid for Congress in 2008.

2010 was West’s year. He rode the Tea Party wave along with dozens of other inexperienced conservatives looking to block the president at every turn. And he quickly became the most visible freshman in the House, appearing on Fox News constantly, and supplying a steady stream of outrageous statements to feed the political media and liberal blogosphere.

West has accused the 80-odd members of the House Progressive Caucus of being Communists; he has called Barack Obama a “low-level socialist agitator”; said that Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels would be “proud” of the Democratic Party today; and called Obama supporters a “threat to the gene pool.” West utters these statements with absolute conviction, his back always ramrod straight, and he never apologizes. There are too many moments to count, and they’ve made West a reviled figure among Democrats and a hero, much more so than nearly any other tea partier, on the conservative right.

The Florida freshman is enough of a hero, indeed, that West — once viewed as the softest of Republican targets, a fleck of Tea Party flotsam that would recede with the tide — is now the frontrunner against a well-financed Democratic opponent named Patrick Murphy, a 29-year-old construction executive from a powerful family in Florida. Murphy is well-spoken, good-looking, and is running on a pro-business Democratic platform (he would choose $1 million/year as the cutoff for extending the Bush tax cuts, for example). But he’s behind by nine points in the latest survey from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, done in conjunction with local news station WPTV. (A poll done by Sunshine State News showed West with a much smaller lead of one point.) Despite pulling in more than $2.5 million by the end of July, Murphy can’t compete with the fundraising machine that is Allen West, who has raised more than $10 million.

And as with anything West is involved in, this campaign is all about Allen West. And the bet that Democrats have made — that that very fact would be his downfall — doesn’t appear to be working out.

After finishing his tour of the Palm City Fall Fest, West announced that he was hungry for funnel cake. He reappeared later that afternoon at a tea party rally in Vero Beach, about 45 minutes up the road in Indian River County, home of some of the best citrus fruit in the country.

About a thousand people turned up to sit on lawn chairs they toted out to the shadeless fairgrounds to watch the same tea party speakers who seem to appear at every event like this on what has become a kind of circuit — Tony Katz, a Los Angeles-based conservative activist who smokes cigars onstage, Deneen Borelli, FreedomWorks’ director of minority outreach — as well as Connie Mack, the Republicans’ struggling Senate candidate, and Bill Posey, the congressman for that district best known as the first Congressman to introduce legislation requiring birth certificates from presidential candidates. But it rather seemed that everyone was there to see Allen West.

Caroline Smith of neighboring Ft. Pierce sat to the side, wearing a star of David around her neck and an Allen West t-shirt and holding an Israeli flag. Her long-distance boyfriend, Jake Barnes of Green Bay, Wisconsin, was in town visiting.

“I think we need men with balls in Congress,” Barnes said by way of praising West. “We need a resurgence of men with spines.” Both Barnes and Smith said West’s military background was important to them, and his support of Israel was most important for Smith.

Peter and June Page, 46 years married, of Vero Beach, attended the rally with a couple American flag lawn chairs. June, who had a sunhat and a sprightly manner, made sure that BuzzFeed took a picture of her pocketbook, to which she had duct-taped a bumper sticker that read “2012: End of an ERROR.”

Though the Pages don’t live in West’s district, they contribute to his campaign (as is the case with many donors across the country, something Democrats have tried to turn into a line of attack).

Peter likes West for his “valiant effort to return the country to the 10 commandments, Judeo-Christian ethics, and the principles of the founding fathers,” he said. Peter works for the government as a Homeland Security forensic dentist.

Asked what they thought of West’s controversial quotes, like calling House Democrats “communists,” both June and Peter agreed: perfectly great.

“They are Marxists,” June said brightly. “And the proof of it is that Obama is proud that he supports socialism.”

“What would be good for you as a reporter would be to look up the definitions of communism, socialism, and Marxism,” Peter added.

June: “They’re all related.”

Peter: “It’s just a matter of degree.”

Back to West: “I think it’s outrageously absurd for him not to have been promoted to full colonel,” Peter said, referring to the pistol incident. The problem: “Your generation is going to be faced with the push of sharia.”

In other words, West isn’t playing to a tough crowd.

He took the stage to massive applause, thanking Posey, who introduced him, and quickly launching a broadside on his opponent, Murphy.

“He’s a person who referred to you as extremists,” West said. He pointed out that it was the same word that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used to describe the people who attacked the American Embassy.

“You are not terrorists,” West said. It’s the kind of rhetorical leap he takes often, but with such total self-confidence that you can’t blame people for nodding along.

In the same speech, West said that the actual unemployment rate was closer to 14.7 percent, not the 7.8 percent recently tabulated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He threatened America’s enemies abroad with “the Angel of Death disguised as the American bald eagle,” a line that debuted on his Facebook page after the Benghazi attacks but which really came to life with a full-throated delivery onstage. He boasted about Rush Limbaugh being one of his constituents.

“I know you’re tired,” he said near the end. “I know you’re hot —“

“Keep going!” someone in the audience yelled.

West wrapped up his speech and exited to the rope line, where he was surrounded by adoring supporters.

West’s bombast isn’t just a personality trait. Whether or not it’s accidental, it’s a tactic that boosts his fundraising, as his opponent Murphy pointed out to reporters after their televised debate on October 19: “The vast majority of his fundraising comes after these divisive remarks,” Murphy said.

As a somewhat surprising result, West’s team welcomes the national media that comes for what would, in any other candidate, be gaffes. His spokeswoman pointed BuzzFeed to the Palm City fair even though West’s appearance there hadn’t been publicly listed, and provided specific directions for getting credentialed for the debate. By contrast, Murphy’s spokeswoman tried to prevent BuzzFeed from coming to the debate by claiming, falsely, that press wasn’t allowed in, and was generally evasive about Murphy’s campaign schedule for the weekend.

With the West campaign’s guidance, BuzzFeed was admitted to the debate, which took place in a chilly TV studio in West Palm Beach. Outside, a handful of protesters from a group called Stand Up Florida waved signs that said “Allen West! Your! Fired!” and “Allen West is a Carpetbagger!” (He’s originally from Georgia.)

“I don’t feel like he’s really for the people,” said one protester, Linda McSpadden, of West Palm Beach. “He’s categorized a lot of people.”

West’s outspoken style “just makes it worse,” McSpadden said. Meanwhile, an anti-West debate watching party was being held at the restaurant of Scott Van Duzer, the pizzeria owner who became famous for bear-hugging the president (Van Duzer explained by phone that he wasn’t available to talk at the moment, but to look for him at the presidential debate Monday in Boca Raton, to which he’s been invited by the White House).

Inside, the candidates sat around a table with three reporters from WPTV, the local NBC affiliate. Fireworks were kept at a minimum during the debate, which focused on jobs, the economy, and West’s controversial statements.

“When we talk about the history of progressivism, I think it’s real easy to talk about Marxism, socialism, and communism,” West said in a neutral tone, echoing his supporters, the Pages. “I’m not going to be afraid of people just because they get upset.”

Meanwhile, Roxana Trinko was barely able to contain herself in the studio (“He’s a coward!” she whispered loudly during one of Murphy’s responses). Roxana, 53, and her husband, Bill, are ardent West supporters from Boca Raton. They’d gotten tickets in to see the debate, for which there was room for only 30 people. Roxana wore tall patent leather heels and a gold anklet, while Bill sported an alligator vest made from the hide of two alligators he had killed with a stick in the Everglades.

“We hunt them ourselves,” Roxana explained. “We’re the Boca Raton hillbillies. I own a business, he’s a retired firefighter, I’ve got the fingernails going on, and we go out in the Everglades and we hunt them and we kill them with permits from the state.” Bill showed BuzzFeed a series of pictures of dead alligators on his iPhone.

Roxana hates Murphy’s lack of pizazz above all.

“All he wants to do is blend in,” she said. “It’s not making a difference. It’s not standing out. It’s not a candidate who gives any hope or change, to coin the whole Barack Obama campaign.”

After the debate, Murphy and West spoke to reporters briefly.

“Congressman West was interrupting me continually,” Murphy said. He said that he’d tried to shake West’s hand on the way in and had been rebuffed. “I’m tired of the bickering in this country.

Murphy wouldn’t say outright that West tries to be controversial just to be covered by the media, but did say there was a “correlation” between the two: “Last I heard he’s on Fox News more than any other member of Congress, and he’s a freshman.”

He’s well aware that West has much higher name recognition, not only in the district but all over the place.

“Well, sometimes name I.D. is good and sometimes name I.D. is bad,” Murphy said, smiling wanly.

West breezed out the door. A local TV reporter asked him whether the candiates should apologize to each other for the series of negative ads each has been running. One, from a Democratic super PAC mostly financed by Murphy's father, depicts West punching women. The anti-West ad also depicts him with a gold tooth, leading some of his suporters to charge that "it was a racist thing,” as a campaign volunteer named Pauline Becker told BuzzFeed in Palm City.

West's hardest campaign punch is an ad that uses Murphy’s mugshot taken after a bar fight when he was 19. West told BuzzFeed he had qualms using the mugshot of a college freshman. “I had 18, 19 year olds who were with me in Kandahar, Afghanistan.”

“I’m the kind of guy that’s not going to say something that I don’t mean,” West said. “What is there for me to apologize for?”

Asked about Murphy’s suggestion that West is in it for the headlines, West looked dismissive.

“I’m not looking for headlines but I think I should be able to speak my mind,” he said. “But if you guys want to write about it, that’s on you.”

A spokesman dismisses a widespread Twitter rumor that they were employing canvassers in the Philippines.

U.S. Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney laughs as he sits down to dinner at a restaurant in Delray Beach, Florida, October 21, 2012.

Image by Jim Young / Reuters

The Romney campaign flatly rejected a widely-spread online rumor Sunday night that it had outsourced some of its call centers.

The rumor, which has been percolating on Twitter in recent days, appears to be fueled by anecdotal accounts from people who say they've received cold calls from Romney campaign canvassers located in the Philippines.

The latest proponent of the rumor is a liberal stand-up comedian named Mark Agee, who tweeted Saturday, "TRUE STORY: A friend got called by a Romney canvasser. She asked, and he was in the Phillipines. Mitt outsourced his own f*cking campaign." The story was retweeted more than 1,000 times, and has its way into the liberal blogosphere.

But senior Romney adviser Kevin Madden said it wasn't true.

"Our phone contact vendors do not use call centers outside of the U.S.," Madden told BuzzFeed.

Another campaign official noted that there are outside vendors "raising money off us," and said if people really are receiving calls from outside the country, they have nothing to do with the campaign.

“Start rebuilding here,” is the campaign's refrain hours before the foreign policy debate.

Source: youtube.com

Foreign policy — and image. “No one will be watching,” shrugs a Romney aide.

Image by Rick Wilking / Reuters

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. — The final debate of the presidential campaign will take place Monday in a climate utterly different from the first: A close and hard-fought campaign in which the challenger, Mitt Romney, is the one whose aides say they’d like to keep momentum high and expectations low.

“Most voters aren’t paying attention to foreign policy — and they certainly don’t want to watch a debate about it,” said one Romney aide. The aide also noted that the debate will be competing against Monday Night Football and game seven of the NLCS tonight night for viewers.

Despite record audiences to the previous debates, “no one will be watching,” the aide predicted.

Despite dismissing the debate, Romney’s team exuded confidence on Sunday, telling reporters that debate prep at the Marriott in Delray Beach ended around 4 p.m. with the final mock debate. Sen. Rob Portman received a round of applause for his portrayal of Barack Obama. Just a short review schedule may be in the cards for debate day.

Obama, meanwhile, finds himself in the unusual position of a Democrat playing a strong foreign policy hand. His campaign trail discussion of the subject has focused largely on his greatest triumph, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and he has addressed the subject primarily to poke at his rivals’ weakness —Romney bumbling a foreign trip or his response to a news event like Libya.

“We all remember his Dukes of Hazard tour of international destinations of the summer where he not only roiled countries that are not as friendly to us, but our best ally, Britain,” Obama’s top adviser, David Axelrod, said Sunday on Meet the Press.

But Romney has also struggled to offer a clearly different set of plans in an arena dictated more by national interest and presidential instinct than by white papers. Save for branding China a currency manipulator, Romney has largely failed to establish a clear distinction between himself and Obama beyond continuing his policies — save for employing tougher rhetoric to describe it. And Romney has stopped short of trying to sell a war-weary nation on the logical consequence of his tougher talk — tougher action.

Romney has ducked saying what he'll do if given the option of negotiating with Iran one-on-one, as the New York Times reported on Saturday — a luxury he won't have on the debate stage. Obama, meanwhile, will be asked to account for the mixed messages coming out of his administration.

But the Massachusetts governor faces real challenges Monday. Unlike Obama, he has not been steeped in these issues for the past four years. Aides suggested that Romney plans to back off the Libya attack in tonight’s debate — which backfired in last week’s town hall — to focus more broadly on the complex consequences of the Arab Spring.

Obama too may try to back off his own aggressive stance at the last debate, aides hinted, saying he’s planning on reminding voters that he is, in fact, president.

“That’s what most people are looking for in this debate — it’s about showing you have the temperament to handle crises, and time and again Mitt Romney has proven he lacks it,” said one Obama campaign aide. “Who do you want in the Oval Office when things get tough? The man who had the courage to kill Osama bin Laden or the man who couldn’t keep his shoes tied on a foreign trip?”

The format too, will prevent the all-out-slugfest witnessed in the town hall debate, with both candidates seated just feet from Bob Schieffer and each other at a table. That has not, of course, put a dent in the half-serious pre-debate jabs.

“It means Romney might not be as aggressive either,” the Obama aide said, “But we’ve seen what happens when he gets called out — he gets angry with the moderator, and that’s going to cost him, particularly when discussing these subjects.”

The campaign updated the language of the Iran section of their “on the issues” page in early October, expanding what's “unacceptable” and including adding a section hitting the President for “his willingness to talk without preconditions or pressure.” The White House recently said they were prepared to meet Iran for one-on-one talks but denied a Times report that they had agreed to sit down with the country after the election.

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Former Village Voice editor-in-chief Tony Ortega has obtained a copy of the application people must fill out who want to be part of the Sea Org, Scientology's strict religious order for which members sign billion-year contracts. “You can't be shot for what you have done, you can only be shot for what you haven't told us.”

Have you taken LSD or “Acid” (Some slang names are “blotter acid”, “window pane”, “orange sunshine”, “purple haze”, and “microdot”)?

A decent number of the questions focus around mind-altering drugs, which Scientology is emphatically against.

Source: wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com

Have you ever taken PCP or Angel Dust (Some slang names are “Sherms”, “Superweed”, “Dust”, “Super Kool”, “Killer Weed”, “Whack” and “Animal Tranquilizer”)?

Mainly two drugs, at least on this application: PCP and acid.

Source: laist.com

Have you ever been involved in homosexual activities or sexual perversions? If so, please note any handlings done:

In Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard classifies homosexuality as a perversion, and on his "Tone Scale" of human emotion, he classifies it as "covertly hostile."

Are you related to or connected to intelligence agencies either by past history or immediate family?

A good intelligence agent would presumably answer "no" to this one.

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Issues like the aftermath of the Benghazi attack and talks with Iran will be a central topic at the final foreign policy debate in Florida. In 2007, then-Senator Obama promised an open foreign policy and to be transparent about decisions made by his administration.

Source: youtube.com

Election-season challenges to abortion rights (and the organization's future) have led to a surge in donations.

Image by Andrew Burton / Getty Images

Mitt Romney has promised to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood, but his campaign so far has had the opposite effect: The group says it's having a banner year in both donations and volunteers.

The organization has gained nearly two million new supporters in the last two years, said Dawn Laguens, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund's executive vice president for policy, advocacy, and communications. That number includes donors, volunteers, and people who have signed Planned Parenthood petitions, and the biggest gains began to come after the Susan G. Komen Foundation's controversial (and ultimately reversed) decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood in February.

The election has only accelerated these gains. Romney's platform assails the organization both directly, with a promise to defund it, and indirectly, with a pledge to end the contraceptive coverage mandate and support for overturning Roe v. Wade. Rep. Joe Walsh recently drew attention for claiming that abortion is never needed to save the life of a woman — "every time one of these guys opens their mouth," she says, "more and more people say they're completely out of touch on issues of women's health."

That's translated into more donors, and existing donors giving more money — the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the organization's advocacy arm, is in the midst of the most successful fundraising drive in its history. And, Laguens says, "we see it in everything we do. It's not just donations: every phone bank is backed, every canvas team is full." Another source within the Planned Parenthood Action Fund says its Twitter account gained 1,000 followers in the week between the vice presidential and second presidential debates.

That doesn't mean Planned Parenthood isn't worried about a Romney presidency. Surge in donations notwithstanding, Laguens says a successful defunding would mean Planned Parenthood couldn't possibly provide the various services it currently does. "Who gets elected here and what they believe in is going to make a difference to how many people are able to access health services," she explained.

But Laguens adds that actually defunding Planned Parenthood may not be as easy as Romney thinks. "The last time somebody tried to defund us," she says, referring to Republican efforts to block Planned Parenthood funding in 2011, "there was a really loud roar of people who said, 'no way.'"

This one goes out to everyone who ever wished that Mitt Romney had Ol' Dirty Bastard's mic control.

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Source: beta-adhd.com

Oh the humanity.

Source: youtube.com