Tag Archives: eric fehrnstrom

Romney’s day: demands apology, everyone laughs, still can’t say who ran Bain after 1999

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“What are you going to do when the Chinese leader says something? Or Putin says (something critical) to you? You’re going to whine…You cannot do that. And as Mitt Romney said once to his own Republican colleagues: Stop whining. I’ll give him his own advice: Stop whining.” — Rahm Emanuel on Romney demanding an apology from the Obama campaign over suggestions that he may have committed a felony about his time at Bain Capital in Securities and Exchange Commission filings.


Source: supershelberta

“No, we will not apologize. Mr. Romney claims he’s Mr. Fix-It for the economy because of his business experience, so I think voters entirely legitimately want to know what is exactly his business experience. Mr. Romney is now claiming he wasn’t there at the time except his filings with the SEC listing says he was the CEO, chairman and president of the company.” — President Obama,  in an interview with WAVY-TV in Portsmouth, Virginia, the AP reports

Think Progress: “On Monday, Romney’s senior adviser couldn’t say who was running the company in his absence. “You should check with Bain, but it wasn’t Mitt Romney,” Eric Fehrnstrom told Reuters’ Sam Youngman. Romney claims to have turned over day to day management of Bain to a management team after he left for the Olympics, though the company continued to list Romney as its CEO well into 2002.”

Andrew Sullivan | Yes, Romney perjured himself : “If there was a good deal of time back and forth in the first few months and some business conducted all the way through to December (‘pretty much exclusively’), and if Romney’s own lawyer tells an inquiry that Romney’s work for Bain ‘continued unabated just as they had,’ then it is incontrovertibly true that Romney’s statement under oath that he was not involved ‘in any way’ in Bain business after February 1999 was a lie under oath.”

The earlier Romney’s Resignation Letter From Bain Capital may be closer to the truth than anything we’ve seen so far…

Morning Bunker Report: Monday 6.4.2012

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WHAT ROMNEY / REPUBLICANS STAND FOR———————————————

Paul Krugman again slams Ryan’s budget plan and Romney’s advisor Eric Fehrnstrom for supporting it — “The plan’s a fraud,” Krugman said. “The plan is a big bunch of tax cuts, some specified spending cuts, basically for poor people, and then a huge magic asterisk which is supposed to turn into a deficit reduction plan, but, in fact, if you look what’s actually in it, it’s a deficit-increasing plan.” “And so to say that, just tell the truth that there is really no plan there, neither from Ryan, nor from Governor Romney, is just the truth,” he said. “If that’s being harsh and partisan, gosh, then I guess the truth is anti-bipartisanship.” — Raw Story || image: phroyd

Austerity for the rest of us: Don’t look to Mitt Romney for help on underwater mortgages – Mitt Romney won’t offer “targeted relief for the 11.5 million American homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth,” Lanhee Chen, his campaign’s policy director, told Bloomberg’s Al Hunt. Chen described such policies as insufficient for stabilizing the housing market. – Think Progress


image: MoveOn.Org

Romney’s promises: we’ve heard it all before – Mitt Romney ran for governor of Massachusetts promising more jobs, decreased debt, and smaller government. By the time Romney left office, state debt had increased, the size of government had grown, and Massachusetts had fallen behind almost every other state in job creation. Romney economics didn’t work then, and it won’t work now — YouTube

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Romney adviser dismisses women’s issues as ‘shiny objects’ — Despite spending the GOP’s contested primary accusing President Obama for waging “an assault on religion,” flyering voters in Iowa with pamphlets that touted a “pro-life” agenda, and pledging to defund Planned Parenthood, Mitt Romney’s senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom insisted that the general election should eschew social issues. Fehrnstrom also accused Democrats of using women’s reproductive health as “shiny objects” to avoid discussing the economy. “Mitt Romney is pro-life,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “He’ll govern as a pro-life president, but you’re going to see the Democrats use all sorts of shiny objects to distract people’s attention from the Obama performance on the economy. This is not a social issue election.” – Think Progress

Louisiana paper runs ad suggesting Obama and Democrats want to murder Christians – The Daily Advertiser, a Gannett-owned paper serving central Louisiana, is standing by its decision to run an advertisement today in which a far-right extremist group suggests that President Obama and Democrats are conspiring to murder Catholics and Christians. […] As with most newspapers, The Daily Advertiser says it does screen advertisements to ensure that blatantly false, overly offensive or otherwise inappropriate content is kept out of the paper. – Think Progress

WHAT THE PRESIDENT / DEMOCRATS STAND FOR ————————————

Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom asked Paul Krugman if he preferred Obama’s plan over the Ryan plan. “Oh, yeah. I mean, the president — at least it’s — you know, I don’t approve of everything, but there are no gigantic mystery numbers in his stuff. We do know what he’s talking about. His numbers are… you know, all economic forecasts are wrong, but his are not… are not insane. These are… these are just imaginary.”  – Crooks and Liars

Shrum: ‘There’s nothing wrong’ with Obama holding Romney accountable — “There is nothing wrong with the president holding Mitt Romney to his account for his record from private business and his record as a public official,” [Democratic strategist Bob] Shrum said. “Harry Truman did the same thing. Ronald Reagan in 1980, one of the most optimistic politicians in America, ran a pretty tough negative advertising campaign, against Jimmy Carter.” Shrum added: “If you did what the governor (Romney) is suggesting, and maybe he’s not, and you just let this be a referendum, I don’t think the president could win.” — Raw Story

Having it both ways: a tale of two standards – Romney has been running for president pretty much non-stop for six years. He and his aides have, in other words, had a very long time to come up with compelling explanations for all of the shortcomings in Romney’s record. With that in mind, Romney’s staffers had to know that when they appeared on the Sunday shows yesterday, they’d hear questions about Massachusetts being 47th out of 50 states in job creation during Romney’s tenure. And what was their explanation? Romney inherited a bad situation, and when he left, things were marginally better. Seriously, that’s their defense. [...] Look, this isn’t complicated. Romney is trying to create a standard for success that only he’s allowed to use.  [...] If Romney’s to be congratulated for inheriting an economy that was struggling but then turning things around a little, by that identical standard, he ought to be patting Obama on the back for a job well done. Indeed, the Romney campaign talking points practically sound like an Obama endorsement.– Steve Benen || image: obama2016

Walker recall election Tuesday: you can help! This is a race that will come down to turnout — The final Public Policy Polling count ahead of tomorrow’s recall election shows a slight Walker lead in a race that’s tightening up in the final hours. […] x If the folks who turn out on Tuesday actually matched the 2008 electorate, Barrett would be ahead of Walker by a 50-49 margin. It’s cliche but this is a race that really is going to completely come down to turnout. Needless to say, if you’d like to help out with turning out the vote, you can help out with phone banking here. Today’s the day we need you to help. It’s crunch time, and you can make calls from your own home. It’s easy and simple. This race is winnable, folks. Fire Walker with me. — Balloon Juice

Sarah Jessica Parker: “That Guy” — “Ok, the guy who ended the war in Iraq, the guy who says you should be able to marry anyone you want, and the guy who created 4 million new jobs, that guy: President Obama and Michelle are coming to my house for dinner on June 14, and I want you to be there too. But you have to go to JoinObama.com for your chance to win and the contest ends tomorrow night so go right here, right now. Because we need him and he needs us.” – YouTube


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Average working women vs Ann Romney: ‘getting your ass out the door at 7am when it’s cold’

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Mitt Romney in January: Mothers Should Be Required To Work Outside Home Or Lose Benefits – Women who stay at home to raise their children should be given federal assistance for child care so that they can enter the job market and “have the dignity of work,” Mitt Romney said in January, undercutting the sense of extreme umbrage he showed when Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen quipped last week that Ann Romney had not “worked a day in her life.”


image: alliancewithnone

“The language here was, perhaps, inartful, or perhaps America is a society that lives to fight stupid, non-consequential, meaningless controversies and this is the new one. But what she meant to say, I think, was that Ann Romney has never gotten her ass out of the house to work. No one is denying that being a mother is a tough job, I remember that I was a handful. Okay, but there is a big difference in being a mother, and that tough job, and getting your ass out of the door at 7am when it’s cold, having to deal with the boss, being in a workplace, and even if you’re unhappy you can’t show it for 8 hours, that is a different kind of tough thing.” – Bill Maher, on the Ann Romney hissy fit (see link for video)

via: Buzzfeed

And from The Rude Pundit (warning: language!),

Are we really doing this again? Are we really having some worthless fucking debate over how hard it is to be a stay-at-home parent? President Obama said, “There’s no tougher job than being a mom.” Really? Ask a coal miner. Ask a sweatshop worker. It’s fucking stupid. Are we just back to Hillary Clinton and the motherfucking cookies? Oh, wait, Michelle Malkin’s quoting that 1992 remark, so the Rude Pundit supposes that we are.

The Rude Pundit’s sick of bowing down at the altar of the homemaker. Sure, sure, it’s hard work raising children. Ask the people who run day care centers and preschools. It’s hard work whether you work a full-time job or not. But let’s be honest here: Choosing to be a stay-at-home parent (and that includes the increasing number of dads that do it) for the last generation or so is a bourgeois indulgence that’s primarily available to the financially privileged. Even those who “sacrifice” to stay home with the kids get to do so only because they have an amount of security that’s simply not available to the vast majority of Americans (and let’s leave out the long-term unemployed who have decided, “Well, fuck it. May as well stay home”). It’s a choice that’s available only to a select minority of the people of this country that does so little to actually help parents.

[...]  But, you know, sure, raising kids is work, a lot of work, constant work. That’s something we can’t deny. Still, it’s work that parents chose to do by having children, so, you know, don’t fucking complain. And when someone says it’s not a job, suck it up. It’s not a fucking job. It’s a privilege, one that millions of parents would love to be able to have but can’t because they don’t have the means of Ann Romney.

Read it all…

Mitt Romney in 1994: “This is a different world than it was in the 1960s when I was growing up. When you used to be able to have mom at home and dad at work. Now mom and day both have to work.” 

I guess he could have added: Well, MY children’s mom doesn’t have to work but YOURS probably does… heheh!

Jessica Valenti at The Nation agrees with Rosen,

There’s no doubt that Rosen, a CNN contributor and Democratic political consultant, made a gaffe in providing such a juicy sound bite. But her message—in context—was right on. Rosen was responding to Mitt Romney’s constant trotting out of Ann when he gets a question on women’s issues:

What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying, well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues. And when I listen to my wife, that’s what I’m hearing.

Guess what, his wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and how do we—why do we worry about their future?

There’s nothing there about stay-at-home moms, or the idea that that raising children isn’t work. Rosen was referring to the fact that Ann Romney—an incredibly rich and elite woman—likely does not understand the economic concerns of most American women. Again, it was unfortunate choice of words—but she wasn’t wrong.

[...]  Focusing on this slip-up just brings more attention to the way in which a Romney presidency wouldn’t support mothers. Because empty platitudes about motherhood “being the hardest job in the world” doesn’t change the reality of most moms’ lives, or make their job any easier.

But it’s not just that Romney is bad for women (whether they work outside the home or not). What’s being lost in this conversation is the incredibly facile and insulting notion that just because a woman made the decision to marry Romney and occasionally talk to him about other women, that he is somehow well-informed on women’s issues. Ann Romney is not an expert on women’s issues just because she happens to be one. And she’s not an expert in what mothers need just because she has children. Believing otherwise is infantilizing and reduces women’s very important and complex concerns to beauty parlor chitchat.

Unfortunately, female conservative base voters will take their party’s empty platitudes and tell themselves to be grateful they’re given that much. Politics above all. Gay people might get married.

I said this to a commenter yesterday,

Money can’t buy health or happiness, but it can at least buy medical care and some measure of comfort for the pain and suffering. And at a certain level of wealth, naturally you’re going to get the best medical care that money can buy.

So I have difficulty understanding how Ann Romney — a breast cancer survivor and diagnosed with MS — could support her husband’s position to ‘get rid of’ Planned Parenthood clinics and do away with Obamacare, especially with its provision that insurance companies can’t reject women with pre-existing conditions, like breast cancer or Multiple Sclerosis. There are American women with little or no means who utilized PP for early breast cancer screening. There are women (and men, and children) who can’t get insured or can’t afford the premiums because of pre-existing conditions. I wonder where is Ann’s empathy for other people, who aren’t married to a vastly wealthy man, but who suffer from health issues just as serious as her own.

And THAT’S another reason why Ann Romney as no idea (nor will she ever) about the concerns of average working women. More importantly, that’s why her husband is completely clueless if Ann and her “ladies who lunch” crew are going to be Mitt’s standard for American women and what he knows about them in general.

Comedy relief: Eddie Murphy from 20 years ago in his concert film “Raw,” on the work that goes into being a wealthy stay at home mom (Warning: language!):