Friday, August 31, 2012

That So-Called Republi-CON Leadership

If you listened closely, both Christie and Ryan used their campaign speeches to point out that Obamney is not the right man to elect because he lacks leadership and follows the polls.  Read the Washington Post, A very strange argument for Mitt Romney, which states:

"Chris Christie and Paul Ryan hit the same themes. We have hard choices facing us. We need leaders who won’t flinch before those choices. Leaders who won’t be deterred by the polls. Leaders who won’t compromise their principles. Leaders who won’t duck the tough issues. Leaders who won’t hide the hard truths.

That description arguably works for Christie and Ryan. That’s their brand, even if it’s selectively applied. But whether you love Romney or you hate him, do these lines really sound like a description of him? Is his political history really that of a bold, poll-defying, truth-talker?

Ryan was emphatic in his speech. 'So here is our pledge. We will not duck the tough issues,' he promised. 'We will lead.'

Christie was no less forceful. 'It’s easy for our leaders to say, ‘Not us, not now’, in taking on the really tough issues,' he said on Tuesday. 'And unfortunately we have stood silently by and let them get away with it.  But tonight, I say enough.'

Here is what Romney, so far in this campaign, has said. No changes to any entitlement programs for any seniors for the next 10 years. No specifics on how quickly his Medicare vouchers will grow for future seniors. No specifics on which tax breaks he’ll eliminate in order to offset the multi-trillion dollar cost of his tax cuts. No specific plan naming the cuts he’ll make to reach his $7 trillion target. No specifics on how he’ll equalize tax treatment of employer and individual health care. It is a campaign based on the principle of 'not us, not now.'

'Real leaders do not follow polls,' Christie continued. 'Real leaders change polls.'

And perhaps they do. But so far, the Romney campaign appears to have followed quite a number of polls.

In 2009, Romney wrote an op-ed for USA Today in which he advised President Obama to apply 'the lessons we learned in Massachusetts' to his health-care reform. Among those lessons was that 'using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages ‘free riders’ to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.' That is to say, among those lessons was to include an individual mandate in the plan. Romney later said the mandate was 'unconstitutional.'

In February, Romney said, 'The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.' In April, under fire for opposing the auto bailout, Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s top communications adviser, said, Romney’s 'position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed. I know it infuriates them to hear that. The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney’s advice.'

Tonight, Ryan said Obama didn’t do enough to 'correct' the housing crisis. Romney’s initial position on housing was, 'Don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom.' Later, he said, 'The idea that somehow this is going to cure itself by itself is probably not real. There’s going to have to be a much more concerted effort to work with the lending institutions and help them take action, which is in their best interest and the best interest of the homeowners.' The campaign never released an actual housing policy.

During the debt ceiling debate, Romney remained silent for months on end. Critics — including on the right — joked that he’d joined 'the Mittness protection program.' Then, after the deal was struck and Congress was about to vote, he released a statement saying, 'while I appreciate the extraordinarily difficult situation President Obama’s lack of leadership has placed Republican members of Congress in, I personally cannot support this deal.' It is hard to see that episode as either a display of tough leadership or indifference to polls.

Indeed, it’s difficult to think of a single issue where Romney has defied the polls to tell his party something they didn’t want to hear. He raised his hand when Bret Baier asked the participants at a Fox News debate whether they’d oppose a deal that include $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in taxes. He backed off his once strongly stated belief that global warming was caused by humans. He moved from being pro-choice to pro-life, and from holding 'progressive' views to being 'severely conservative.' . .

[I]f you’re looking for a guy who doesn’t duck the tough issues, who never obscures the hard truths, who tells you the unpleasant facts you don’t want to hear, who isn’t deterred by the polls, Romney isn’t your guy."

No Surprise, A Republi-CON CONvention of Lies

UPDATE V:   Lyin Ryan delivered "a speech that is more about big ideas than it is about facts -- ideas like 'Lying is handy.'"  Watch the Colbert Report, Paul Ryan's Misleading GOP Convention Speech:




UPDATE IV:  Obamney proved once again that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.  Read the Washington Post, The trends behind Romney’s numbers, which notes that while he didn't lie, his claims were misleading. 

UPDATE III:  Don't take my work for it.  Read Fox News, Paul Ryan’s speech in 3 words, one of which was dishonest, noting that "to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech."

UPDATE II:  And a critique of the lies continues, after reading, watching and re-reading Ryan's speech, and using a 'definition of 'true'" that is loose, not "for arguments that were ironclad. It was just for arguments — for claims about Obama’s record — that were based on a reasonable reading of the facts, and that weren’t missing obviously key context. . .

Ryan’s claims weren’t even arguably true. You simply can’t say the president hasn’t released a deficit reduction plan. The plan is right here. You simply can’t say the president broke his promise to keep your GM plant open. The decision to close the plant was made before he entered office — and, by the way, the guy at the top of your ticket opposed the auto bailout. You simply can’t argue that the Affordable Care Act was a government takeover of the health-care system. My doctor still works for Kaiser Permanente, a private company that the government does not own. You simply can’t say that Obama, who was willing to follow historical precedent and sign a clean debt ceiling increase, caused the S&P downgrade, when S&P clearly said it was due to congressional gridlock and even wrote that it was partly due to the GOP’s dogmatic position on taxes.

Oh, and here’s one we missed: 'You would think that any president, whatever his party, would make job creation, and nothing else, his first order of economic business. But this president didn’t do that. Instead, we got a long, divisive, all-or-nothing attempt to put the federal government in charge of health care.' The stimulus — which was the administration’s major job creation package — came before health care. It was their first priority. That’s simply inarguable. . .

This has been a central challenge during this election. The Republican ticket, when it comes to talking about matters of policy and substance, has some real problems – problems that have nothing to do with whether you like their ideas. Romney admits that his tax plan “can’t be scored” and then he rejects independent analyses showing that his numbers don’t add up. He says — and Ryan echoes — that he’ll bring federal spending down to 20 percent of GDP but refuses to outline a path for how well get there. He mounts a massive ad assault based on a completely discredited lie about the Obama administration’s welfare policy. He releases white papers quoting economists who don’t agree with the Romney campaign’s interpretations of their research.

All this is true irrespective of your beliefs as to what is good and bad policy, or which ticket you prefer. Quite simply, the Romney campaign isn’t adhering to the minimum standards required for a real policy conversation. Even if you bend over backward to be generous to them — as the Tax Policy Center did when they granted the Romney campaign a slew of essentially impossible premises in order to evaluate their tax plan — you often find yourself forced into the same conclusion: This doesn’t add up, this doesn’t have enough details to be evaluated, or this isn’t true.

I don’t like that conclusion. It doesn’t look “fair” when you say that. We’ve been conditioned to want to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame, and the fact of the matter is, I would like to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame. I’d personally feel better if our coverage didn’t look so lopsided. But first the campaigns have to be relatively equal. So far in this campaign, you can look fair, or you can be fair, but you can’t be both."

Read the Washington Post, A not-very-truthful speech in a not-very-truthful campaign.  
 
UPDATE:  The consensus is that the Ryan speech "was a stunning display of dishonesty. In the twelve hours since Ryan gave his address, Slate, Bloomberg, New York Magazine, the Boston Globe, the New Republic, the New Yorker and the Associated Press have run scatching critiques.

The leading fact checkers — Politifact, Factcheck.org and the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler — have followed suit."

Read the Washington Post, Will Paul Ryan's dishonesty matter to voters?

Of course, what did you expect, even the Obamney campaign declared that it was "not going to let [their] campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."


The article states that "Ryan started this race with a reputation for honesty. He’s on his way to losing it."

But I think he was a  Republi-con all along, his reputation only proved how good he was at conning people.

Read The New Yorker, The Paul Ryan Speech: Five Hypocrisies

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Obamney Picks a Person He Doesn't Think Is Qualified to Be President

UPDATE:  Don't take my word for it.  Even Ryan's brother calls him a "career politician. . . [who has never had] a real job."

Read the Washington Post, Barack Obama spent a lot more time in the private sector than Paul Ryan.

"Three years ago, Mitt Romney proposed a constitutional amendment that would say '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.'"

By this standard, Ryan isn't qulified to be president.

Read the Washington Post, Mitt Romney’s constitutional amendment would bar Paul Ryan from the presidency.

Monday, August 27, 2012

The Republi-CON 'Gold Will Save Us' Myth

"In 1981, President Ronald Reagan created the Gold Commission. The purpose of the commission was to appease conservatives who wanted to see the country return to the gold standard. The conclusion of the Commission? That’s a clown idea, bro.

'Restoring a gold standard does not appear to be a fruitful method for dealing with the continuing problem of inflation,' the Commission reported. They even rejected the halfway measure of issuing a limited number of bonds backed by gold as a way of 'introducing gold into our monetary system.'

So, to recap, in 1981, amidst a serious inflation problem, Reagan created a commission to study a gold standard. You couldn’t have picked a more sympathetic president, or a more sympathetic moment, to the gold standard. And they still rejected it.

Now fast forward 30 years. There’s no inflation problem. The head of the Federal Reserve was originally appointed by George W. Bush and is credited by most observers as having headed off a potential Great Depression through creative monetary policy. And so what does the Republican Party want to do? Well, according to a draft of the party’s platform, they want another Gold Commission."

Read the Washington Post, The GOP has picked the wrong time to rediscover gold

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Will Mormons Save America?

REPOST:

Will the election of  a Bishop of the Church of Latter Day Saints be the fulfillment of the White Horse Prophecy?

Also read The New York Times, Mormons’ First Families Rally Behind Romney, which notes that "descendants of Mormons who made the great trek to Utah in the 1840s, chased by Indians, cholera and United States troops, have turned out in strength to back" Obamney.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Surprise, Surprise (NOT), Prettyboy is a Flip-Flopper

First he was for the stimulus, before he was a against it. Read the Washington Post, Paul Ryan’s stimulus problem.

Then he was for Medicare savings, before he was against it.  Read the Washington Post, Paul Ryan: For Medicare cuts before he was against them?

Nice addition to the ticket for Obamney, the flip-flopper's flip-flopper.

Neo-Republi-CON McCarthyism

UPDATE:  "Yes, it takes a brave man to randomly accuse someone of something horrible, based on no evidence and then demand they refute the evidence that you don't have. So tonight, I am accusing [insert the name of your favorite demagogue] of being a baby-eating werewolf. There it is. It's out there now.

Do I have evidence? No. But someone has to stand up to him. Where do I find the courage?"


The Republi-con campaign veers "into frightening and familiar territory, a throwback to a part of life in the 1950s for which no one should harbor any nostalgia."  Read the Washington Post, Are Bachmann and Sununu attacks part of a new McCarthyism?

For those of you who forgot, McCarthy was a Republican party Senator who made "demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character and/or patriotism of political opponents."

 Every town has a McCarthy.  Here in NW Florida, he's a pastor.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Republi-CON VP Speculation

UPDATE III:  Although he's a tea party darling, "it’s worth pointing out that Ryan’s home town of Janesville, Wis., where he still lives, is recovering economically in no small part because of money from the stimulus and other federal grants."  Read the Washington Post, Federal spending is helping drive recovery of Paul Ryan’s hometown.

Does this Republi-con hypocrisy surprise anyone.  

UPDATE II:  And the nominee is a perfect Republi-con, whose family owns a national road construction firm, the author of the Roadmap for America’s Future, "a comprehensive plan to reduce the welfare state and radically curtail the government’s role in protecting citizens from life’s misfortunes," but who, after his father died, collected and used Social Security survivor's benefits to pay for college, one of the very social programs he wants to eliminate.

Should be an interesting election.


UPDATE:  Of course, there is always Mr. Nice Guy.  Read the Washington Post, Tim Pawlenty waits to see if his campaigning will lead to vice presidential nod

Who will it be?

Someone who has 'no skeletons in the closet, can give a solid convention speech, shine in the vice presidential debate -- and otherwise stay discreetly in the background — while helping carry a key state in November?  (See the Los Angeles Times, Romney will pick Portman -- and here's why.)

Or should the pick make it a "Jersey vs. Chicago" election?  (See the Washington Post, The best VP for Romney.)

Or someone "to make this a big election over big issues"? (See the Washington Post, Why do conservatives want Paul Ryan to be vice president?)

As the Los Angeles Times article notes a "surprise VP pick would be out of character for the cautious, conventional Romney, but if he’s got one up his sleeve, he’s likely to reveal it very soon. The last thing his campaign wants is a media scramble over his running mate that overshadows the carefully scripted national convention at the end of the month.

A safe and boring pick, by contrast, might only be good for burst of publicity that would fade in a matter of days--which argues for waiting, perhaps until the week before the delegates gather in Tampa, Fla.

That’s why each day that passes without an announcement from Romney makes it more likely that Ohio’s junior senator will get the call."

Monday, August 6, 2012

Porn Stars for Obamney

Because ya gotta protect those assets.

Read ABC News, Retired porn star Jenna Jameson supports Mitt Romney

P.S. Don't expect to see this reported on HedgeHog News.

I Say Again, Call the Republi-CON Bluff

"In today’s Wall Street Journal, the Columbia economist Glenn Hubbard, who is one of Mitt Romney’s top economic advisers, has an op-ed piece entitled 'The Romney Plan for Economic Recovery.' . . .

[But] there is no easy way to square the circle. Far from putting forward a 'recovery plan,' Romney remains tied to a grab bag of proposals that won’t do anything to promote spending and job creation if they are fully enacted, and which could well tip the economy into another outright slump. Is it any wonder that he is failing to capitalize on lacklustre growth and eight-per-cent unemployment?"


Read The New Yorker, Romney’s 'Recovery Plan' Could Bring On Another Recession.

I said it before, I'll say it again, call the Republi-con bluff.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Punography

From an email:

I changed my iPod name to Titanic. It's syncing now.

Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.

How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it.

I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.

This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I'd never met herbivore.

I'm reading a book about anti-gravity . I can't put it down.

I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words.

They told me I had type A blood, but it was a Type- O.

Class trip to the Coca-Cola factory. I hope there's no pop quiz.

Energizer battery arrested. Charged with battery.

I didn't like my beard at first. Then it grew on me.

How do you make holy water? Boil the hell out of it!

Did you hear about the cross eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn't control her pupils?

When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble.

Broken pencils are pointless.

I tried to catch some fog. I mist.

What do you call a dinosaur with a extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus.

England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool .

I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.

I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx.

All the toilets in New York's police stations have been stolen. Police have nothing to go on.

I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough.

Haunted French pancakes give me the crepes.

Velcro - what a rip off!

Cartoonist found dead in home. Details are sketchy.

Venison for dinner? Oh deer!

Earthquake in Washington obviously government's fault.

I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.

Be kind to your dentist. He has fillings, too.

The Obamney Tax Plan Doesn't Add Up

The "Tax Policy Center report assessing Mitt Romney's tax plans was a big, big deal. So big a deal, in fact, that [one writer interupted his summer] vacation to draw out a couple of its key points."

For example, point # 2:  "The reason Romney’s plan doesn’t work is very simple. The size of the tax cut he’s proposing for the rich is larger than all of the tax expenditures that go to the rich put together. As such, it is mathematically impossible for him to keep his promise to make sure the top one percent keeps paying the same or more."  

Read the Washington Post, Nine takeaways on Romney’s tax plan, which also notes that the "fact that they couldn’t make Romney’s numbers work even when they stacked all these scenarios on top of one another shows just how impossible Romney’s promises are."

Me, oh my, Republi-con lies, I am utterly shocked (NOT).  

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

The Obamneys, The First Family of Amercia Dressage, ‘It’s Basically NASCAR In A Velvet Top Hat’

UPDATE:  "John Kerry was made to look effete in 2004 by Republican mockery of his windsurfing, his Turnbull & Asser shirts and his French fluency. Now Democrats have a chance to do something similar to Romney, with his Swiss bank account, his Grand Cayman and Bermuda tax havens, his multiple homes, his $10,000 bet, his friends who own NASCAR teams, and now the six-figure horses his wife imports from Europe. Nothing says 'man of the people' quite like horse ballet."

Read the Washington Post, The politics of horse ballet.

Speaking of horses and Obamney, there is the White horse Prophecy.


The Romneys' horse Rafalca makes the Olympic team.

You must agree that "there is no better way to dispel the myth that Romney is detached patrician elite than competitive horse prancing."

Watch the Colbert Report, Mitt Romney's Champion Horse & Dressage Tribute:


SUA, SUA!

More on the Birthers Racists Fantasies

Birthers are part of a "sick political culture where 'facts are so easily twisted for political purposes and where strange armies of ideological pseudo-historians roam the biographical fields in search of stray ammunition.' . . . they disregard facts and common sense and undermine the role of serious history as they concoct conspiracy theories that portray the president as dangerous, alien and less than American.

What drives them? . . . [F]ears of demographic changes in this country, and out of racism."

Read the Washington Post, What drives the Obama doubters and haters?