Mitt Romney (ABC Debate):

We have a president who has an entirely different view. He wants us to turn into a European-style welfare state and have government take from some to give to others. That will kill the ability of America to provide for a prosperous future, to secure our freedom, and to give us the — the rights which have been in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. I believe in an America that’s based upon opportunity and freedom, not President Obama’s social welfare state.

Newt Gingrich (ABC Debate):

Well, look, I think that’s a good message and I agree with him [Romney]. A — a little bit harsh on President Obama, who, I’m sure in his desperate efforts to create a radical European socialist model, is sincere.

Rick Perry (NBC Debate):

I make a very proud statement and of fact that–we have a president that’s a socialist.  I don’t think our founding fathers wanted America to be a socialist country.  So I disagree with that– premise that– somehow or another that– President Obama reflects our founding fathers.  He doesn’t.  He talks about having a more powerful, more centralized, more consuming and costly federal government.

Rick Santorum (NBC Debate):

 Well, I– I– I think I’m just answering your question.  Maybe– maybe we’re not communicating well.  But I just talked about– that– medical– health savings account is an anti-socialistic idea to try to build a bottom-up, consumer-based economy– in health care.

So far, we’ve seen none of these candidates provide any actual evidence beyond shallow rhetoric that substantiates that Obama is actually a “socialist” or that his policies will lead to a “European-style” socialist welfare state. Worse, while we’ve heard these Republican candidates continually make “socialist” claims, we have seen little movement by the press to scrutinize them.

Moderator David Gregory, to his credit, did ask Rick Santorum whether his support for the the Prescription Drug Benefit program, a social program, was equivalent to himself being a “socialist.” But beyond this, there has been a noticeable gap in the news media asking the GOP candidates to back up their claims.

UPDATE (10:15pm): While I have reservations about PolitiFact’s sometimes iffy decisions, I noticed this evening that they gave a “Pants on Fire” rating to Rick Perry’s claim from last night’s debate that Obama is a “Socialist.” Their conclusion:

There are plenty of ways to have a meaningful, substantive conversation about the differences of the Republicans and Democrats in tax policy, economics and the role of government. But it’s simply preposterous for Perry — and Gingrich — to refer to Obama’s policies as socialism or to say he is a socialist. Obama’s policies may have expanded government, but they don’t justify this ridiculous hyperbole. We’re reaching for the matches — Pants on Fire!

Unfortunately, besides briefly mentioning Gingrich, they seem to be taking a blind eye to the fact that Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney have made the exact same claims.

Accordingly, 1115 has decided to compile a schedule for Season 2 of the 2011/2012 Republican Primary Debates. This is a complete and up-to-date as of January 26, 2012. I’ll leave a link to this post on the sidebar for quick reference.

I was so outraged by the president of the United States for standing up and saying every child in America should go to college. Well who are you? Who are you to say that every child in America should [go to college]? I mean, the hubris of this president to think that he knows what’s best.

• Are untapped natural gas reserves as expansive as the natural gas industry have us believe?
• Ron Paul blamed AIDS patients for being victims of their own lifestyle in his 1987 book:

“The individual suffering from AIDS certainly is a victim — frequently a victim of his own lifestyle — but this same individual victimizes innocent citizens by forcing them to pay for his care,” Paul wrote.

• Derek Thompson from the Atlantic examines the demographics of labor force drop outs.
• Although the House of Representatives might not accurately represent their constituents on many issues, they at least seem to mimic the population on one: illegal downloading

U.S. prosecutors are preparing what would be the first criminal charges against BP Plc (BP/) staff after the worst U.S. oil spill last year, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.

Prosecutors are focusing on whether some BP employees, including several Houston-based engineers and at least one supervisor, provided false information to regulators about the risks linked to the drilling of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, the Journal said. Department of Justice officials said in September that they looking to whether BP failed to properly report changes in key pressure measurement during the drilling process.

This is definitely a step in the right direction. Now if only BP’s corporate personhood could be charged with manslaughter and sent away to jail…

Kallie Durkit: “Relatability has been a large issue for you on this campaign trail, and as a college student many people in my generation find it especially hard to relate to you as a candidate,” said 21-year-old Kallie Durkit, who attends Bowling Green State University in Ohio. “Why should we mobilize for you as a candidate instead of Obama, which we did in 2008?”

Mitt Romney: “What I can promise you is this – when you get out of college, if I’m president you’ll have a job,” said Romney. “If President Obama is reelected, you will not be able to get a job. That’s the reason I will hopefully get young people who are in college is to say, You know what, I understand what it takes to get jobs in America.”

The most ridiculous part about this statement is that he ‘promises’ poor little Kallie Durkit that  she won’t get a job if Obama is reelected.  It’s not like he’s just asserting that he can do a better job than Obama, but that voting for Obama is equivalent to economic apocalypse — a world where all college students are unemployed.

This is not a one-off gaffe. Instead, it follows a long line of distortions and flat out lies made by the Romney campaign in their quest to dupe the American public into voting for him. The media has to keep Romney accountable for saying auch transparently false statements. It’s absurd enough already that he has maintained an aura of integrity and consistency for so long when nothing could be farther from the truth.

#10 Chris Christie Mic Checked

#9 Michele Bachmann Mic Checked

#8 Representatives of the Gas Industry Mic Checked

#7 Karl Rove Mic Checked

#6 Barack Obama Mic Checked

#5 Scott Walker Mic Checked

#4 Eric Cantor Mic Checked

#3 Newt Gingrich Mic Checked

#2 John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo Mic Checked

#1 NYC Panel for Education Policy Mic Checked

BONUS #1:  Robert Doyle, Mayor of Melbourne Mic Checked

BONUS #2:  Wal Mart Mic Checked

My first inclination upon returning back to 1115 after Thanksgiving was to comment on the terrifying night-time raid the NYPD carried out upon the 9,000 people camping outside of the Macy’s in Herald Square. But then I realized that never happened.

In other news, an internal NYPD Disorder Control Unit document was snagged by an arrested Occupy Wall Street protester who found it in the back of a police van. The document mainly states the Do’s and Don’ts that officers should follow when attempting to control “disorderly and violent groups.” There are some obvious guidelines that one would expect from the police during such a civil disorder incident like “maintain firearms discipline” and “do not engage in unnecessary conversation.”  But the guidelines also insist that the officers maintain a “strong military presence” and to “always” have their helmets and baton ready for “immediate use.”

In a previous post I wrote about the Pepper-Spraying incident at UC Davis and the all too common conflict that arises when a militarized police force confronts peaceful protesters. Another such instance is pictured above, where a white shirt NYPD officer punched an OWS protester without provocation. In this case, it was a high-ranking officer who acted up. I think it’s safe to say that when officers are told that they have to rise above their regular policing role to produce the semblance of a “strong military presence”, things are going to go awry and nobody wins in the end.

“They set this trap by saying we’re going to cut the military by $600 billion,” Romney said of the automatic cuts that would happen if the Super Committee did not reach a deal. “With the world that’s a dangerous place, we’re going to put the military on the chopping block. It’s like holding a gun to your own head. I can’t imagine the circumstance that ever makes any sense at all. Then with that as the possible outcome, you have a president who didn’t get involved in the process.”

Meanwhile in reality, this past week saw major developments in our actual military’s strategic and technological capabilities. First there was the announcement by President Obama that the United States will permanently station 2,500 Marines in Australia. Then, on that same day, the Army announced that they had successfully tested a hypersonic missile that can strike any location on earth within an hour. That doesn’t sound much like “holding a gun to your own head.”

We’re going to hear a whole lot of this type of rhetoric in the next few days by Republicans. The congressional super committee has broken their promise to reach a bi-partisan compromise that would lower our national debt. Instead of trying to reach an agreement that was made up of honest concessions by both party’s, the Republicans decided to reject any proposal that included tax increases for the rich. It doesn’t matter that two-thirds of those polled earning over $100,000 believe that millionaires should be taxed higher, or that a majority of Republican voters agree with this sentiment. None of that matters for the super-wealthy congress that doesn’t want to believe their eyes when they read the part of the constitution that say’s, “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United State.”

And so now we’re going to have to hear politicians gripe about the draconian consequences of the “triggers” going into effect as if they didn’t have an alternative. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are going to take pot shots at Obama for failing to “lead” and for making our country “weak”. The Super-Committee will release phony statements that include sentences such as, ”Despite our inability to bridge the committee’s significant differences, we end this process united in our belief that the nation’s fiscal crisis must be addressed and that we cannot leave it for the next generation to solve.”

The only thing that our representatives are not going to say is “sorry” – sorry for manufacturing a crisis and for being too incompetent to manufacture a solution.

So it turns out that the cop who pepper-sprayed the nonviolent protesters at UC Davis is an exemplary officer – a “hero” who once saved the life of a fellow officer. Clearly, there’s a discrepancy between the overzealous role he played on Friday afternoon and his normal routine. I think, however, that in order to understand why police in full riot gear will violently attack nonviolent protesters who pose no threat, you only have to drive 100 miles south to Stanford, California.

I’m referring to the Psychology 101 (and probably Police Academy 101) lesson about the Stanford Prison Experiment, where “normal” individuals were brought to a simulated prison and assigned roles of either prisoner or prison guard. It only took a day for the experiment to go awry: as the subjects began to internalize their roles, the prison guards began abusing the prisoners while the prisoners began to “act up” and feel powerless at the hands of the guards.  The experiment deteriorated so rapidly that the planned 14 day experiment was cut off at 6 days – and even then, the lead investigator took a lot of heat from the academic community for allowing it to go on as long as it did.

With this experiment in mind, it should come as no surprise that police who are dressed for battle will battle. Armed with shields, helmets, batons, and “non-lethal” weapons, we have watched this scene play out time and time again. Protesters who could easily be subdued by a non-militarized police officer with two bare hands and a pair of handcuffs (I’ve seen it done on COPS before) are instead brutally taken down by the use of weapons, chemical agents, and flash grenades. Why is this? Because the riot police have been sent in to act out their roles with the props given to them.

Norm Stamper, who was chief of the Seattle Police during the WTO protests of 1999 that became known as the the “Battle in Seattle,” would know something about the dynamics between protesters and riot police. In a recent editorial in The Nation magazine, he wrote:

…Seattle might have served as a cautionary tale, but instead, US police forces have become increasingly militarized, and it’s showing in cities everywhere: the NYPD “white shirt” coating innocent people with pepper spray, the arrests of two student journalists at Occupy Atlanta, the declaration of public property as off-limits and the arrests of protesters for “trespassing.”

The paramilitary bureaucracy and the culture it engenders—a black-and-white world in which police unions serve above all to protect the brotherhood—is worse today than it was in the 1990s. Such agencies inevitably view protesters as the enemy. And young people, poor people and people of color will forever experience the institution as an abusive, militaristic force—not just during demonstrations but every day, in neighborhoods across the country.

This Us versus Them mentality is invariably the outcome of the police playing military dress-up. The real question is whether we will accept the continuation of this disruptive role-playing game that pits law enforcers against the values they are responsible for upholding.

It’s been reported that two of the police officers who were involved in the pepper-spraying incident have now been placed on paid administrative leave for their actions. I think we’re delusional if we think that suspending a couple officers for lack of personal discipline is going to prevent this episode from happening again.

UPDATE (11/23/2011):

It turns out that the cop has been a douche prior to this incident. According to a report by the Daily Mail:

…an alleged anti-gay slur by Pike also figured in a racial and sexual discrimination lawsuit a former police officer filed against the department, which ended in a $240,000 settlement in 2008.

Officer Calvin Chang’s 2003 discrimination complaint against the university’s police chief and the UC Board of Regents alleged he was systematically marginalized as the result of anti-gay and racist attitudes on the force, and he specifically claimed Pike described him using a profane anti-gay epithet.