Integrity and honesty: put up or shut up

“There is no whining in politics. Stop demanding an apology, release your tax returns.”— GOP strategist John Weaver (via: think4yourself)


image: con-tem-plate

“I brought up a lot of stuff in the debate that doesn’t matter today.” — Texas Gov. Rick Perry, when asked about his consistent calls for Mitt Romney to reveal his income tax records during the Republican debates earlier this year. Perry, who made his remarks during a brief interview after stumping for Romney in Elko, Nevada, was quick to change the subject to Barack Obama’s college records and economic issues.  (via: think4yourself)

Video: Romney sings: OFA ad

Mitt Romney sings America the Beautiful (warning: Romney sings), accompanied by facts from his long career as a vulture capitalist and plutocratic elitist:



Romney will eat America.

Class warfare: people who sign the front of a paycheck vs. people who sign the back

“Romney types, of course, are the ones who sign the front of the paycheck, and the Obama types are the one who have spent their entire lives signing the back of them.” — Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin, slamming Obama supporters and “implying that they too do not understand how private equity works because they have not been employers themselves.” (via reallyfoxnews)

It’s funny because a majority of the low information dullards who watch Fox Entertainment and worship hatemongers like Malkin have also been signing the “back of a paycheck” their entire lives.

To have been an “employee” instead of an “employer” your entire life is suddenly something to be ashamed of — that’s now a legitimate rightwing insult? Sorry, working / middle class employees: the conservative elite (your Betters) would like to inform you that you have no right to say shit about shit. Just shut up and vote for Mitt Romney.

Keep going, rightwingnutjobs… you’re doing great!

RNC Political Director Rick Wiley is way too hip for this presidential campaign

According to Josh Fruhlinger at Wonkette, RNC Political Director Rick Wiley has been sending “Obama’s campaign manager like four or five Tweets a day making fun of his lousy campaign and calling him “bro.”" Seriously:

Just having some fun on Twitter, don't get your panties in a knot

The RNC does important stuff! Fruhlinger reports that “Jim Messina’s been taking the high road so far and not responding.” Why would anyone respond to such an idiot? Told you conservative pinheads like to spew trash on Twitter.

Tip: Bro, try gluing some of that chin beard where your eyebrows should be.

images: wonkette 

RelatedRNC Chair Reince Priebus goes Full Metal Apocalypse on Fox Entertainment

President Obama is 100% committed to not extending tax cuts for the wealthy

Think Progress reports on Robert Gibbs’ and Jay Carney’s insistence that the President is 100% committed to not extending tax cuts for the wealthy:

“As House Republicans return to Washington to a vote on extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for another year, Obama adviser Robert Gibbs insisted that the president would not support giving rich people another tax break. “Let’s make some progress on our spending by doing away with tax cuts for people who quite frankly don’t need them – tax cuts that haven’t worked,” Gibbs said during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union. Obama is “100% committed” to that position, he insisted. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made a similar pledge last month when he was asked directly if the president supports a temporary extension of the cuts, which expire at the end of the year. Carney said, “He will not. Could I be more clear?”” 

Your decision in November is pretty clear:

Buzzfeed EXCLUSIVE: the Obama campaign’s “Font-gate”

Sit down, because Zeke Miller of Romney’s online PR firm (Buzzfeed) has cracked the biggest story of the 2012 campaign season:

President Obama is using communist typeface on his signs. Well… communist INSPIRED font from retro-Cuban posters. CUBA. COMMUNIST! THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING. Hide your kids. This changes everything.

Zeke Miller is a scholar and a patriot. He’s like the Robert Langdon of computer fonts. And there’s absolutely no reason why Zeke should feel embarrassed about actually asking the Obama campaign for comment on this “issue” — or for the response he received from press secretary Ben LaBolt: “Your GOP operative should have had the courtesy to stay sober before noon, and BuzzFeed should go back to labeling cat slideshows.

They WOULD say that, wouldn’t they, Zeke?

Romney’s business experience: redistribution from the middle-class to a minority at the top

Paul Krugman sums up the reasons (the right reasons!) that the Obama campaign has decided to go after Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital:

“Romney wasn’t that kind of businessman. He didn’t build businesses, he bought and sold them.”

“…why does [Romney] want us to think he should be president? It’s not about ideology: Romney offers nothing but warmed-over right-wing platitudes, with an extra helping of fraudulent arithmetic, and it’s fairly obvious that even he himself doesn’t believe anything he’s saying.

“Instead, his thing is competence: supposedly, his record as a successful businessman should tell us that he knows how to create jobs. And this in turn means that we have every right to ask exactly what kind of a businessman he was.

“Bain invested in companies that specialized in helping other companies get rid of employees, either in the United States or overall, by outsourcing work to outside suppliers and offshoring work to other countries.”

“Now, the truth is even under the best of circumstances, the case for electing a businessman as president would be very weak. A country is not a company – does any company sell more than 80 percent of what it makes to its own workers, the way America does? — and competitive success in business bears no particular relationship to the principles of macroeconomic policy. So even if Romney were a true captain of industry, a latter-day Andrew Carnegie, this wouldn’t be a strong qualification.

“In any case, however, Romney wasn’t that kind of businessman. He didn’t build businesses, he bought and sold them – sometimes restructuring them in ways that added jobs, often in ways that preserved profits but destroyed jobs, and fairly often in ways that extracted money for Bain but killed the business in the process.

“And recently the Washington Post added a further piece of information: Bain invested in companies that specialized in helping other companies get rid of employees, either in the United States or overall, by outsourcing work to outside suppliers and offshoring work to other countries.

“[Romney was] a captain of deindustrialization, making big profits…by helping to dismantle the implicit social contract that used to make America a middle-class society”

“The Romney camp went ballistic, accusing the Post of confusing outsourcing and offshoring, but this is a pretty pathetic defense. For one thing, there weren’t any actual errors in the article. For another, it’s simply not true, as the Romney people would have you believe, that domestic outsourcing is entirely innocuous. On the contrary, it’s often a way to replace well-paid employees who receive decent health and retirement benefits with low-wage, low-benefit employees at subcontracting firms. That is, it’s still about redistribution from middle-class Americans to a small minority at the top.

“Arguably, that’s just business – but it’s not the kind of business that makes you especially want to see Romney as president.

“Or put it a different way: Romney wasn’t so much a captain of industry as a captain of deindustrialization, making big profits for his firm (and himself) by helping to dismantle the implicit social contract that used to make America a middle-class society.”

Mitt Romney’s not the solution. He’s the problem.



“The Problem”

Mitt Romney, 10/11/2012: ”The Chinese are smiling all the way to the bank … taking our jobs and taking a lot of our future. And I am not willing to let that happen.”

He made a fortune letting it happen.

Newly published documents show Mitt Romney’s firms were ‘pioneers’ at ‘helping companies outsource their manufacturing’ to countries including China.

Bragging they were ‘A one-stop shop for their outsource requirements.’

Mitt Romney’s not the solution.

He’s the problem.

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President Obama continues to push Congress to create jobs, use war money for nation-building

“…on Friday, I signed into law a bill that will do two things for the American people. First, it will keep thousands of construction workers on the job rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure. Second, it will keep interest rates on federal student loans from doubling this year – which would have hit more than seven million students with about a thousand dollars more on their loan payments. Those steps will make a real difference in the lives of millions of Americans. But make no mistake: we’ve got more to do. The construction industry was hit brutally hard when the housing bubble burst. So it’s not enough to just keep construction workers on the job doing projects that were already underway. For months, I’ve been calling on Congress to take half the money we’re no longer spending on war and use it to do some nation-building here at home. There’s work to be done building roads and bridges and wireless networks. And there are hundreds of thousands of construction workers ready to do it…”The President’s weekly address


“Conservatives would have you believe that our disappointing economic performance has somehow been caused by excessive government spending, which crowds out private job creation. But the reality is that private-sector job growth has more or less matched the recoveries from the last two recessions; the big difference this time is an unprecedented fall in public employment, which is now about 1.4 million jobs less than it would be if it had grown as fast as it did under President George W. Bush. And, if we had those extra jobs, the unemployment rate would be much lower than it is — something like 7.3 percent instead of 8.2 percent. It sure looks as if cutting government when the economy is deeply depressed hurts rather than helps the American people. – Paul Krugman

Mitt Romney held a press conference to say that Mitt Romney deserves a vacation

And, of course, to criticize the President.

Romneys at Play
Just a few hours after telling reporters the jobs report today was a “kick in the gut” for Americans, Mitt Romney returned to his vacation, driving his high-power speedboat, filled to the brim with his kids and grandkids, to a nearby home for a dip in Lake Winnipesaukee. ABC News

In a press conference scheduled less than a hour before he spoke, and timed as a response to Friday’s jobs report, Mitt Romney continued to criticize President Obama’s economic policies in general and also defended his decision to leave the campaign trail for a family vacation — a move that has been widely criticized within the GOP, Politico reports:

“I’m delighted to be able to take a vacation with my family. I think all Americans appreciate the memories they have with their children and their grandchildren. I hope that more Americans are able to take vacation… Part of a good job is the capacity to take a vacation.” [...] This was the second month in a row where Romney had no public schedule on the day jobs figures were released. Last month, he gave a quickly arranged interview on CNBC and then had no public events for several days after.”

Far be it for Mitt Romney to deny himself a vacation when he’s worked so hard over the years at leveraging and cannibalizing healthy companies, brutalizing American employees, and walking away with all the money. Not to mention the energy it takes to campaign for almost five years straight, lie constantly, reverse your opinions (and then reverse them back!) on anything and everything on an almost daily basis, while trying to convince voters to trust you as you’re fighting to hide your true wealth, tax returns, and offshore accounts from them.

Mitt and Ann Romney: hardest working people in America!

Related: “Lemon. Wet. Good.”

“All right, I’m going to eat my burger and everybody just pretend like I’m not here.”


Image by KEVIN LAMARQUE / Reuters

SANDUSKY, Ohio — President Barack Obama took an unscheduled lunch stop with former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland on the first day of his bus tour in Oak Harbor, Ohio.

Pool report on our president workin’ the room via Buzzfeed:

“The motorcade pulled into Kozy Corners, a cash-only local diner with square tables(daily specials starting at $4.65). In the parking lot outside, Obama knelt to speak to a young boy with spiky blue-tipped hair. “I like that hair, man. I was thinking of getting some hair just like it,” Obama said, touching the boy’s head. “What do you put in there to make it spiky? Product?” The boy looked spell-bound until, prompted by his parents, shook the president’s hand.

“Later, the president walked into the restaurant, shaking hands and taking pictures. As he entered the dining room, accompanied by former Gov. Ted Strickland, he waved and was applauded by a crowd of between 50 and 75 (capacity of the dining room is 85 but not every seat was taken). Obama greeted several elderly customers first, asking them how long they’ve been married and what their secrets were for looking so young. A waitress carrying a shrimp basket approached the president. “Are those for me?” he asked with a grin.

“Nearby, a fourth-grade girl, Sydney, showed Obama her sketchbook. “You’re very talented,” he said, flipping through the pages of drawings. “You’re a very well spoken young lady.” He inscribed it “Dream big dreams.” At the next table, he cradled a baby, telling the parents it reminded him of the baby of his brother-in-law. “Just do whatever she tells you to,” he said to a man and his wife at the neighboring table, when they swapped stories about how to maintain a good marriage. At the next table, Obama stopped to talk to five white-haired women, who told they were part of a regular pinochle game for several decades. “Tell the truth, the national press is here,” the president said. “Are you playing for money?”" Continue…

Our president is great with people — AVERAGE people. 

barackobama: Scenes from President Obama’s bus tour: High fives in Oak Harbor, Ohio.

Caught on tape: Romney praised similarities between his plan and the President’s, liked the mandate

Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed points out Romney’s flip-flopping, caught on tape, from April 2010: “Mitt Romney yesterday said in an interview with CBS News that the individual mandate was a tax, while the plan he put in place in Massachusetts was a penalty, and not a tax. In a video from April 2010, Mitt Romney praised some similarities between his plan and President Obama’s. Romney said he liked the individual mandate, the portability of the insurance, the requirement that insurers cover people with a preexisting condition, and the similar exchanges. Romney said his plan was different because it was state plan and his plan did not raise taxes, and did not cut Medicare. (As a Governor, Romney had no authority to cut Medicare.)”