By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Just this past summer, American Roman Catholic bishops were decrying the Obama Administration for forcing its ancillary institutions like colleges and hospitals to pay for reproductive health services for its women employees. Lawsuits were filed, press releases were released, and commentators were assembled on cable news to express the outrage. The holy fathers even channeled Rev. Martin Luther King (never a favorite of the Catholic hierarchy — how could he be with that name?) calling for civil disobedience to contest the mandates of the new law. Letters were written to the flock (with approved language, of course) from the bishops bellowing, ““We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law.” The bishops even marketed a catchy name for their protest: the flag waiving, patriotic sounding, Fortnight for Freedom. (Yes, His truth was marching on in full display!)
The dire predictions from the Catholic leadership: Obama will have a tough time this fall among the RCs. Romney must have been reading the church bulletin because it was surely no coincidence that he chose Catholic firebrand, Rep. Paul Ryan, as his running mate. The not so subtle GOP even traipsed out anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, anti-Obama, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, to deliver the closing prayer at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., next week. Catholics were being seriously wooed with everything Madison Avenue and the Business Roundtable could muster.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Romney’s coronation. A new Pew poll shows that Americans Catholics are embracing the incumbent’s campaign to the tune of 15 percentage points. Obama leads Romney 54% to 39% among likely Catholic voters in a poll released September 12 by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press. That’s up from Obama’s two percentage point lead over Romney in a June poll by Pew. What accounts for the anti-establishment surge?
The Catholic vote is not as monolithic as some would have you believe. Obama won the Catholic vote in 2008 due in large part to the votes of Hispanic and African American Catholics. That coalition seems to be holding and Obama has drawn even with Romney among Caucasian Catholic voters. Add to that Obama’s edge among female voters (56% to 37%) and you get a serious headache for Romney strategists.
But how strong is Obama’s support versus Romney’s and how likely are voters to change their minds? More bad news for Romney. Pew finds that Obama has the strongest support of any incumbent since Bill Clinton and perplexingly for Romney his support is more positive than negative calling into question Romney’s negative ad blitz.
At this stage in the campaign, Barack Obama is in a strong position compared with past victorious presidential candidates. With an eight-point lead over Mitt Romney among likely voters, Obama holds a bigger September lead than the last three candidates who went on to win in November, including Obama four years ago. In elections since 1988, only Bill Clinton, in 1992 and 1996, entered the fall with a larger advantage.
Well, things can change, right? Pew says maybe not:
Compared with many previous elections at this point in the campaign, more voters this year say they are absolutely certain to vote for their chosen candidate. Only 22% of registered voters (and 18% of likely voters) can be classified as swing voters …
Romney faces an uphill fight but surely not an insurmountable one. His problem may be that some of his most trusted allies from the pulpit might be leading only themselves with the rank and file having a mind of their own.
Source: CNN and throughout.
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
blouise, Did you beat me yet? From what Gene has said, I must have been just lucky on the first game.
nick spinelli
Ok Biden people, he’s smart, eloquent and sincere. Fortunately, you can’t see my face as I write this. Basta!
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Obviously you have not considered our telepathic powers … you have excellent bone structure. 😉
“Obviously you have not considered our telepathic powers … you have excellent bone structure.”
Blouise,
And besides that the last 4 letters of his last name rock. 🙂
SwM,
But it’s a great Scrabble word!
Paul Ryan: ‘It Would Take Me Too Long’ To Explain Mitt Romney’s Tax Plan (VIDEO)
9/30/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/30/paul-ryan-tax-plan-mitt-romney_n_1926660.html
Ok Biden people, he’s smart, eloquent and sincere. Fortunately, you can’t see my face as I write this. Basta!
If you want to see how your will no longer have any more rights as a American or you are one?. Just sit and do nothing because in Nov. all
of our rights and liberties will be taken away by a person who is’n a natural born American and who hates our nation and all of its rights,and freedoms
that were given to us by our forefathers. Do you know anything about the bill of rights and for that matter the American Constitution? I think you should be looking at the evidence that your present President is not really who he is he says. Look at the video by Michael Savage ” How Obama Fixed 2012 election”
Nick,
You underestimate Biden. He is an excellant speaker and debater. Always has been. Most of his supposed “gaffes” were merely Republican “gotcha” tactics, empowered by the Estabishment Press. They did the same thing with Al Gore and John Kerry. The first as represented by the ” he invented the internet” meme and the second in the swiftboating of Kerry’s Viet Nam service. Joe Biden will kick Ryan’s ass in their debate and come off as a favorite uncle to boot.
Why do feel like a Protestant in Northern Ireland? A Mormon with a legitimate chance to win the presidency, and a Supreme Court with nary a representative from the kinder of Martin Luther. Salaam Alaikum. Over and out.
Dogs dont have religion or believe in God or the hereafter. A bunch of us in this dogpack were reincarnated and had human lives in prior lives. The trip to the Elis Island Reincarnation Center cured us of any delusions about God, Prophets or Prosthetics. I went to the seminar on the second floor which was labeled Go Back As A Dog. The seminar lasted about two hours and we heard about a dogs life in the midwest with a good family. I got to come back as a guide dog for a blind guy who can see enough to eat breakfast but not cook it. He dont know nuttin about the Dogalogue machine and how we dogs bark into it and it comes out in print prose for the rest of you humanoids to read. Dogs vote. Early and often. After the election I will chimne in here on the blog and tell you how we do it. After the Willard story about the dog in the crate on the top of his car he lost the dog vote. Obama is a good dog owner. We have early voting out here where we live. Early and often. Go to 538.com and look up the polls from Nate Silver on Catholics and their take on Mormons. The Willard aint got a prayer. Aint got one heard in heaven after that dog in the crate crime.
If no one votes, it will be already taken from you, so just not vote and see who will become the next President watch the videos on you tube regarding Obama ,he is already elected by the powers that control the government and it isn’t even Nov. yet. The videos on the Government and it’s corrupt backers who are the real movers and shakers who control the puppet. Now as far as religion I think it should be put back in, I don’t know about you ,but look around you and what do you see No God in the Government and no God in your lives there tor the Government wants you to believe them and what they say. If God and I do believe in his son,and in his Mother, but the Catholic Church isn’t now what it was in his time and his Apostle’s time and so I feel it should change to become more to his teaching. It’s the Pope/ or Man and his priests who represent Jesus. But If you look into his teaching and for that matter all other teaching then decide within yourself..The real teachings of Jesus were taken out to suit the the teaching of the pasts Popes. Can you see Jesus living in the Popes home and living in all of it’s finery, he was born in poverty, Your soul is the one thing that Jesus was born for. To know and love him that’s why we were real reborn while all the material riches,wealth, power that the Pope has and is living in while his people are suffering and dying. that is something that will have to change. You are his temple if you love him, and have him in your life.,you have to be prepare for the judgement day. All material things you have you wont be able to take when you die. And for people who don’t believe in him only in science and in theory, than look at the places of Jesus birth place,, at the wonders and miracles that have occurred in different places where their faith and belief of his existence and that of his holy Mother Mary also. It’s really up to you.because there is a Heaven and Hell because of those people who have died and came back to testify of its existence.
Mark,
The Catholics are a divided group. As a non-practising Catholic who learned his catechism from the Benedictine Nuns, the hierarchy of the Church is far to the right of the Jesus Christ I grew up with. So many of the current Catholics have lost their enthusiasm for the leaders of the Church because of their continued hiding of child predators as well as their lurch to the right in recent years. Cardinall Bernadin would not recognize this church. I think Gene is right that the church members are also being turned off by Romney and Ryan’s love affair with the greenback and their determined efforts to harm the poor and the middle class. Great discussion!
Blouise, We always have been bifurcated but gender and race were the primary drivers.
Gene,
It is my greatest fear for I know you are right.
“bifurcation” gotta write that down 😉
Blouise,
I agree there is much discontent with the status quo, but history shows without some unifying event and/or person to give direction to the desire for change, it won’t happen. Unfortunately, these sorts of events tend to be horrific in such a base way as to garner almost universal appeal to human nature. And as to personal leadership as unifying force? The cult of personality is a mixed bag for results to be certain. It brought the world leaders like some of our Founders and Nelson Mandela. It also gave us Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini.
There is an ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.
There is nothing more interesting than uncertainty for a culture and society already in ethical decline. The increasing division and stratification of our society as evidenced by the bifurcation of the justice systems and governmental support structures (which were once for the commons and are now increasingly for “the elite” and the legal fiction of corporations) and the decline of the rule of law is a solid indication that we as a country are in such decline. Whereas at one time I though a calamity might be avoided on the path to the upswing of social change, I’m beginning to have doubts that it is avoidable.
Gene,
The answer might be glimpsed within the rise in registered Independents. I don’t know yet where it is going and lack the imagination to honestly predict its future but I sense a deeply rooted change within the electorate.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/08/06/how-fracking-disposal-wells-are-causing-earthquakes-in-dallas-fort-worth/
Solar Disarray
China is stealing America’s solar manufacturing industry. Should we fight back—or rejoice?
By Will Oremus
Posted Thursday, May 3, 2012
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/05/green_jobs_how_china_and_solyndra_left_america_s_solar_power_companies_fighting_each_other_for_scraps_.html
Excerpt:
In the year since BrightSource announced its IPO, however, clouds have formed over the U.S. solar industry. A boom in hydraulic fracturing has sent natural gas prices plummeting, making alternative energy sources such as solar look much pricier by comparison. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans have signaled that they plan to let the clean-energy subsidies introduced in the Obama administration’s 2009 stimulus bill expire. A $9 billion cash-grant program, which quietly created thousands of jobs, has already lapsed.
At the same time, China has made solar manufacturing a centerpiece of its economic agenda, sending a tide of cheap photovoltaic panels to American shores. Prices for those panels have dropped an incredible 75 percent in the past three years. That’s great for consumers in the short term—installing solar panels on your roof has never been so affordable. It’s also a boon for the companies that install those panels. SolarCity, a California startup that has become a national leader in designing, leasing, and installing solar-panel systems, has apparently profited handsomely. It announced plans for its own IPO just last week.
But for American companies that manufacture solar panels, the triple whammy of cheap natural gas, austerity in the United States and Europe, and cheap Chinese photovoltaics has been devastating. The most dramatic flameout happened at Solyndra, the California startup that was trying to make solar panels more efficient. Solyndra, though, struggled to make its solar tech affordable, and when prices for traditional panels plummeted, the company went bankrupt. It took with it some $500 million in federal guaranteed loans, to the outrage of Republicans who felt the government shouldn’t have been investing so heavily in clean energy to begin with. More significantly, the ensuing media storm (which included unfounded allegations of cronyism and fraud) made the entire clean-technology industry political poison.
Solyndra was only the most visible in a line of dominoes It was preceded into insolvency by Massachusetts-based Evergreen Solar and Intel spinoff SpectraWatt.* Next to fall was Arizona-based Stirling Energy Systems, followed by Solar Millennium, a German giant with a big U.S. presence. First Solar, a 13-year-old Arizona-based firm that went public in 2006, was until recently the world’s largest solar-panel manufacturer. Just last year, it topped Forbes’ list of America’s 25 fastest-growing tech companies. But last month, the company announced it was laying off 2,000 workers, shuttering a factory in Germany, and idling plants in Malaysia. Its shares have tanked, falling from a high of $170 last February to just $18 today, with no sign of improvement ahead.
Amid the gloom, BrightSource’s star still shone. On April 11, the day before its initial public offering, the tech-business blog GigaOm called the impending IPO “a big boost for a beleaguered industry.” Hours later, BrightSource announced it was canceling the public stock offering. It cited “adverse market conditions.” The company insists it made the decision “from a position of strength” and says it remains viable. Its $2.2 billion plant in California’s Mojave Desert is fully funded, thanks to investments from NRG Energy and Google and a $1.375 billion federal loan guarantee. Still, BrightSource’s future looks much dimmer than it did just a few weeks ago.
The irony here is that the United States’ “solar bubble” is bursting at a time of sustained growth in the global market for solar power. While American and German companies are going belly up, Chinese firms like Suntech and Trina are expanding, thanks in part to tens of billions of dollars in government loans and credits. Though Chinese consumers make up less than one-tenth of the global market for solar power, its firms now control an estimated 70 percent of the production market for solar modules. In 2005, imports of solar cells and modules from China to the United States totaled $22,000. In 2011, that figure was $2.8 billion.
The remaining U.S. firms are now fighting for survival, and they’re turning to the federal government for help. With subsidies a political nonstarter, solar businesses seized on a different approach…
The more I think about it, the more I think Romney’s trouble is ultimately rooted in the elitism of the wealthy, a presumption that because he’s wealthy he’s fit to lead and due both deference and “his turn” at being President, and his catering to the more extreme right wing elements within the GOP (which has in recent history drifted so far to the right as to invite fair comparison to fascism in stark contrast to the DNC’s drift to no where that requires them to have a spine) with his choice of Ryan and his “corporations are people” mantra. His problem with Catholics such as it may be is simply gravy to the meat of his problems with the people.
However, your other “choice” is a guy who has taken Bush’s most egregious anti-Constitutional policies, put them on steroids and enhanced them by claiming the Executive right to unilaterally execute citizens without due process.
The fast road or the slow road to Hell . . .
Both paths lead to ruin unless the fundamental breakdown of representative government by the corrosive corrupting influence of money is halted, reversed and the Constitution restored. Until then?
In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Does it?
Well folks, the second largest fault in the US is the New Madrid fault which lies just north of this area. Additionally, there are two other significant faults even closer to this quake, the Long Point/Eureka Heights fault and the Rio Grande Rift. Spending winters in southern California I have become fascinated w/ earthquakes. So…lets let the scientists analyze before we go all chicken little on this.
Elaine, The two quakes happened last night about 11 in the region of the Barnett Shale. It probably is fracking related. Last year there was a quake here was supposedly related to the fracking in Oklahoma.