————————————-WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY

NRA chief: The media are ‘a national disgrace’ for Trayvon shooting coverage – “But the media, they don’t care,” LaPierre said. “Everyday victims aren’t celebrities. They don’t draw ratings, don’t draw sponsors. But sensational reporting from Florida does. In the aftermath of one of Florida’s many daily tragedies, my phone has been ringing off the hook.” “You reporters, you don’t know their names, you don’t care about those people. You manufacture controversy for ratings. You don’t care about the truth and the truth is the national news media in this country is a national disgrace.” LaPierre is well known for trying to pushing his belief that President Barack Obama wants to eliminate the Second Amendment and take away people’s guns.

Romney’s open mike momemnt – Romney went into a level of detail not usually seen by the public in the speech, which was overheard by reporters on a sidewalk below. One possibility floated by Romney included the elimination of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Cabinet-level agency once led by Romney’s father, George. [...] “The Department of Education: I will either consolidate with another agency, or perhaps make it a heck of a lot smaller. I’m not going to get rid of it entirely,” Romney said, explaining that part of his reasoning behind preserving the agency was to maintain a federal role in pushing back against teachers’ unions. [...] Mrs. Romney… also discussed the criticism she faced this week, and her pride in her role as a mother. “It was my early birthday present for someone to be critical of me as a mother, and that was really a defining moment, and I loved it,” Mrs. Romney said. [...] Romney identified specific loopholes and deductions for the wealthy that he would eliminate in order to both finance his tax cut, and ensure that the nation’s top earners face the same tax burden they do today. “I’m going to probably eliminate for high income people the second home mortgage deduction,” Romney said, adding that he would also likely eliminate deductions for state income and property taxes as well.

HUH? Anti-Abortion Bachmann Says Women Need To Make Their Own Decisions About Their Bodies – BACHMANN: What we want is women to be able to make their own choices [...] We want women to make their own choices in healthcare. You see that’s the lie that happens under Obamacare. The President of the United States effectively becomes a health care dictator. Women don’t need anyone to tell them what to do on health care. We want women to have their own choices, their own money, that way they can make their own choices for the future of their own bodies. Bachmann doesn’t believe a women’s right to choose applies in all cases, though, promising on the presidential campaign trail that in addition to supporting an abortion ban, she wouldn’t allow exceptions for rape or for the woman’s health. On Meet The Press, Bachmann also claimed that “every aspect of women’s lives would be better” under likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney than under President Barack Obama. However, Romney has already promised to repeal the gains women make under Obamacare, which prohibits health care providers from charging higher rates to women. [image: conservativemediaanalysis]

So what Mitt Romney was saying, in other words, was that he believes poor mothers should go out and get jobs rather than to stay home with their children. He believes that going out and getting a job gives mothers — and everyone else — “the dignity of work.” And so, finally, he believes that staying home and taking care of children is not “work,” and does not fulfill a “work requirement,” and does not give poor mothers “the dignity of work.” And he believes all of this strongly enough that, as governor of Massachusetts, he signed those beliefs into law. [...] Over the past week, both parties decided to pander to stay-at-home mothers by forgetting this policy consensus and claiming they have always believed being a stay-at-home mother is “work.” But while they certainly believe parenting is toil, they don’t believe it is, in any real sense, work. And you can see that in the laws they’ve made.[...] Those statutory distinctions don’t matter to wealthier parents like Ann Romney. She’s not looking for government benefits. Politicians can pander to her by merely recognizing the labor she puts in. But to poorer mothers, those benefits mean quite a lot. Politicians, however, don’t pander to poorer mothers. They put them to work. [image:peterfeld]

OR… maybe Republicans are calling for a repeal of ‘welfare reform’?

———————————————————–——PRESIDENT OBAMA / DEMOCRATS

Romney’s ‘Hero’ Scott Walker Got Rid Of ‘Equal Pay For Women’ Laws – Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) chimed in Sunday on the battle for female voters, making an impassioned case that President Obama’s policies are far better for women than those of presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney. “It’s Barack Obama whose first bill he ever signed was the Lilly Ledbetter fair pay act,” she said on NBC’s Meet The Press. “Mitt Romney? His hero is a governor from Wisconsin who just got rid of the equal pay laws there.” She added Obama has worked to increase economic opportunity for women by focusing on education, pell grants and broading access to health care. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) appeared on the same segment, echoing the Romney campaign’s [debunked] argument that most of the jobs lost under Obama have been women’s jobs.

Fox host to Romney aide: Women job loss claim an ‘accounting trick’ – It’s a claim that his campaign has been making for over a week and senior adviser Ed Gillespie continued to push the line during an interview with [Fox News host Chris] Wallace on Sunday. “You know, 858,000 women have lost their jobs since President Obama took office,” Gillespie declared. “Ninety-two percent of the job losses in this recession or this recovery — slow stifled recovery — have fallen on women.” “Wait,” Wallace interrupted. “You know that it is true that more women have lost jobs and it’s true that more women are without jobs now, but it is not true that 90 percent — they did under Obama, but many, many more men — because they are in the job sectors that people lose jobs first — lost jobs under President Bush.” “So, it’s a little bit of an accounting trick,” Wallace added. “And all of the independent fact finders have said it’s misleading.” “Those independent fact finders aren’t very independent,” Gillespie shot back. “If you look at their bona fides, they tend to come from left-leaning organizations.” “The Washington Post? PolitiFact?” Wallace wondered. [TPM]

Wall Street is suing for rights to speculate on oil. Wall Street’s challenge to U.S. regulations limiting speculation in commodities including oil and natural gas should be dismissed because Congress required the rules under the Dodd-Frank Act, 35 Democratic Senators and Representatives said in briefs submitted to a federal judge. The 2010 Dodd-Frank law “was designed and intended to make those position limits mandatory,” 18 Democratic and one Independent senator said in a friend of the court brief submitted to the court. In a separate brief scheduled to be filed, 17 Democratic House members said the law didn’t require an analysis prior to completion. Trade associations representing companies including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) sued to overturn the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulation approved last year that would cap the number of contracts a derivatives trader can have. The lawsuit is one of the financial industry’s highest- profile challenges to the Dodd-Frank law that bolsters regulation of derivatives after largely unregulated swaps helped fuel the 2008 credit crisis. [...] “Oil supplies are plentiful and demand is down, so high gas prices can’t be explained by ordinary market forces of supply and demand,” Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said in a statement announcing the court filing. “An ongoing contributing factor is excessive speculation in U.S. commodity markets.” … [source: Bloomberg | via: arielnietzsche]