Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) made a fool out of himself during a nationally televised public hearing when he asked Hillary Clinton about a covert CIA operation that was actually non-existent:
“It’s been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and that they may have weapons and what I’d like to know is the annex that was close by, were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons and were any of these weapons being transferred to other countries, any countries, Turkey included?”
Watch:
Clinton clearly doesn’t know what the hell Paul is talking about, nor should she know, since Paul’s “news reports” are also non-existent. He actually got the information from the website of conspiracy theorist/right wing whackaloon, Alex Jones, who published the ‘story’ yesterday morning. Tell me again why anyone would vote for this idiot?
During a press conference on Monday, President Obama rejected the notion of minting a platinum coin and the possibility of invoking the 14th Amendment, referring to these ideas as “magic tricks” and “loopholes”. He also explained the debt ceiling process, as well as the constitutional roles of the president, and the Congress in the process:
“And there are no magic tricks here. There are no loopholes. There are no easy outs. This is a matter of congress authorizes spending. They order me to spend. They tell me you need to fund our defense department at such an such a level. You need to send out social security checks. You need to make sure that you’re paying to care for our veterans. They lay all this out for me, because they have the spending power. And so I am required by law to go ahead and pay these bills. Separately, they also have to authorize a raising of the debt ceiling in order to make sure those bills are paid.
So what congress can’t do is tell me to spend X and then say we’re not going to give you the authority to go ahead and pay the bills.”
On the House floor yesterday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) ripped into Tea Party Caucus member Pete Sessions (R-Tx) over middle class tax cuts:
“Do I detect your smirk to mean that you don’t think Republicans will vote for middle income tax cuts, Mr. Sessions, should I take it to mean that you will continue to hold middle income tax cuts hostage, giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country?
The unfairness of it is appalling, the fact that it increases the deficit is disgraceful, and that it does not create jobs is a big mistake for us to make.”
During a rehash of why Republicans lost the election on Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough asked Conservative author David Frum “What was Mitt Romney’s message?”. Frum’s response was scathing and direct:
“Mitt Romney's message is, 'I am going to take away Medicare from everybody under 55. I'm going to cut Medicaid for everybody by about a third, and I'm going to do that in order to finance a giant tax cut for me and my friends, and the reason I'm doing that is because half of the country contribute nothing to our national endeavors.'”
Watch (the section I quoted begins at approx. 1:36):
President Obama’s victory speech was one of his best political speeches ever, inspiring and moving his supporters and the country--watch (full speech):
FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT: President Obama's Victory Speech in Chicago, November 6, 2012
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward. (APPLAUSE)
It moves forward because of you. It moves forward because you reaffirmed the spirit that has triumphed over war and depression, the spirit that has lifted this country from the depths of despair to the great heights of hope, the belief that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people. (APPLAUSE)
Tonight, in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back, and we know in our hearts that for the United States of America the best is yet to come. (APPLAUSE)
During the GOP primaries, when Romney was asked about disaster relief for recent tornado and flood victims, Mitt Romney said he’d like to see disaster relief privatized, and called such relief “immoral”. Watch:
Well, that’s pretty clear. Mr. Romney would like to see those of us who are not in the 1%, fend for ourselves. Disasters included.
Mr. Romney has a new ad out, an ad that attempts to hide his extremist positions.
It features a woman who clearly lies about Romney’s positions, and then claims that she voted for Obama in 2008. The problem is well, that while you can find sites which back her up, they do so either in error or in order to deceive. The truth is in what Mr. Romney himself has recently said.
On the issue of contraception, we can look to the Blunt Amendment to determine whether or not Mr. Romney supports the use of contraceptives.
The Blunt Amendment allows your boss to decide for you whether or not you will get access to contraceptives through your health insurance. That’s right. And Mitt Romney said himself that he supports the Blunt amendment (@14:46 on the Maddow video).
“Of course I support the Blunt Amendment.”
On the issue of a woman’s right to choose, abortion, Mitt Romney has said very recently (September 2012) that he would appoint Supreme Court justices who would strike down Roe v. Wade:
“But I am pro-life and will intend, if I’m president of the United States, to encourage pro-life policies. [...] And I hope to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will follow the law and the constitution. And it would be my preference that they reverse Roe v. Wade and therefore they return to the people and their elected representatives the decisions with regards to this important issue.”
Romney also said that he would sign a bill which banned all abortions (@11:33 on the video):
“I’d be delighted to sign that bill.”
“Delighted.” Rachel Maddow on Romney’s severely conservative positions(the segment on these issues starts at approximately 09:04):
A Romney administration would end abortion, would take away our right to choose what we do with our own bodies.
No exceptions for anything. Not rape. Not incest. Not the life of the mother.
Factor this in with Romney's stance on the Blunt Amendment -- which would make it more difficult for you to obtain contraceptives since he will allow your boss to decide whether or not you could obtain contraceptives through your health insurance.
This is what Mitt Romney really supports. This is what the Republican War On Women is about. This is what it will mean to women if Mitt Romney is elected.
If you’re undecided at this point, you need to think hard about your options, and then go to the polls and vote for Barack Obama. Not to do so will affect you, your children, and your grandchildren in ways you can’t even begin to count.
During a campaign event in Iowa yesterday, President Obama destroyed Mitt Romney’s claim of a “five-point” plan for the economy:
“Governor Romney has been running around talking about his five-point plan for the economy for quite some time. And as I pointed out last night, and you guys heard yourselves, it’s really a one-point plan. It’s really a one-point plan. It says folks at the very top can play by their own set of rules.
That’s why they can pay lower taxes than you do, or they can use offshore accounts. Or they can invest in a company, bankrupt it, fire the workers, take away their pensions, ship the jobs overseas, and still make money doing it.
It’s the one-point plan that says it’s okay for Wall Street to keep engaging in the reckless behavior that got us into the mess we’ve been fighting back from for the last four years. It’s the same philosophy that’s been squeezing middle-class families for more than a decade. It’s the same philosophy that we saw in the previous administration. And I have seen too much pain and too much struggle to let this country go down that same road again.”
Back on the campaign trail in Wisconsin on Friday, Joe Biden talked about the Republican plan for the future of women’s rights:
“If anyone had a doubt about what’s at stake in this election when it comes to women’s rights, and the Supreme Court, I'm sure they were settled last night.
It was made clear last night that they don't believe in protecting a woman's access to health care. It was made very clear that they do not believe a woman has a right to control her own body. These guys have a social policy out of the fifties.”
Mr. Biden begins speaking at 1:34. Watch:
Vice President Biden is referring to statements made by both Romney and Ryan, but especially to what Paul Ryan said during the Vice Presidential Debate on Thursday night, where Ryan said called rape and incest “methods of conception” again. Ryan also said that Romney would appoint Supreme Court justices who would vote to reverse Roe v. Wade (at least two justices are likely to retire during the next four years, one of them a liberal). You can read the transcript of the debate, and/or watch the full video.
Mitt Romney, 10/3/12: I will not reduce the taxes paid by high income Americans.
Mitt Romney, 2/22/12: There were so many misrepresentations in there it's going to take me a little while. Number one, I said today that we're going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by twenty percent—including the top one percent.
Mitt Romney, 10/3/12: The key to great schools? Great teachers. So I reject the idea that I don't believe in great teachers or more teachers.
Mitt Romney, 6/8/12: He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It's time for us to cut back on government.
Mitt Romney, 10/3/12: Actually, it's a lengthy description, but number one, pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.
Mitt Romney, 3/27/12: If they're 45 years old and they show up and they say I want insurance because I've got heart disease, it's like: "Hey guys, we can't play the game like that." You've got to get insurance when you're well, and then if you get ill, then you're going to be covered.
Sheesh…..it’s certainly become very clear that Mitt Romney is not to be trusted at all.
At a rally in Denver yesterday, President Obama talked about Romney’s promise to get rid of PBS and Big Bird:
“When he was asked what he would do to actually cut spending and reduce the deficit, he said he'd eliminate public television funding. So….But I just want to make sure I got this straight. He'll get rid of regulations on Wall Street -- but he's going to crack down on Sesame Street.”
About 15 percent of PBS’s budget comes from federal funds. But for many rural stations, that percentage is much higher.
“Stations in rural parts of the country, where their parts of the federal funding is 40, 50, 60 percent, those stations will go off the air,” PBS chief executive Paula Kerger told CNN this morning. “The reach of our work is so extensive and so deeply rooted in education … the fact that we are in this debate at all is just incomprehensible.”
Full Text Transcript of the First Presidential Debate October 3, 2012:
JIM LEHRER: Good evening from the Magness Arena at the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado. I’m Jim Lehrer of the PBS NewsHour, and I welcome you to the first of the 2012 presidential debates between President Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee.
This debate and the next three -- two presidential, one vice- presidential -- are sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Tonight’s 90 minutes will be about domestic issues, and will follow a format designed by the commission. There will be six roughly 15-minute segments, with two-minute answers for the first question, then open discussion for the remainder of each segment.
In a clip released by Larry King’s online-only-show, Bill Maher talked to King about Paul Ryan, painting Ryan as a bigger liar than Romney. Watch:
“Paul Ryan is certainly an interesting man. He has the the moral core of the pimp from ‘Taxi Driver’. This is a guy who will just say anything, I mean…wow. I thought Mitt Romney was a facile liar. This guy, you know, he even lies about his marathon times, you know….He’s just one of those people who when he’s speaking, he’s lying.”
The "moral core of a pimp from 'Taxi Driver'.....HAHAHA............
In 2002 during his campaign for Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney told the people of that great state that he wouldn’t make cuts to public education:
“The services delivered to our children in schools….we’re not gonna cut that.”
In his very first budget after being elected, Gov. Romney cut $248.7 million from K-12 education.
Watch:
As you heard, in 2011 Romney had this to say about class size:
“All the talk about ‘we need smaller classroom size’…….look, that’s promoted by the teachers unions to hire more teachers.”
And in 2012, Romney said that in Massachusetts, they found that there’s no relationship between class size and how kids perform. A pumpkin head could tear that one apart.
So then, do you trust him with your precious kids? I wouldn’t.
Included in this latest ad from Obama-Biden, is a small portion of Mitt Romney’s interview with 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley, focused on Romney’s idea of tax fairness (broadcast on Sunday, September 23, 2012). Watch:
In a secretly taped video, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney calls half of America parasitic freeloaders during a private fundraiser last May, emphasis mine:
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent 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 health care, 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.”
Watch Dallas Tea Party leader, Ted Phillips, cry about the expiring Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and attack the unemployed and food stamp recipients:
Tea Party buffoon, Ted Phillips:
“I think it is a bad thing is they let those cuts expire, we’re in the middle of a deep, deep recession … Now is not the time to increase taxes to the dwindling producers in our country when we have a president who is trying to give more money away to the moochers and welfare. We need people working, not sitting back receiving food stamps and unemployment. It’s laughable.”
I have my personal issues with Bill Maher, mostly relating to his treatment of President Obama. That said, Maher does a rare and masterful job of destroying the arguments of terrorist sympathizer, Indian-American conservative Dinesh D’Souza, who is the author of the anti-Obama book titled “The Roots of Obama's Rage”, and is also the producer of the anti-Obama right wing docu-movie based on the book. Watch:
On a personal level, when I first read about the book, I laughed. D’Souza really had to stretch to come up with his silly theory that Obama is an anti-colonialist and that his own dreams are derived from his Kenyan father’s dreams. Keep in mind that Pres. Obama did only meet his father once.
(Via Bob Cesca)
Adding…….sorry the vid is a little blurry, but it is the only video of that clip available to the blogs.
So, you heard Mitt Romney say: “for people 55 years of age and older, there’s no change.” You won’t like the translation.
Under the Romney-Ryan plan for Medicare, if you are younger than age 55, let’s say 54, and Romney-Ryan are elected to office, you will see a Medicare that is completely different from the one that your parents and grandparents enjoyed. It will be a voucherized plan, entailing fewer benefits and much higher costs to the beneficiaries.
Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman on Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan, emphasis mine:
In the first decade, the big things are (i) conversion of Medicaid into a block grant program, with much lower funding than projected under current law and (ii) sharp cuts in top tax rates and corporate taxes.
Is this a deficit-reduction program? Not on the face of it: it’s basically a tradeoff of reduced aid to the poor for reduced taxes on the rich, with the net effect of the specific proposals being to increase, not reduce, the deficit.
Watch and listen to President Obama knock down the Medicare lies of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan:
President Obama on the Medicare lies (text) via Jason Easley, emphasis mine:
“Now, you know the truth is I think they know it’s not a very popular idea. Now they are being dishonest about my plans, since they can’t sell their plans. I mean they are trying to throw everything at the wall just to see what will stick. The latest thing they’ve been trying is to talk about Medicare. Now, you’d think they’d avoid talking about Medicare given the fact that both of them have proposed to voucherize the Medicare system. But I guess they figure the best defense is to try to go on offense.
So New Hampshire, here is what you need to know. Since I’ve been in office, I have strengthened Medicare. I’ve made reforms that have extended the life of the program, that have saved millions of seniors with Medicare hundreds of dollars on prescription drugs. The only changes to your benefits that I’ve made on Medicare is that Medicare now covers new preventive services like cancer screening and wellness visits for free.
Gov. Romney and Congressman Ryan have a very different plan. What they want to do is that they want seniors to get a voucher to buy their own insurance, which could force seniors to pay an extra $6,400 a year for their healthcare. Again, this is not my estimate. Remember those guys who analyze these things for a living? That’s their assessment. That doesn’t strengthen Medicare. That undoes the very guarantee of Medicare. That’s the core of the plan written by Congressman Ryan and endorsed by Gov. Romney.
So here’s the bottom line. My plan saves money in Medicare by cracking down on fraud, and waste and insurance company subsidies, and their plan makes seniors pay more so they can give another tax cut to millionaires and billionaires. My plan’s already extended the life of Medicare by nearly a decade. Their plan would put Medicare on track to be ended as we know it. It would be an entirely different plan. A plan in which you could not count on healthcare because it would have to be coming out of your pocket. That’s the real difference between our plans on Medicare.”
As you’re probably aware, Mitt Romney has been accusing the president of “demonizing” small business owners, using President Obama’s words out of context. This video, and the quote from it, is President Obama’s response to Romney’s lies:
“Those ads, taking my words about small business out context, they're flat out wrong. Of course Americans build their own businesses. Every day, hard-working people sacrifice to meet a payroll, create jobs, and make our economy run.
Now what I said was that we need to stand behind them, as America always has by investing in education and training, roads and bridges, research and technology.”
Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are meeting privately this morning in Pittsburgh:
The campaigns had refused to discuss details of the get together and were trying to keep the location secret. They have planned no press coverage of the meeting.
Santorum aides have said an immediate endorsement of Romney is not expected at the session. Instead, they describe an opportunity for the one-time opponents to get to know each other better and discuss the upcoming general election campaign, as well as some of the conservative policy issues important to the former Pennsylvania senator.
Meanwhile, the DNC put out a video re Romney and Santorum. Watch:
Yeah, Mitt, I’m thinking that you just can’t stuff all that vitriol from your former adversaries during the primary campaign back down under.
A video put out by the Obama Campaign, takes a look back through the Republican primary campaign where Gingrich told us how he really feels about the filthy rich Mr. Romney, which is that he positively loathes Mitt Romney. Watch the video:
Newt Gingrich’s endorsement of Mitt Romney today (Gingrich’s campaign was suspended today) is a move which is certainly hypocritical, and likely to be seen as self-serving since Newt still owes quite a lot of money, and is hoping that Romney will see that his campaign debts are paid off.
Personally, it’s the hypocrisy that makes me nauseous--Republicans seem to have this gene which allows them to easily lie/suspend the truth when the slightest opportunity presents itself. This trait becomes particularly noxious when it occurs within presidential elections, because it’s as if they don’t understand just how bad a particular person would be for the country they claim patriotic fervor for.
And Romney’s lies are very much targeting the Obama presidency, so here’s Rachel Maddow to tell some truth about Mitt Romney’s lies:
Maddow finishes with her assessment of Mitt Romney’s dishonesty:
“He lies all the time. Really easily. He says things that are not true with unnerving frequency, arguably more than any modern candidate for a major office, and there are a lot of creeps among them. Some dishonesty in national American politics is frankly routine. It's too bad that that's true. Romney style dishonesty is a sight to behold. It's different, he's bending the curve.”
“Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It's almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”
- During a CNN interview, Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstorm responds to a question on whether he thinks that Romney has moved “so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election”.
The quote is not quite three quarters of the way through the video, which is pretty boring since Mr. Fehrnstorm imparts all info in an almost completely expressionless voice.
Watch:
I’m pretty sure that by the end of 2012, Mitt Romney will easily be the favorite to win the #1 spot in a contest for “Politician With the Largest Number of Political Flip Flops Ever”.
“Why extremists always focus on women, remains a mystery to me, but they all seem to.
It doesn't matter what country they're in, or what religion they claim, they all want to control women, they want to control how we dress, they want to control how we act, they even want to control the decisions that we make about our own health and our own bodies.
Yes, it is hard to believe, but even here at home, we have to stand up for women's rights and reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America needs to set an example for the entire world.”
- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the right wing extremists who have taken on the women of America ( and awakened a sleeping giant).
For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, a Georgetown law student, Sandra Fluke, recently testified before the House on coverage of contraception by insurance companies. Ergo, Limbaugh took this and did a smear job on Fluke, calling her a “slut” and a “prostitute”.
Although Limbaugh made a non-apology apology, national advertisers, under some pressure on social media sites such as Twitter, are canceling their ad contracts in near droves. Two radio stations have also cancelled Limbaugh’s show, and it’s beginning to look like Rush’s radio show may go the way of Glenn Beck’s television show. And that is a very good thing.
So anyway, Stewart threw on a hazmat thingy to protect himself from Limbaugh’s bile, and dove into the slime.
Watch:
Best line from the takedown:
“To the people who are upset about their hard-earned tax money going to things they don't like: Welcome to the f*cking club. Reimburse me for the Iraq war and oil subsidies, and diaphragms are on me!”
This morning, ABC News published a video of Romney from 2002. The video features Romney bragging on his Washington connections, his own “insiderness”, when he was the governor of Massachusetts.
In a long-forgotten tape from the 2002 Massachusetts governor’s race obtained by ABC News, Mitt Romney is seen touting his Washington connections and his ability to get millions of taxpayer dollars from the federal government.
So here’s Mitt Romney, as quoted by ABC News, going on about his veryown Washington insider connections:
“I am big believer in getting money where the money is. The money is in Washington.”
“I have learned from my Olympic experience that if you have people who really understand how Washington works and have personal associations there you can get money to help build economic development opportunities.”
Watch:
The video, which was surreptitiously shot by Democratic opponents of Romney on Oct. 16, 2002, shows him addressing a group called the New Bedford Industrial Foundation. The Power Point presentation he uses lists ways to improve economic development in Massachusetts, including “boost federal involvement.”
“I think the scars and stains of racism are deeply embedded in American society. Some of the things that you hear people saying about this president… in religious terms, this president has been called everything but a child of God. And as, and I’ve been around a while -- I have never, ever seen the type of hostility that exists in America; we didn’t have this type of hostility during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.”
- The formidable civil rights icon, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), talks about President Obama and race in response to a question from David Gregory.
Talking to Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC a short time ago, Foster Friess, the conservative financier responsible for Rick Santorum’s super-PAC, made this comment about the currently ongoing, and outrageous, contraception brouhaha:
“This contraception thing, my gosh, it's [so] inexpensive. You know, back in my days, they'd use Bayer aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly.”
“First, if you're a business that wants to outsource jobs, you have that right, but you shouldn't get a tax deduction for doing it. That money should be used to cover moving expenses for companies like Master Lock that decide to bring jobs home. Give them the tax break.
Second of all, no American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas. So we've said, from now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax. And every penny should go towards lowering taxes for companies that choose to stay and hire here in the United States of America. Give them a bigger tax break.
Third, if you’re an American manufacturer, you should get a bigger tax cut. If you’re a high-tech manufacturer, creating new products, new services, we should double the tax deduction you get for making products here in America. If you want to relocate in a community like this one that’s been hard hit when factories left town, you should get help financing a new plant, financing new equipment, training new workers.”
- President Obama talks about tax reform and insourcing jobs at Master Lock in Wisconsin yesterday.
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