The Republican Party Is Dead. There Are Only 6 Remaining Members.

Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins

A significant number of the American people have been bamboozled, swindled, and otherwise cheated and lied to for at least the past 40+ years, at least since 1980, and beginning in earnest in January 1981 with the Reagan administration.

In actuality, the Republican party’s seeds of destruction were sown in 1964 at the Republican National Convention in Daly City, California when then-New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller warned the assembled delegates that

“The Republican party is in real danger of subversion
by
a radical, well-financed,
and
highly disciplined minority.”  

He was given 5 minutes to address the delegates, but was booed for over 16 minutes.

Why?

He was seeking the inclusion of language in the official party platform which would have said,

“The Republican Party fully respects the contribution of responsible criticism, and defends the right of dissent in the democratic process. But we repudiate the efforts of irresponsible, extremist groups, such as the Communists, the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society and others, to discredit our Party by their efforts to infiltrate positions of responsibility in the Party, or to attach themselves to its candidates.”

One would think that such language condemning and repudiating the Ku Klux Klan, Communists, John Birch Society members, and others, would have been welcomed.

Ku Klux Klansmen rally in support of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, the GOP 1964 Presidential nominee.
Image: Universal History Archive/Getty Images

But, it wasn’t.

That was the year Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater was the party’s Presidential nominee.

That was also the year the GOP suffered one of the greatest losses in American political history.

A mere 6 states – Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina – voted for Barry Goldwater.

Lyndon Baines Johnson won in a landslide with 486 Electoral College votes to Goldwater’s 52.

The Popular Vote was just as decisive:
Johnson 43,127,041 (61.1%), to Goldwater 27,175,754 (38.5%).

The next quadrennial election cycle proved to be a harbinger of things to come.

Nebraska Republican Senator Ben Sasse

In 1968, Alabama Governor George C. Wallace – a stridently biogted racist and segregationist, at the height of his hatred of Blacks – campaigned on the American Independent ticket against Republican Richard Nixon of New York, and Minnesota Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey, who had been LBJ’s Vice President. That year’s election was equally decisive in its victory, but what may be most interesting, is the fact that as a 3rd Party Candidate, the openly racist, bigoted Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, though he was a Democratic governor, campaigned on a platform of racial segregation as a Presidential candidate on the American Independent ticket – and commonly, though incorrectly known as a “Dixiecrat” – won 5 states (AL, AR, GA, LA, MS) and their 46 Electoral College votes, along with 9,901,118 Popular Votes, for 13.5% of all Popular Votes cast. It remains the strongest showing of a 3rd Party candidate in American political history. Not even John B. Anderson in 1980, or Ross Perot in 1992 won any Electoral College Votes, though Ross Perot made a good showing among the Popular Vote with 19,743,821, or 18.9% of all Popular Votes cast, and in 1996, Perot secured 8,085,294 Popular Votes, which was 8.4% of all Popular Votes cast, though he never won any Electoral College votes in any election.

Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski

Wallace’s strong showing among those 5 Southern states in 1968 was resounding evidence of how pervasive, ingrained, and embedded – how thoroughly infiltrated – the message of hate, and he as its chief messenger – along with the Ku Klux Klan, Communists, John Birch Society, and other such elements as then-New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller had mentioned at 1964’s RNC convention – had become in the South. Sadly, Nixon did nothing to help, and rather, relied upon a “Southern Strategy” to win over those very voters – the racist bigoted “Dixiecrats” who had become enured with the Ku Klux Klan, Communists, John Birch Society members, and others – to welcome them into the fold of the Republican Party.

Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” was the creation, per se (it was more an anthropological and demographic analysis of long-term trends than anything else), of Kevin Phillips (b.1940), a brilliant, if not genius (matriculated Colgate University aged 16, graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude, spent his junior year at Scotland’s University of Edinburgh, where he knew more about Scottish history than his Scottish classmates), Harvard Law-educated man who authored the 1969 book “The Emerging Republican Majority“ in which he detailed an ethnographic political strategy that capitalized upon, an exploited alleged hostilities between the Irish, Italians, and Poles, and Jews, Negroes, and affluent Yankees to achieve its goals. He later abandoned the GOP in the 1990’s after becoming grossly disaffected by them.

Having now authored over 13 books, the premise of his first book “The Emerging Republican Majority,” was the presumption that most voters “still voted on the basis of ethnic or cultural enmities that could be graphed, predicted and exploited. For instance, the old bitterness toward Protestant Yankee Republicans that had for generations made Democrats out of Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants had now shifted, among their children and grandchildren, to resentment of the new immigrants – Negroes and Latinos – and against the national Democratic party, whose Great Society programs increasingly seemed to reflect favoritism for the new minorities over the old.”

Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy

In a May 17, 1970 article entitled “Nixon’s Southern strategy ‘It’s All In the Charts’” for the New York Times,

How out of touch with reality is the GOP?

The GOP recently acknowledged that, among other aspects of their party’s alienation from the American mainstream, they need to modify and change not merely their image, but their appeal to Hispanics, which have largely voted for Democratic candidates.

The irony of their acknowledgment is that they want to do the very thing they’ve demonstrated why and how they’ve alienated themselves from the American mainstream… hire a Mexican to do their work.

As reported in VOXXI, by Grace Flores-Hughes on March 19, 2013, “The Republican National Committee plans to hire political directors from the Hispanic, Asian, African American communities as well as from women’s groups.”
Read her story: “The ambitious coming out of the Republican Party”

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The numbers prove it: The GOP is estranged from America

By Andrew Kohut, Published: March 22

Andrew Kohut is the founding director and former president of the Pew Research Center. He served as president of the Gallup Organization from 1979 to 1989.

In my decades of polling, I recall only one moment when a party had been driven as far from the center as the Republican Party has been today.

The outsize influence of hard-line elements in the party base is doing to the GOP what supporters of

Mitt Romney “never wanted to be president,” says son Tagg.

The story behind Mitt Romney’s loss in the presidential campaign to President Obama

It was two weeks before Election Day when Mitt Romney’s political director signed a memo that all but ridiculed the notion that the Republican presidential nominee, with his “better ground game,” could lose the key state of Ohio or the election. The race is “unmistakably moving in Mitt Romney’s direction,” the memo said.

But the claims proved wildly off the mark, a fact embarrassingly underscored when the high-tech voter turnout system that Romney himself called “state of the art” crashed at the worst moment, on Election Day.

To this day, Romney’s aides wonder how it all went so wrong.

They console each other with claims that the election was much closer than realized, saying that Romney would be president if roughly 370,000 people in swing states had voted differently. Romney himself blamed demographic shifts and Obama’s “gifts”: federal largesse targeted to Democratic constituencies.

But a reconstruction by the Globe of how the campaign unfolded shows that Romney’s problems went deeper than is widely understood. His campaign made a series of costly financial, strategic, and political mistakes that, in retrospect, all but assured the candidate’s defeat, given the revolutionary turnout tactics and tactical smarts of President Obama’s operation.

One of the gravest errors, many say, was the Romney team’s failure, until too late in the campaign, to sell voters on the candidate’s personal qualities and leadership gifts. The effect was to open the way for Obama to define Romney through an early blitz of negative advertising. Election Day polls showed that the vast majority of voters concluded that Romney did not really care about average people.

These failures are now the subject of scrutiny by national GOP officials who say they plan to

Grover Norquist: “Romney was a ‘poopy head’.”

“…the president was committed, ah, elected on the basis that he was not Romney, and that Romney was a ‘poopy head,’ and you should vote against Romney – and he won by two points.”
–Grover Norquist

Norquist’s voice sound like he’s a pinko puss.

Not a man.

—

Grover Norquist: Obama Won Because He Called Romney A ‘Poopy Head’

The Huffington Post  |  By Luke Johnson Posted: 11/12/2012 9:12 am EST

Grover Norquist, founder and president of Americans For Tax Reform, has a new theory about why President Barack Obama won — he portrayed Mitt Romney as a “poopy head.”

“The president was committed; elected on the basis that he was not Romney and Romney was a poopy head and you should vote against Romney and he won by two points,” Norquist said on CBS’ “This Morning” Monday. “But he didn’t make the case that we should have higher taxes and higher spending, he kind of sounded like the opposite.”

Host Norah O’Donnell pushed back. “Well, I’m not sure that’s what the president called Mitt Romney, Grover,” she said. “That’s not the debate that was had … he said very clearly throughout the debate that the

Mentally Sick Residents in 20 States Petition White House to Secede from Union

I can’t believe that I’m really reading this.

It’s unfathomable.

Genuinely.

That this could happen is stupefying.

It is unimaginable.

Literally.

If I were to continue, I would unleash a stream of less-than-wholesome language to characterize those who agree with such ludicrously asinine actions.

But, let us remember this, my friends – that is not only ANTI-AMERICAN, it is the actions of TRAITORS – TREASON.

Here’s hoping that only the truly mentally sick were the ones who filed, signed and endorsed such petitions.

Reckon Alabama Governor Dr. Robert Bentley signed it?

He’s promised to repay nearly $1/2 BILLION to the Alabama Trust Fund, saying “Trust me,” but never quite put it into writing that he’d repay.

The sad thing about that is, that the people of Alabama believed him.

Maybe it should be renamed the “Alabama Mis-Trust Fund“?

Naah.

The majority of people trust him.

After all, he’s the governor, AND he’s a doctor.

Does that mean that the people can sue him for malpractice after he screws everything up?

—

Alabama joins states where residents petition White House to secede from U.S.

By George Talbot | gtalbot@al.com
on November 11, 2012 at 9:24 PM, updated November 12, 2012 at 7:31 AM

(Bob Daemmrich/Texas Tribune)

Alabama is one of 20 states – and counting – where residents have petitioned the White House in the days after the Nov. 6 presidential election, seeking to withdraw from the United States and create their own governments.

The informal petitions are created by citizens on the White House web site under a “We the People” program created by the Obama administration.

President Barack Obama was re-elected Tuesday, defeating a challenge from Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

The Alabama petition was filed Friday by Derrick B. (no last name given) of Mobile. It was the third petition filed overall, following an initial petition filed Wednesday, the day after the election, on behalf of Louisiana. The second petition was filed Friday on behalf of Texas.

“We petition the Obama Administration to peacefully grant the State of Alabama to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own new government,” the petition reads.

The Alabama petition had received 4,426 signatures as of Monday morning.

Other states making similar requests include Arkansas,

Which U.S. Presidents did better jobs instilling consumer confidence?

Salesman-in-chief

Daily chart

Oct 25th 2012, 14:02 by Economist.com

Which leader has most lifted confidence in America’s economic future?

U.S. Index of Consumer Expectations

RESTORING confidence in America’s future is one of the overarching goals of Mitt Romney‘s economic plan, entitled “Believe in America”. The very fact of his victory in the presidential election on November 6th would generate “a great deal of optimism”, he argues, even before he

What will President Obama do in his next four years?

Obama and the Road Ahead: The Rolling Stone Interview

In an Oval Office conversation with a leading historian, the president discusses what he would do with a second term – and his opponent’s embrace of ‘the most extreme positions in the Republican Party‘

by: Douglas Brinkley

Photo by Mark Seliger

Barack Obama can no longer preach the bright 2008 certitudes of “Hope and Change.” He has a record to defend this time around. And, considering the lousy hand he was dealt by George W. Bush and an obstructionist Congress, his record of achievement, from universal health care to equal pay for women, is astonishingly solid. His excessive caution is a survival trait; at a time when the ripple and fury provoked by one off-key quip can derail a campaign for days, self-editing is the price a virtuoso must pay to go the distance in the age of YouTube.

Viewed through the lens of history, Obama represents a new type of 21st-century politician: the Progressive Firewall. Obama, simply put, is the curator-in-chief of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society. When he talks about continued subsidies for Big Bird or contraceptives for Sandra Fluke, he is the inheritor of the Progressive movement’s agenda, the last line of defense that prevents America’s hard-won social contract from being defunded into oblivion.

Ever since Theodore Roosevelt used executive orders to save the Grand Canyon from the zinc-copper lobbies and declared that unsanitary factories were grotesque perversions propagated by Big Money interests, the federal government has aimed to improve the daily lives of average Americans. Woodrow Wilson followed up T.R.’s acts by creating the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission and re-establishing a federal income tax. Then, before the stock market crash in 1929, the GOP Big Three of Harding-Coolidge-Hoover made “business” the business of America, once more allowing profiteers to flourish at the expense of the vulnerable.

Enter Franklin Roosevelt, a polio victim confined to a wheelchair and leg braces. His alphabet soup of New Deal programs – the CCC and TVA and WPA – brought hope to the financially distraught, making them believe that the government was on their side. Determined to end the Great Depression, Roosevelt was a magnificent experimenter. Credit him with Social Security, legislation to protect workers, labor’s right to collective bargaining, Wall Street regulation, rural electrification projects, farm-price supports, unemployment compensation and federally guaranteed bank deposits. The America we know and love today sprung directly from the New Deal.

For the next three decades, the vast majority of voters benefited from Roosevelt’s revolution. And every president from FDR to Jimmy Carter, regardless of political affiliation, grabbed America by the scruff of the neck and did huge, imaginative things with tax revenues. Think Truman (the Marshall Plan), Eisenhower (the Interstate Highway System), Kennedy (the space program), Johnson (Medicaid and Medicare), Nixon (the EPA) and Carter (the departments of Energy and Education). Whether it was Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy going after the Mob or LBJ laying the groundwork for PBS, citizens took comfort in the knowledge that the executive branch was a caring iron fist with watchdog instincts that got things done.

It was the election of Ronald Reagan that started the Grand Reversal. Reagan had voted four times for FDR, but by 1980 he saw the federal government – with the notable exception of our armed forces – as a bloated, black-hatted villain straight out of one of his B movies. His revolution – and make no mistake that it was one – aimed to undo everything from Medicare to Roe v. Wade. Ever since Reagan, both the New Deal and

The Oracle at Delphi: Mitt Romney’s direct tie to increased unemployment in North Alabama

The average reader may not be aware that there was once a huge Delphi plant in Limestone county, Alabama, which facility was located directly across from Calhoun Community College.

Mitt Romney owned a significant interest in a firm that profited by laying off workers, dumping their pensions, moving to China, and then profiting rapaciously from the TARP bailout. That large plant – one among many, with the largest one being in Alabama – was the Delphi Steering Gear facility in Tanner, near Decatur, in Limestone County.

It was one of North Alabama‘s LARGEST employers – with emphasis on “was.”

The men & women who made careers there, whose labors enabled their children to attend college, provided their families’ clothing, groceries, housing & healthcare, and provided for their own retirement, and which was a union shop, was shuttered several years ago.

Most of what news I recall about it centered around how corporate traders, not unions, were wanting even more & more profit when they were already profitable. Time and time again, the workers took cuts in benefits & pay to keep their jobs for as long as they could… all to no avail.

Like a gazelle savaged on the plains of the Kalahari Desert in Africa, that once prosperous plant has been laid to waste, and there are only industrial skeletal remains. Even the human buzzards, scavenging metal for recycling from the industrial carcass, have left. For many years now, the hollow exterior hulk, instead of employees, materials & labor, has been drawing cobwebs, dust & rust. And soon, like all things left unattended, it too will crumble.

There are no taxes paid to Limestone county, or to nearby Decatur, Athens or Huntsville, or to Alabama for roads, schools, police & fire protection. But there is an even greater issue, one which is exceedingly more weighty and sorrowful. As a result of it all, there is no hope, there are no jobs, and there is no future.

Here’s the even more disturbing part: Mitt Romney had his hand in that pie.

And yet the saddest and most perplexing part is, that most Alabamians will vote for the GOP nominee/candidate.

Following the economic investigative report are historical local news reports that show the progression about the issue (which validate the economic investigative report by Greg Palast), from the:
• Decatur Daily,
• Huntsville Times,
• Associated Press,
• Athens-Limestone News Courier,
• Saginaw News (via MLive.com), and
• Wall Street Journal,
dating 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009 & 2010.

For the benefit of the reader, Greg Palast is an economist and financial investigator turned journalist whose series on vulture funds appeared on BBC Television’s Newsnight. He is the author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin) and, most recently, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps (Seven Stories). For additional information about him, his website is: http://www.gregpalast.com.

—

Mitt Romney’s Bailout Bonanza

Greg Palast, October 17, 2012   |    This article appeared in the November 5, 2012 edition of The Nation.

This investigation was supported by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute and by the Puffin Foundation. Elements of it appear in Palast’s new book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps (Seven Stories). Research assistance by Zach D. Roberts, Ari Paul, Nader Atassi and Eric Wuestewald.

2012 GOP Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Mitt Romney’s opposition to the auto bailout has haunted him on the campaign trail, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio. There, in September, the Obama campaign launched television ads blasting Romney’s November 2008 New York Times op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” But Romney has done a good job of concealing, until now, the fact that he and his wife, Ann, personally gained at least $15.3 million from the bailout—and a few of Romney’s most important Wall Street donors made more than $4 billion. Their gains, and the Romneys’, were astronomical—more than 3,000 percent on their investment.

It all starts with Delphi Automotive, a former General Motors subsidiary whose auto parts remain essential to GM’s production lines. No bailout of GM—or Chrysler, for that matter—could have been successful without saving Delphi. So, in addition to making massive loans to automakers in 2009, the federal government sent, directly or indirectly, more than $12.9 billion to Delphi—and to the hedge funds that had gained control over it.

One of the hedge funds profiting from that bailout—
$1.28 billion so far—is Elliott Management, directed by 
Paul Singer. According to TheWall Street Journal, Singer has given more to support GOP candidates—$2.3 million—than anyone else on Wall Street this election season. His personal giving is matched by that of his colleagues at Elliott; collectively, they have donated $3.4 million to help elect Republicans this season, while giving only $1,650 to Democrats. And Singer is influential with the GOP presidential candidate; he’s not only an informal adviser but, according to theJournal, his support was critical in helping push Representative Paul Ryan onto the ticket.

Singer, whom Fortune magazine calls a “passionate defender of the 1%,” has carved out a specialty investing in distressed firms and distressed nations, which he does by buying up their debt for pennies on the dollar and then demanding payment in full. This so-called “vulture investor” received $58 million on Peruvian debt that he snapped up for $11.4 million, and $90 million on Congolese debt that he bought for a mere $20 million. In the process, he’s built one of the largest private equity firms in the nation, and over decades he’s racked up an unusually high average return on investments of 14 percent.

Other GOP presidential hopefuls chased Singer’s endorsement, but Mitt chased Singer with his own checkbook, investing at least $1 million with Elliott through Ann Romney’s blind trust (it could be far more, but the Romneys have declined to disclose exactly how much). Along the way, Singer gained a reputation, according to Fortune, “for strong-arming his way to profit.” That is certainly what happened at Delphi.

* * *

Delphi, once the Delco unit of General Motors, was spun off into a separate company in 1999.

Paul Ryan & campaign bum rush Ohio Catholic charity soup kitchen for Fake Photo Op (fauxtaux)

“Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra long tassels.”
–Jesus Christ, Matthew 23:5 (NLT)

—

Charity president unhappy about Paul Ryan soup kitchen ‘photo op’

By Felicia Sonmez , Updated: October 15, 2012

Paul Ryan & wife “wash” already clean dishes for a fake photo op in Youngstown, OH.

The head of a northeast Ohio charity says that the Romney campaign last week “ramrodded their way” into the group’s Youngstown soup kitchen so that GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan could get his picture taken washing dishes in the dining hall.

Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, said that he was not contacted by the Romney campaign ahead of the Saturday morning visit by Ryan, who stopped by the soup kitchen after a town hall at Youngstown State University.

“We’re a faith-based organization; we are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations,” Antal said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there, and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.”

He added: “The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.”

Ryan had stopped by the soup kitchen for about 15 minutes on his way to

Mitt Romney won’t intervene in Bain’s export of 170 American jobs to China

The company is profitable.

Sensata Technologies, 2520 S. Walnut Road, Freeport, Illinois – which was created by Bain Capital in 2006 – develops, manufactures, and sells sensors and controls for major auto manufacturers such as Ford and General Motors.

Despite rising profits, the company plans to institute the final layoffs in November. The workers are training their Chinese replacements, who have been flown to Illinois by the company.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is a co-founder of Bain Capital, the private equity investment firm that created Sensata. According to SEC filings, Romney served as CEO of Bain Capital from its founding in 1984 until 2002. Romney, however, has repeatedly said he left the company in 1999.

The employees’ website is Bainport.com.

—

Why Romney can’t save the Sensata workers

By Dan Primack September 18, 2012: 4:43 PM ET

Sorry, but Mitt Romney won’t save the Freeport jobs

Protesters want Mitt Romney to intervene on their behalf.

FORTUNE — As Occupy Wall Street celebrated its one-year anniversary yesterday in Zuccotti Park, a much smaller group of protesters set up camp in the northwestern Illinois town of Freeport. They called it called BainVille, in sarcastic homage to the private equity firm they blame for outsourcing their jobs to China.

What the protesters want is for Mitt Romney to intervene on their behalf, leveraging both his national profile and his relationship with Bain Capital executives. And, in theory, it makes sense. After all, what presidential candidate wouldn’t want to help save 170 American manufacturing jobs? Particularly someone who talks about getting tough with China?

But it simply isn’t going to happen.

For the uninitiated, here’s a quick backgrounder: Late last year, a Bain-owned company called Sensata Technologies (ST) agreed to

Jobless Claims in U.S. Fall to Four-Year Low

Fewer Americans than forecast filed first-time claims for unemployment benefits last week, which may reflect difficulty adjusting the data for seasonal swings at the start of a new quarter.

Applications for jobless benefits dropped 30,000 to 339,000 in the week ended Oct. 6, the fewest since February 2008, Labor Department figures showed today. Economists forecast 370,000 claims, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey. One state accounted for

Romney Speech Offers Few Differences With Obama Policies

Romney Speech Offers Few Differences With Obama Policies

Mitt Romney’s speech on foreign policy did more to highlight his similarities with President Barack Obama than to draw sharp distinctions over handling global affairs.

In an address yesterday at the Virginia Military Institute, the Republican presidential nominee accused Obama of lacking a strategy for the Middle East, saying the region faces a higher risk of conflict now than it did when the president took office.

“I know the President hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States. I share this hope. But hope is not a strategy,” Romney told cadets and military officials in Lexington, Virginia, during his fifth visit in four weeks to the politically competitive state.

Still, Romney offered few details of his own approach, and in his attempt to appeal to a broader base of American voters, he echoed several policies already being pursued by Obama, said Charles Kupchan, a U.S. foreign policy specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“The speech struck me as more moderate than previous ones, with less bluster and less neoconservative rhetoric,” Kupchan said in a phone interview, referring to a school of political thinking that emphasizes unilateral American leadership and military power. “The problem for Romney is when you take out the neocon rhetoric, he starts looking a lot like Obama.”

Presenting the 60/40 Rule: NO MORE China buying U.S. Treasury Notes

Mitt Romney, during the first Presidential Debate of 2012, said, “I’m sorry, Jim. I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you too. But I’m not going to — I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it. That’s number one.”

In a previous post I opined how his plan is asinine, because it represents only 0.0012% of the budget.

In a separate post in a different forum, in a thread in response to the topic of cutting PBS, someone wrote that no one (agency) wanted to take a cut, and that Mr. Romney had a valid point about borrowing from China.

That is a concern, and a valid point with which I share similar sentiment, that not only is it bad fiscal policy to borrow, but it is even more dangerous to allow a majority share of any nation’s debt to be held by foreign nations, multinational corporations and others not loyal to the United States. It is a matter of national security, with which the Joint Forces Command

Why Mitt Romney’s Big Bird & PBS “budget saving” is asinine.

Imagine if the Federal Budget was $1.00.

Then, take a penny, and

Ever the Artful Dodger, Mitt Romney ran to France during the Viet Nam War

The Long & Short of it: Mitt Romney dropped out of college, which meant he was going to lose his student deferment. Then, he decided he could obtain additional deferments by doing missionary work. Where else but to France would a cushy kid go? So, he did, for two years. Then, he decided he wanted to return to the United States, so he re-enrolled in college, this time at a different one – BYU. That meant he could get ANOTHER deferment… which he did.

One thing’s for certain: MITT ROMNEY KNOWS HOW TO GAME THE SYSTEM.

While at Stanford, Mitt Romney was exempt from the draft because he had a 2-S student deferment which was given to most undergraduates. He kept it only one year. Similarly to his older brother, Scott, Mitt Romney left Stanford early to serve for 30 months as a missionary abroad, as is customary for devout Mormon men.

During those two years in France, from 1966 to 1968, he obtained another draft exemption as a missionary — which was very controversial, because critics complained that it disproportionately excluded Mormon men from service.

The Selective Service eventually limited church districts to one religious deferment every six months, which sharply reduced draft exemptions in Utah. But in Michigan, where Mitt Romney grew up, the small Mormon population there made it highly unlikely that others competed for the mission that Mitt Romney volunteered for, said Barry Mayo, a counselor at the time to the district bishop. After he returned from France, Mitt Romney transferred to Brigham Young University, and obtained another student deferment.

Three years after George Romney became the the Nixon administration‘s housing secretary, a journalist interviewed children of top administration officials about their views on the war. Then 23-year-old Mitt said, “If it wasn’t a political blunder to move into Vietnam, I don’t know what is.”

—

All Gave Some, Some Gave All.

And ONE ran off to France to hide.

By David Pinar on Sep. 28, 2012

Mitt Romney resigned from college, then requested a draft deferment & exemption for missionary work in France.

The Vietnam War was one of the most troubling, challenging times for America. It was America’s most unpopular war, and it sharply divided our country. Some proudly enlisted and volunteered for duty. Some had to be drafted, but served their country and did their duty. Many protested against the war. And some even immigrated to Canada to avoid the draft. But as diverse their views and opinions were they shared one thing in common: they formed their opinions and then followed their convictions. But there was one who didn’t: Willard Mitt Romney.

That’s Mitt on the right in May 1966, at Standford University. Some students had organized a sit-in demonstration protesting the war, the draft, and university President Sterling’s support for the war. So Mitt joined a counter demonstration supporting the war in Vietnam and the draft. He thought those anti-war protestors should just shut up and prepare to be drafted and deployed. When he was running for President in 2007 he claimed in an interview with NBC that

Arnold Schwarzenegger on ObamaCare

Lesley Stahl of CBS news program 60 Minutes recently interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger for an episode which aired Sunday, September 30, 2012. Among the topics discussed in their broad-ranging interview was his term as California governor and his signature health reform law.

She read from Mr. Schwarzenegger’s recently published autobiography the following: “My plan

Do We Now Know Enough About Mitt Romney’s Taxes?

MAKING SEN$E — September 28, 2012 at 5:04 PM EST

By: Paul Solman

US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks at a town hall meeting at Central High School in Grand Junction, Colorado, on July 10, 2012, where he said he has ‘nothing hidden’ in his taxes. Photo by: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

It’s hard enough to figure out my own taxes every year without having to worry about Mitt Romney’s. But because the issue of Romney’s taxes has come to loom so large, I thought I’d better get some professional advice. So I sought out a friend, estate planning lawyer Matthew Berlin, who has modest clients like me as well as the high and well-heeled, some of them with assets abroad. I asked him if we now knew all we need to know, at least with respect to the tax returns Mitt Romney has disclosed publicly.

No, said Matthew. There are a host of questions that any inquiring tax attorney or journalist might ask. Without them, a true picture of Romney’s finances would be impossible. So I asked Matthew if he wouldn’t share the questions with us. Here they are:

Guess what? Mitt Romney STILL pays a lower tax rate than you… you 47% slob.

You sleazebag, free-loading, dirtbag, entitlement-minded, mamby-pamby, wussified, two-bit, grifter…

No, not you, dear reader.

Mitt Romney.
—

Romney paid $1.9 million in 2011 taxes

Washington Post

Published 11:13 p.m., Friday, September 21, 2012, By Philip Rucker, Jia Lynn Yang and Steven Mufson

Mitt Romney paid $1.9 million in taxes on $13.69 million in income in 2011, most of it from his investments, for an effective rate of 14.1 percent, according to hundreds of pages he released Friday in a move to quiet political controversy over his personal finances.

Wall Street Crap Shoot – h (Photo credit: SouthernBreeze)

The Republican presidential nominee could have paid less in taxes, but he engineered his 2011 returns to

Mitt Romney’s 47% gaffe makes him 100% unsuitable to be president

It is Romney’s only unerring quality that he constantly affirms his stereotype. And this could be the week that sinks his challenge

by Michael Cohen
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 September 2012 12.20 EDT

If the Republican primaries and presidential campaign have taught us anything, it is that Mitt Romneyis not very good at politics. Incessant gaffes, strategic missteps, a paucity of policy prescriptions and a plethora of head-scratching tactical decisions have come to define his run for the White House. Quite simply, Mitt Romney is a bad politician.

Mitt Romney: “My job is not to worry about those people.” Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters

But on Monday night, we learned something new – and profoundly unsettling – about him: he may very well also be a bad person.

I don’t use those words lightly, but I’m not sure how else to interpret the comments he made at a closed-door fundraiser that were posted online by Mother Jones. They are devastating. They suggest a level of meanness and divisiveness in Romney’s personal character that is disturbing – even disqualifying for the nation’s highest office.

Look at how Romney classifies the 47% of Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes:

“[They] will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what … These are people who pay no income tax …

“[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

This is a breathtaking statement: a fundamental misunderstanding of

Do you trust this man? Can you trust this man?

The Secret Service endeavors to protect presidential candidates from physical harm by attacks upon him from those whom would seek their harm.

However, there is one death the Secret Service cannot prevent – political suicide.

NBC had the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players.”

The GOP has a “Not Ready to be President” candidate in Mitt Romney.

“After the assassination of

Former Tennessee Senator & Cardiothoracic Surgeon Bill Frist, MD enters healthcare dialogue

Face it. Sooner or later, you’re going to die. Death is a part of life. Making a decision about whether or not you want to be connected to belts, tubes, hoses & pumps to circulate your blood, food & oxygen when your body would have naturally expired is essentially what the discussion is about.

—

The Bill Frist ℞

By: Brett Norman
September 16, 2012 11:06 PM EDT

Meet former Sen. Bill Frist, a renegade “Obamacare”-loving Republican who is in the mood for some real bipartisanship.

Yes, the same Frist who as Senate majority leader led an army into the culture wars over Terri Schiavo and whose efforts in 2004 to unseat his then-rival, Minority Leader Tom Daschle, led to a nasty — and personal — Washington battle royal.

Now, Frist is pushing for a national conversation on end-of-life care and dismissing “caricatured”talk of death panels. He’s committing Republican heresy in endorsing elements of the loathed Affordable Care Act. He’s standing shoulder to shoulder with Daschle in search of a bipartisan way to tackle one of the thorniest problems around: how to get control of health care costs before they sink the economy.

Frist is pushing for a national conversation on end-of-life care. | AP Photo

The Frist-Daschle reconciliation, in particular, is a source of amazement to some longtime Washington observers.

“I didn’t think they would ever talk again,” said Bill Hoagland, a budget expert and former aide to Frist who has joined the duo on a health cost control initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “I was surprised, pleasantly, that they would work together.”

Daschle told POLITICO, “He’s been a very important partner and I would say has become a friend in spite of the fact that we’ve had a difficult history.”

“That is past and we now find much more in common than not,” he added. “We both know that we need to find a consensus way forward.”

Frist, a heart and lung transplant surgeon who is now focused on research and policy, is working on

The continuing saga of “My Favorite Kenyan,” Part 2

Ray Bolger starred as the Scarecrow in the 1939 motion picture classic “The Wizard of Oz,” originally filmed in black & white, it is a fairytale dream sequence in which Dorothy Gale (played by Judy Garland) is swept away to a magical land in a tornado and embarks on a quest to see the Wizard who can help her return home.

Gee, I kinda’ wish they hadn’t.

Now, I wonder if the sales of my Special Kansas Tin Hat will decline.

Be sure to get yours now, while your thoughts are still yours!

You never know those sneaky feds, next thing, they’ll put micro-neurotransmitters in each and every kernel of corn.

C’mon “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!”

Dorothy: How do you talk if you don’t have a brain?
Scarecrow: Well, some people without brains do an awful lot of talking don’t they?

---

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Ballot Challenge in Kansas Over Obama’s Birth Is Ended

By JOHN ELIGON

September 14, 2012

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Citing a wave of angry backlash, a Kansas man on Friday withdrew a petition in which he argued that President Obama should be removed from the state’s election ballot because he did not meet citizenship requirements.

The challenge filed this week by Joe Montgomery of Manhattan, Kan., prompted state election authorities to seek a certified copy of Mr. Obama’s birth certificate and reignited long-running conspiracy theories that the president was not born in the United States. The state will continue to try to obtain the birth certificate, and officials will meet on Monday as scheduled to close the case officially. But without the petition, Mr. Obama will remain on the ballot, Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach told The Associated Press.

Mr. Montgomery, the communications director for the Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine, explained his decision in an e-mail to Mr. Kobach.

“There has been a great deal of animosity and intimidation directed not only at me, but at people around me, who are both personal and professional associations,” he wrote. He added that he did not “wish to burden anyone with more of this negative reaction.”

After a hearing on Thursday, the state’s Objections Board, led by Mr. Kobach, a conservative Republican, said it needed more information before issuing a ruling.

Mr. Montgomery argued that under case law, to be eligible to become president, a person must be born in the United States to parents who are citizens. Mr. Obama’s father was from Kenya, and his mother was from Kansas. Mr. Montgomery also speculated that

Mitt Romney shoots off his Foot-In-Mouth Disease… again.

There are so many hilarious headlines that could be written.

What an utter idiot.

The Secret Service can protect him from others, but they can’t protect Mitt from his own political suicide.

More signs of President Obama’s re-election.

Oh… and be certain to read the comments following the story.

—

Romney’s statement perfectly undiplomatic

Mitt Romney makes remarks on the attack on the US consulate in Libya (Reuters)September 12,

2012 6:41 pm, by Edward Luce

There are moments that can indelibly brand a politician and Mitt Romney may just have met his.

U.S. Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney makes remarks on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, in Jacksonville, Florida September 12, 2012. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES – Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS)

The alacrity – and brittle certainty – with which the Republican nominee responded to the violence against US diplomats on Tuesday night offers a snapshot of why his candidacy has failed to attract true believers. On Wednesday morning, Hillary Clinton read out a sombre statement condemning the killing of Chris Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans. Forty minutes later, Barack Obama followed suit. Both focused on Mr Stevens’ tragic death.

In between Mr Romney squeezed in an openly political press conference in which he called the Obama administration’s response “disgraceful” and said it “should never apologise for America.” His condolences were brief and dutiful. The exercise was based on the strained allegation that Mr Obama had sought to mollify the protestors in Egypt (the US embassy in Cairo issued a statement that had not been approved by the White House).

In a race between two more evenly matched candidates, Tuesday night’s significance would have been to inject a foreign policy dimension into an almost wholly domestic campaign. That may be one outcome. But Mr Romney has

IRS pays whistleblower $104 Million for exposing wealthy tax cheats

United States Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Special Agent badge

To know the truth is good, even though what may be revealed might not be good.

The über-wealthy & super-rich can run, but they cannot hide.

If anything, this perfectly illustrates the need for strong regulation.

IRS pays whistleblower $104 million

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER

— Sep. 11 10:58 AM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for a whistleblower say the Internal Revenue Service has awarded their client $104 million for providing information about overseas tax cheats — the largest amount ever awarded by the agency.

Ex-Swiss banker Bradley Birkenfeld is credited with exposing widespread tax evasion at Swiss bank UBS AG. Birkenfeld himself

Wall Street Journal on @MittRomney policy plan & R’ObamaCare Mitt-Flop

Do tell.

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WSJ chides Romney for too few policy details

By MAGGIE HABERMAN|

9/10/12 10:11 PM EDT

The WSJ editorial page weighs in on Mitt Romney‘s Obamacare response on Meet the Press, and the subsequent clean-up:

When Mitt Romney ventures into health care, political trouble usually follows. So it went this weekend, as the GOP standard-bearer made his own policy sound worse than it is.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the Republican was asked what he would do about people with pre-existing medical conditions who would supposedly “no longer be guaranteed health care” if he repeals the Affordable Care Act. “I say we’re going to replace ObamaCare,” Mr. Romney replied. “And I’m replacing it with my own plan,” without defining the substance of his own agenda.

When pressed, Mr. Romney said that “I’m not getting rid of all of health-care reform. (That would be the liberal euphemism for ObamaCare.) Of course, there are a number of things that I like in health-care reform

Liar Paul Ryan claims he didn’t vote for Defense cuts he voted for

Liar.

Just like his father Mitt Romney.

Liar.

—

Ryan: I Didn’t Vote For The Defense Cuts I Voted For

By Zack Beauchamp on Sep 9, 2012 at 12:13 pm

Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan has gotten in hot water before for criticizing President Obama for the very same defense cuts that he voted for in 2011. When confronted with this incongruity today on Face The Nation, Ryan simply denied that he ever voted for the cuts, telling an incredulous Norah O’Donnell that he didn’t actually vote for the cuts he’s on record as voting for:

O’DONNELL: Now you’re criticizing the President for those same defense cuts you’re voting for and called a victory.

RYAN: No, no — I have to correct on you this, Norah. I voted for a mechanism

The Biggest Economic Challenge of Obama’s Second Term

Investing in economic infrastructure is ALWAYS a sound decision because
1.) Materials and Manpower ALWAYS comes from the private sector (and always will), and;
2.) Economic capacity and economic opportunity expands.

Note also these two remarks:

“Corporations won’t hire more workers just because their tax bill is lower and they spend less on regulations. In case you hadn’t noticed, corporate profits are up. Most companies don’t even know what to do with the profits they’re already making. Not incidentally, much of those profits have come from replacing jobs with computer software or outsourcing them abroad.

“Meanwhile, the wealthy don’t create jobs, and giving them additional tax cuts won’t bring unemployment down. America’s rich are already garnering a bigger share of American income than they have in eighty years. They’re using much of it to speculate in the stock market. All this has done is drive stock prices higher.”

—

Monday, September 10, 2012

The question at the core of America’s upcoming election isn’t merely whose story most voting Americans believe to be true – Mitt Romney’s claim that the economy is in a stall and Obama’s policies haven’t worked, or Barack Obama’s that it’s slowly mending and his approach is working.

If that were all there was to it, last Friday’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the economy added only 96,000 jobs in August – below what’s needed merely to keep up with the growth in the number of eligible workers — would seem to bolster Romney’s claim.

But, of course, congressional Republicans have never even given Obama a chance to try his approach. They’ve blocked everything he’s tried to do – including his proposed Jobs Act that would help state and local governments replace many of the teachers, police officers, social workers, and fire fighters they’ve had to let go over the last several years.

The deeper question is what should be done starting in January to boost a recovery that by anyone’s measure is still anemic. In truth, not even the Jobs Act will be enough.

At the Republican convention in Tampa, Florida, Romney produced

Mitt Romney, the “Etch-A-Sketch” Flip-Flop candidate, flips again. This time, on “ObamaCare.” Borderline Personality Disorder?

Given the number of statements which Mitt Romney has made – statements in which he contradicts his own previous statements – it’s more than disconcerting that Mitt Romney has once again switched positions. Late former president Ronald Reagan – then candidate Reagan – once famously intoned while campaigning “there go you again.”

This, however, makes Mitt Romney appear almost schizophrenic, out of touch with reality, incapable of taking a position, constantly changing positions, being a moving target, a reed blown by the wind, wishy-washy, two-faced, hypocritical, liar, indecisive, and more.

“Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) (according to the ICD-10 World Health Organization disease classification, emotionally unstable personality disorder, borderline type) is a personality disorder marked by a prolonged disturbance of personality function, characterized by unusual variability and depth of moods.”

Those are NOT the qualities America needs in it’s Chief Executive.

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Romney backs away from healthcare pledge

By Anna Fifield in Washington
September 9, 2012 6:18 pm

Mitt Romney has said he would keep the most popular parts of Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reforms if elected president, performing an abrupt about-turn on his earlier campaign promise to repeal the whole law.

His comments will reignite suspicions that the Republican presidential candidate is a politician of expediency and

Paul Ryan is a lying hypocrite who requested ObamaCare money for his district.

Well, well, well…

Can you smell the hypocrisy cooking?

This is the kind of garbage commonly found in the GOP these days.

—

Exclusive: Paul Ryan Quietly Requested Obamacare Cash

Lee Fang, September 5, 2012 – 1:35 PM ET

Investigating the intersection of politics, lobbying and public policy.

Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan is barnstorming the country, promising to repeal every provision of the Affordable Care Act if the Romney-Ryan ticket is elected. But a letter he wrote to the Obama administration may undermine this message.

On December 10, 2010, Ryan penned a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services to recommend a grant application for the Kenosha Community Health Center, Inc to develop a new facility in Racine, Wisconsin, an area within Ryan’s district. Ryan wrote, “The proposed new facility, the Belle City Neighborhood Health Center, will serve both the preventative and comprehensive primary healthcare needs of thousands of new patients of all ages who are currently without healthcare.”

Paul Ryan’s request for Obamacare funds

The grant Ryan requested was funded directly by the Affordable Care Act, better known simply as healthcare reform or Obamacare.

The letter, among several obtained by The Nation and The Investigative Fund through a Freedom of Information Act request, is a stark reminder that even the most ardent opponents of Obamacare privately acknowledge many of the law’s benefits.

Federally funded health clinics have long provided a broad range of vital medical, dental and mental health services to underprivileged communities across the country, regardless of a persons’ ability to pay. To meet the goal of expanding coverage, the Affordable Care Act provides for a sweeping expansion of such clinics, including $9.5 billion for operating costs to existing community health centers and $1.5 billion for new construction.

In public, Ryan has cultivated a profile as

Clint Eastwood talks about “Invisible Obama” meme

What an idiot.

Utter idiot.

Didn’t even prepare for his performance… and it was painfully evident.

Idiot.

—

Clint Eastwood speaks to Carmel Pine Cone about invisible Obama

By Jen Chaney Posted at 03:16 PM ET, 09/07/2012

Eastwood and his now famous empty chair. (Charles Dharapak – AP)

Clint Eastwood has finally explained why he decided to address an empty chair during his speech at last week’s Republican National Convention. As further proof that the “Million Dollar Baby” director does things in his own unique way, he chose to comment on this much-debated matter exclusively to the Carmel Pine Cone, a weekly newspaper in Monterey County with a print circulation of 19,000. While that media-strategy decision may sound odd, it’s not quite as weird or unprecedented as it sounds. (More on that in a minute.) It also allows him to weigh in on this matter on his own terms before he begins doing media for his next movie, the baseball dramedy “Trouble With the Curve.”

Now, let’s get to Eastwood’s account of what happened before he spoke in Tampa and inspired a generation to create a tidalwave of memes.

Compelled to speak because he feels “President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” and also to demonstrate that Hollywood is not populated solely by lefties, Eastwood said he agreed to appear at the convention after Mitt Romney extended a personal invitation

Romney’s aides, naturally, wanted to know what Eastwood planned to say, to which the film icon responded, “You can’t do that with me, because I don’t know what I’m going to say.” Apparently Romney’s staff was fine with that because

If government IS the the problem, then the Constitution is the BIGGEST problem. Therefore, abolishing the Constitution would solve all problems.

Contrary to Ronald Reagan’s assertion, government is NOT the problem.

Government is OF the people, BY the people, and FOR the people.

If government were the problem, the Constitution would be the BIGGEST problem.

Essentially, that argument – the one that claims “government is the problem” – is a self-refuting idea (aka self-defeating argument). In other words, it inherently & naturally contradicts itself.

The observant (astute) reader will recall that it was Ronald Reagan who made that specious claim.

Again, if “government is the problem,” then anarchy is the answer; for anarchy is the total absence of government.

So… there’s your GOP “logic.”

As I continue to write, and opine, and explain, the GOP has been taken over by radical leftists who are Hell-bent upon destroying government.

Again, I have written, if government is evil, then those involved in government are evil. Why then, would someone admit they are participating in, and desire to participate in an evil process?

That too, it self-contradictory.

And that too – that government is evil – is a GOP argument.

It’s pure idiocy.

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On Defense In Era Of Anti-Big Government Sentiment

by NPR Staff

Listen to the Story / All Things Considered [11 min 29 sec] / Add to Playlist / Download / Transcript

September 2, 2012

In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was making the case that government was a necessary and positive part of American life. Contemporary Democrats are having less success with the argument.

Democrats today, for the most part, balance between two slightly competing ideas: that government is part of the solution, while still acknowledging that it can be part of the problem. Meanwhile, they’re up against a long-running Republican messaging campaign against “big government.”

The concept of big government goes back to around the beginning of the 20th century. Princeton historian Julian Zelizer traces the idea to the Wilson administration and its initiatives, including the creation of the Federal Reserve.

“Woodrow Wilson, who is still conservative by modern liberal standards, does allow for a pretty dramatic expansion of government,” Zelizer tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered.

The real turning point, though, was

Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital

How the GOP presidential candidate and his private equity firm staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs – and stuck others with the bill

by: Matt Taibbi

Mitt Romney illustration / Illustration by Robert Grossman

The great criticism of Mitt Romney, from both sides of the aisle, has always been that he doesn’t stand for anything. He’s a flip-flopper, they say, a lightweight, a cardboard opportunist who’ll say anything to get elected.

The critics couldn’t be more wrong. Mitt Romney is no tissue-paper man. He’s closer to being a revolutionary, a backward-world version of Che or Trotsky, with tweezed nostrils instead of a beard, a half-Windsor instead of a leather jerkin. His legendary flip-flops aren’t the lies of a bumbling opportunist – they’re the confident prevarications of a man untroubled by misleading the nonbeliever in pursuit of a single, all-consuming goal. Romney has a vision, and he’s trying for something big: We’ve just been too slow to sort out what it is, just as we’ve been slow to grasp the roots of the radical economic changes that have swept the country in the last generation.

The incredible untold story of the 2012 election so far is that Romney’s run has been a shimmering pearl of perfect political hypocrisy, which he’s somehow managed to keep hidden, even with thousands of cameras following his every move. And the drama of this rhetorical high-wire act was ratcheted up even further when Romney chose his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin – like himself, a self-righteously anal, thin-lipped, Whitest Kids U Know penny pincher who’d be honored to tell Oliver Twist there’s no more soup left. By selecting Ryan, Romney, the hard-charging, chameleonic champion of a disgraced-yet-defiant Wall Street, officially succeeded in moving the battle lines in the 2012 presidential race.

Like John McCain four years before, Romney desperately needed a vice-presidential pick that would change the game. But where McCain bet on a combustive mix of clueless novelty and suburban sexual tension named Sarah Palin, Romney bet on an idea. He said as much when he unveiled his choice of Ryan, the author of a hair-raising budget-cutting plan best known for its willingness to slash the sacred cows of Medicare and Medicaid. “Paul Ryan has become an intellectual leader of the Republican Party,” Romney told frenzied Republican supporters in Norfolk, Virginia, standing before the reliably jingoistic backdrop of a floating warship. “He understands the fiscal challenges facing America: our exploding deficits and crushing debt.”

Debt, debt, debt. If the Republican Party had a James Carville, this is what he would have said to win Mitt over, in whatever late-night war room session led to the Ryan pick: “It’s the debt, stupid.” This is the way to defeat Barack Obama: to recast the race as a jeremiad against debt, something just about everybody who’s ever gotten a bill in the mail hates on a primal level.

Last May, in a much-touted speech in Iowa, Romney

Bain Capital among firms subpoenaed by NY AG – suspected of tax evasion

The noose tightens.

—

UPDATE 2-New York probes private equity tax strategy – source

Sun Sep 2, 2012 8:00am IST

* NY AG subpoenas at least 12 private equity firms
* AG probing conversion of fees into fund investments
* Bain, Romney’s former firm, among those subpoenaed
* KKR, Apollo, Silver Lake, TPG also get subpoenas

By Karen Freifeld and Greg Roumeliotis

Sept 1 (Reuters) – At least a dozen U.S. private equity firms have been subpoenaed by the New York state attorney general as part of a probe into whether a widely used tax strategy that saved these firms hundreds of millions of dollars is proper, a source familiar with the situation said on Saturday.

Among the firms that were subpoenaed are Bain Capital LLC, KKR & Co LP, TPG Capital LP, Apollo Global Management LLC and Silver Lake Partners LP, the source said.

Bain was once headed by Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate who hopes to unseat President Barack Obama in the Nov. 6 election.

The subpoenas, which were sent out in July, seek documents related to

Is Government & the process of governing really evil, truly corrupt, and criminal?

Those who assert that government is evil, yet participate in the process by and through their own candidacy & election, are admitting they are evil.

Ironic, eh?

And yet, it’s pure logic… something sadly & noticeably absent in the GOP.

For years I have shared this (astute & regular readers will recognize my quote, and the category of the same name), that

“Politics is the art of compromise, and first begins in the home.
For neither Daddy, nor Mama, nor children always get their way all the time.
On occasion, however, Daddy gets his way, Mama gets her way, and by mutual agreement, the children get their way.
And by this effort, in which on occasion everyone gets their way from time to time, no one is harmed, the family is not harmed, and everyone learns how to get along, to love, and cooperate with each other, and to help one another.
In that way, we teach children how to love, to live, to respect, and increase our own sense of love and respect for each other.”

Regular readers of this blog will also recognize the song which I’ve been singing, which is that the Republican party – since 1964 – has been, as then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller said at the RNC convention at Cow Palace in San Francisco, “The Republican party is in real danger of subversion by a radical, well-financed and highly disciplined minority.” {Ed. note: I encourage the reader to also read the entry of November 10, 2009 entitled “These extremists feed on fear, hate and terror.”}

Further, those who tear down things are destroyers, although through our process of governance, there are some who are hell bent upon deconstructing it.

It always takes more creativity, energy and effort to maintain and operate a thing, than it does to create it, simply because maintenance efforts are ongoing and continuous, whereas once a thing is made, there is no further energy or effort required to make it, for it is already made.

In the same way, our nation’s governance requires more effort now than in 1776 (when it was 2,500,000 – in contrasting comparison, NYC’s population is now over 8,400,000) to operate for several reasons, not the least of which is that our nation’s population is in excess of 300,000,000 (300 Million) – a mere drop in the bucket when compared to China or India – both nations which have 1,000,000,000 (1 Billion) more people each.

Logically and rationally, with the proliferation of inventions, discoveries & patents, it is utterly absurd – so much so as to be insane – to assert that in this era, with all the continual increase of those same inventions, discoveries & patents multiplied by our population – that somehow, we will have fewer laws, smaller needs, and a decrease in any kind of governance, rule, regulation or law is beyond the scope of any rationality or comprehension. Analogously, it’s like asserting that adults should – and can – wear children’s sized clothing.

—

How ‘Government’ Became A Dirty Word

by NPR Staff
September 1, 2012

Listen to the Story
All Things Considered [11 min 29 sec] / Download / Transcript

The message at the GOP convention this week was clear: Government is too big, too expensive, and it can’t fix our economic problems.

President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy Reagan, in the inaugural parade in Washington, D.C., in January 1981. In his speech after being sworn in, Reagan called government “the problem.”

“The choice is whether to put hard limits on economic growth, or hard limits on the size of government. And we choose to limit government,” said Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan.

There’s nothing new about the message. Anti-big government sentiment is practically part of the American DNA, and it has deep roots in the Republican Party.

“Republicans, dating back to the New Deal, had always voiced their opposition to the expansion of government,” says Julian Zelizer, who teaches history and public policy at Princeton. “It was always part of the party the idea that centralization was bad, bureaucracy was dangerous, taxes were bad.”

But before the 1960s, the Republican Party also had a liberal wing, Zelizer tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.

“They had New York Republicans, they had a lot of Midwestern progressives, who still said government is good for a lot of things,” he says.

Extremism ‘Is No Vice’

At the 1964 Republican convention, the party showed a shift away from

Zzzz… Day 2 of the GOP Convention. Yawn.

No matter how many hackneyed, tired old phrases the speakers threw out – including Ann Romney‘s “lovey-dovey” message, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s attempt to whip up the delegates – there was no getting them fired up.

None.

Poor Governor Christie even had to TELL the delegates to STAND UP.

Good grief.

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How the Republicans Built It

August 28, 2012

It was a day late, but the Republicans’ parade of truth-twisting, distortions and plain falsehoods arrived on the podium of their national convention on Tuesday. Following in the footsteps of Mitt Romney’s campaign, rarely have so many convention speeches been based on such shaky foundations.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, in the keynote speech,

Republicans: Let’s fly to Israel, eat fancy food, drink Dom Pérignon champagne, and swim nekkid!

Hey!

I know!

Let’s get lobbyists to pay for a trip to Israel where we can eat fancy food, drink Dom Pérignon champagne, and swim nekkid!

You know, it’d be funny if it weren’t first so sad… because it’s all true.

Every Dogdamn bit of it.

—-

August 21, 2012

Skinny-Dipping in Israel Casts Unwanted Spotlight on Congressional Travel

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JODI RUDOREN

WASHINGTON — The trip was much like any of the hundreds hosted in recent years by a nonprofit offshoot of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful Washington lobby, and the purpose was much the same: to solidify the support of American lawmakers for Israel at a time of Middle East tumult.

For eight all expense-paid days, House Republicans visited Israel’s holiest sites, talked foreign policy with its highest officials and dined at its most famous restaurants, including Decks, known for its grilled beef, stunning views of the Sea of Galilee, and now, for an impromptu swim party.

With hundreds of Washington lawmakers having gone to Israel courtesy of the program, the trips have a reputation as being the standard-bearer for foreign Congressional travel. “We call it the Jewish Disneyland trip,” said one pro-Israel advocate in Washington.

But for lawmakers, the attention surrounding last summer’s trip — thanks to reports of a skinny-dipping Kansas lawmaker who was part of the delegation —  has

Led by GOP Speaker of the House John Boehner, Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing your “Do Nothing Congress” of 2012

Republican obstructionism, or Republican obstructionism?

So far this year, lawmakers have staged 195 roll-call votes, which boils down to only about 60 pieces of legislation, including post-office namings.

Among them are:
● The Mark Twain Commemorative Coin Act.
● The Sportsmen’s Heritage Act of 2012.
● Legislation requiring the Treasury to mint coins commemorating the 225th anniversary of the U.S. Marshals Service.
● The World War II Memorial Prayer Act.
● The Permanent Electronic Duck Stamp Act.

Because the Democrats lack a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, they can bring virtually nothing to a vote without the blessing of the Republicans. Even with that hurdle, the Senate has been able to slog through a few bills in recent weeks, including

Paul Ryan Will Save Social Security & Medicare

NOT!

The original title of this entry was “Paul Ryan Contradicts Himself & Pimps his Mother.”

For behold, it’s a case of “The pot calls the kettle ‘black.'”

First, he is a career politician damning “this board of bureaucrats,” of which he is a founding, card-carrying member.

Paul Ryan has never held an honest, private sector job a day in his life (if you count driving the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile during summer in college), and has ONLY had political jobs since he first started working.

He has completely IGNORED the findings of the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of Management and Budget and the Governmental Accountability Office, all who have independently found that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act decrease the budget and has NOT taken ANY money from Medicare, Medicaid or the Social Security Trust Fund (SSTF).

You know the saying:

Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello blasts Paul Ryan as hypocrite

Let’s see… Paul Ryan‘s resume should read 1.) Career Politician; 2.) Hypocrite.

He took Social Security survivor’s benefits money after his daddy died, and has only briefly held one job – Oscar Mayer Weinermobile driver – during the summers – much less then a year. Other than that, he’s been involved in politics. No private sector job. And the whole irony of the matter is that Mitt Romney is on the record as saying that his running mate should have a minimum of business experience (not that it matters, because he’s publicly contradicted himself so many times).

However, a few months ago Mitt did suggest that we ought to change the constitution so that “the president has to spend three years working in business before he becomes president of the United States. Then he or she would understand that the policies they are putting into place have to encourage small business to grow.”

Of course, that would have disqualified former Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower (34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961), who was a career Army Officer, and rose to the rank of Supreme Allied Commander during WWII, and then retired shortly thereafter the war’s conclusion.

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Tom Morello: ‘Paul Ryan Is the Embodiment of the Machine Our Music Rages Against’

Rage Against the Machine‘s guitarist blasts Romney’s VP pick and unlikely Rage fan

By Tom Morello

August 16, 2012 6:44 PM ET

 Last week, Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan, the Republican architect of Congress’s radical right-wing budget plan, as his running mate. Ryan has previously cited Rage Against the Machine as one of his favorite bands. Rage guitarist Tom Morello responds in this exclusive op-ed.

Paul Ryan’s love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn’t understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn’t understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.

Tom Morello and Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan
Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images; Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Ryan claims that

Today Mitt Romney spoke out of the _?_ side of his mouth, and said:

“And you know what he did with it? He’s used it to pay for Obamacare, a risky, unproven, federal takeover of health care.” –Mitt Romney

Government estimates say that more than 6,000 jobs statewide and 20 percent of Iowa‘s electricity needs come from wind power, and the state’s senior GOP leaders all support renewing an extension of a wind tax credit that Romney opposes.

Romney’s campaign did not respond to repeated quests for his position on the other portions of the bill, which includes items such as a tax break for developers of NASCAR facilities and purchasers of electric motorcycles.

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http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-08-14/gop-ticket-faces-growing-pains-as-dems-attack
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FACT: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is fully paid for,

Mitt Romney picks up another porn star endorsement

Jenna Jameson Endorses Mitt Romney: ‘When You’re Rich, You Want A Republican In Office’

The Huffington Post  | By Nick Wing Posted: 08/03/2012 11:57 am Updated: 08/03/2012 5:32 pm

Retired porn star Jenna Jameson waded into the 2012 presidential race on Thursday, choosing a San Francisco strip club as the venue to announce her support for GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.

CBS San Francisco has her comments:

“I’m very looking forward to a Republican being back in office,” Jameson said while sipping champagne in a VIP room at Gold Club in the city’s South of Market neighborhood. “When you’re rich, you want a Republican in office.“

With an estimated net worth of $30 million and a resume that includes 160 films, Jameson ranks as one of the porn industry’s wealthiest players.

Jameson’s endorsement may come

Mitt Romney demonstrates more hypocrisy, required Paul Ryan show several years tax returns

What’s that smell?

Oh… never mind.

It’s the hypocrisy cooking.

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Paul Ryan gave Romney camp several years of tax returns

1:26pm EDT

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R) listens to his vice president selection, U.S. Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) speak at a campaign event at the NASCAR Technical Institute in Mooresville, North Carolina August 12, 2012. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Mitt Romney released two years of his own tax returns to the public but that didn’t appear to be enough when he vetted running-mate Paul Ryan and other vice presidential candidates.

The campaign team for Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, reviewed several years of tax returns from Ryan and other, according to the head of Romney’s VP search process Beth Myers.

But Romney – a former private equity executive with an estimated net worth of up to $250 million – has refused to

Mitt Romney chooses Paul Ryan as running mate; Damage Control begins

Paul Ryan, ‘Brown Noser’? The Wikipedia Edit Wars Begin for Romney’s Running Mate

By Megan Garber

Aug 11 2012, 9:13 AM ET

Now that his candidacy is official, Paul Ryan’s Wikipedia page will become a battle ground.

Paul Ryan’s classmates vote him “Biggest ‘Brown-Noser.'” pic.twitter.com/P2DrIncJ Photo via Twitter via @ryanlizza – Washington Correspondent for The New Yorker, Contributor for CNN

In high school, Paul Ryan’s classmates voted him as his class’s “biggest ‘brown noser.'” This little tidbit is a source of delight for political opponents of the Wisconsin representative-turned-Romney-running mate; to his supporters, in general, it’s an irrelevant piece of youthful trivia.

But it’s also a tension that will play out, repeatedly, in the most comprehensive narrative we have about Paul Ryan as a person and a politician and a policy-maker: his Wikipedia page. Late last night, Politico reports — just as news of the Ryan choice leaked in the political press — the first substantial edit to that page removed an extant “brown noser” mention:

removing prom king and brown noser from article –see discussion on “talk” page

But then another user put the “brown noser” mention back in. Because: relevant!

And then another user removed it again, explaining:

Removed unnecessary statement from Early Life about … “Brown Noser.” This is not needed in article is not common in such brief survey sections.

As of this writing, “brown noser” stands. As does a maybe-mitigating piece of Ryan-as-high-schooler trivia: that he was also voted prom king. But that equilibrium could change, again, in an instant.

Now that Ryan’s confirmed,

How to End This Depression

It’s been said that ‘everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.’

The distinguished Dr. Krugman – who accurately foretold in 2001 that the “Bush Tax Cuts” would create significant deficit (and they did) – understands the role of government in providing opportunity for entrepreneurs and private enterprise, and the equally important role that government has in responsibility to protect public health and safety.

The long and short of it is this: Government spending on economic infrastructure (including education) is a good investment because it yields significant immediate and long-term results.

Why?

Because Materials and Manpower ALWAYS come from the private sector.

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the aforementioned premise, and the numerous times about which I have written in detail about the same. This entry illustrates with three excellent examples of that principle.

Naysayers and critics miss one very important factor in their analogy, which is that the Federal government has the power and authority to print money. The way that factor relates to the issue at hand is this: While the government could – in theory, and in reality – print enough money to give $10,000 to every man, woman and child in this nation the net effect of so doing would be to devalue the money, which would be resulting from inflation.

How to correct, resolve or work within the guidelines of that factor is to understand that one very important role of government is to provide OPPORTUNITY for entrepreneurs and private enterprise. By providing opportunity, government is also encouraging private enterprise and entrepreneurship. And, for the strict Constitutionalists, courts have continued to uphold and acknowledge that such power is contained within the Preamble’s clause “to promote the general welfare.”

Further, for the “anti-Big Government” naysayers, it is preposterous (contrary to reason or common sense; utterly absurd or ridiculous) to imagine that, in this era, with every technological advance, invention and discovery which has been made since 1776, and with our population (now approaching 312,000,000), that we would have fewer laws, rules and regulations than when we first began.

And, for those who say we should balance our budget, I would agree. However, I hasten to point out, that the last time that was done was under Eisenhower and LBJ. That does not excuse us from an ongoing civil discussion and debate about how to effectively manage our nation’s budget. Perhaps a formula of some type which would take into account GDP, debt (outstanding Treasury notes), trade deficit, population growth, birth rate, and other factors – with an “escape” mechanism for times of civil emergency or war, of course.

For such, we need technocrats – experts in areas of operations – rather than bureaucrats. Perhaps in an advisory role. But then again, we have those.

So… why don’t we work together as we ought?

Politics.

It seems that “Everybody’s got something to hide except for me and my monkey.”

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May 24, 2012

Paul Krugman

The depression we’re in is essentially gratuitous: we don’t need to be suffering so much pain and destroying so many lives. We could end it both more easily and more quickly than anyone imagines—anyone, that is, except those who have actually studied the economics of depressed economies and the historical evidence on how policies work in such economies.

President Obama on a tour of the Master Lockfactory in Milwaukee with the company’s senior vice-president, Bon Rice, February 2012; Susan Walsh/AP Images

The truth is that recovery would be almost ridiculously easy to achieve: all we need is to reverse the austerity policies of the past couple of years and temporarily boost spending. Never mind all the talk of how we have a long-run problem that can’t have a short-run solution—this may sound sophisticated, but it isn’t. With a boost in spending, we could be back to more or less full employment faster than anyone imagines.

But don’t we have to worry about long-run budget deficits? Keynes wrote that “the boom, not the slump, is the time for austerity.” Now, as I argue in my forthcoming book^*—and show later in the data discussed in this article—is the time for the government to spend more until the private sector is ready to carry the economy forward again. At that point, the US would be in a far better position to deal with deficits, entitlements, and the costs of financing them.

Meanwhile, the strong measures that would all go a long way toward lifting us out of this depression should include, among other policies, increased federal aid to state and local governments, which would restore the jobs of many public employees; a more aggressive approach by the Federal Reserve to quantitative easing (that is, purchasing bonds in an attempt to reduce long-term interest rates); and less timid efforts by the Obama administration to reduce homeowner debt.

But some readers will wonder, isn’t a recovery program along the lines I’ve described just out of the question as a political matter? And isn’t advocating such a program a waste of time? My answers to these two questions are: not necessarily, and definitely not. The chances of a real turn in policy, away from the austerity mania of the last few years and toward a renewed focus on job creation, are much better than conventional wisdom would have you believe. And recent experience also teaches us a crucial political lesson:

Here’s a bank where Mitt Romney has no money. Ironically, it’s American.

Smack-dab in the heart of rural, working class, coal-mining America.

Oh… the irony!

American tax code promotes outsourcing. Mitt Romney’s jobs plan would exploit that weakness.

The Center for American Progress is a public policy think-tank which was created by John Podesta in 2003 as an alternative to right-wing extremist think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

You can skip the article to the conclusion, but then, if you did, you’d miss out on the rationale… which is the significant point.

Yes, there are changes to American tax policy which need to be re-examined, particularly and especially those which do not offer competitive, fair or just incentives for a win-win-win for American enterprise, the American worker, and the American economy as a whole. However, the rules that have skewed the advantage to Big Business to the exclusion of the benefit of all of America and her citizens should be re-examined and modified or eliminated as necessary.

Time and time again, history has shown that when our nation has had high personal income tax rates, our nation has prospered significantly. That’s but one proof positive that should no longer be a “sacred cow” for any political party.

Further, the “starve the monster” philosophy which has, in large part, guided the modern Republican party, even spawning the modern radical TEA Party element, is a significant departure from reality. The reason why is simple: 100 years ago, we didn’t have space travel, the Internet, computers, cell phones, the Interstate highway system and so many, many, many more things that we have now. It’s ludicrous – bordering on the insane – to imagine that as these new inventions and innovations have proliferated (themselves signs of American ingenuity & enterprise), that there would be fewer rules and regulations associated with them. The concept is really quite simple. For example, when families have more children, there are more rules to govern their actions & behaviors. It’s analogous also to saying that, as an adult, one would wear smaller clothing as an adult, then as they did when in their infancy. It’s so preposterously ludicrous as to be insane – a genuine divorce from reality.

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Romney’s New Tax Incentive for Outsourcing U.S. Jobs

How Romney’s Plan Would Reward Foreign Outsourcing

Gov. Romney presents his plan for creating jobs and improving the economy during a speech Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011, in Las Vegas. His argument that we must exempt the overseas profits of American companies from U.S. taxes to make them more competitive in a global economy doesn’t hold up. SOURCE: AP/ Julie Jacobson

By Seth Hanlon | July 16, 2012
Download this issue brief (pdf)

The Washington Post recently reported that some of the companies Mitt Romney’s firm Bain Capital invested in were “pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories.” Even more troubling than his business record is his platform as Republican presidential candidate, which includes a policy that would encourage and further accelerate the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign countries.

The former Massachusetts governor would make U.S. corporations’ overseas profits exempt from U.S. taxes. These profits are already treated favorably under the tax code compared to corporate profits that are earned and reported domestically, creating an inefficient bias toward investment offshore. The favorable treatment of profits that are reported offshore also creates rewards for corporations that shift profits (on paper) out of the United States to foreign countries, including tax havens such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

Romney’s proposed exemption for foreign profits would exacerbate the worst features of our current tax system. It would:

Mitt Romney owned a company that disposed of aborted babies.

Part of Mitt Romey’s problem is that the titles “CEO,” “President” and “Sole Shareholder” mean something.

He claims that the titles were meaningless, that though he had the titles, he had neither influence nor control over the firms.

If we were to presume that his assertions are true – that he had neither influence nor control over the firms – that would then signify that the firms purposely gave him meaningless titles which he willingly accepted. And, as we all know, a meaningless title is the moral equivalent of a d0-nothing job.

So, what we really want to know, is that really the message that Mitt Romney wants to give – that he favors “do-nothing” jobs?

Besides, if he wasn’t running the companies, who was?

Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Zuma

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Romney Invested in Medical-Waste Firm That Disposed of Aborted Fetuses, Government Documents Show

And these documents challenge Romney’s claim that he left Bain Capital in early 1999.

—By David Corn, Washington Bureau Chief

 Mon Jul. 2, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the revelation had the potential to damage the candidate’s reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion.

But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said

Secret Swiss Bank accounts, Cayman Island Bank accounts, Bermuda Tax Haven Bank accounts… what does Mitt Romney have to hide?

What does Mitt Romney have to hide?

Why won’t he live up to his late father’s example, and voluntarily and openly reveal all his tax records?

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Where the Money Lives

August 2012, 2012-08-08 T11:00:24.000-04:00

By Nicholas Shaxson

For all Mitt Romney’s touting of his business record, when it comes to his own money the Republican nominee is remarkably shy about disclosing numbers and investments. Nicholas Shaxson delves into the murky world of offshore finance, revealing loopholes that allow the very wealthy to skirt tax laws, and investigating just how much of Romney’s fortune (with $30 million in Bain Capital funds in the Cayman Islands alone?) looks pretty strange for a presidential candidate.

BURIED TREASURE Grand Cayman, where Bain Capital maintains at least 138 funds. Inset, Mitt Romney tries to spot his La Jolla home from the campaign plane. ©Ruth Tomlinson/Robert Harding World Imagery/Corbis (beach); by Justin Sullivan/Getty images (inset).

A person who worked for Mitt Romney at the consulting firm Bain and Co. in 1977 remembers him with mixed feelings. “Mitt was … a really wonderful boss,” the former employee says. “He was nice, he was fair, he was logical, he said what he wanted … he was really encouraging.” But Bain and Co., the person recalls, pushed employees to find out secret revenue and sales data on its clients’ competitors. Romney, the person says, suggested “falsifying” who they were to get such information, by pretending to be a graduate student working on a proj­ect at Harvard. (The person, in fact, was a Harvard student, at Bain for the summer, but not working on any such proj­ects.) “Mitt said to me something like ‘We won’t ask you to lie. I am not going to tell you to do this, but [it is] a really good way to get the information.’ … I would not have had anything in my analysis if I had not pretended.

“It was a strange atmosphere. It did leave a bad taste in your mouth,” the former employee recalls.

This unsettling account suggests the young Romney—at that point only two years out of Harvard Business School—was willing to push into gray areas when it came to business. More than three dec­ades later, as he tried to

Americans Love/Hate “ObamaCare”

Does that surprise anyone?

People don’t like being told what to do.

They naturally buck against any system – no matter who or what – that tells them what to do, or how to do it. And yet, we know that civil society abides by rules and regulation which govern every aspect of our lives from the cradle to the grave. We must abide by rules as we grow. In fact, we’re introduced to regulation and rules by our parents who punish us when we disobey them. To hear “NO! Don’t do this, do that this way,” are all common in childhood.

But hopefully, we outgrow childhood and transition through that elongated period of pseudo-adulthood called the “teenage years,” and successfully become responsible adults, and abide by laws, rules, regulations galore… ranging from civic laws, to employer policy, procedure and more. And then, we make more laws, rules, regulations, policy and procedures. It’s a never-ending cycle.

The gist of all, is that by following rules and regulations, we demonstrate personal responsibility, and accountability to others. And rarely is that ever an impediment to progress, or a harm to our neighbor.

So naturally, when we hear or see of someone having a knee-jerk reaction to anything, we can almost immediately discount most – if not all – of what they say, simply because of their radical overreaction. And so it is with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which is often misnomered as “ObamaCare.”

The PPACA actually contains more policy and regulation of Big Health Insurance companies‘ egregious practices than it does anything else.

For example,

• It is now illegal for Health Insurance Companies (HICs) to deny coverage based upon “pre-existing conditions” for children and adults.

• It is now illegal for HICs to charge women more for health insurance than they do men.

• It is now illegal for HICs to refuse payment for services rendered by physicians, hospitals or pharmacies simply because the insured person inadvertently forgot to dot an “i” or cross a “t” on an application.

• It is now illegal for HICs to use the majority of healthcare insurance premiums to pay for overhead expenses including executive compensation, stockholder payout, overhead office expenses, advertising, or any other expense UNRELATED to the delivery of healthcare. Now, they must use 80% of premiums to pay for healthcare.

• It is now illegal to deny family coverage for a child simply once they reached aged 18. HICs are now required to continue coverage to children up to age 26 if they are still enrolled in school.

Page 6 from “Assuring Affordable Healthcare for All Americans,” by Stuart M. Butler, Ph.D., The Heritage Foundation, 1989, ISSN 0272-1155

 

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Most Americans oppose health law but like provisions

(Reuters) – Most Americans oppose President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform even though they strongly support most of its provisions, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Sunday, with the Supreme Court set to rule within days on whether the law should stand.

Fifty-six percent of people are

Stay-at-home-mom Ann Romney’s tax deductions for her dressage horse exceeded the average American Median Income

Is this not a prime example of how “We the People…” should require higher tax rates of the über wealthy?

I mean, really… they get a deduction of $77,000 for their f*ing horse?!

C’mon, people!

What’s wrong with this picture!?!

Out of touch with reality, or out of touch with reality?

Hey!

I know!

Mitt says “job one is creating jobs in America.”

Since Mitt & Ann get those rich-folk tax breaks, that makes him a “job creator.”

So maybe you can work in one of Mitt’s horse barns!

You plebian slob.

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Romney Horse Wins Spot on Olympic Dressage Team

June 16, 2012

By TRIP GABRIEL

GLADSTONE, N.J. — Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, who plan to attend the opening of the Olympic Games in London this summer, now have a personal rooting interest in the event.

Jan Ebeling, Mrs. Romney’s longtime riding tutor, and his horse Rafalca, co-owned by Mrs. Romney,