Posts by Hines Brian

Love it. Love it! Love it!! Congrats to the Obama speechwriter(s) who came up with the inspired notion of "Romnesia." That's a perfect one word description of what Mitt Romney suffers from. And which we voters can't allow to have spread to the rest of America. Best line is when Obama tells Romney, no need to worry about your illness, you've got Obamacare, and it covers pre-existing conditions! The video is well worth 4:43 of your time. I smiled my way through it.    Thanks to Daily Kos for a Romnesia blog post.---------------------------------"We've got to name this condition that he's…

Usually I watch the recorded first third of KGW's Portland 11 pm news in a semi-comatose state, aware of what's on the TV only enough to keep fast-forwarding through the seemingly endless string of car crashes, dog bites, and other "if it bleeds, it leads" stories that bore my wife and I. But last night -- gasp! -- KGW actually mentioned some national political news early on. Unfortunately, they got it wrong. Though I can't remember anchor Laural Porter's exact words, the gist of what she said was, "Polls split on who won the second presidential debate, Obama or Romney."…

President Obama and I have made up. Evidence is shown in our VISA balance, which became $100 larger a few minutes ago. I'd vowed "no more Obama for America" donations -- especially after the first presidential debate, when, after a brief honeymoon period during which I thought Obama did fine, the horror of his listless performance hit home. After watching tonight's debate, though, I'm a happy progressive again. Win or lose (and I'm betting "win"), Obama has gotten back to being a tough fighter. That's all I wanted: to see him go toe to toe with Romney rather than cower…

This blog post almost was going to be about Joe Biden's strong debate performance last night, where he smiled, smirked, and that's malarky'd in a "give 'em hell" manner that raised my progressive spirits.  I was all set to discuss some analyses of Paul Ryan's dissembling, a.k.a. lying, the most obvious of which was his resolute reluctance to provide any details at all about the Romney-Ryan plan to cut tax rates 20% across the board without increasing the deficit or the middle class tax burden. This magic is supposed to happen by limiting certain deductions and other tax expenditures. Bizarrely,…

Thanks to a fellow Tai Chi student who didn't take Obama's groan-inducing performance (if you're a progressive) at the first 2012 presidential debate as seriously as I did, today I learned about a Taiwanese animation that takes a humorous view of the Romney-Obama bout. Have a look. And a read of the subtitles, unless your Chinese is a lot better than mine.   It was healing to smile my way out of the pain I've been feeling as, day by day, Obama's re-election chances take another downward tilt on Five Thirty Eight. He's down to 68%, a big drop from the…

Oh, great. Not! Just what I didn't want to read at the end of an otherwise splendid sunny warm rainless Oregon day. Nate Silver's overview of where the presidential race stands. Following another day of strong polling on Tuesday, Mitt Romney advanced into the best position in the FiveThirtyEight forecast since the party conventions.  ...The forecast model is not quite ready to jump on board with the notion that the race has become a literal toss-up; Mr. Romney will need to maintain his bounce for a few more days, or extend it into high-quality polls of swing states, before we…

On the slight chance that this blog rant will be read by a social media Democratic campaign fundraiser, here's some tips for you from a progressive who is getting irritated at your current tactics. My wife and I already have given quite a bit of money to Obama for America, the Congressional Democratic campaign committees, and some individual candidates like Elizabeth Warren. Plus, we've donated in support of Oregon Dems. We're more inclined to give when we feel that campaigns are doing the best they can, with energy and enthusiasm, to defeat Republican efforts to return us to the not-good-old…

After I finished watching a recording of the first Obama-Romney debate last night, I said to my wife (who saw it live at a friend's house), "I think Obama did fine." Then I watched the MSNBC commentary. Almost universally the liberal commentators, along with the conservative ones, said Obama's debate performance was a disaster. After listening to them for a while, I started to change my mind about how well he did. But with the light of a new day, and further pondering of what went on during the debate, I'm back to feeling good about Obama. Yes, he wasn't…

The Republican Party has a problem with reality: it denies it. I'm not saying that all Republicans do this. But G.O.P. leaders sure do, along with a much higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats. Evolution and global warming are prime examples of G.O.P. head-in-the-sand'ness. Now political polls can be added to the reality-denying list.  Nearly every national poll shows President Obama leading Mitt Romney. Gallup, Ipsos and Bloomberg all have the president up by six points. The RAND Corporation puts Mr. Obama up by seven and a half. Only Rasmussen has Mr. Romney up nationally among likely voters, by two points. Swing…