The compassionate cast of petulant pundits on Fox & Friends bashed the efforts by NBC and a collection of celebrities to raise money to benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy. Their complaint is that the program might have a positive effect on the campaign of President Obama. And to prevent any possibility of that, Fox thinks the benefit should be called off or delayed.
Great idea. Let’s just forget about the millions of people struggling to provide for their families without power or clothes or food or homes. They can wait another week or two until we’re certain that the President won’t get any ancillary afterglow from the charity program. After all, what’s more important? Taking care of people whose lives have been turned upside down by a natural disaster, or placating heartless Republicans who are against helping people in the first place?
These weasels turn my stomach. And in case you thought it might just be limited to the imbeciles on one Fox News program, Fox also published a story saying much the same thing on their web site. That story quoted only a right-wing PR executive and a VP of the uber-conservative Media Research Center. No one from NBC or any artists representatives were allowed to comment. However, Fox did include comments from anonymous Tweeters who shamefully advocated boycotting the benefit. Seriously, they want to boycott a charity event for hurricane victims. What’s next? Picketing cancer survivors? Tripping blind people? And all of this unsympathetic bombast is being spewed prior to the event when none of these critics know what will take place, or who will participate.
Typical right-wing, knee-jerk opposition to any project that might help people. Brought to you by the same folks who opposed Social Security and Medicare, and now want to see those programs scrapped in favor of vouchers and private sector solutions so that businesses can profit from other peoples misery. Which, by the way, is precisely how Mitt Romney proposed to deal with disaster relief.
With less than a week until election day, the campaign of Republican contender Mitt Romney is pulling out all the stops to appeal to a voter demographic that is often neglected: the irredeemably stupid.
What else could explain Romney’s late surge of blatantly false rhetoric? As he stumps around the nation, Romney is now repeatedly blathering about Chrysler moving Jeep production to China. That charge has been ruled a “Pants-on-Fire” lie by PolitiFact. It was given “four Pinocchios” by the Washington Post. It was forcefully refuted by Chrysler who called Romney’s assertions “unnecessary fantasies.”
These are not mere disagreements on subjective political statements. These are the lowest ratings possible for falsehoods. Perhaps we should not be surprised by a candidate who has previously declared that they would not let their campaign be “dictated by fact-checkers.” Romney has lived up to that promise. Currently 41% of his statements reviewed by PolitiFact are rated as false, and 19 of those are “Pants-on-Fire” lies. That’s a record, and a dubious achievement for a public figure.
The only conclusion is that Romney has abandoned all pretense of being an honorable public servant. He has decided that his only path to the White House is to corral as many idiots who are susceptible to this sort of hogwash as possible. It is a open play for the most ill-informed, deliberately ignorant yokels in America. Who else would vote for a man who has demonstrated that he has no core principles and admittedly “Etch-a-Sketches” his positions as required to pander to his audience.
Romney has taken diametrically opposing stances on key agendas including the auto bailout, abortion, gay rights, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Climate Change, and even his own hallmark health care plan. It was that tendency for being so ethically-challenged that made Romney a hated figure in his own Republican Party during most of the primary season. Now much of the party has sucked up their disgust and have settled for a man they despise, but only because they despise Obama even more.
So in these final days of the campaign, the remaining undecided morons are struggling to choose between an historically accomplished president (who says he can’t run on his record?), and a failed governor whose home state abhors him. The choice is between a man who has rescued the economy from disaster, reduced unemployment from 10.1% to 7.8%, advanced civil rights for women, gays and minorities, brought the Iraq war to an end, saved the auto industry from collapse, and advanced a progressive agenda for financial reform, energy production, and job creation, or an unrepentant liar who regards half the nation as moochers, represents only big corporations and the wealthy, has no understanding of foreign policy, and wants to privatize Social Security, Medicare, and even FEMA.
Seriously, you would have to be pretty stupid to vote for Mitt Romney. To do so with full knowledge of what he represents is basically an admission that you have given up on intelligence, reason, and rational thought. If that is insulting to those of you who still intend to vote for Romney, there is recourse. Don’t vote for him. It is not too late to restart your brain. Remember why you opposed him so vehemently in the primary and refuse to sacrifice your integrity for a man who has not exhibited any of his own.
For the rest of you, those who grasp the importance of an election that will result in the implementation of America’s first health care plan, the appointment of a couple of Supreme Court justices, and shape the direction of civil liberties and economic fairness and equality, make voting your priority. Nothing you do in the next week will have a greater impact on your life for the next decade. Vote early, if available in your state, but just be sure to vote – and take a couple of people along with you.
Joss Whedon’s must-see video explains exactly why American needs Mitt Romney. It’s because Romney is “ready to make the deep rollbacks in health care, education, social services, reproductive rights, that will guarantee poverty, unemployment, over-population, disease, rioting, all crucial elements in creating a nightmare Zombie Wasteland.”
What is it about desperate politicians who are afraid they are losing that makes them resort to ugly and counterproductive rhetorical assaults? In 2008 we saw Sarah Palin accuse Barack Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” Now, in 2012, Mitt Romney’s surrogates have dispatched Clint Eastwood to up the ante.
The ad featuring Eastwood (video below) was produced by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads Super PAC, which is funded by millionaires who are ashamed of disclosing their identities. Super PACs themselves are unpatriotic in that they are a perverted distortion of the democratic principle of “one person, one vote.” When millionaires are allowed to anonymously aggregate unlimited sums of money you have something more like “one dollar, one vote.”
Eastwood’s performance in this ad is a big improvement over the one he gave at the Republican convention. Of course, he had a script for this. The problem is that the script contained this bit of foolishness: “Obama’s second term would be a rerun of the first and our country just couldn’t survive that.”
Precisely how weak does Eastwood (and his handlers at American Crossroads) think this country is? Does he really believe that America will dissolve into dust if Obama is reelected? Does he think that our enemies will subdue and enslave us? What dreadful fate awaits in the second term of Obama’s presidency that would cause us not to survive? That sounds like the kind of fear mongering that is more often associated with Apocalyptic prophets or Glenn Beck’s fans. And it is a starkly different message than the one he delivered in his famous halftime ad for Chrysler when he spoke about the difficulties are nation had endured:
“But after those trials, we all rallied around what was right, and acted as one. Because that’s what we do. We find a way through tough times, and if we can’t find a way, then we’ll make one.”
Apparently Eastwood has lost that sense of optimism and now thinks that when we encounter tough times we will fold up like paper dolls and be swept away by a light breeze. Or maybe it just tells us something about the differences between a commercial trying to sell us a car and one trying to sell us a horror story about monsters from Kenya who hate freedom.
It is also curious why Eastwood thinks a rerun of Obama’s first term would be unsurvivable. Which part does he think would do us in? The part where Osama Bin Laden (and dozens of Al Qaeda leaders) was put to rest? The part where the war in Iraq was concluded? The part where the stock market doubled? The part where unemployment went from 10.1% to 7.8%? The part where a full-on depression was avoided and companies like Chrysler were rescued so they could hire actors like Eastwood to make commercials?
America survived a civil war, two world wars, a depression, presidential assassinations and corruption leading to resignation, and George W. Bush. If people like Eastwood and Rove and Romney are so pessimistic about America that they think it will not survive another four years of Obama, they have very little faith in the nation they profess to love and they should stop pretending they are patriots.
There is so much wrong in this statement aside from the utter idiocy of Donald Trump’s hyperbolic promotion of it as “very big news” about President Obama that could significantly alter the race for the White House. First, there is nothing about this that can be considered news. It isn’t even original on Trump’s part. Earlier this year he proposed a deal to trade Mitt Romney’s tax returns for Obama’s college records (although Romney never agreed to it).
Trump, whose endorsement Mitt Romney is proud of, raises the issue of Obama’s birth certificate again, further enveloping himself and Romney in a surreal conspiracy theory regarding the President’s birthplace. In this reference Trump takes credit for getting the President to release the information, while simultaneously casting doubt on the authenticity of it. So what exactly is he taking credit for? He also makes the completely false claim that Obama has spent millions of dollars to keep the info secret.
Trump, who makes a mockery of his book title “The Art of the Deal,” has put a deal on the table that sounds a bit like Dr. Evil’s million dollar ransom. If the President wanted to raise five million dollars for charity he could do it overnight. He’s already raised hundreds of millions for his campaign. Trump’s chump change is laughable. It’s also interesting that he suggests as beneficiaries “inner city children” and “AIDS research.” Both are worthwhile recipients, but Trump seems to want to pigeonhole the President’s interests as being limited to minorities and gays. Dog whistling in the wind?
Trump asserts that the release of these records will “end the anger of many Americans.” Well, “many” is a subjective term. In this case it applies only to morons who are easily persuaded by charlatans like Trump to believe fairy tales without evidence. I don’t think that’s a constituency that Obama is anxious to pursue. Trump also says that should Obama comply he “will become transparent like other presidents.” None of whom have ever released such documents, and the only one ever to be asked is the black guy.
Finally, Trump notes that in order for the deal to be consummated, the doc dump must be “to my satisfaction.” Based on his past record of being satisfied by factual, authenticated data, that’s a loophole that’s almost big enough to drive Trump’s ego through.
This man has proven once again that he simply cannot be taken seriously. He is nothing but a washed up TV reality show host whose businesses have gone bankrupt at lease four times. Yet he continues to get attention from weasels in the press, and particularly Fox News where he announced this hoax. This ought to be his “Al Capone’s Safe” moment. Hopefully he will be shamed off of the public radar after wasting everyone’s time with his delusional schemes.
New York, October 24, 2012 – President Obama is the least transparent president in the history of this country. Sadly, we know very little about a large portion of our president’s life and, in fact, he has spent millions of dollars in legal fees to make sure that it stays that way. I am very honored to have gotten President Obama to release his long form birth certificate, or whatever it is that he released. This was something that neither John McCain nor Hillary Clinton was able to do during their very long bitter political campaign despite the fact that they were strong in demanding its release (nobody knows why he would not do it). Many Americans have serious questions —questions that should not be part of the political dialog. Over the course of the last year, millions of people have contacted me via my social media pages (Twitter.com/realDonaldTrump, Facebook.com/DonaldTrump) seeking my assistance to have this extremely important issue settled once and for all. While they may have the thought and concern, they feel that they lack the ability to get this done. Essentially a large portion of American people are asking me to serve as their spokesman.
It is for this reason that I have a deal for the President — a deal that I do not believe that he can refuse. If Barack Obama agrees (or has the universities and colleges agree) to give all of his college records and applications and if he provides all of his passport records and applications, I will give to a charity of his choice (inner city children in Chicago, American Cancer Society, AIDS research, etc.) a check for five million dollars. The check will be given immediately after he releases the records so stated, or causes said records to be released. If he chooses to do this he will be doing a great service not only to the charity, but also a great service to the country and indeed, himself.
If he releases these records it will end the question, and indeed the anger, of many Americans. Their president will become transparent like other presidents. So all he has to do to collect five million dollars for a charity of his choice, is get is universities and colleges to immediately give his complete applications and records and also release his passport information. When he does that to my satisfaction, and if it’s complete, the check will be delivered immediately. A lot of people will be very, very happy to see this happen.
Frankly, it’s a check that I very much want to write. I absolutely would be the most happy of all if I did, in fact, make this contribution through the President to a charity of his choice. One caveat — the records must be given by October 31st at 5pm in the afternoon.
So, Mr. President, not only will I be happy, and totally satisfied, but the American people will be happy and the selected charity will be very, very happy. Thank you, Mr. President.
Posted by Mark NC on October 23, 2012 at 12:41 pm.
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After watching last night’s debate I was struck by how often Mitt Romney agreed with President Obama on a string of the most significant foreign policy issues. It’s hard to fathom how Romney can go out on the campaign trail and lambaste the President for a foreign policy that he asserts is falling apart, when he seems to concur nearly across the board with what Obama is doing and has done.
Setting aside the fact that Romney has also blasted Obama for these very same policies, here is a short list of examples of his Etch-a-Sketchy new positions that he has cribbed from the President:
I believe, as the president indicated, and said at the time that I supported his action [in Libya].
I don’t blame the administration for the fact that the relationship with Pakistan is strained.
I support that and entirely, and feel the president was right to up the usage of [drones], and believe that we should continue to use it,
I congratulate him on taking out Osama bin Laden and going after the leadership in al-Qaeda.
It’s absolutely the right thing to do, to have crippling sanctions [on Iran].
The surge [in Afghanistan] has been successful and the training program is proceeding apace […] and we’re going to be able to make that transition by the end of 2014.
We can be a partner with China. We don’t have to be an adversary in any way, shape or form.
First of all, I want to underscore the same point the president made which is that if I’m President of the United States, when I’m President of the United States, we will stand with Israel.
I couldn’t agree more about going forward.
That kind of acquiescence makes for a pretty one-sided debate – which is what it was. On a question regarding Syria, Obama responded to Romney’s answer by saying “What you just heard Governor Romney said is he doesn’t have different ideas. And that’s because we’re doing exactly what we should be doing.” That might just as well have been the answer almost everything Romney said. Romney obviously doesn’t have an original thought to contribute to the discussion so he pathetically mimics the President.
The Huffington Post helpfully put together a video that features just how deferential Romney was to Obama last night.
The final debate of the 2012 presidential campaign is history, which is ironic because that’s where Mitt Romney appears to want to lead America.
There was almost nothing that Romney said that described a vision for the future of America. The entire focus of his remarks centered on either what he regarded as Obama’s failures in the past four years or his own proposals that closely mirrored those of the Bush administration – or even farther back. When Romney raised what he surely thought was a killer point comparing the size of today’s Navy to that of the Navy in 1917, Obama shot back
“But Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.
The President topped that observation by noting that Romney’s backward looking analysis failed to take into consideration the capabilities of a modern military force. While it may be true that the number of certain defense assets fluctuate, Obama zinged “We also have fewer horses and bayonets.”
Romney was clearly uncomfortable talking about foreign policy, an area in which he has no experience. He was so uneasy that he repeatedly attempted to shift his answers to the domestic economy. Unfortunately for him, he lost debate points on that field as well. Romney’s dodging resulted in a lackluster performance that even his conservative colleagues noticed. Many of them lamented that he didn’t bring up Libya and the tragic murders in Benghazi. In fact, the only time Romney could be said to have gone on offense was a lame criticism of Obama’s travel itinerary in the first few months of his presidency.
On many other issues of substance Romney resorted to agreeing with Obama’s policies – on Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, and the killing of Osama Bin Laden – even though Romney had previously excoriated Obama on those matters in stump speeches throughout the year. With regard to Romney’s past criticisms Obama blasted his judgment saying “I know you haven’t been in a position to actually execute foreign policy, but every time you’ve offered an opinion, you’ve been wrong.”
Audiences were keenly aware of Romney’s failings. The polls that have been published this morning all give the win to Obama. CNN put it at 48-40. CBS has 53-23. Public Policy Polling gave Obama a 53-42 advantage. It’s what is commonly known in polling circles as a blowout. Although it remains to be seen what impact this debate will have on broader presidential preference polling that will be conducted over the next several days.
Perhaps the most devastating misfire by Romney is the one that Fox News has been trumpeting all morning as a success. Romney had the gall to chastise Obama for the fabled “apology tour.” The folks at Fox and Friends were nearly giddy in their recitation of that segment of the debate. However, the charge is one that has been examined and repeatedly debunked. PolitiFact gave it a ruling of a “Pants-on-Fire” lie. And that is emblematic of the Romney campaign. If this remains the core talking point in Romney’s favor for the rest of the day, he’s in big trouble.
As of this morning the race is still pretty close. But if substance matters, voters should begin to swing back to the President. He has now decisively won two out of three debates, and he has demonstrated his superior grasp of both domestic and foreign affairs. And any objective analysis would have to conclude that the country is way better off now than it was in 2008, after Republicans, executing the same policies that Romney advocates today, created an economic calamity of historic proportions. Obama’s best message is that, after all we’ve endured, we must not allow the party that steered the nation into the rocks to regain control of the helm.
Posted by Mark NC on October 22, 2012 at 2:09 pm.
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This is just a little distraction in the build up for the third and final debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney. It may also be a prescient foreshadowing of what’s to come for Romney.
Tomorrow’s presidential debate will be focusing on foreign policy. Instead of wasting 90 minutes on shallow disputes over out-of-context soundbites and arguments over who gets credit/blame for events that only tangentially reflect on the office of the presidency, the public would be better served if there was a substantive discussion on the issue just raised by the UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson. In a symposium on the negative impacts of post-9/11 security measures, Emmerson said…
“There is no doubt that the Romney administration would be able to claim — in the event of a Romney presidency — a democratic mandate for torture. That would put Romney as the first world leader in history to be able to claim a democratic mandate for torture.”
Emmerson’s remarks are based on Romney’s advocacy for the euphemistically-named “enhanced interrogation” techniques such as waterboarding. The rest of the world calls it torture, and even many U.S. experts regard it as an inhumane tactic that produces unreliable results.
As usual, Romney has taken both sides of this issue. In a debate in 2007 he said that he opposed torture, but refused to say whether he considered waterboarding torture. However, he also refused to rule out the use of waterboarding, and just Last month, when asked directly if he believed waterboarding to be torture, he responded, “I don’t.”
President Obama can exploit both Romney’s wavering positions and his current stance approving of practices that include torture. Obama signed an executive order that put an end to the use of enhanced interrogation, which Romney has promised to rescind. Romney’s position is of concern to international allies, as expressed by the UN’s Emmerson…
“The re-introduction of torture under a Romney administration would significantly increase the threat levels to (Americans) at home and abroad. Such a policy, if adopted, would expose the American people to risks the Obama administration is not currently exposing them to.”
Were Obama to point out this fatal flaw in Romney’s foreign policy platform he could draw a sharp distinction between his steady leadership that is in harmony with our allies around the world, and Romney’s extremism that would serve only to alienate our friends and give our enemies justification for accelerating their attacks in an ever more brutal fashion.
Hopefully Obama will raise this subject if the moderator does not. It would provide for a far more enlightening discussion than one consumed by nonsense like when Obama said that the attack in Libya was an act of terror, or how badly Romney hurt U.S./British relations by insulting their Olympics.
Sometimes the world is a cruel place that indiscriminately strikes down innocent multimillionaires whose only desire is to fatten the wallets of their friends, family, and wealthy contributors. At times like these we must set aside trivial differences and band together to find solutions and ease the suffering.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is one such victim of the scourge of Romnesia. Early symptoms were apparent during the GOP primary season when Romney became noticeably confused by the inquiries of the press. When asked to comment on his previous statements he stammered “I’m not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was.”
His condition has deteriorated rapidly since then. He now seems to have lost all cognitive awareness of closely held beliefs and principles. The severity of his disability threatens to render him incapable of performing the routine activities of daily life, much less those of the president of the United States. Here is a brief sampling of his symptoms:
The man who once declared that he was unwaveringly pro-choice now campaigns to overturn Roe v. Wade.
While he recently insisted that he opposed giving employers the right to deny contraceptive coverage in their health care plans, he has also supported the Blunt Amendment in congress which would do just that.
He once was adamant that he would be a stronger advocate for gay rights than Sen. Ted Kennedy, but now he backs legislation that defines marriage as being a union between one man and one woman.
As governor of Massachusetts he signed a bill banning assault weapons, but today he lines up with the NRA’s position to refrain from any such laws.
As a college student during the Vietnam War he protested efforts to end the draft, but he evaded service himself to become a Mormon missionary in Paris and took four academic deferments.
His father George Romney set a precedent by releasing twelve years of tax returns, but Mitt refuses to reveal more than two, neither of which cover the controversial years when he was CEO of Bain Capital.
He drafted and implemented a health care program in Massachusetts that he said should be a model for the nation, but when President Obama actually used it as a model, Romney castigated it and promised to repeal it.
With such an obvious display of symptomatic decline, it was only a matter of time before outside observers were forced to comment. Most notably, President Obama was among the first to acknowledge the situation with grace and sympathy:
“He’s forgetting what his own positions are, and he’s betting that you will too. He’s changing up so much – backtracking and sidestepping. We’ve gotta name this condition that he’s going through. I think it’s called Romnesia. […] And if you come down with a case of Romnesia, and you can’t seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, or the promises you’ve made over the six years you’ve been running for President, here’s the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions.”
How thoughtful of the President to note that his own health care plan is available to provide some relief for Romney in his time of need.
Despite that show of support, Romney lashed out at Obama for raising the issue. But even Romney’s criticism was further evidence of his diseased state of mind. He said…
“They’ve been reduced to petty attacks and silly word games. Just watch. The Obama campaign has become the incredible shrinking campaign.”
In the space of a single sentence Romney disparaged the President for playing “silly word games,” and then himself invoked word game silliness with his “incredible shrinking” crack. Only eight words separated the first thought from the Romnesiatic contrary thought. There is no clearer signal that his disease is at a dangerously advanced stage.
While there is no known cure for Romnesia at this time, our thoughts go out to his family and we have hopes that he will get some relief. The nature of the treatment he will have to undergo will take a fair amount of time and require great fortitude and endurance. Therefore, the best thing that we can all do to help is to vote for Barack Obama for president. Romney will need to focus on his recovery for the next four years and the last thing he needs is the additional distractions of such a stressful job. And it’s the last thing America needs as well.
