Frame&Focus

political and visual musings
nedhepburn: inothernews: Via the New York Daily News: Looks like Mitt Romney is running for President of the United States of “Amercia.” In an embarrassing blunder, Romney’s campaign misspelled the word “America” on its new “With Mitt” iPhone app, launched Tuesday.The app has a transparent skin that allows users to take a photograph and superimpose the slogan “A better Amercia” on the image. The presumptive Republican nominee is taking heat on the Internet for the error. “Whew, I hear Mitt’s updating that misspelled Amercia on his app. He’s just going with Untied States now,” read one tweet. “Does Mitt Romney believe that Obama was born in Keyna,” another tweeter jabbed. AMERCIA FUCK YEHA. Knowing the correct spelling of where you’re running for president is kind of a prerequisite.

nedhepburn:

inothernews:

Via the New York Daily News:

Looks like Mitt Romney is running for President of the United States of “Amercia.”

In an embarrassing blunder, Romney’s campaign misspelled the word “America” on its new “With Mitt” iPhone app, launched Tuesday.

The app has a transparent skin that allows users to take a photograph and superimpose the slogan “A better Amercia” on the image.

The presumptive Republican nominee is taking heat on the Internet for the error.

“Whew, I hear Mitt’s updating that misspelled Amercia on his app. He’s just going with Untied States now,” read one tweet.

“Does Mitt Romney believe that Obama was born in Keyna,” another tweeter jabbed.

AMERCIA FUCK YEHA.

Knowing the correct spelling of where you’re running for president is kind of a prerequisite.

(via motherjones)

Obama’s new campaign video about the progress he’s made in LGBT rights.

I will never understand how deeply religious people, who purportedly ascribe to the tenants of love and compassion, can openly profess this much hatred.

Pastor Charles Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, N.C. has “figured out a way to get rid of ‘em” (“‘em” = the LGBT community). Round ’em up, put ‘em in camps surrounded by electrified fences, and leave ‘em to die.

Well Pastor Worley, if you’re so intent on following the Bible as the “inerrant Word of God”, you might want to learn your 10 Commandments before paying attention to some outdated sentences in Leviticus.

Oh, and you have terrible grammar. You weren’t “disappointed bad” by President Obama’s support of marriage equality, you were badly disappointed. Save the adverb.

UPDATE: one of the Pastor’s supporters spoke to Anderson Cooper and I just… wow. She does a good job of showing how indefensible bigotry and homophobia really is.

http://youtu.be/cUXDKnL4xGE

The church insists it’s an argument about religious freedom, not birth control. But, really, it’s about birth control, and women’s lower caste in the church. It’s about conservative bishops targeting Democratic candidates who support contraception and abortion rights as a matter of public policy. And it’s about a church that is obsessed with sex in ways it shouldn’t be, and not obsessed with sex in ways it should be.

Picturing myself in “The Life of Julia”

“The Life of Julia” is a powerful interactive infographic from the Obama campaign contrasting a woman’s opportunities from preschool to retirement in America under  Obama versus under Romney. It is a simplification, but it is also a powerful distillation of why there is a 10% gap between Obama and Romney with female voters.

Critiques of “The Life of Julia” predictably have a common theme of overbearing “cradle to grave” government, but I think something more nuanced is happening as well.

One critic, David Harsanyi, asks “who the hell is ‘Julia’ and why am I paying for her whole life?” and then smugly points out that “Julia then has a son named Zachary (who has no father around, as far as I can tell).” The Week summarized, “Without getting married, she decides to have a baby, and next thing we know, she retires on Social Security and Medicare … With no mention of family, church, or husband, Julia’s central relationship is with the nanny state.”

These responses aim to attack Obama’s platform and policies on a fiscal level, but instead end up sounding like an ignorant dismissal of systemic inequality and sexism. Think about it this way:

Although I can’t guess at the Obama campaign’s motives, the ad’s spotlight is focused solely on Julia, portraying her (and her son) without explicit conceptions of family, church, or spouse. This allows a broad spectrum of women to identify with Julia. She could be a single mother. She could have a partner of any gender. She could be in a non-monogamous partnership or community. She could belong to any religion. (Admittedly, she is represented with relatively fair skin). Clicking through Julia’s life, I could actually identify with her, because she wasn’t placed next to a husband. She wasn’t pictured in front of a church. 

“The Life of Julia” touches on the pertinent, immediate subject matter - how programs supported by President Obama could enrich any woman’s life, and give her equal access to opportunity and success - access she should have no matter her sexual orientation, her marital status, her religion, or her family.