Here’s that Priorities USA ad, featuring Joe Soptic, who lost his job and his health insurance because of Bain Capital (and his wife subsequently died of cancer):
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“To that point, if people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care. There are a lot of people losing their jobs and losing their health care in President Obama’s economy.” — Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul, yesterday, counterattacking a Priorities USA ad in which a laid-off steelworker blames the presumptive GOP nominee for his family losing health care.
This kind of problem is something that “Obamacare” — aka the Affordable Care Act, based on Romneycare — is trying to remedy.
Oh, what was that you said last month, Governor Romney?
Joe Soptic would have been better off in Massachusetts, back when Romney felt one way about universal health care. He feels differently now though. Like education, Mitt Romney thinks we should only get as much health care as we can afford. I kind of think a $77,000 tax deduction on a horse is non-essential. But that’s just me.
“So now this is the message: I tried to reason with the blacks, I really did, but it turns out they just want a free lunch… As far as free lunches go, we of course just witnessed the biggest government handout in history, one that Romney himself endorsed. Four and a half trillion dollars in bailout money already disbursed, trillions more still at risk in guarantees and loans, sixteen trillion dollars in emergency lending from the Federal Reserve, two trillion in quantitative easing, etc. etc. All of this money went to Romney’s pals in the Wall Street banks that for years helped Romney take over companies with mountains of borrowed cash. Now, after these banks crashed, executives at those same firms used those public funds to pay themselves massive salaries, which is exactly the opposite of “helping those who need help,” if you’re keeping score.
“[...] Romney can’t even be mean with any honesty. Even when he’s pandering to viciousness, ignorance and racism, it comes across like a scaly calculation. A guy who feels like he has to take a dump on the N.A.A.C.P. in Houston in order to connect with frustrated white yahoos everywhere else is a guy who has absolutely no social instincts at all. Someone like Jesse Helms at least had a genuine emotional connection with his crazy-mean-stupid audiences. But Mitt Romney has to think his way to the lowest common denominator, which is somehow so much worse.
“[...] Most presidents have something under the hood – wit, warmth, approachability, something. Even the most liberal football fan could enjoy watching an NFL game with George Bush. And even a Klansman probably would have found some of LBJ’s jokes funny. The biggest office in the world requires someone who buzzes with enough personality to fill the job, and most of them have it.
“But Romney doesn’t buzz with anything. His vision of humanity is just a million tons of meat floating around in a sea of base calculations. He’s like a teenager who stays up all night thinking of a way to impress the prom queen, and what he comes up with is kicking a kid in a wheelchair. Instincts like those are probably what made him a great leveraged buyout specialist, but in a public figure? Man, is he a disaster. It’s really incredible theater, watching the Republicans talk themselves into this guy.”
(Photo: From a 2004 Newsweek photo, snapped by Ethan Hill depicting Romney on one of his million dollar warmbloods — HuffPo)
After being booed at the NAACP convention yesterday, Romney scurried off to a fund-raiser in Hamilton, Montana where he decided to finally respond: “Remind them of this: If they want more stuff from government, tell them to go vote for the other guy, more free stuff. But don’t forget, nothing is really free.”
What Mitt lacks in a spine (or a grown man’s testicles) he more than makes up for in dog-whistling for rich, white donors in Montana.
Tommy Christopher: ”This will probably help Romney with certain segments of the Republican base, but the broader electorate may well react negatively to the contemptuous attitude he displays toward people who support health care reform, who simply want the insurance that they pay for to actually cover them and their loved ones when they need it to. It will also give the press, and the former Massachusetts Governor’s opponents, a chance to remind independent voters that Mitt Romney actually does give different speeches to different audiences. To his donors, people who favor government health care reform with an individual mandate are freeloaders, while he tells the people of several years ago that government health care reform with an individual mandate eliminates the freeloader.”
Steve Benen: ”In fact, this was entirely predictable — the far-right Republican presidential candidate spoke to the NAACP and effectively proclaimed, “Vote for me and I’ll make sure 7 million African Americans lose their health insurance.” What kind of campaign pitch is that? For crying out loud, of course Romney got booed. At the risk of being overly cynical, I can’t help but wonder if Romney did this on purpose precisely so he would be booed. [...] Indeed, if I had to guess, I’d say Romney will now position himself as something of a victim — he appeared in good faith, the argument goes, but that mean ol’ NAACP audience booed him for standing by his beliefs. It’ll be nonsense, but it’s likely to become the Republican talking point.”
callmeclinton: Responses to Romney’s NAACP speech, in which he announced, “If you want a president who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him.”
Mitt Romney: If you want a president who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him. Black people: what White people: what Mexican people: what Asian people: what Young children: what My cat: what The large rock in my backyard: what Time: what Space: what Light: what Literally the entire universe: what via: deadcrackerstorage
Think Progress reports that Mitt Romney’s speech at the NAACP this morning was a failure:
“The crowd booed Romney when he called for the full repeal of Obamacare and audibly laughed when he suggested he would be a better president than Obama for the African-American community. Also notable was what was left unsaid. Romney failed to address voting rights, which is a major theme of this NAACP gathering. ThinkProgress was on the scene and talked to some NAACP members after Romney’s speech to get their thoughts. James Waters said some of Romney’s comments were “patronizing,” while Joe Brown argued that Romney “made a serious misjudgment relating to the health care reform.” Allytra Perryman went even further: “I don’t think he has any way to even remotely relate to the everyday citizen, let alone African-American citizens.””
Every time Romney reads a quotation off the teleprompter, he finishes it by saying "End of quote."— Molly Ball (@mollyesque) July 11, 2012
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He also told the crowd he’d repeal “Obamacare” and was justifiably booed for that remark:
WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY—————————–—
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s budget would add $10.7 trillion to the debt and reduce federal revenues to just 15 percent of GDP, exploding the “prairie fire of debt” Romney warned the nation about in a speech last week in Iowa. …House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), in an appearance on Fox News this morning, made the laughable claim that a budget that explodes the debt will simultaneously prevent a debt crisis: RYAN: More to the point, though, the kind of budget Mitt Romney is talking about is one that prevents a debt crisis. — ThinkProgress
Jim Cramer: Romney is ‘a job destroyer, not a creator’ — Appearing on Meet The Press in the roundtable segment, the Mad Money host differed with David Gregory’s** perspective that Romney had a “real area of strength” over President Barack Obama on the economy. Gregory based his view on a recent ad from the Romney campaign that mentioned how the former Massachusetts governor would approve of the controversial Keystone pipeline if he was president. “Romney is known as a job destroyer, not a creator,” Cramer said. “I just don’t think that this will stick, I think Bain sticks. I think the idea that you bring in Bain, which is what happened, in the 80′s. They fire people and that’s how they get prosperity for the rich.” –Raw Story|| **NOTE on David Gregory’s ‘perspective’: This month, Gregory headlined as a keynote speaker for a major Republican advocacy group. Your liberal media.
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Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) claims his budget ‘pre-empts austerity’ – Paul says that his plan to slash government spending on programs for the poor while increasing defense spending and giving tax cuts to the wealthy would actually “prevent austerity.” […] “What we’re saying is let’s get on growth and prevent austerity,” he continued. “The whole premise of our budget is to preempt austerity by getting our borrowing under control, having tax reform for economic growth and preventing Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid from going bankrupt. That preempts austerity.” […] The budget plan Ryan unveiled earlier this year aimed to cut spending by privatizing parts of Medicare, slashing Medicaid programs for the poor by $810 billion, spending 38 percent less on transportation and 33 percent less on education than the Obama administration has proposed. — Raw Story
RNC chair blames Obama for Rev. Wright attack ad story – [RNC Chairman Reince Priebus] on Sunday said it was the fault of President Barack Obama and the Democrats for reports that a super PAC supporting presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney was considering attack ads featuring Obama’s former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “I know how it works,” Priebus insisted to CNN’s Candy Crowley. “It’s the Democrats and Barack Obama that want the story out there… — Raw Story
WTF, Cory Booker?Newark Mayor Cory Booker Defends Bain Capital, Attacks Obama Campaign – On Meet the Press, Booker called criticizing Romney’s time at Bain “ridiculous” and “nauseating.” [...] By [Sunday] afternoon, Booker had started to walk back his criticisms of Obama and his campaign. – ThinkProgress
GOP House = 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow: “I’ve never been shy about leading. But you know, leaders need followers. And we’ve got 89 brand new members. We’ve got a pretty disparate caucus. It is hard to keep 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow long enough to get a bill passed.” – – House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), in an interview on This Week. – Political Wire
WHAT THE PRESIDENT / DEMOCRATS STAND FOR ————————————
Private Jobs Increase More With Democrats in White House — The BGOV Barometer shows that since Democrat John F. Kennedy took office in January 1961, non-government payrolls in the U.S. swelled by almost 42 million jobs under Democrats, compared with 24 million for Republican presidents, according to Labor Department figures. Democrats hold the edge though they occupied the Oval Office for 23 years since Kennedy’s inauguration, compared with 28 for the Republicans. Through April 2012, Democratic presidents accounted for an average of 150,000 additional private-sector paychecks per month over that period, more than double the 71,000 average for Republicans. – Bloomberg
RESHORING: Factories begin to shift back to US — Two-thirds of big US manufacturers have moved factories in the past two years, with the most popular destination being the US, according to a survey being released on Monday by Accenture, the consultants. The report provides some of the first industry-wide empirical evidence of “reshoring,” the trend of jobs once outsourced to low-cost emerging economies being brought back to the US. President Barack Obama has proposed tax incentives for companies that move their overseas operations back to the US and tax penalties for those that do not. “If you’re a business that wants to outsource jobs, you shouldn’t get a tax deduction for doing it,” Mr Obama said in this year’s State of the Union address. “No American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas.” Some 65 per cent of the senior executives questioned by Accenture said they had moved their manufacturing operations in the past 24 months, with two-fifths saying the facilities had been relocated to the US. China was the second destination for relocated factories, with 28 per cent, followed by Mexico with 21 per cent. […] The survey also reveals that US manufacturers expect China to overtake Europe as their second biggest market within three years. –FT.com|| (original link is subscription only)
Pelosi described Boehner’s approach to coming debt-ceiling negotiations as immature and irresponsible. “Last year, just the threat of not lifting the debt ceiling caused our credit rating to be lowered. This is not a responsible, mature, sensible place for us to go. We all know we have to reduce the deficit. We have to do it in a balanced way,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The speaker wants to go over the edge. […] “If the speaker was serious about moving forward, Pelosi said, he should bring the middle-class tax cuts to the floor now so that they are not held hostage during negotiations after the election. “I challenge the speaker right now to bring the middle income tax cuts to the floor,” she said. Pelosi praised the defense cuts that are scheduled to take effect in 2013 as a result of the previous debt ceiling deal. — HuffPo
NAACP follows Obama’s lead on marriage equality – Over the weekend, the board of the NAACP, in a near-unanimous vote, followed Obama’s lead and endorsed same-sex marriage. — Maddow Blog
Obama’s Super PAC is trailing Romney’s Super PAC (not to mention all the other GOP ones) in fundraising. — Politico
A large and growing share of SNAP households are working households (see chart). In 2010, more than three times as many SNAP households worked as relied solely on welfare benefits for their income.The share of SNAP households with earnings has continued growing in the past few years — albeit at a slower pace — despite the large increase in unemployment.One reason why SNAP is serving more working families is that, for a growing share of the nation’s workers, having a job has not been enough to keep them out of poverty.
“I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families.”
Before he, very bravely, claimed to have said ‘blah’ people instead of ‘black’ people. THEN! came this gem from Professor Gingrich on Jan. 5:
Newt Gingrich said at a Plymouth, NH town hall that he plans to “go to the NAACP convention and tell the African-American community why they should demand paychecks instead of food stamps.”
Turns out, according to reality, more people are choosing BOTH to survive. But facts and reality don’t play well in places like South Carolina.
And as far as telling blah people or the NAACP, specifically, that they should choose a paycheck over foods stamps? See the demographics of ‘food stamps’ after the cut: Continue reading →
“I didn’t say what you just said. Let me be very clear, because this is something that makes me, quite frankly, very irritated. … What I said was, there’s a real problem in America because you have a president who’s put more people on food stamps — people, I didn’t say any ethnic group, people — than any other president in history. … And I said I would be willing to go to the NAACP annual convention — which most Republicans are not willing to do — and I’d be willing to talk about the importance of food stamps versus paychecks.”
Maybe we’d believe Newt more if he wasn’t singling out the NAACP to talk about the importance of “food stamps over paychecks.” We wonder why he didn’t offer to go talk to the audience at NASCAR too? As a matter of fact, ESPECIALLY the audience at NASCAR:
Mr. Barbour is working on the new fake history of the South again, with an interview in the Weekly Standard. He praises the Citizens Council, which used to be called the White Citizens Council, for keeping the peace when his hometown schools integrated:
“You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”
Matt Yglesias breaks down the ACTUAL history of the Citizen’s Council in the South:
The Citizens’ Councils were, right in the state of Mississippi where Barbour is from, the respectable face of white supremacist political activism. Here’s an example from the Association of Citizens’ Councils pamphlet: “Why Does Your Community Need a Citizens’ Council?”
Maybe your community has had no racial problems! This may be true; however, you may not have a fire, yet you maintain a fire department. You can depend on one thing: The NAACP (National Association for the Agitation of Colored People), aided by alien influences, bloc vote seeking politicians and left-wing do-gooders, will see that you have a problem in the near future.
The Citizens’ Council is the South’s answer to the mongrelizers. We will not be integrated. We are proud of our white blood and our white heritage of sixty centuries.
Haley Barbour gives these people credit for keeping things calm!
In Mississippi in the 1950s and 60s most white people were white supremacists. And within the large and powerful white supremacist community, there was a split between more moderate and more radical factions. The moderates pursued a strategy of economic coercion and the radicals pursued a strategy of violence. There was also a small minority of white proponents of racial equality. In Barbour’s home town of Yazoo City, Mississippi the moderate faction of white supremacists had the upper hand. And Barbour thinks the strength of moderate white supremacists helped create a beneficial political atmosphere in his hometown.
When you have to choose between radical white supremacists and moderate white supremacists, you’re still going to end up with white supremacists (i.e. racists).
Charles Johnson explains “there was a lot of crossover between the CC and the KKK:” (link)
White Citizens’ Council: African Americans who were seen as being too supportive of desegregation, voting rights, or other perceived threats to whites’ supremacy found themselves and their family members unemployed in many instances; whites who supported civil rights for African Americans were not immune from finding this happening to them as well. Members of the Citizens’ Council were sometimes Klansmen, and the more influential the Citizens’ Council member, the more influence he had with the Klan. In fact, the WCC was even referred to during the civil rights era as “an uptown Klan,” “a white collar Klan,” “a button-down Klan,” and “a country club Klan.” The rationale for these nicknames was that it appeared that sheets and hoods had been discarded and replaced by suits and ties. Much like the Klan, WCC members held documented white supremacist views and involved themselves in racist activities. They more often held leadership in civic and political organizations, however, which enabled them to legitimize discriminatory practices aimed at non-whites.
And for your further reading “pleasure” (sarcasm), here’s a link to the archives of the Citizens Council newspaper. This kind of information reminds me why as a “Northerner,” I’ve never romanticized the South (or movies like Gone With The Wind). And even though I know good people live in the South, the term “Deep South” instantly reminds me of Deliverance and the KKK.
Bottom line: People like Haley Barbour just reinforce these connotations for the entire world.
Politico interviewed Breitbart right before he left for vacation, and he adds more race-baiting smears against Shirley Sherrod!
Ron Radosh over at Pajamas Media thinks Breitbart owes Shirley Sherrod an apology. (His commenters aren’t happy about that!)
Dan Riehl springs into action (to defend Breitbart) by parroting all the excuses Breitbart has been making for himself the past few days. (btw Riehl says Sherrod is a Marxist…)
Jim Hoft (First Things) says Sherrod is linked to Bill Ayers.
Weekly Standard’s John McCormack: “Breitbart’s posting of the partial clip, which leaves out crucial information, was unfair to Sherrod.”
“It’s unfortunate that whoever laid this out there didn’t lay out the whole story, as opposed to a part of it.” House Minority Leader John Boehner (NOTE: whoever = BREITBART)
Fox New anchor Shep Smith slammed Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com as “widely discredited,” and blasted the White House for acting on its video… and even called out his own employer (Fox News).
Limbaughattacked Shep Smith for “cav[ing]” in acknowledging that “Breitbart is wrong.” The NAACP should not be spelled “R-A-C-I-S-M,” Limbaugh added.
“Just as the Department of Agriculture and this Administration will review its actions, I also hope this starts a conversation in the media about how it operates.“Robert Gibbs
“…as disappointing as Tom Vilsack’s first crack at this was, the idea that he or Obama is the bad guy in this story is not only preposterous but verging on obscene.”Josh Marshall
Sherrod is considering legal action against Breitbart.
. Joan Walsh: What Shirley Sherrod said: “God helped me see that its not just about black people, it’s about poor people.” And Breitbart called her a racist.
Private Jobs Increase More With Democrats in White House — The BGOV Barometer shows that since Democrat John F. Kennedy took office in January 1961, non-government payrolls in the U.S. swelled by almost 42 million jobs under Democrats, compared with 24 million for Republican presidents, according to Labor Department figures. Democrats hold the edge though they occupied the Oval Office for 23 years since Kennedy’s inauguration, compared with 28 for the Republicans. Through April 2012, Democratic presidents accounted for an average of 150,000 additional private-sector paychecks per month over that period, more than double the 71,000 average for Republicans. – 
RESHORING: Factories begin to shift back to US — Two-thirds of big US manufacturers have moved factories in the past two years, with the most popular destination being the US, according to a survey being released on Monday by Accenture, the consultants. The report provides some of the first industry-wide empirical evidence of “reshoring,” the trend of jobs once outsourced to low-cost emerging economies being brought back to the US. President Barack Obama has proposed tax incentives for companies that move their overseas operations back to the US and tax penalties for those that do not. “If you’re a business that wants to outsource jobs, you shouldn’t get a tax deduction for doing it,” Mr Obama said in this year’s State of the Union address. “No American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas.” Some 65 per cent of the senior executives questioned by Accenture said they had moved their manufacturing operations in the past 24 months, with two-fifths saying the facilities had been relocated to the US. China was the second destination for relocated factories, with 28 per cent, followed by Mexico with 21 per cent. […] The survey also reveals that US manufacturers expect China to overtake Europe as their second biggest market within three years. – 
