Mitt Romney clearly going for that all-important Boehner bronzer vote

You can process this information through whatever filter you deem relevant. For me, this seems ominous for the Romney campaign, but I'm wary of getting overly confident. It is the sign of an insecure candidate to demand that they be able to stack the deck of a town hall audience with supporters, yet that is just what Mittens did for his last Univision appearance:

Univision anchor Maria Elena Salinas told Buzzfeed that while both candidates had agreed to distribute their share of tickets mainly to students, Romney’s campaign reneged at the last minute, demanding to bus in activists to fill the seats.

But even with that demand, wouldn't you know? Mittens had a hard time finding enough Latino-looking supporters to fill out the auditorium:

But after exhausting the few conservative groups on campus, the Romney camp realized there weren't enough sympathetic students to fill the stands on their night — so they told the network and university that if they weren't given an exemption to the students-only rule, they might have to "reschedule."

The organizers relented. One Democrat with ties to the Obama campaign noted that Rudy Fernandez, the university official charged with coordinating the forums, is a member of Romney's Hispanic steering committee. Fernandez did not respond to BuzzFeed's questions about whether he gave preferential treatment to Romney's campaign.

In any case, Romney's team was allowed to bus in rowdy activists from around southern Florida in order to fill the extra seats at their town hall.

Whew! That was a close one for the Romney campaign. I won't rub it in that the Obama campaign had no problems with the first Univision arrangement. Maybe it was the few Latino conservatives they could find that precipitated Romney's need to go orange for the event. The more faces of color, the better, amirite?

Still, Romney worried that he didn't make the best impression, and demanded that he be able to re-shoot his intro:

When co-anchor Jorge Ramos noted, in Romney’s introduction, that he would only be available for 35 minutes, versus the full hour that President Obama had promised, Romney refused to come onstage until Univision agreed to re-shoot the introduction. ”Our president of news was talking to the Romney campaign and negotiating it,” Salinas told Buzzfeed. “But at that point, you can’t really argue with that. The candidate is there, everyone is in their seats, the show must go on. There’s a limit to how much we can object to it.”

They re-shot the intro, noting the time discrepancy at the end of the broadcast.

President Obama, by contrast, adhered to the original agreement, and threw no hissy fits.

This is hardly the first time a candidate (at any level) has tried to paint him or herself in the best light, trying to finagle the most favorable coverage. What is unusual is that the media isn't playing along and letting us know about all these behind-the-scenes drama. And when the media isn't helping you, that's a very bad sign.

Rick Santorum has finally sauntered off the big stage, leaving him with plenty of time on his hands to harass high-school girls about their skirt length and bark at the moon about its nocturnal promiscuity.

You'd think it would be high times for Team Romney. But you'd be wrong.

What once seemed like it would be the GOP's race to lose, or at the very least a spirited general election contest, has seen Mitt Romney and what remained of his party's brand deconstructed and defenstrated. To put it in Yogi-Berra parlance, for the Romney Campaign,"it got late early out there."

Sure Santorum is technically gone, but he'll be with Romney for the rest of this race. Every time the former Massachusetts Governor has to answer to independent women in the Milwaukee or Philadelphia suburbs about why he'd "get rid" of Planned Parenthood," and explain to Latino families in Las Vegas and Phoenix why he'd "veto" the Dream Act, the ever-cherubic apparition of Santorum will be smiling gaily over his shoulder.

There is no doubt that some things are beyond Romney's control. The falling unemployment rate. The Dow's hitting and now hovering around 13,000. The delay in creating those 3 jobs building the car elevator thingy that takes you to the stadium-sized basement in Romney's 3rd house. These were all unexpected.

But not putting Santorum away early even while outspending him like 9:1, so that the social-issue firebrand could stick around and pull the primary so far right that Vladimir Zhirinovsky would have seemed moderate. Mitt has only himself and his severely marvelous personality to thank for that.

The end result—because of Santorum's squatting in the race as long as he did, while taking a rhetorical hatchet to Romney in much the same language as Democrats have—Romney is so unpopular right now if his dog Seamus were still around he might put Romney in the dog kennel on top of the car.

According to CNN polling, the Governor will be the only presidential candidate since 1996 to exit the primaries with a net negative approval rating. If you want the thumbnail sketch, just take a look at North Carolina.

This is a state President Obama barely won in 2008, bringing it into swing state territory for the first time in a generation of electing right-winger Jesse Helms to the Senate consistently. Changing demographics have moved the state to the Left, no doubt, but going into this election most observers would call it a lean-Republican state if they were being honest.

Yet, at this point, Obama is up 5 points, 49 percent to 44 percent. But it is the internals of this poll, which must look to Romney like they've been infected by Ebola, that tell the story of how badly Romney is doing. He only is viewed positively by 29 percent of voters in the Tarheel State, with a whopping 58 percent viewing him unfavorably.

Basically, he'd have to make a pretty steep climb just to reach the favorability level of Kanye West, or Encephalitis.

It is not over yet for Romney, as there are many unpredictable things that can happen (think terrorist attack, economic crash, or mass hypnosis of American voters). But one thing is for sure—he'd better start Etch A Sketching, stat.

This piece was first published at Al Jazeera English

I had a good time in Vegas, so I didn't spend a huge amount of time at NN, but I did spend enough time to take in the mood, and it was schizophrenic. About half the people there are some combination of angry, disappointed and bitter with Democrats in general and Obama in particular.

This group sees him as not a heck of a lot better than George Bush, and in fact the Democrat who extended some of Bush's worst policies, especially in civil liberties. This includes a lot of feminists (angry at what they see as betrayals on abortion), many Hispanics angry at the continued harsh enforcement of immigration laws, gays who feel Obama has betrayed clear promises on gay rights, anti-war activists saddened by escalation in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and a mishmash of folks who think health care reform was a dog's breakfast and that the general way the economy and financial reform has been handled is a disgrace.

Then there are the folks who would characterize themselves, in general, as hard-nosed pragmatists and "realists". These range from the "Obama is the greatest liberal president since FDR" types, who think that the Obama is just wonderful and those progressives and liberals who don't agree are simply delusional to those who feel that a lot of what he's done has been watered down pap in general but that it's certainly better than nothing and that those who are disappointed are unrealistic idealists who simply don't understand the constraints Obama and Congressional Democrats are working under.

As regular readers know, I tend to the first camp, but I'm not going to go into why, I simply want to note that this divide is very real. It's occasioning a lot of anger on both sides. The first sees the second as tribalistic sellouts, willing to excuse horrible things they would never excuse in Republicans so long as they are committed by Democrats and lacking an understanding of just how bad Democratic policy has been. These are folks who tend to sneer at the "wins" as either illusory or so underwhelming as to be a parody of the "lesser evil" argument. (Reminding one inevitably of the T-shirts which say "Why Vote for the lesser evil. Cthulhu 2008.") To many of these folks the other side are, crudely put, sell-outs.

The second side is angry at what they see as fairy-tale thinking and deeply unrealistic. "Obama couldn't fix everything immediately, but he's better than the Republicans will be if they get back in power" is their mantra, ranging from "really, he's wonderful and you're insane for thinking otherwise" to "well, yes he sucks but he sucks less than what the Republicans will do when they get in power." Either way, they see the attacks from what they consider the "purists" as deeply damaging. Democrats may or may not be a ton better than Republicans, but either way, they are better, and there is a moral case to be made for sucking it up one more time and working hard to elect, as the old progressive battle cry runs, "better Democrats". This is a two-party state, with those parties having an unbreakable oligopoly on power. Dissing Democrats just helps the even worse party win, at which point they will do even worse things. So get over your problems, whether they are with economic policy or Obama's continued shredding of fundamental civil liberties like Habeas Corpus, jump back into the trenches with your bowie knife or bayonet and fight for Democrats, not against them because by constantly bad mouthing Dems all you do is make it more likely that Republicans will win, and if they win, well, that will be baaaaddddd. Very, very baaaaaddddd.

To put it crudely and unfairly to both sides, it's the sell-outs without principles against the purists without realism.

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When reality catches up to Arizonans for their passage of their misbegotten police-state immigration law, it's going to be ugly and unpleasant. If other states really are considering passing similar laws, they will want to watch what happens to Arizona -- and they will inevitably wind up thinking twice.

We've pointed out previously -- as have the nation's police chiefs -- that the law is almost certain to in fact increase violent crime and dilute law enforcement's capacity to deal with it in Arizona.

And that will only be the first consequence (and a decidedly ironic one, since this law was sold as being a means to crack down on violent crime). The longest-lasting and most significant, however, will be the economic one: When the Latino workforce flees Arizona, their economy will suffer a dramatic downturn unlike any they've seen in decades.

It's already starting to happen:

Arizona’s hard-hitting immigration law is driving Hispanics out of the state weeks before the controversial law goes into effect.

Although concrete figures are not available, anecdotal evidence suggests Hispanics, both legal residents and illegal immigrants, are starting to flee.

Schools in Hispanic neighborhoods are reporting abnormal enrollment drops, and businesses that serve Hispanics also report that business is down, according to a USA Today report published Wednesday.

The report suggests that the immigration law is compounding demographic trends that have already significantly curtailed illegal immigration during the past two years. The bad economy has been the primary deterrent to many Hispanic immigrants seeking to enter Arizona, says Jeffrey Passel, a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.

“If you have a bad economy and a hostile environment, then that’s likely to cause people to think twice about coming, and possibly even to leave,” Mr. Passel says.

... Any loss, however, will be a loss for the Arizona economy, [David Gutierrez, a professor of immigration history, at the University of California San Diego] suggests.

“Latinos...are a highly flexible, highly exploitable work force, a buffer to economic downturns,” he says. “Many of the industries here – agriculture, service industries, low-end manufacturing, construction – are massively dependent on undocumented workers.

“If I were able to conduct an experiment and pay all of Arizona’s undocumented workers to not work for two weeks, the economy would come to a screeching, crashing halt instantaneously.”

This brought to mind a video forwarded to me from my friend Jimmy at McCranium, an Eastern Washington blog, of a Pasco immigration attorney named Tom Roach giving an informational talk to group of local citizens in Kennewick on May 29.

The talk is excellent, and I recommend watching the whole thing if you're interested. Because Roach effectively drills down to the heart of our dilemma with immigration -- namely, our current laws are so screwed up they have no chance of meeting the nation's economic needs or effectively dealing with natural immigration pressures that are driven by not just the economy, but the American Dream itself:

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The campaign to dehumanize immigrants -- both those without documents as well all legal immigrants, especially Hispanics -- in America is on in full force. Microchipping them was just the start.

When I saw the grasshopper graphic I chuckled for a moment because it's so surreal, it's so not of this earth. It couldn't possibly come from a member of Congress, could it?

Speaking on the House floor last night, Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), who has been a vocal voice in the bipartisan movement to increase border security, had a peculiar and offensive way of framing the issue.

Poe: "Now it seems to me that if we are so advanced with technology and manpower and competence that we can capture illegal grasshoppers from Brazil, in the holds of ships that are in a little small place in Port Arthur, Texas on the Sabine River. Sabin River, madam speaker, is the river that separates Texas from Louisiana. If we're able to do that as a country, how come we can't capture the thousands of people that cross the border everyday on the southern border of the United States? You know they're a little bigger than grasshoppers and they should be able to be captured easier.

Here's how Poe really feels about non-whites in America.

I was wondering if it came from a David Lynch movie. You know how he likes insects. Blue Velvet, maybe. The GOP, teabaggers and conservatives remind me of Frank Booth. (Not for children video clip.)

It sure looks like Republicans have been huffing the good stuff over this issue. As always, it brings out the eliminationist impulse, doesn't it?

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I don't think Judge Andrew Napolitano yesterday gave Neil Cavuto quite the response he was looking for when he asked him about Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's predictably bad decision to make hers the first official police state in the country for immigrants.

See, every other paid Fox News Analyst that day had been sturdily defending the bill. Not the Judge:

Napolitano: She's gonna bankrupt the Republican Party and the state of Arizona. Look at what happened to the Republicans in California with the proposition --

Cavuto: What happens?

Napolitano: Ah, Hispanics -- who have a natural home in the Republican Party because they are socially conservative -- will flee in droves. She's also gonna bankrupt her state, because no insurance company will provide coverage for this. And for all the lawsuits that will happen -- for all the people that are wrongfully stopped -- her budget will be paying for it. Her budget will be paying the legal bills of the lawyers who sue on behalf of those that were stopped.

This will be a disaster for Arizona -- to say nothing of the fact that it's so unconstitutional that I predict a federal judge will prevent Arizona from enforcing it as soon as they attempt to do so. That will probably be tomorrow.

Judge Napolitano is an interesting mixed bag of an analyst. Sometimes he's just a flat-out nutcase. At other times, he's a sharp and insightful guy. This was definitely one of the latter occasions.

I think what Arturo Venegas, Jr., former chief of the Sacramento Police Department and project director of the Law Enforcement Engagement Initiative, had to say bears repeating:

“The passage of SB 1070 in Arizona is a catastrophe for community policing, with repercussions that will be felt by law enforcement officials across the country. The actions of the state legislature and Gov. Brewer are an unfunded mandate to Arizona police and are clearly rooted in concerns over politics, not public safety. No police officer should have to put arresting an undocumented immigrant over catching a violent criminal to avoid a lawsuit, and no victim or witness of a crime should be afraid to report it because he or she will be deported if he or she speaks to police.

“This law will drive a wedge between police and the immigrant and Latino communities not only in Arizona, but around the country. Trust between law enforcement professionals and the communities they serve is the cornerstone of community policing, and departments across the country have been working for decades to develop strong relationships with the community. Latinos and immigrants across America have been watching Arizona with fear, and will retreat deeper into the shadows now that this bill has become law.

“Today is a very sad day for the majority of us in law enforcement who believe that effective policing is based on community trust. I hope the federal government will heed this wake-up call and take long-overdue action for comprehensive immigration reform to protect our communities, and I am deeply disappointed in Governor Brewer and the Arizona legislature for passing this dangerous, costly, and ineffective law.”

It's important to understand that this kind of approach means that real violent crime is going to increase in Arizona. That's certainly what has happened in Maricopa County, under the regime of Crazy Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose approach to emphasizing immigration enforcement has served as the inspiration for this bill. As the conservative Goldwater Institute found [PDF], such an approach meant skyrocketing rates in real crime:

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John McCain is really scrambling this time around, it seems. In this segment on BillO's show, he hammers on the Federal government for not acting rapidly enough to 'secure the borders' while defending Arizona's new Xenophobia Act requiring all immigrants to keep their documents with them for examination at any time by law enforcement. Not content to stop there, he also blames immigrants for engaging in the 'intentional accident' scams.

O'REILLY: Now, next week, the governor is going to sign, we believe, a very stringent state law that gives the police in Arizona very, very broad authority to question people. And a lot of people say it's going to be racial profiling. You're going to look for Hispanics, question them, to see if they're here legally or not. And it's just not fair. And you say why?

MCCAIN: I say that the federal responsibilities have not been fulfilled. Therefore, the states are acting -- the state of Arizona is acting and doing what they feel they need to do in light of the fact that the federal government is not fulfilling its fundamental responsibility to secure our borders. Our borders must be secure.

O'REILLY: But what about the racial profiling? You know that's going to happen has to happen.

MCCAIN: I hope -- I would be very sorry that if some of that happens. And I regret it, but I also regret the -- really, it's not just the murder of Robert Krantz. It's the people whose homes and property are being violated. It's the drive-by that -- the drivers of cars with illegals in it that are intentionally causing accidents on the freeway. Look, our border is not secured. Our citizens are not safe.

Leaving aside the usual double-talk about the Feds from a "small-government" kind of guy, let's take a minute to think about those staged accidents. Here's how they work, usually in heavy traffic:

• The guy in front of you slams his brakes on after being cut off on the freeway.
• You slam your brakes on to avoid him, but you can't quite stop fast enough, so your car rear-ends his. Because these accidents are usually staged in heavy traffic, speed at impact tends to be low, but not low enough.
• The driver you hit has some passengers, and they all claim to have neck pain.
• You have to file a police report and an insurance claim, they run up medical bills with clinics involved in the scam, and they wait for the insurance settlement to close the deal

One of my kids was the victim of one of these scams. It's not immigrants running these; it's Molly Middle Class and her cronies. Immigrants would not risk arrest by getting involved in something involving lawyers, police reports, and ongoing investigations. They just wouldn't.

But keep it up, almost-President McCain, because I'm sure it plays well with those scared seniors in Arizona and the xenophobic gun-toting, immigrant-hating folks, too. Problem is, JD Hayworth may actually do it better than you.

(h/t Media Matters)

Meet the graduating Texas senior class of 2020 and beyond. This group of students has some unique identifying characteristics, products of an education based upon textbooks crafted with an agenda. If you were to test them on their knowledge, here's what you'd discover:

• They don't know who Thomas Jefferson is and why he's significant, but they do know who John Calvin is and believe he was instrumental to the formation of our nation.
• They believe the terms church and state are interchangeable.
• They do not believe in evolution as fact, but are inclined to embrace creation theory or intelligent design as the explanation for how the universe came into existence.
• They believe the right to bear arms is a first AND second amendment right granted by the Constitution. (see 11:12 entry)
• They do not understand the term "democracy", but can define "constitutional Republic" and apply it to the American system of government.
• They don't know that the United States Constitution bans placing one religion over others.
• They can name at least three pro-free market factors contributing to European progress in medieval times. (Yes, I'm serious. Read the 6:43 pm entry)
• They cannot define capitalism, but are completely familiar with the idea that taxation and government regulation inhibits free enterprise.
• They ignore Hispanics and their role in various historical events in the United States, such as the Alamo.

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John Fund went on Glenn Beck's show last night to help Beck with his characterization of the Obama White House as a nest of fist-bumping terrorist radicals, mostly by underscoring its supposed connection to ACORN and the SEIU. (According to Beck, SEIU's Andy Stern is "really controlling our country.")

At the end of the segment, Fund began describing the ways ACORN's nefarious activists are supposedly engaged in voter fraud in the New Jersey election:

Fund: People are going door to door in parts of Camden with Hispanics that don't have very much knowledge of English, and they're saying, "We have a new way for you to vote, la nueva forma de votar; just fill out these papers."

But as Media Matters noticed, he's actually describing something that happened in 1993 in Philadelphia. Indeed, he accurately described it in his Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he tried to claim that fraud was occurring in New Jersey:

There are additional reports from Camden that Hispanic voters have been misled into voting absentee ballots. So-called bearers who are allowed to collect and carry absentee ballots are said to have encouraged voters to fill out applications for absentee ballots. A few days later, the bearers reportedly return with the actual ballots, which they offer "assistance" in filling out.

Authorities in nearby Philadelphia know about such scams. In one infamous case, a key 1993 race that determined which party would control the Pennsylvania state senate was thrown out by a federal judge after massive evidence that hundreds of voters had been pressured into casting improper absentee ballots. Voters were told by "bearers" that it was all part of "la nueva forma de votar" -- the new way to vote. Local politicos tell me Philly operatives associated in the past with Acorn may now be advising their Jersey cousins on how to perform such vote harvesting.

Notice that in this version of events, there's no mention of the "la nueva forma de votar" ruse being used in Camden -- just the use of absentee ballots. And despite Fund's claims, there is no evidence of actual fraud yet even in this absentee-ballot operation -- just the potential for it.

Conservatives like Fund have long pinned their electoral hopes on reducing voter turnout, because encouraging large numbers of voters is a certain recipe to right-wing defeat. The Right succeeds most when voter turnout is suppressed -- and absentee-ballot efforts are part of reversing that trend.

They also like having handy excuses when they lose. It's clear that Fund, Beck, and the rest of the Right is setting themselves up with a way to claim that an electoral loss in New Jersey was illegitimate. Because that's what they're best at -- tearing down liberals after they beat them at the polls.

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Xenophobic Arizona Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, has raised a lot of eyebrows. Besides his very public hatred of Hispanics, he's also established ties with a Neo-Nazi group in his home state. Arpaio's obliteration of civil rights has finally caught up with him and the Obama Administration is finally pushing back:

A controversial Arizona sheriff known for taking a hard line against illegal immigrants has been stripped of some of his powers in what he described as a political move by the Obama administration.

Under a two-year-old agreement with the federal department of homeland security, Arpaio and his deputies had been authorised to enforce federal immigration law by arresting suspected illegal immigrants in the field and by checking the immigration status of people arrested on other offences.

But after drawing thousands of complaints and a civil rights investigation from the justice department, Arpaio was this week stripped of his federal authority to make immigration arrests. County attorney Andrew Thomas, one of Arpaio's supporters, condemned the "setback in the fight against illegal immigration". Read on...

This is a positive sign and I applaud the White House for taking making this happen. It's long overdue.