Mitt Romney’s poll numbers at standstill, Washington Post-ABC News poll finds
Mitt Romney’s favorability ratings have stalled during his campaign’s bumpy summer months, with his earlier improvements as he was wrapping up the Republican presidential primaries in the spring appearing to flat-line, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Although 40 percent of voters now say they hold a favorable opinion of the former Massachusetts governor — virtually unchanged from May — those holding negative views of him ticked higher in the new survey, from 45 percent to 49 percent.
DUBIOUS
Happy HUMP DAY, Everyone! We hope you’re enjoying 3 Chics featured artist The Pointer Sisters
OBAMA/BIDEN 2012!
YES WE CAN
Somehow, this is not a surprise…
By Dennis G. August 8th, 2012
If you are of a certain age, you might remember Ronald Reagan.
And if you remember the Reagan years, you might remember the Iran-Contra Scandal.
In an effort to raise off-the-books money to fund conservative paramilitary groups in Central America, the Reagan Administration set up a money laundering system where weapons were sold to Iran, the cash bought drugs and the cash from the sale of the drugs was sufficiently laundered to give it to the Right-wing warriors south of the border—free of Reagan’s fingerprints. Much and more of these funds went to Nicaragua, but the dirty wars spread to other countries. One was El Salvador, where a brutal civil war flourished from 1979 to 1992.
A central feature of all the Central American conflicts during the Reagan/Pappy-Bush years was the Right-wing death squad. They killed anybody in their way from peasants to intellectuals to Bishops to Nuns. A lot has been written and documented about these conflicts. It is known who—in addition to Reagan’s off-the-books (and illegal) contributions—funded the death squads. In El Salvador much of that funding came from a few rich Salvadorian families with estates in Miami.
Funny thing.
It turns out that the folks funding El Salvadorian Death Squads contributed 40% of the capital that Mitt Romney needed to start Bain Capital.
Somehow, I am not surprised.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/08/08/somehow-this-is-not-a-surprise/#comment-3566985
Did Romney enable company’s abusive tax shelter?
By Peter C. Canellos and Edward D. Kleinbard,
Mitt Romney’s refusal to release tax returns in the critical years of his income accumulation has done little to dispel the legitimate concern that arises from hints buried in his scant disclosure to date: Did he augment his wealth through highly aggressive tax stratagems of questionable validity?
One relevant line of inquiry, largely ignored so far, is to examine what exists in the public record regarding his attitude toward tax compliance and tax avoidance. While this examination is hampered because his dealings through his private equity company, Bain Capital, are kept shrouded, there are other indicators.
A key troubling public manifestation of Romney’s apparent insensitivity to tax obligations is his role in Marriott International’s abusive tax shelter activity.
Edward D. Kleinbard
Romney has had a close, long-standing, personal and business connection with Marriott International and its founders. He served as a member of the Marriott board of directors for many years. From 1993 to 1998, Romney was the head of the audit committee of the Marriott board.
During that period, Marriott engaged in a series of complex and high-profile maneuvers, including “Son of Boss,” a notoriously abusive prepackaged tax shelter that investment banks and accounting firms marketed to corporations such as Marriott. In this respect, Marriott was in the vanguard of a then-emerging corporate tax shelter bubble that substantially undermined the entire corporate tax system.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/08/opinion/canellos-kleinbard-romney-taxes/
There’s a whole thread up on this.
Ametia,
Gabby Douglas is on the cover of People Magazine for next week…..
And I will be buying this issue… MULTIPLE ISSUES!
found this in the comments at Balloon Juice…
cause, you all know how I feel about the extent of folks’ loyalty to Willard goes:
hells littlest angel Says:
If Romney went broke, he wouldn’t have a friend in the world, and Ann would be out the door looking for a man who could keep her in ponies.
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Romney moves to embrace ‘Romneycare’
Posted by Aaron Blake at 01:52 PM ET, 08/08/2012
The WashingtonPost
The health-care law which shall not be named is starting to get mentioned.
Twice today, Mitt Romney’s campaign has cited the health-care law he signed as Massachusetts governor — seeking credit for something it took pains to explain away during the Republican primary race.
Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul, responding to a harsh new super PAC ad featuring a man who blames Bain Capital for his uninsured wife’s death, broke new ground for the campaign by praising Romney’s health insurance mandate.
To that point, if people had been in Massachusetts, under Gov. Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care,” Saul said on Fox News. “There are a lot of people losing their jobs and losing their health care in President Obama’s economy.” (These comments are around the 2-minute mark in the video above.)
Similarly, at an event in Iowa today, Romney seemed to suggest his bill qualifies him to tackle reforming Obama’s bill: “And I have some experience doing that, as you know,” he said, according to a tweet by Reuters’ Sam Youngman.
It’s a very novel strategy. And it’s fraught with danger.
Obama’s health-care law remains perhaps the biggest arrow in the GOP’s 2012 election quiver, because it so motivates the GOP base against the president.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/romney-team-moves-to-take-credit-for-romneycare/2012/08/08/c371e216-e17b-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_blog.html?wpisrc=nl_pmpolitics
Wed Aug 08, 2012 at 08:24 AM PDT.
Huffington Post: Romney Started Bain With Blood Money
by rem123
What a surprise. Romney defied his own beliefs to get ahead.
The Huffington Post headline reads: Mitt Romney Started Bain With Money from Families Tied To Death Squads. The article by Ryam Grim and Cole Stangler is a very in depth and lengthy profile into the how Bain Capital got its start. According to the article, In 1983, founder, Bill Bain approached Mitt Romney about starting Bain Capital, a private equity appendage of the consulting firm Bain & Company. After some qualm, Romney agreed. However, According to Huffington Post, the jobs came with a stipulation.
.
Romney struggled to raise funds from traditional sources of money
When Romney struggled to raise funds from other traditional sources, he and his partners started thinking outside the box. Bain executive Harry Strachan suggested that Romney meet with a group of Central American oligarchs who were looking for new investment vehicles as turmoil engulfed their region.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
So after Mitt’s initial reluctance, he’s going to do the right thing, right? WRONG!
Romney was worried that the oligarchs might be tied to “illegal drug money, right-wing death squads, or left-wing terrorism,” Strachan later told a Boston Globe reporter, as quoted in the 2012 book “The Real Romney.” But, pressed for capital, Romney pushed his concerns aside and flew to Miami in mid-1984 to meet with the Salvadorans at a local bank.
It was a lucrative trip. The Central Americans provided roughly $9 million — 40 percent — of Bain Capital’s initial outside funding, the Los Angeles Times reported recently. And they became valued clients.
“Over the years, these Latin American friends have loyally rolled over investments in succeeding funds, actively participated in Bain Capital’s May investor meetings, and are still today one of the largest investor groups in Bain Capital,” Strachan wrote in his memoir in 2008. Strachan declined to be interviewed for this story.
When Romney launched another venture that needed funding — his first presidential campaign — he returned to Miami.
“I owe a great deal to Americans of Latin American descent,” he said at a dinner in Miami in 2007. “When I was starting my business, I came to Miami to find partners that would believe in me and that would finance my enterprise. My partners were Ricardo Poma, Miguel Dueñas, Pancho Soler, Frank Kardonski, and Diego Ribadeneira.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/08/1117932/-Huffington-Post-Romney-Started-Bain-With-Blood-Money
I was just coming to post this. The FILTH just keeps on coming!
REPOSTING THIS EVERYWHERE
11 FRIGGIN’ CENTS.
11 FUCKING CENTS and this mofo wants to whine about the ACA?
FUCK HIM.
…………………..
National health care for 11 cents per pizza
By Steve Benen – Wed Aug 8, 2012 10:00 AM EDT.
John Schnatter, CEO of the Papa John’s pizza chain, shared a political, election-year message during a shareholders conference call the other day. His message: the Affordable Care Act will be bad for his business and its customers
On a conference call last week, CEO and founder John Schnatter (a Mitt Romney supporter and fundraiser) said the health care law’s changes — set to go into effect in 2014 — will result in higher costs for the company — which they vowed to pass onto consumers.
“Our best estimate is that the Obamacare will cost 11 to 14 cents per pizza, or 15 to 20 cents per order from a corporate basis,” Schnatter said.
Matt Yglesias had the same reaction I did: “Stipulating for a moment that this is true, doesn’t it seem like a rather small price to pay?”
Actually, yes. I haven’t the foggiest idea if Schnatter’s figures are accurate, and given that his enthusiastic support for the Romney campaign, I’d recommend caution before accepting them as fact.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say the Papa John’s CEO is correct and the price of a large pepperoni pizza will go from $14.08 to $14.19 (or, on the outside, $14.22) as a consequence of the Affordable Care Act. This is supposed to make Americans oppose the health care law?
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/08/13181038-national-health-care-for-11-cents-per-pizza?lite
Let’s see; pore-clogging-cheese, nitrite-rich pepperoni, and carbo-ridden dough is likely the culprit here. I don’t frequent Papa John’s never have, never will.
Yesteday’s WH Presser
AMETIA,
PLEASE FIND A WAY TO POST THIS VIDEO.
Home » Blogs » scarce’s blog
August 08, 2012 10:20 AM
Romney campaign spokesperson touts Romneycare
BY SCARCE
.
The Romney campaign farce continues. It’s somewhat doubtful that bringing up the fact that having access to universal health care saves lives, while trying to deny the same system nationwide upon which it is based, is going to win many converts. In fact, all her response is likely to do is annoy other republicans.
A flummoxed Bill Hemmer of Fox News quickly changed the subject, naturally.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/asd-0
LARGEST TAX AVOIDANCE SCHEME
Did Romney enable company’s abusive tax shelter?By Peter C. Canellos and Edward D. Kleinbard, Special to CNN
August 8, 2012 — Updated 1536 GMT (2336 HKT)
Editor’s note: Peter C. Canellos, a lawyer, is former chair of the New York State Bar Association Tax Section. Edward D. Kleinbard is a professor at Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California. He is the former chief of staff of Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation.
(CNN) — Mitt Romney’s refusal to release tax returns in the critical years of his income accumulation has done little to dispel the legitimate concern that arises from hints buried in his scant disclosure to date: Did he augment his wealth through highly aggressive tax stratagems of questionable validity?
Opinion: Why won’t Romney release more tax returns?
One relevant line of inquiry, largely ignored so far, is to examine what exists in the public record regarding his attitude toward tax compliance and tax avoidance. While this examination is hampered because his dealings through his private equity company, Bain Capital, are kept shrouded, there are other indicators.
A key troubling public manifestation of Romney’s apparent insensitivity to tax obligations is his role in Marriott International’s abusive tax shelter activity.
Romney has had a close, long-standing, personal and business connection with Marriott International and its founders. He served as a member of the Marriott board of directors for many years. From 1993 to 1998, Romney was the head of the audit committee of the Marriott board
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/08/opinion/canellos-kleinbard-romney-taxes/
Why I’m Standing With President Obama Today
Posted: 08/08/2012 8:35 am
President Obama is in Denver today to outline the choice in this election and how it will affect every woman in America. This election decides whether years of struggle for basic health care rights that so many women fought for will be rolled back. I’ll be standing with the President in Colorado because I believe we must defend those rights — and that means reelecting a President who stands with us.
This choice is personal for all of us because it will impact each of our lives. But for me, it’s intensely personal. Earlier this year, I was publicly attacked by Rush Limbaugh and others for testifying before members of Congress. I had shared stories of my friends and other young women, stories no different from those I’ve heard from women who also worry about having the health care they need.
Fortunately, we have a President who has fought for our right to quality, affordable care. That’s the promise behind President Obama’s health reform: we should have access to basic health care no matter where we work or study or what gender we are. And Obamacare is already delivering access to care for millions of women.
READ ON
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandra-fluke/barack-obama-denver_b_1753380.html
THIS: Sandra Fluke: When I was verbally attacked earlier this year, I was heartened by the many Americans who reached out in support, regardless of their politics. President Obama was one of them. He condemned those hateful words and supported my right to speak without being attacked.”
“Mr. Romney was not. When Rush Limbaugh called me a “slut” and a “prostitute” for speaking about medical needs for contraception, Mr. Romney could only say that it “wasn’t the language [he] would have used.”If Mr. Romney can’t stand up to the extreme voices in his own party, we know he’ll never stand up for women and protect the rights that generations of women fought so hard to ensure.”
TELL IT, MS. FLUKE!!
August 08, 2012 9:49 AM
The Big Dog Speaks
By Ed Kilgore
Mitt Romney’s campaign probably made a tactical error in displaying Bill Clinton’s image in its highly mendacious and deeply divisive new ad on welfare policy that suggests, among other fabrications, that the Obama administration is somehow abolishing the central “work” focus of the 1996 welfare reform act Clinton signed. As I thought might happen, the Big Dog is speaking out against the lies in a statement (per Politico’s Maggie Haberman):
Governor Romney released an ad today alleging that the Obama administration had weakened the work requirements of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. That is not true.
The act emerged after years of experiments at the state level, including my work as Governor of Arkansas beginning in 1980. When I became President, I granted waivers from the old law to 44 states to implement welfare to work strategies before welfare reform passed.
After the law was enacted, every state was required to design a plan to move people into the workforce, along with more funds to help pay for training, childcare and transportation. As a result, millions of people moved from welfare to work.
The recently announced waiver policy was originally requested by the Republican governors of Utah and Nevada to achieve more flexibility in designing programs more likely to work in this challenging environment. The Administration has taken important steps to ensure that the work requirement is retained and that waivers will be granted only if a state can demonstrate that more people will be moved into work under its new approach. The welfare time limits, another important feature of the 1996 act will not be waived.
The Romney ad is especially disappointing because, as governor of Massachusetts, he requested changes in the welfare reform laws that could have eliminated time limits altogether. We need a bipartisan consensus to continue to help people move from welfare to work even during these hard times, not more misleading campaign ads.
How did the Romney campaign’s response to this rather categorical rejection of the ad’s claims? It just repeated them. I swear, trying to engage these people in any sort of reasoned discourse is like looking into the eyes of a goat: nothing there but the determination to keep on keeping on, truth be damned. Team Mitt has a lot riding on this latest effort to tar (racial allusion intended) the president with the “welfare” meme, which unsubtly links repeated GOP claims that Obama is a wild-eyed socialist “redistributor of wealth” to the least popular and most racially explosive programmatic element of the New Deal/Great Society legacy. The welfare ad is going to be in heavy rotation according to Romney campaign sources, and no number of refutations of its central claims (by Clinton or by “fact-checkers” like PolitiFact, which quickly gave the ad a “Pants on Fire” designation) will stop them.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_08/the_big_dog_speaks039091.php
Posted at 01:34 PM ET, 08/08/2012 An extreme conservative GOP candidate for Senate in Missouri
By Greg Sargent
Democrats are widely thought to have caught a break in Missouri last night, because Rep. Todd Akin prevailed in the GOP primary to face Senator Claire McCaskill — her weakest opponent. Akin has a history of over-the-top statements which Steve Benen documents right here; he has compared federal involvement in student loans to a “stage three cancer of socialism” and has said liberalism is grounded in “hatred of God.”
But Dems believe Akin may have another serious vulnerability — not just what he has said, but how he has voted. Akin has repeatedly voted against measures that passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support, votes that Dems will point to as evidence of how far Akin is out of the mainstream, even among Republicans:
* In 2012, Akin was one of 24 to vote against the Training and Research for Autism Improvements Nationwide Act; 147 Republicans voted for it. A GOP press release described this as an effort to “advance training and education for autism service providers” so that “autistic children and adults can lead fuller, happier and healthier lives.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
Posted at 10:44 AM ET, 08/08/2012 TheWashingtonPost Can Obama fight Romney to a draw on economy?
By Greg Sargent
I continue to believe that the Obama campaign is angling to fight Mitt Romney to a draw on the economy. As I’ve noted before, Obama advisers would obviously like a win, but they many have to settle for a draw. Then the campaign might be winnable on other fronts: tax fairness, entitlements, vision for the future, personal attributes.
Today’s New York Times/CBS/Quinnipiac poll of three swing states sheds a bit more light on this. They suggest an interesting dynamic has taken hold. Swing voters continue to say Obama is more in touch with their problems than Romney; and they mostly see his business background negatively. But Romney is tied with Obama — or doing better — on the generic question of who can fix the economy.
Romney’s numbers are upside down on whether he cares about people’s problems in Wisconsin (41-51) and Virginia (44-48). They are roughly even in Colorado (47-46). By contrast, majorities in all three states say Obama cares about their needs and problems.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/can-obama-fight-romney-to-a-draw-on-economy/2012/08/08/3e4f254a-e161-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_blog.html
August 08, 2012 8:20 AM
Blue Girl’s Missouri Primary Postmortem
Missouri held its primary yesterday, and we are very pleased to have Political Animal’s great friend Blue Girl offer a Primary Postmortem. Blue Girl blogs about Missouri politics at Show Me Progress. You can also follow her on Twitter where her handle is @BGinKC.
By Ed Kilgore
It was an interesting night in the Show-Me-State. There were races where the vote was just a formality and others where a candidate ran unopposed, but there were also hard-fought battles. Quite a few races were called within an hour of the polls closing, and the results of most were known within two hours, but then there were the nail-biters, too. Those were the ones that had me consuming mass quantities of caffeine and staying up way past my bedtime on a school night.
Claire McCaskill was unopposed on the Democratic side, while on the GOP ticket it was a banquet of crazy and one of those nail-biters I was just talking about. I like to think that Claire did the Dance of Joy until she dropped from sheer exhaustion when it became clear that her opponent would be Todd Akin, the most chock-full-o-nuts wingnut in a three-wingnut race. The rest of us just heaved a sigh of relief that Sarah Steelman lost so we don’t have to put up with any more visits from Caribou Barbie: Fashion Offender. If Steelman had pulled it out, Sister Sarah and her hideous wardrobe would have campaigned with Steelman so much over the next three months that she would have gotten her mail here.
In the newly-redrawn Missouri First, two Democratic incumbents – Lacy Clay and Russ Carnahan – fought a bitter and acrimonious battle. I’m a big enough person to admit to my character flaws, so I confess: It was the sort of race I love to watch Republicans engage in, but I get an “11th Commandment” bee in my bonnet about it when Democrats do it. In the end, when the votes were counted, it was Lacy Clay by a landslide. He pulled a whopping 63.2 percent to Carnahan’s 34 percent. Clay will face Republican sacrificial lamb Robin Hamlin in November in a district where Republicans could apply for endangered species protection if they believed in such a thing.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_08/blue_girls_missouri_primary_po039089.php
LOL Claire McCaskill needs to SWEAT major. Maybe now she’ll get her act together and claim her title as a TRUE DEMOCRAT. Missouri’s got enough RIGHTWING crazy.
Here’s How Mitt Romney Might Have Paid No Taxes
August 7, 2012
Did he or didn’t he? This is the oddly intriguing question swirling around Mitt Romney as critics contend that he may have paid no income tax for some portion of the last 10 years.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has become chief inquisitor in this weird populist trial, claiming that a “successful businessman” familiar with Romney’s finances told him that the Republican presidential candidate paid no taxes for a decade. There’s a McCarthyist air to Reid’s charge–since there’s no proof that it’s true–yet it may also be politically effective, since Romney already struggles with an aristocratic, out-of-touch image.
If Romney has paid taxes, as he insists, he could clear up the whole controversy by simply releasing several years’ worth of tax returns, beyond the 2010 return and the 2011 estimate he’s already released. But he has refused, and there may be good reason for that. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he paid nearly zero taxes in 2008 and 2009,” says Brad Badertscher, an accounting professor at the University of Notre Dame. “It’s going to look bad no matter what he does.”
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/rick-newman/2012/08/07/heres-how-mitt-romney-might-have-paid-no-taxes
Dems get the GOP rival they want in Missouri
By Steve Benen – Wed Aug 8, 2012 8:00 AM EDT.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) of Missouri is generally considered one of the more vulnerable Democratic incumbents this year. Going into yesterday, she had three Republican challengers vying for the GOP nomination, and polls show McCaskill struggling against each of them.
The task, then, was to hope Missouri Republicans backed the most ridiculous GOP nominee in their primary, to give McCaskill the best shot at success. Of course, in this case, Democrats were prepared to do more than just hope — they actually went out of their way to help the weakest Republican candidate.
Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) was running third in the three-way primary up until fairly recently, but McCaskill started running ads intended to boost the right-wing congressman with the GOP base in advance of his Senate primary. As the dust settled last night, the scheme worked surprisingly well: Akin won a surprise victory, winning by six points over his next closest challenger.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/08/13179536-dems-get-the-gop-rival-they-want-in-missouri?lite
Sheik Yerbouti
By John Cole August 8th, 2012
I swear to ALLAH, this guy is just the gift that keeps giving:
Mitt Romney mistakenly confused the words “Sikh” and “sheik” at a fundraiser here Tuesday night when he offered his condolences to the victims of last weekend’s shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee correctly spoke of the Sikh religion earlier in the day when he observed a moment of silence at a campaign event in Illinois. But at the Iowa fundraiser, he instead talked about the “sheik temple” and the “sheik people.” Sheik is an Arabic honorific, whereas Sikh is a religion with roots in South Asia.
Palin with testicles
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/08/08/sheik-yerbouti/
BHA HA HA HA
Whether You’re a Brother or Whether You’re a Mother
By mistermix August 8th, 2012
I just wanted to point out that the Harry Reid story is staying alive, thanks to none other than Fred Hiatt at the Washington Post, in a both-sides-do-it editorial titled “Reid and Romney’s sleazy rhetoric on taxes”. Synopsis: We all can agree that Harry Reid is history’s biggest villain, but where are those tax returns, anyway, Mitt?
After hearing that Romney hauled out the corpse of a welfare mother driving her Cadillac home to cook her strapping young bucks a t-bone while they watch their flat screen TV, I was wondering if Romney’s obvious, easily disproved lie about welfare reform would gain any traction. As far as I can tell, the answer outside of the Fox News world is “no”. A quick check of the Times, Post and CNN shows their ears aren’t tuned to hear that dog whistle, and Memorandum was dominated by skeptical rebuttals of the claim, while they’re still talking about Mitt’s taxes.
And even the liberal Kevin Drum is admitting that there are a few years where Romney might not have paid any tax. I think Drum and the other people who consulted their own experience, or even “experts”, on taxes were talking to the wrong people. CPAs and tax lawyers—people who can tell your run-of-the-mill small business guy with the net worth of a few million how to save a few bucks in taxes—aren’t the droids you’re looking for when you’re trying to find out how the 1% roll. One of Josh Marshall’s readers who’s in the private equity business thinks its plausible Romney didn’t pay much tax for a few years (and that other partners knew), and it’s been done before (as recently as 2010) by others.
Reid’s awful sin is that he used an anonymous source to make a plausible accusation about a set of documents that have been routinely disclosed by Presidential candidates from both parties for years. Is that so different from what journalists do every day?
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/08/08/whether-youre-a-brother-or-whether-youre-a-mother/#comment-3563965
WILLARD cannot win against the nuns…they aren’t playing with him either.
…………………………
Nuns want Romney on the bus
By Steve Benen – Wed Aug 8, 2012 12:32 PM EDT.
Associated Press
First, the Nuns on the Bus launched an extraordinary tour, lambasting the House Republican Budget plan crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for the way in which it mistreats the poor.
Now the Nuns on the Bus have a few thoughts for the Republicans’ presidential hopeful.
NETWORK, a National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, is inviting Governor Mitt Romney to spend a day with Catholic Sisters who work every day to meet the needs of struggling families in their communities. Sister Simone Campbell, NETWORK’s Executive Director and leader of the “Nuns on the Bus” tour, said that she especially encourages Mr. Romney to work alongside the Sisters as they serve the people. These are the people who will be further harmed by his proposed budget cuts and by the terribly divisive and demeaning political advertisements about welfare.
The Sisters’ invitation comes after recent false attacks from Mr. Romney that demonstrate his lack of understanding of the struggles families and children face as they work to get out of poverty.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/08/13182786-nuns-want-romney-on-the-bus?lite
Always choose wealthy parents
By Steve Benen – Wed Aug 8, 2012 11:14 AM EDT.Back in April, Mitt Romney delivered one of his more memorable pieces of advice. Talking to Otterbein University in Ohio, the Republican said President Obama is against “success” — I still have no idea what that was in reference to — but Romney prefers to “encourage young people.”
“Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business,” Romney said.
The line was significant because of what it told us about Romney’s approach to economic opportunities. If you’re a young person who can’t afford rising college tuition rates and/or don’t have the resources to launch a business venture, the GOP’s would-be president has some advice for you: choose wealthy parents.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/08/13181825-always-choose-wealthy-parents?lite
The Latest Romney Dogwhistle
Posted on 08/07/2012 at 2:30 pm by JM Ashby
“Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check.”
So we’re back to Welfare Queens? It’s only been a month since Romney barked at the NAACP and told them that if they want “more free stuff,” they should vote for the other guy.
What this ad doesn’t tell you is that Republican governors, including Mitt Romney himself once upon a time, requested more leeway on welfare than the new rules announced by the Department of Health and Human Services allow.
In 2005, Romney and 28 other Republican governors wrote a letter to Congress requesting even more flexibility than Obama has offered, for the purpose of “[e]mpowering states to seek new and innovative solutions to help welfare recipients achieve independence.”
“Increased waiver authority, allowable work activities, availability of partial work credit and the ability to coordinate state programs are all important aspects of moving recipients from welfare to work,” read the letter, which was co-signed by prominent GOP governors like Tim Pawlenty, Rick Perry, Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee and Jon Huntsman.
Whoops?
Of course that’s not important. What’s important for Team Romney is the dogwhistle. Substance is secondary to the attack.
http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2012/08/the-latest-romney-dogwhistle.html
Another Bad Day For Romney
By Joe Klein
The theme of the day for the Romney campaign was, as Alex Rogers notes below, that Obama’s Soft on Welfare. It sort of flopped. The factoid planted at the microscopic center of the non-story is that the Obama campaign allegedly granted states the right to request waivers from the current welfare work requirements…which is true, except for the following things:
1. The waivers would be granted only if states came up with alternative ideas to create jobs for people on welfare.
2. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney himself asked for such a waiver in 2005.
And, this third bit is just too good…
3. As governor, Romney offered welfare recipients free auto insurance, registration, inspections and memberships in AAA. From the original Boston Herald piece:
…………………………
Now, let me make two points:
1. This Romney–the guy who invented what the Herald called “Welfare Wheels”–is the same guy who launched on Rick Perry during the primaries for offering college scholarships to the children of illegal immigrants. In fact, he’s still against–maybe, I guess, but we can’t be too sure, because, well, he’s refusing to answer the question–the federal Dream Act, which would grant citizenship to such children who graduated college or served into the military. But cars for welfare recipients was, somehow, just fine. (By the way, I applaud Romney’s program and congratulate him on the 80% success rate.)
2. How incompetent is the Romney campaign? They keep coming up with these stupid gambits–the last was the lie that Obama opposed early voting for members of the military in Ohio–that are shot down instantaneously (everywhere but in Fox-Rush land). And worse, the Democrats–who seem to have a superior oppo team–can often produce counter-stories, like the Herald item, that make things even worse for Romney.
But there is a larger question here: How stupid does he think we are? Every day brings a mind-boggling act of untruth-telling. Last week, he told Sean Hannity that his economic plan “is very similar to the Simpson-Bowles plan.” Except for the fact that Simpson-Bowles raised $2 trillion in revenue over the next 10 years and Romney’s plan raises…well, he won’t say, but so far he hasn’t identified one red cent. I can’t remember a candidate so brazenly allergic to facts. What a travesty.
Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/07/another-bad-day-for-romney/#comment-613200493#ixzz22xYbWWqm
August 08, 2012 11:53 AM
Beyond Job Approval
By Ed Kilgore
In the strangely large tribe of conservative political gabbers who think it’s important to insist again and again the Mitt Romney’s a sure bet to win in November, there are basically two kinds of people. From one kind, populated by people who don’t much pretend to be interested in serious analysis or empirical data or much of anything other than their own opinions, you’ll hear endless evocations of Obama’s “failed policies” or divisive character or incredible radicalism or crappy leadership style, all of which make it obvious that “the American people” (or at least the real “American people”) will dump him on November 6 and then engage in an orgy of self-congratulation, perhaps producing an immediate economic boom.
But there is a second kind of triumphalist gabber that deploys numbers and history and to some degree attempts to make an empirical case that “the American people,” or at least a plurality of them, are headed in the desired political direction. Within this category (we could call it the Dick Morris Group) are some folks who might as well be relying on sheer assertion, given their aggressive cherry-picking of data (usually Rasmussen surveys) and of electoral precedents (usually 1980 over and over). The other, more serious bunch (you might call it the Jay Cost Group) tends to fixate on one measurement of public opinion that blots out the sun and takes any other optic right off the table. Typically, that sole-significant-data-point measurement is presidential job approval.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_08/beyond_job_approval039095.php
Nefarious Newt on Mittens:
I know what Romney’s problem is: he doesn’t understand what the Internet is.
He doesn’t realize that everything he’s said and done in his career is archived somewhere, in a database.
He doesn’t understand that what he has said, his televised bits, his missives to newspapers, all that stuff, is probably accessible via the Web to some degree.
He doesn’t understand that within minutes, people can compare what he just said to what he has said over the entire breadth of his career.
He doesn’t seem to understand that people who know him — or knew him — have access to the Internet and can put forth more information about him.
He’s running a campaign like’s he’s whistle-stopping ahead of the press and they can’t keep up with him. He acts like in order to find anything out, you have to go to the library and thumb through dusty tomes.
Mitt Romney is a Tammany Hall politician in an instantaneous communication age. And he’s getting burned.
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This is from the comments section of Joe Klein’s “Another Bad Day for Romney” (the piece is excellent and the comments section is very intelligent as well, despite some stormfront/anti-PBO trolling):
http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/07/another-bad-day-for-romney/#comment-613200493
LOL
Romney confuses ‘Sikh’ with ‘sheik’
By Philip Rucker, Published: August 7
The Washington Post
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Mitt Romney mistakenly confused the words “Sikh” and “sheik” at a fundraiser here Tuesday night when he offered his condolences to the victims of last weekend’s shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee correctly spoke of the Sikh religion earlier in the day when he observed a moment of silence at a campaign event in Illinois. But at the Iowa fundraiser, he instead talked about the “sheik temple” and the “sheik people.” Sheik is an Arabic honorific, whereas Sikh is a religion with roots in South Asia
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/romney-confuses-sikh-with-sheik/2012/08/07/10beaba6-e0fc-11e1-a19c-fcfa365396c8_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics
LOL CNN & MSNBC JACKALS are whining about both camps name-calling, and not talking about the issues. President Obama’s campaign messages are Kicking Romney’s ASS, and that’s why you’re crying like the little TITTY BABIES you’re accusing the presidential candidates of behaving.
Guess what Murdering Joe and crew and TEA-NN, ya’ll should’ve been around when the RACIST TEA PARTY called our president everything but a nigger, oh that right. they’ve called him that too. GTFOH
How Romney Lost the Summer
Bob Shrum
SNIP
Or take the controversy over Mitt’s refusal to release his tax returns, just supercharged by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s report that a Bain investor told him Romney paid no taxes for 10 years. GOP surrogates and commentators, who have never seen the returns, rushed to the barricades of the Sunday talk shows to label Reid “a liar.” They were uniformly indignant—and unconvincing. All they did was pour fuel on the fire. As veteran Republican strategist Ed Rollins said on Fox News, the questions are “gonna dog all the way,” and the only way to “to put it behind him” is to “release more taxes.”
I am now convinced Romney can’t. Either his closest confidants have convened around a table and concluded that there’s political disaster in those returns, or the candidate already knows this all too well and won’t show them to any of his handlers lest the information leak. Logic and my own experience in presidential politics persuade me that the only reason to withhold something like this is if its release could put a near end to the campaign.
For Romney and his operatives to find themselves in this situation is inexplicable, except on grounds of heedless greed. The man has known he was going to run for president for eight years or more, and perhaps for his whole adult life. So close the Swiss bank accounts and offshore investments in tax havens in, say, 2005 or 2006; he’d get away with disclosing just five years of returns. And he could have made sure he paid a reasonable percentage in income taxes each and every year. He didn’t have to jump through every loophole, moneybags in hand. To the horror of his accountants, he could have skipped some deductions. How about last year’s $77,000 deduction for that dancing horse?
In short, Romney needed to straighten out his financial affairs, and those around him should have told him to do it long ago. And if he is his own principal adviser on this, then he has an adviser who’s a fool—a very rich fool. His ignorance about the political fallout seems to be matched only by his arrogance in assuming that he can be simultaneously a plutocrat and presidential nominee.
SNIP
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/08/mitt-romney-lost-the-summer-tax-returns-overseas-gaffes-more.html
HAPPY HUMP DAY , EVERYONE! :-)
I’m loving Stephanie Cutter this morning. she’s slicing and dicing the JACKALS on CNN.
Good Morning, Ametia and Everyone :)