Romney on abortion — 2 ads.

Romney's ad:



Obama's response:



That sounds terrible:

“If Roe v. Wade was overturned, Congress passed a federal ban on all abortions, and it came to your desk – would you sign it? ‘Yes’, or ‘no?’”

“Let me say it: I’d be delighted to sign that bill.”

Ban all abortions? Including abortions that would save the life of the mother? Did Romney really say that? The Weekly Standard prints whole context:

QUESTIONER: Hello, my name is AJ. I'm from Millstone, New Jersey. I would all of the candidates to give an answer on this. If hypothetically, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the Congress passed a federal ban on all abortions and it came to your desk, would you sign it? Yes or no?

COOPER: Mayor Giuliani?

GIULIANI: If Congress passed a ban on all abortions throughout the United States?

COOPER: If Roe v. Wade was overturned and Congress passed a federal ban on all abortions and it came to your desk, would you sign it, yes or no?

GIULIANI: I probably would not sign it. I would leave it to the states to make that decision.

(APPLAUSE)

I think that that -- the problem with Roe against Wade is that it took the decision away from the states. If Roe against Wade were overturned because it was poorly decided, if the justices decide that, it would them go back to the states, and it would seem to me that that would be the answer.

The answer is that each state would make a different decision. I don't believe, in the circumstance that you asked before, that it should be criminalized. I think that would be a mistake unless we're talking about partial birth abortion or late-term abortion.

I think you should have parental consent. I think we should have access to adoptions instead of abortion. But, ultimately, I think these decisions should be made on a state-by-state basis.

COOPER: Governor Romney?

ROMNEY: I agree with Senator Thompson, which is we should overturn Roe v. Wade and return these issues to the states.

ROMNEY: I would welcome a circumstance where there was such a consensus in this country that we said, we don't want to have abortion in this country at all, period. That would be wonderful. I'd be delighted.

COOPER: The question is: Would you sign that bill?

ROMNEY: Let me say it. I'd be delighted to sign that bill. But that's not where we are. That's not where America is today. Where America is is ready to overturn Roe v. Wade and return to the states that authority. But if the Congress got there, we had that kind of consensus in that country, terrific.

That is kind of a weird answer by Romney, and I don't blame the Obama campaign for pulling out that quote. I can see why, fighting for the Republican nomination and pushed and cornered like that, he said "I'd be delighted to sign that bill." Notice that the idea is that we'd be in some hypothetical other America, and if we had arrived there, it would be terrific and delightful, but that's not where we are, so there's no immediate prospect of seeing that bill.

The Romney campaign wants to say, it's not a realistic present-day threat — which is true — and it's not what Romney is really talking about when not pushed and cornered by the formidable Anderson Cooper — which is also true. When free to put his policy in his words, Romney prefers to leave the matter to the state legislatures. Of course, that involves overturning Roe v. Wade, which he's open about. It's an anti-abortion position, though not as anti-abortion as the way it comes out in Obama's ad.

Bottom line: Those who are considering voting for Romney ought to understand exactly how anti-abortion Romney is, but it's up to Romney, not Obama to do that precision work.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz under maximum stress...

... as Anderson Cooper proves he's not a complete liberal hack. Amazing!

Via Instapundit.

"Recently, however, I’ve begun to consider whether the unintended outcomes of maintaining my privacy outweigh personal and professional principle."

"It’s become clear to me that by remaining silent on certain aspects of my personal life for so long, I have given some the mistaken impression that I am trying to hide something – something that makes me uncomfortable, ashamed or even afraid. This is distressing because it is simply not true."

Anderson Cooper comes out.

What do you think of Cooper's statement?
	Sexuality should be kept private, and it really doesn't have anything to do with his journalism.
	If you don't come out earlier, it's more dignified to act like you think it should be private.
	It was wrong to be in the closet, so... better late than never.
	He soberly balances factors, and his view of the balance changed. I respect that.
	He's a gay hero. I congratulate him for his courage.
	We already knew, so this is meaningless.
pollcode.com free polls

Did you watch the TV coverage of the Iowa Caucuses all the way to the end?

I didn't, but Chris (my son) did. Here's our IM dialogue (with me in italics):

i went to bed early

was extremely long

were some amusing parts though

what?

like this http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2012/01/04/bts-iowa-caucus-edith-carolyn-highlights.cnn

I heard them say "It's too close to call" about 100 times, then I lost my mind, then I went to bed



some stuff on cnn... they sort of figured out the results before it was announced by talking to a precinct captain

there was a point where someone kept trying to "flick" a graphic back to the original tv and did it three or four times before it worked, and anderson cooper said something like "have we just given up?" (on reporting)

LOL [at the "Edith and Carolyn" video]

"whadya mean the numbers don't match"

yeah

what time of night was that?

i think around 1 am central

and it was after the point where they seemed like the news anchors couldn't take it anymore

anderson cooper in particular kept just insulting the graphics and stuff

LOL

there was a point when cooper said something like "if you miss any of this you can catch it all later on the daily show when he ruthlessly makes fun of you

if they had all the clips of everything that happened they could make it seem really funny but the problem is it was over the course of like 6-7 hours

Yeah, that's why I went to bed.

ADDED: You can watch the flickfail here.

Anderson Cooper tries coffee for the first time and calls it "watery."

He also eats spinach for the first time and calls it "slithery." 

The funniest thing is, we thought Kathy Griffin was talking to Anderson Cooper when she said that.

We were watching CNN live on New Year's Eve, and we laughed a lot when Kathy Griffin said — with plausible thought-we-went-to-commercial deniability:

"Screw you. Why don't you get a job, buddy? You know what? I don't go to your job and knock the dicks out of your mouth."

Now, I see that it was — or they're saying it was — a comeback to a heckler.

Griffin is as master at getting big publicity by — simultaneously — scandalizing the squares and delighting her fans. We all remember "Suck it, Jesus."

AND: Which New Year's Eve TV experience was more painful?

The New Year's Eve live-blog.

7:27 Central Time: Shouldn't you be out carousing? No. It's smart to stay in on the night when everyone else is out. So hang out here if you like. I hope you don't mind that I'm doing Central Time. But one must be somewhere? Where are you? Are you already in 2009? I see from Site Meter, that there are currently 142 people on the blog. There are readers in Dublin, Brighton, and Germany, so, hello, people of the future.

7:44: Celebrations around the world, but "A number of Arab nations - including Egypt, Jordan and Syria - cancelled planned celebrations in solidarity with Palestinians in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip after a fifth day of Israeli air-strikes on the coastal enclave."

8:24: Champagne cork popped.

8:44: I'm watching Mickey Kaus and Bob Wright doing their New Year's Bloggingheads.

9:27: "How cold is it in New York? Look at that jacket! What a candyass!" I exclaim, looking at Ryan Seacrest — whoops for a second there I called him Ryan Seaquest — who is wearing an overstuffed down jacket and ear muffs. We've turned on "Dick Clark's New York Rockin' Eve" — or whatever it's called. I check my iPhone. It's 19° in NYC. So: candyass! They go to commercial, and we switch to "South Park."

10:00: We're kind of excited about Kathy Griffin (along with Anderson Cooper) covering Times Square on CNN.

10:05: The sound technology on CNN is terrible! They're trying to talk to reporters in lots of different cities, and either they can't hear them or the crowd noise is blowing out the microphones. Now Anderson and Kathy can't hear each other when they are standing side by side. "Can we stop saying Pap smear?" Cooper asks, after Kathy makes a few Pap smear jokes.

10:52: CNN comes back from a commercial break with Lynyrd Skynyrd singing "Sweet Home Alabama" in Pikeville, Kentucky. It sounds terrible. Is it the CNN mikes? Or do they suck? Hey, is that Bill Clinton? Oh, that's not Kentucky now. It's New York City. And there's Hillary and Bloomberg. Bill is not wearing a puffy jacket. He's got a lovely brown leather jacket. Very attractive. He's got his values in order.

10:57: Close to the end in New York City. They're playing John Lennon singing "Imagine." Chris says: "It's sort of a downer of a song in the last 2 and a half minutes."

10:58: I'm kinda tired. Can I be on NY time?

10:59: The Clintons start the ball. The ball, the ball, the ball, the ball. Yay!!!! Happy New Year!!!!!!!

11:00: "Oh, I'm tired! Can I be on NY time?" "No! You have to be on the time that you're in!"

11:01: Oh! Good lord! The Clintons are dancing and it makes me cry! Now, Kathy and Anderson are dancing, and Kathy says to Anderson, "Are you seeing anyone?" and we all know that's a huge joke.

10:05: "2 thousand and 9. We got to the big 9." I say that, as if 9 is an especially magnificent numeral. CNN plays Frank Sinatra singing "New York, New York," then Ray Charles singing "America the Beautiful," then Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World."

10:08: Lot's of folks are wearing those 2009 glasses, and I suddenly realize that this is the last year for the 00 glasses. You'll have to wait until the year 3000 to wear glasses like that. Will we even have eyes in 3000?

11:30: We've finished the bottle of champagne, and I'm making herb tea, as if that will keep me up until midnight. I've muted the TV, which is really annoying me, and Chris and I are making lists of all the movies we saw in 2008 and putting them in order. This little effort wakes me up a bit. Here's my list:

The Fall
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
Synecdoche, New York
The Reader
Mongol
Iron Man
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Faster, Bigger, Stronger
Standard Operating Procedure
U23D
Australia
Dark Knight
Children of Huang Shi
Doubt
Rachel Getting Married
Sex and the City

11:35: Chris IMs his movie list:

Milk
The Fall
The Reader
Synecdoche, New York
Slumdog Millionaire
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
U23D
Mirrors
Rachel Getting Married
Sex and the City

11:40: A shot of Times Square: Everyone has cleared out. Weird. It was the place to be, and then it's nothing.

11:47: Okay, now, who's in the Central Time Zone with me? The Central Time Zone rules!

11:51: "We're the only ones here! This is like a really messed up bar!" So says Kathy Griffin, looking down at Times Square. Anderson Cooper explains the notion of time zones.

11:59: CNN is playing some crap music. This is not the way I want to end a year or indeed what I want to do anywhere.

12:00: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! We watched CNN do the countdown in New Orleans. It was really lamely done. "Wouldn't it be great if there was a hologram of the Clintons dancing there?" says Kathy Griffin. We laugh. First laugh of the year. That can't be the biggest laugh of the year. Let's hope there are many laughs.

UPDATE, 10/22/11: I'm just reading this by chance and laughing at that last line Let's hope there are many laughs. In the year I was anticipating, I met Meade in January, fell in love with him in February, and married him in August. 2009 was brimming with excitement and happiness... and many, many laughs.