Romney/Ryan 2012

[Jolie Rouge]

This is what “FORWARD� really looks like
By Michelle Malkin • August 11, 2012 09:45 AM

Yes. PHEW.

After a week marred by a not-ready-for-prime-time staffer who had movement conservatives questioning Team Romney’s competence, sanity, and willingness to fight the brass-knuckles White House and Chicago thug operatives, the Romney campaign made the right decision.

And the Right decision.

Fittingly, the motto of the USS Wisconsin on which Romney/Ryan made their announcement is “Forward for Freedom.�

Paul Ryan is fresh, young, energetic, smart, courageous, and ready for prime time.

Paul Ryan is a policy wonk AND a front-line warrior whose budget and long-term entitlement reforms have the entire Dem-Soros-lapdog media machine unhinged.

Paul Ryan is ready to fight false media narratives.

Paul Ryan is battle-tested against the White House.

Paul Ryan won’t cut and run when the going gets tough.

The Dems and their media water-carriers are invoking the the NY-26 loss as evidence that Ryan is a drain on GOP electoral prospects. They’ve misread those results completely and the Dems’ blind hubris and demagoguing overreach will be their downfall. Reminder:
http://michellemalkin.com/2011/05/25/mediscare-and-the-ny-26-loss/


I’ve had my doubts about GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s commitment to fiscal conservatism in the past, but his mettle is being tested and this is his moment.

Beltway Republicans are going wobbly in the wake of the GOP’s NY-26 loss — seen as a referendum on the Ryan Medicare overhaul plan.

William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection draws bottom-line lessons from the NY race:

There were so many quirks about this race that it’s hard to draw simple conclusions, but I think the following apply (in no particular order):

* A third party candidate can make a difference, and in this case Davis certainly drew more away from Corwin than Hochul.
* The Tea Party brand is powerful. A phony like Davis, who petitioned his way onto the ballot and then chose to call his ballot line the “Tea Party� line still managed to draw a significant vote.
* National Republicans need to get their act together. This is not a district which should have been ignored for so long. The challenge from Davis was noted by me and others in early April.
* The ability of Democrats to scare grandma should not be underestimated. Republicans need to be very proactive and very hard hitting is getting ahead of Democrats and explaining not only that no one currently receiving Medicare will be affected, but that the current system will result in severe rationing if changes are not made.
…
* In the face of the Democratic scare grandma machine, nice guys and gals will finish last.

…
* The MSM will message for Democrats all day long. Already last night the NY Times rand a banner “Rubuke Seen To Medicare Plan.�

For his part, Ryan is not running from the fundamental battle over entitlements and free-market reform. While Democrats shriek and moan about seniors rolling off cliffs, Ryan’s out with a sober, serious, adult conversation on the long-term structural changes needed to keep the system solvent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DJIC7kEq6kw

Tea Party activists need to stand by Ryan and buck him up when the GOP establishment cuts and runs. Fiscal conservatism must not be beholden to electoral cycles. This is what real leadership looks like.

All that said: A strong movement conservative in the VP slot is a necessary, but not sufficient, ingredient for a winning ticket that provides a clear contrast to the backward, profligate, big government Democratic duo in the White House.

Paul Ryan helps to Right the listing Romney ship.

It’s a great relief.

Now, all together: FIGHT!

***

Watch the video. The contrast couldn’t be clearer:

GOP: We have a plan to solve the massive unfunded liabilities crisis and restore fiscal responsibility in Washington.

Democrats: “�We don’t have a definitive solution…We just don’t like yours.�

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=h_f20ZDBj5k

http://michellemalkin.com/2012/08/11/this-is-what-forward-really-looks-like/

Best line of Ryan’s speech this morning?

“We will not replace our founding principles, we will reapply them.�

Right. On.

***

Here come the big-spending Big Labor goons to decry “fat cats.� Snort:

National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel released the following statement reacting to Gov. Mitt Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his Vice Presidential running mate.

“For weeks, there’s been speculation about who Gov. Romney would choose to be his running mate and what it would mean. And now we have our answer. By selecting Ryan, Romney has doubled down on his view that opportunity is only for those who can afford it or are willing to game the system. He’s shown yet again that he is more willing to help the rich get richer than ensuring middle class families get ahead.

“Ryan’s position on fundamental education issues like funding for early childhood education and efforts to keep class sizes small don’t speak to ensuring that every child in this country gets a quality education, it continues Romney’s misguided and out of touch mentality that class size doesn’t matter and children should get as much education as they can ‘afford’. Elections are about choices, and Governor Romney’s VP selection indicates that once again he chose the corporate fat cats and Wall Street barons over students, teachers, bus drivers, nurses and secretaries. The three million members of NEA know you can’t put Americans back to work by cutting jobs, educate our kids by laying off teachers, or level the playing field for small businesses by rigging it in favor of big corporations.

“Ryan was the architect of the budget plan that would have gutted Medicare and converted it to a voucher program. Ryan and Romney have shown over and over again that they are more willing to run up trillion dollar deficits to help the rich get richer while undercutting opportunity for middle class families.

“These are the positions and policies of Governor Romney. And so NEA members know enough to know that a Romney-Ryan administration is bad for our students, families and the wrong direction for America.�

[Jolie Rouge]

Andrea Mitchell: Paul Ryan not a pick for suburban moms, not a pick for women
By Doug Powers • August 11, 2012 02:37 PM

After Mitt Romney announced his choice of Paul Ryan today, NBC Chief White House Spokeswoman/Correspondent Andrea Mitchell took the the baton handoff from the Obama administration for her leg of the “war on women” relay: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/08/11/andrea_mitchell_ryan_not_a_pick_for_suburban_moms_ not_a_pick_for_women.html


Andrea Mitchell loses her voice while reacting to the Paul Ryan speech: “This is a base election. This is not a pick for suburban moms, this is not a pick for women.”

Hey, if women don’t mind Mrs. Alan Greenspan speaking on their behalf about what they find appealing, that’s their business, but I think many of them will object.

Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air mentioned that Ryan scored best among women from within the pool of Romney running-mate possibles. Seniors, as of last year anyway, preferred Ryan’s budget plan over Obama’s. So when beacons of objectivity like Andrea Mitchell claim today that Ryan is not a pick for women, or tomorrow that he’s not a pick for seniors, she’s simply projecting the concerns of Democrats she campaigns for every day.

Click the pic to roll tape at RCP:http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/08/11/andrea_mitchell_ryan_not_a_pick_for_suburban_moms_ not_a_pick_for_women.html

**Written by Doug Powers http://michellemalkin.com/2012/08/11/andrea-mitchell-ryan-moms/


I am seeing an editorial here. Is she a journalist or a commentator? All objectivity is lost here.

..

If the obsolete media hates him that much then he must be a terrific choice

..

Her blink rate suggests she has a pretty good idea she is lying. Odd thing though, when she blinks her lids don’t close all the way. Snake like.

..

Andrea Mitchell has a real American Pravda Media nose for the “news”. She is having problems speaking and planning on how to sharpen up her hatchet for some work on Paul Ryan and The Mittster.
***
The same “reporter” who set up Governor Sarah Palin by taping a 5 hour interview with the ‘Cuda. And then selectively editing and taking out of context enough to show her as a stupid dimwitted ChillBilly from Alaska. The ‘Cuda got smarter and avoids these gotcha interviews with the APM like she avoids angry Mama Grizzly bears!
***
I hope Romney and Ryan have learned from the ‘Cuda experiences. Don’t give the enemy any unfired ammo. Only the hot smoking stuff going their way! They seem to be shooting themselves in the foot a lot these days.

***

Since when is Andrea Mitchell a suburban mom? Does she even know any suburban moms? D.C. suburbs don’t count, as they’re the richest in the nation.

..

National Boosting Choomba network news flash:::

Chief Occupy White House spokeshole Dandrea Ratchell has discovered that the Paul Ryan plan for national mental health is to feed baby cats to baby crocodiles.

When asked why he would suggest such a thing, VP candidate Ryan did not respond, saying he didn’t accept the premise of the question. This proves Rep. Ryan intends to round up baby cats and feed them to baby crocodiles.

In fact, according to spokeshole Ratchell, there will be film at 11 showing this very thing done by Rep. Ryan himself. (Film courtesy Industrial Light and Magic.)


..


The LSM is already gearing up for a Palinesque character assassination.

Character assassination and personal attacks will be their focus – and the issues will be contorted into lies. They already had dossiers on all the potential running mates so they’d be prepared no matter who was chosen.

[Jolie Rouge]

.
Paul Ryan, Romney’s earnest opposite
5 hrs ago.

In 1996, bedeviled by conservative doubts about his tax-cutting credentials, Bob Dole named Jack Kemp -- the fervent champion of free-market economics – as his running mate. Sixteen years later, confronting lingering right-wing skepticism about his conservative pedigree, Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan – a former Kemp speechwriter – as his vice-presidential nominee.

Romney played against type in his surprise selection of the youthful seven-term Wisconsin congressman, who was considered a long-shot until the last few days. Rather than choosing a make-no-waves running mate like Ohio Sen. Rob Portman or former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Romney opted for a free-market ideologue over a political man for all seasons.

The veep choice is probably the best pre-election preview of how Romney would govern from the Oval Office. By going with Ryan -- whose well-publicized budget proposals put both traditional Medicare and Social Security in the cross-hairs – Romney is signaling that he can change direction with stunning speed. Instead of a predictable recite-America-the-Beautiful campaign designed to make Barack Obama the issue, Romney has added policy heft and controversy to his I-can-create-jobs bromides.

Introducing Ryan in Norfolk on Saturday morning, Romney called him “the next president of the United States.” (Obama made an analogous slip-up in 2008.) While it would take a Freudian to unpack what Romney meant subconsciously, it is safe to say that Ryan would provide the domestic agenda for Romney as the next president of the United States.

To Democrats, Paul Ryan is both literally and metaphorically two four-letter words. The Ryan budget, which passed the House in 2011 with only four dissenting Republican votes, would gradually turn Medicare into a voucher program and slash state funding for Medicaid. Although it is not in the House-passed plan, Ryan has also been a passionate advocate of private accounts for Social Security. The Romney-Ryan ticket is now on record as advocating the largest downsizing of popular federal programs since the ill-fated 1964 Barry Goldwater crusade.

What we still don’t have is an entirely reliable account of how and when Romney arrived at Ryan. Was he always the stealth favorite or was there a last-minute shift within the Mitt inner sanctum? The inside story will have to wait until the full how-a-great-man-makes-a-decision deliberate leaks from inside the Romney camp and, maybe, until the books published after the campaign.

The timing matters because there could be another less charitable interpretation of the route to Ryan – Romney can be rolled. In the last few days, both the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Weekly Standard enthusiastically endorsed Ryan for vice president. The New York Times captured the conservative mood with a Thursday headline: “Romney Faces Pressure from Right to Put Ryan on Ticket.”

Since early indications are that Romney decided on Ryan in the last 10 days, that pressure may have arrived as a seismic shock in Romney headquarters. If Romney actually abandoned Portman or Pawlenty to placate the GOP base, it suggests that he would govern by always nervously looking over his right shoulder.

Critics have sniffed that Ryan lacks the foreign-policy pedigree that Romney as a former governor needs. But, with the exception of Portman’s short stint as George W. Bush’s trade czar, the same can be said of all the apparent GOP finalists. At least Ryan offers nearly 14 years of congressional experience, which is more than you can say about current and former governors like Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie. And, by the way, the last ticket totally devoid of Washington credentials was the one nominated by the Republicans in 1948. And somehow, I suspect, Romney does not want to emulate Tom Dewey in grabbing defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Ryan is, in many ways, the antithesis of Romney. The 42-year-old congressman from Janesville has spent virtually his entire career in the public sector or in the think tank arena. Ryan has been a consistent true believer while Romney has -- to put it charitably -- followed a zigzag course.

Back in 1998, during the Bill Clinton impeachment election, I came to Janesville to cover a hotly contested House race for an open seat featuring a 28-year-old wunderkind Republican named (what a coincidence) Paul Ryan. I recall the fledging candidate walking me around downtown Janesville to show the houses and the historical markers that trace his family’s influence on this small industrial city since the late nineteenth century.

But what stays with me was the earnestness and policy-oriented seriousness of Ryan, even then. When I asked him about Clinton’s conduct, he avoided the fire-breathing rhetoric that was a GOP staple that year and instead said softly, "I think the wrong way to go is to go down a partisan, bitter route." What he wanted to talk about was tax cutting and Jack Kemp with a dollop of Ayn Rand thrown in. When I suggested that his election over Democrat Lydia Spottswood would be interpreted as an endorsement of the Republican impeachment strategy, he replied, "I hope it isn't written that way. I hope it's interpreted that my ideas are better than hers.”

Despite the nearly three decades that separate them in age, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan embody the political principle that it is far better in career terms to reach Congress as a young man than someone more seasoned. (Biden was not yet 30 when he was elected to the Senate in 1972). For all their conflicting styles and ideologies, both vice-presidential candidates exude an enthusiasm for politics, the press and policy debates that Obama and Romney somehow lack.

In a recent interview with Ryan Lizza for a New Yorker profile, Ryan expressed his scorn for presidential candidates who “run on vague platitudes and generalities.” With his bold vice-presidential pick, Romney has embraced the a-choice-not-an-echo theory of presidential politics.

If nothing else, putting Paul Ryan on the ticket guarantees that the Oct. 11 vice-presidential debate will be destination television viewing. And however the politics sort themselves out, the 2012 presidential election has suddenly become interesting as well as merely important.

http://news.yahoo.com/paul-ryan--romney%E2%80%99s-earnest-opposite--character-sketch.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Ryan: Obama has 'record of failure'
By STEVE PEOPLES | Associated Press – 3 hrs ago.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Mitt Romney's running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, wasted little time tearing into President Barack Obama on Saturday, lambasting the Democrat's "record of failure" just hours after being named to the GOP ticket.

Moving into a role as Romney's chief attack dog, Ryan declared Saturday that the nation under Obama's leadership is struggling through the "worst economic recovery in 70 years."

"No one disputes President Obama inherited a difficult situation," Ryan said, standing at Romney's side for the first time as the Republican presidential ticket on the USS Wisconsin, a retired battleship. "And, in his first two years, with his party in complete control of Washington, he passed nearly every item on his agenda. But that didn't make things better."

Romney selected the 42-year-old Ryan, a seven-term congressman, from a short list that included Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.

Ryan is the architect of a conservative and intensely controversial long-term budget plan to remake Medicare and cut trillions in federal spending. His selection immediately thrusts those budget plans into the forefront of the presidential contest.

Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina, called Ryan "the architect of the radical Republican House budget" proposal and said the plan "would end Medicare as we know it."

"We won't duck the tough issues," Ryan said during his acceptance speech. "We will lead."

As his family came on stage, Ryan knelt to embrace his 10-year-old daughter, Liza, and sons Charles, 8, and Sam, 7, before kissing his wife, Janna.

The GOP ticket made its debut at a naval museum in Norfolk, Va., the initial stop of a bus tour through four battleground states in as many days. It seemed likely a stop in Ryan's home state would be added to previously scheduled appearances in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio.

As part of the tour, Romney and Ryan stopped at a bakery in Ashland, Va., to buy pie. Asked if saying yes to Romney was an easy decision, Ryan said: "It was. It was. We've got to save the country."

At a subsequent event at a college gymnasium, the walls were decorated with printed and handmade Romney signs, but none touted Ryan — an indication of the secrecy that surrounded the announcement.

Romney initially made his revelation to supporters via a phone app Saturday morning. "Mitt's Choice for VP is Paul Ryan," it said and implored backers to spread the word.

One campaign official said Romney had settled on Ryan as his pick on Aug. 1, more than a week ago, and informed Beth Myers, the longtime aide who had shepherded the secretive process that led to the selection. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorized to provide details.

During his formal remarks, the congressman blamed Obama for the nation's unemployment rate that has exceeded 8 percent for more than three years, the longest run since the Great Depression. "Higher unemployment, declining incomes and crushing debt is a not a new normal. It is a result of misguided policies," Ryan said.

Ryan is chairman of the House Budget Committee and primary author of conservative tax-and-spending blueprints that the tea party-infused Republican majority approved over Democratic opposition in 2011 and again in 2012. It envisions transforming Medicare into a program in which future seniors would receive government checks that they could use to purchase health insurance. Under the current program, the government directly pays doctors, hospitals and other health care providers. Ryan and other supporters say the change is needed to prevent the program from financial calamity. Critics argue it would impose ever-increasing costs on seniors.

Other elements of the budget plan would cut projected spending for Medicaid, which provides health care for the poor, as well as food stamps, student loans and other social programs that Obama and Democrats have pledged to defend.

Ryan's budget plan died in the Democrat-controlled Senate. "Our rights come from nature and from God, not government," Ryan said. "That's who we are. We promise equal opportunity, not equal outcomes."

http://news.yahoo.com/ryan-obama-record-failure-125726842.html

[pepperpot]

"Our rights come from nature and from God, not government," Ryan said. "That's who we are. We promise equal opportunity, not equal outcomes."

:clapping I think I'm liking this guy.... I want to hear more. :agree

[DAVESBABYDOLL]

*sigh* God in politics ? Our rights came nature and from God? Come on really ? Let me quess, he hunts moose.

What a crock of shlt.

[pepperpot]

*sigh* God in politics ? Our rights came nature and from God? Come on really ? Let me quess, he hunts moose.

What a crock of shlt.
Well, if one believes that the big bang created the earth and it's inhabitants, then it's just "nature"....if one believes that God had a hand in "nature" then it would be God & nature. Either way, I believe the point being is that government is not where our "rights" came from. There's a certain "humanity" that trumps any government "given" right.

This may say it a bit better.....

You see, when conservatives like myself refer to rights, we’re talking about God-given rights. To put it into the perspective of history, we specifically hearken back to the words Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence:


We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

Keep in mind, Jefferson’s phrasing includes the words “among these.” That means life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are mere starting points. All rights, however, have one thing in common: they are God-given. Man does not give rights to other men; wealth does not convey rights; governments do not grant rights.

And really, it’s that last one that is most important and relevant here. Governments do not have the power to give or to grant rights to the people they govern. In truth, a government in and of itself has no rights or powers aside from those given to it by its people. That is a foundational principle of our republic, and that very idea was also put in ink by Jefferson: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed.”

Declaration of Independence a crock? I can see if what he said was followed by "say yay-yah!" with Tammy Fay applauding in the background, then maybe.:lol :shrug

IMO Just because "God" appears in a sentence doesn't mean the whole concept needs to be thrown out the window as fanatic speak, it may also apply in other "terms" as well, but to each his own.

They're not the Blues Bros....;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKZSqd5Y8nA

[Jolie Rouge]

Media Pwned By Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan Pick and Tricks

Read it all via ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/08/how-mitt-romney-and-paul-ryan-tricked-the-press/#

The media was just as fooled at the Ryan pick as they are today blathering on about potentially disastrous consequences from it. As with the reporters in front of Ryan's home, the press always thinks it knows things it doesn't know. This ticket can win with a winning message delivered to an electorate far from pleased with what's taken place in America over the last three years. The key will not be fighting with the media, but going around and over it directly to the people, just as all winning campaigns with an antagonistic press must do.



Mitt Romney decided on Paul Ryan on Aug. 1, the day after returning from his trip overseas to the Olympics in London and to Israel and Poland. The candidate and his campaign kept the secret for nine days, according to campaign sources. Romney and Ryan met secretly on August 5th, after the decision had been made and just before Romney submitted to round-the-clock coverage by reporters who had been traveling with him.

Then the body doubles pulled curtains closed, eliminating the silhouettes.

Throughout the morning there was no movement at the home. A few local police cars rolled by occasionally to gauge the press’s activities.

By this morning ABC’s Jon Karl confirmed Ryan was already in Virginia and the reporters in Wisconsin were eluded.


http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2012/08/media-pwned-by-mitt-romney-and-paul-ryan-pick-and-tricks.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Declaration of Independence a crock? I can see if what he said was followed by "say yay-yah!" with Tammy Fay applauding in the background, then maybe.

IMO Just because "God" appears in a sentence doesn't mean the whole concept needs to be thrown out the window as fanatic speak, it may also apply in other "terms" as well, but to each his own.


:clapping:

[Jolie Rouge]

Esquire Blogger Sees Paul Ryan, Shreds His Safety Net

By W. James Antle, III on 8.11.12 @ 3:42PM


Whenever anyone talks about cutting government spending -- or even, as is more often the case, slightly slowing its rate of growth -- they face the wildest accusations. Think Newt Gingrich and the orphanages, the millions of children who were going to die in the streets after welfare reform, the homelessness allegedly created by Reagan during the Decade of Greed.

Here is your most unhinged attack of the day, brought to you by Esquire: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/paul-ryan-romney-vp-pick-11562917?src=soc_twtr


Make no mistake. In his decision to make Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin, his running mate, Romney finally surrendered the tattered remnants of his soul not only to the extreme base of his party, but also to extremist economic policies, and to an extremist view of the country he seeks to lead. This is unimaginable to those of us who lived here under Romney's barely perceptible stewardship of the Commonwealth (God save it!).

The headline? "Paul Ryan: murderer of opportunity, political coward, candidate for vice president of the United States."

UPDATE: Via Jeremy Lott, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jeremylott/2012/08/worst-piece-on-the-paul-ryan-pick-so-far/ here is the runner-up: http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/106035/picking-ryan-isnt-bold-its-highly-risk-averse


Ryan is the way Romney and his aides escape blame for their now-likely defeat—blame which would have vicious and unrelenting—and pin it in on conservatives instead. With only minor historical revisions, they will be able to tell a story about how Romney was keeping the race close through early August, at which point the party’s conservative darling joined the ticket and sent the poll numbers into steady decline.

Now I don't dispute that this is how the Romneyites and moderate Republicans will spin a Romney-Ryan defeat. But the idea that a man as ambitious as Romney is already at this early stage planning on spinning his defeat and is going to spend grueling months on the campaign trail -- having already spent vast sums of his personal fortune -- on a doomed campaign doesn't pass the laugh test.

http://spectator.org/blog/2012/08/11/esquire-blogger-sees-paul-ryan

[Jolie Rouge]

Scores of women mysteriously appear at Romney/Ryan rally, Andrea Mitchell stumped
By Doug Powers • August 12, 2012 06:13 PM

Yesterday, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell claimed that Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate was “not a pick for women.” If that’s true, how can Mitchell explain why there are so many women in these pictures. http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/08/this-is-what-2012-looks-like-lines-around-the-block-at-romney-ryan-rally-in-high-point-nc/

And these. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151975539980618.872947.809260617&type=1&l=662a065db8

And these. http://twitchy.com/2012/08/12/romneyryan2012-rally-in-nc-on-scene-reports-photos-show-overflow-crowd-fired-up-ready-to-go/

And this one. https://twitter.com/sreinecke/status/234746943950176256/photo/1

And these. http://maroonedinmarin.blogspot.com/2012/08/another-overflow-crowd-at-romney-ryan.html

Were those women on their way to a Sandra Fluke speech and got lost? http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/08/obama-joins-sandra-fluke-pitches-health-law-in-play-for-colorado-women-voters/ They might have been by the time Mitchell files her report later.


The inside of Andrea Mitchell’s head probably looks something like this,
http://s.michellemalkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/obama11.jpg
so she may find it surprising that plenty of women will not only support Paul Ryan on the ticket,
but might be re-energized as a result.


In general, the Ryan pick has so far been a booster rocket for the Romney campaign: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444184704577585424116540572.html


The crowds at Romney rallies swelled to the thousands and grew more raucous in the wake of his vice presidential pick—and the running mates’ Midwestern roots became a major theme.

The weekend’s appearances offered the first glimpse of what Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign now looks like, after adding Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to the ticket. Mr. Romney spent Saturday and Sunday basking in the bump from his new No. 2, as the duo drew crowds of thousands—not previously a regular occurrence for Mr. Romney—and were greeted with raucous applause.


In related news, Paul Ryan is already appearing on Shepard Fairey inspired shirt designs, albeit a little more grounded in reality.


https://p.twimg.com/A0H4fndCYAAs7Qx.jpg



**Written by Doug Powers http://michellemalkin.com/2012/08/12/andrea-mitchell-women-rally/


comments

I have heard from one liberal today that women will reject Ryan because he’s Catholic. Just one more example of liberal intolerance going all the way back to segregation. Phooey!

..

Looks like the Romney/Ryan campaign will have to be getting larger venues. If the size of these crowds are indicative, the pick of Paul Ryan is just what Romney needed. No wonder the state controlled media and the Obama people (redundant) are scared out of their undies

..

More pics from Legal Insurrection…

This is what 2012 looks like

http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/08/this-is-what-2012-looks-like-lines-around-the-block-at-romney-ryan-rally-in-high-point-nc/

“Going into the doors. Holy moly I can’t believe the people.”

“One picture is the front of the line, one picture kinda the back, EXCEPT my camera can’t capture two and a half blocks of people.”

“Many are actually women (the shock).”


..

I too am really looking forward to voting for Romney / Ryan in Nov.

While not exactly equipped to say what is attractive to women, I think seeing a man acting completely selflessly to come to the aid of a friend in dire need is attractive to everyone of substance;
http://www.snopes.com/politics/romney/search.asp
Remember this ?

We DO have a choice at the polls this time; Character / Conservatism vs. more lies, unimaginable debt and chrony state-capitalism.

[wobblypops]

This man deserves the top stop on the ticket & push Mitt to VP.

He's a very smart numbers man & if he gets to lead, once they get into office, this country will be well on its way to the recovery we all need so bad.

[janelle]

Bidden is also Catholic but no one mentions that. Guess they know he is a fake Catholic just like Nancy Pelosi and Kathleen Sebelius but Ryan is the real thing. That scares them.

I saw an interview of Ryan on EWTN. His father died when he was 16 and he had to help his mother. Also they moved his grandmother in with them when she got Alz and took care of her. I bet the video of him throwing granny off the cliff hurts him when he took good care of his own grandmother.

It's going to be and is the most dirty political season ever.

[Jolie Rouge]

Hecklers try to join Paul Ryan on stage, media notes ‘spirited’ atmosphere
By Doug Powers • August 13, 2012 07:25 PM


There are just under three months to go until the election, and probably very few of those days will go by without something like this happening: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/08/paul-ryan-heckled-at-iowa-state-fair/


Ryan’s first foray into Iowa came on the same day when President Obama began his bus tour through the Hawkeye state.

“I heard that President Obama is starting his bus tour today and I heard he wasn’t going to come to the Iowa State Fair,” Paul said.

“Are you going to cut Medicare?” a woman shouted.

“It’s funny because Iowans and Wisconsinites, we like to be respectful of one another and peaceful with one another and listen to one another. These ladies must not be from Iowa or Wisconsin,” Paul said, referring to the protesters.

And that’s when things got much rowdier. A female protester began to climb on the small stage. She was able to get up before being dragged off by Ryan’s Secret Service detail.

Ryan, dressed in a red checked shirt and jeans, continued with his pitch to the rest of the crowd, many holding Romney signs or even standing in front of protesters.

We now await Debbie Wasserman Schultz to claim she is unaware of their party affiliation.

As you can see in the video below, security, not to mention the architectural integrity of the stage, was nearly compromised today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqxjRfSBBmw&feature=player_embedded

If something similar had happened during an Obama or Biden speech, would anyone in the MSM have described the atmosphere as “spirited”? http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2012/08/paul-ryan-iowa-state-fair-/1#.UCmHDs95Of4

Twitchy has lots more. http://twitchy.com/2012/08/13/on-scene-reports-from-iowa-state-fair-lapdog-media-focus-on-ryan-hecklers-ignore-fired-up-crowd/

Update: The Right Scoop has Ryan’s entire speech. http://www.therightscoop.com/full-speech-paul-ryans-first-solo-act-on-the-campaign-trail-draws-huge-crowd-and-a-few-protestors/ A few protesters will try to dominate the coverage (and they’ll succeed to a great degree on some of the mainstream outlets) as the weeks go on but the focus of those wishing for change should and will stay on the message.

Also, Romney’s doing a good job handling the hecklers. http://www.therightscoop.com/awesome-romney-responds-to-heckler-in-wisconsin-then-tells-obama-to-get-his-campaign-out-of-the-gutter/


**Written by Doug Powers http://michellemalkin.com/2012/08/13/paul-ryan-iowa/


Astroturfing is popular with desperate liberals.

..

This is an advantage. The indies who will decide the election see this and say, “STFU lady, I want to hear what he has to say. I’ll make up my own mind, jerk.”

The incivility is born in desperation. They fear Ryan and with good reason.

..

In all seriousness, I do hope the Secret Service will do a better job.

Please pray daily for the protection of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in the months to come, and for this country.

..

NBC glorified the antics of these two morons just as one would expect from that left wing piece of trash.

..

This woman is an example of the new civility which is encouraged by the community organizer in chief who says “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,”
What a tool.

..

I’m afraid things are going to get insane by November. The left is going to go absolutely out of their so-called minds as they election approaches and it is clear obama is going to lose. I predict violence by the left, along with nervous mental breakdowns by the left.

..

Wouldn’t count the chickens yet! It shouldn’t even BE a close race to begin with were Americans really keen and aware of the direction the country’s headed. But along your mention, by my local read around Queens and blogs, expect these campaign nuggets by October:

“This country OWES its 1st black President a 2nd term to catch up with all the missed chances since 1776!”

Yes, sounds humorous, but this will be the main flavor of the race card this term. It’s already playing in my family and block.

“Whites just can’t take a black man ruling over them, that’s why they’re by hook or crook going to force him out!”

Most popular anti-repub marching motto.

“The Tea Party is so insanely racist they’re going to hire someone to try to assassinate Obama!”

This chestnut’s been picking up some moss lately around these parts. Look forward to Sharpton making subtle hints of such.

“Makes no difference to me if we turn into Europe or socialist! I wanna job, keep my house and no more worries ’bout getting sick!”

And candyman Obama delivers. This is really the most disturbing one because it heartedly goes outside the black community. People are willing to sacrifice America’s heritage for social assurance. It tells me that many/most Americans STILL don’t know what’s at stake in this election, and that this one is uniquely unlike any other.

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/391242_10151004360271275_245189469_n.jpg

[Jolie Rouge]

https://p.twimg.com/A0H4fndCYAAs7Qx.jpg

Math is hard for Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Almost as hard as the truth. The DNC chair and habitual secret-keeper made no secret of her penchant for fear-mongering when she appeared today on “The Situation Room.� Wolf Blitzer asked Wasserman Schultz about her and her fellow Democrats’ Mediscare smear campaign against Paul Ryan. We’d love to elaborate on the interview, but, well, this is one of those things you just need to see for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r5NJF5Fcvmg

Yes. That just happened.

http://twitchy.com/2012/08/13/debbie-wasserman-schultz-pwned-by-wolf-blitzer-on-mediscare-lies/



Wasserman Schultz✔ @DWStweets 13 Aug 12

While Romney campaigns in Florida, I'll be on @wolfblitzercnn at 5:35 talking about why he & Paul Ryan would be a disaster for our state.

Chris@NUTailgate
@wolfblitzercnn way to take @DWStweets to school. You rightfully pushed her because she had no legitimate answer. #spin youtu.be/r5NJF5Fcvmg

13 Aug 12

And then it was time to take Wasserman Schultz to the woodshed:


el SOOPer@SooperMexican

.@DWStweets saying Romney killed a woman, and Paul Ryan will kill all Seniors... and the GOP fearmongers?


Mr Broes@mrbroes 13 Aug 12

DNC Chair @DWStweets get's her -ss handed to her on CNN, yes CNN You heard me! youtube.com/watch?v=r5NJF5…

Hand of Doom@djwolf76

@mrbroes I gotta say @DWStweets you need to stay within the confines of NBC & MSNBC because your stupidity level is absolutely stunning.



D Wasserman Schultz✔
@DWStweets 13 Aug 12

While Romney campaigns in Florida, I'll be on @wolfblitzercnn at 5:35 talking about why he & Paul Ryan would be a disaster for our state.

Mike Marchionda@jerseywingding
@DWStweets @wolfblitzercnn when CNN can't even accept your BS spin, you know you are in trouble #liar

13 Aug 12

Scott Trent@Scott9811
Wolf Blitzer really made you STUPID. And CNN is on your side! lol Why do you LIE so much? Why do you MEDISCARE? @DWStweets

13 Aug 12



D Wasserman Schultz✔@DWStweets 13 Aug 12

Paul Ryan is notably absent here in Florida today. No wonder: Seniors want nothing to do with #RomneyRyanEconomics. pic.twitter.com/77cbOS12

Maeghan@maeghandawn
@DWStweets His mother is a senior on Medicare in FL. Careful, your lies will be taking a big bite out of your ass when #RomneyRyan WIN BIG.

13 Aug 12

But is Wasserman Schultz really all that dumb? Considering the frequency with which she backs herself into corners, one could certainly make the case. But to just stop at dumb would in a sense be giving her a pass on the things she says. It seems more likely that Wasserman Schultz either knows exactly what’s going on and feigns ignorance or that she is in fact willfully blind to reality. Either way, she’s a disgrace.


Gabriel Malor@gabrielmalor 13 Aug 12
I think she's simply not very bright. RT @JohnEkdahl: @gabrielmalor Do you think she's intentionally saying 65 instead of 55 the whole time?



Dan McLaughlin@baseballcrank
@gabrielmalor @JohnEkdahl There's a difference between dumb & being strategically obtuse.

13 Aug 12

Oh, snap!


Guy Benson@guypbenson

May I remind you that @DWStweets was hand-picked for her prominent role by the sagacious @BarackObama

[Jolie Rouge]

FULL SPEECH: Paul Ryan’s first solo act on the campaign trail draws huge crowd and a few protestors
Posted by The Right Scoop on August 13th, 2012 in Politics

It was a great speech, but I was a bit distracted by watching the protesters continually try and make a menace out of themselves. It started within the first 2 minutes where 2 protesters rushing the stage had to be dragged away and the rest of the speech others were trying to block the camera and be disruptive. In fact you won’t see Paul Ryan very much in this clip, but you’ll hear him just fine as he ignored them quite well and stayed on message.

You can watch the full speech below: http://www.therightscoop.com/full-speech-paul-ryans-first-solo-act-on-the-campaign-trail-draws-huge-crowd-and-a-few-protestors/

[Jolie Rouge]

Randing Ryan
By Aaron Goldstein on 8.13.12 @ 5:28PM

I find it interesting how The Washington Post, NPR, Newsday, Slate and The Los Angeles Times amongst others are falling all over each other to scrutinize the influence Ayn Rand had on the intellectual development of Paul Ryan.

I am not saying these outlets shouldn't do so. But it would be nice if they had devoted the same energy to scrutinizing President Obama's intellectual development vis a vis Saul Alinsky and the very much alive Bill Ayers, Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Rashid Khalidi. Alas, such scrutiny into Obama's intellectual development is viewed as rude and racist. Besides these outlets reserve their branding for Republicans. Or in this case you could call it Randing.

BTW, The Los Angeles Times still has the videotape of Obama's 2003 appearance at the Khalidi tribute under lock and key having deemed it unfit for public viewing. :hmmmm:

http://spectator.org/blog/2012/08/13/randing-ryan


The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/what-ayn-rand-says-about-paul-ryan/2012/08/13/fd40d574-e56d-11e1-8741-940e3f6dbf48_blog.html

NPR http://www.npr.org/2012/08/11/158630471/what-an-ayn-rand-view-could-do-to-romneys-campaign

Newsday http://www.newsday.com/opinion/viewsday-1.3683911/filler-paul-ryan-ayn-rand-and-the-meaning-of-life-1.3899285

Slate http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/08/13/what_paul_ryan_s_ayn_rand_fandom_means_for_monetar y_policy.html

The Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-vp-paul-ryan-ayn-rand-20120811,0,1175099.story

[Jolie Rouge]

AP Ties Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio to 'Convicted Drug Dealer'
By Tim Graham | August 14, 2012 | 11:38

AP couldn’t let Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio hand out juice at a campaign event in Miami without connecting them to cocaine. What? David Fischer’s story was headlined “Host for Romney event is a convicted drug dealer.” It began: “Mitt Romney held a campaign event Monday evening at a Miami juice shop owned by a convicted cocaine trafficker.”

In 1995, cocaine trafficker Jorge Cabrera gained access to Al Gore and Hillary Clinton at separate fundraisers after giving $20,000 to the DNC. When that story broke a year later, CNN tried to describe him as a “commercial fisherman.” AP’s story continued: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iyGzTMI43N4QjAOhf-Gyy3jc_SJA?docId=3e0d64964cc74c809905e36117b587fe


Romney appeared at El Palacio de los Jugos, which is owned by Reinaldo Bermudez. Court records show that Bermudez pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine in 1999 and served three years in federal prison.

Appearing with Romney was Sen. Marco Rubio. Both men handed out juices to an excited crowd after making brief remarks. Romney was filming a campaign ad at the juice shop, aides said.

The Romney campaign didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Phone calls placed by The Associated Press to the juice shop weren't answered.

Bermudez told the Miami New Times that the Secret Service vetted everything about him when the Romney campaign asked to use his fresh fruit and vegetable stand and that they knew about his criminal record.

"Here in Miami there are a lot people with money who have had problems with the law," Bermudez told the New Times. "Thankfully, we all have the opportunity in this country to re-enter society when we've done something wrong."

Does anyone believe AP would have leaped on this detail about who sold the juice – a man with one drug offense in 1999, with time served – if Obama had an event at the same venue?

For a historical match on Jorge Cabrera, here’s a quick summary from the book Whitewash, which I wrote with Brent Bozell:


Then there's the tale of Jorge Cabrera, cocaine smuggler. The Cuban-born American citizen was already a convicted drug smuggler when the Democrats solicited him (as he was traveling in Cuba) for money despite his criminal record. He donated $20,000 to the Democrats in 1995, and gained access to a south Florida fundraiser with Al Gore in November -- and a White House Christmas party hosted by Hillary in December. Cabrera was photographed with both Gore and Mrs. Clinton.

Three weeks later, he was arrested inside a Dade County cigar warehouse, in a drug bust which found 500 pounds of cocaine. Cabrera was charged with trying to smuggle three tons of cocaine and 30 cases of Cohiba cigars into the United States, and was sentenced in late 1996 to 19 years in a federal prison. The Democrats did not return his money until October 19, 1996, when reporters started inquiring


http://a4.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/14/d1441cf292bc996f6f856b7c42d93de7/l.jpg

The CNN story was illuminating. It showed the picture of Cabrera taken with Hillary Clinton, with Frank Sesno explaining, “That’s commercial fisherman Jorge Cabrera next to the First Lady last December.” Commercial fisherman? That’s a funny title, as you try to explain all the cocaine seized.

On Today, NBC weekend host Jodi Applegate made Cabrera’s photos with Gore and the Clintons sound like unintentional fender-bending accidents. She said to Tim Russert, “Jorge Cabrera, a convicted drug smuggler who gave $20,000 to the DNC, wound up at a fancy dinner with Al Gore, wound up at a White House Christmas party with Hillary Clinton. But they gave the money back when they found out about his background. It may not look good, but is there any proof that anything was done wrong?” At least Russert acknowledged the White House had “no standards when it came to raising money.”


Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2012/08/14/ap-ties-mitt-romney-marco-rubio-convicted-drug-dealer#ixzz23Yc02ci9

comments

Where was this headline:


"Host of Obama political career kickoff, Bill Ayers, convicted Terrorist and bomber!"

...

When do we know who Obamas drug dealer was (is?) ?

He has freely and publicly admitted to his own drug use.

...

Convicted Drug offenders? What does Marion Barry have to do with Romney?

...

Where was the AP when Tony Rezco was buying Barry0 a house?

[Jolie Rouge]

Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Ryan makes the connection

This is what Ryan brings to the ticket that Romney just couldn't say. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/14/ryan-embraces-regular-guy-routine-on-the-stump-in-colorado/


"You know, I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, you know when I was flipping burgers at McDonalds, when I was standing in front of that big Hobart machine washing dishes or waiting tables, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life," Ryan told at least two thousand fired up supporters at Lakewood High School in suburban Denver. "I thought to myself: I'm the American dream."


What is even more important is how he so naturally ties his personal background to a bigger, conservative message. People don't stay all their lives at one place in the economic scale. Where we were as young people is not where we will end up if we work hard and apply our talents.

Thomas Sowell has been making this point over and over. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/312786/who-are-1-percent-thomas-sowell


All sorts of statements are made in politics and in the media as if that top 1 percent is an enduring class of people, rather than an ever-changing collection of individuals who have a spike in their income in a particular year for one reason or another. Turnover in other income brackets is also substantial.

There is nothing mysterious about this. Most people start out at the bottom, in entry-level jobs, and their incomes rise over time as they acquire more skills and experience.

Politicians and media talking heads love to refer to people who are in the bottom 20 percent in income in a given year as “the poor.” But, following the same individuals for 10 or 15 years usually shows the great majority of those individuals moving into higher income brackets.

The number who reach the top 20 percent greatly exceeds the number still stuck in the bottom 20 percent over the years. But such mundane facts cannot compete for attention with the moral melodramas conjured up by politicians and the media when they discuss “the rich” and “the poor.”

Ryan is echoing this line from Abraham Lincoln:
"The man who labored for another last year, this year labors for himself, and next year he will hire others to labor for him."

This is such an obvious point, but so many people miss out on the idea of incomes changing over time and so they don't understand the power of that dream.

http://betsyspage.blogspot.com/2012/08/ryan-makes-connection.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Ryan explains why Medicare cuts were in his House budget
By Chris Moody, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 2 hrs 15 mins ago.

..

WARREN, Ohio -- Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan moved to explain why the federal budget plan he proposed as House Budget Chairman included more than $700 billion in cuts to Medicare Thursday, arguing that he was using President Barack Obama's baseline that already included those cuts when crafting the budget.

Since the Medicare cuts were part of Obama's health care law, Republicans included that projected spending in their proposal, Ryan said. He justified it by pointing out that the House later voted to repeal the health care law, which would have stripped out those cuts and said that Republicans never proposed them. "First of all, those are in the baseline, he put those cuts in," Ryan said, referring to Obama. "Second of all, we voted to repeal Obamacare repeatedly, including those cuts. I voted that way before the budget, I voted that way after the budget. So when you repeal all of Obamacare what you end up doing is that repeals that as well."

"In our budget we've restored a lot of that," Ryan continued. "It gets a little wonky but it was already in the baseline. We would never have done it in the first place. We voted to repeal the whole bill. I just don't think the president's going to be able to get out of the fact that he took $716 billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare."

Both Mitt Romney and Ryan have criticized the president for using Medicare funds to pay for the health care law. Democrats have responded by pointing out that Ryan included those cuts in his own budget. "When we voted to repeal Obamacare we voted to repeal all of it," Ryan said.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/ryan-explains-why-medicare-cuts-were-house-budget-172943914.html


comments

How about start cutting the health benefits of the present and past congress members for starter?

..

What amazes me is that everyone is so quick to REPEAL but no one speaks out on all the freebies, including healthcare, that our "public servants" receive as part of the privalege to work for US. We seem to forget the government should be representing us, not sucking us dry. Everyone, well...almost everyone, that goes into office and comes out a multi-millionaire. That's because while they are in there "representing" the average Joe, they are using every loophole they pass to line their pockets They take our taxes and have a problem giving back. The whole idea is they keep us fighting amoungst each other so they can laugh their way back to the bank. Granted, the ACA may not be the best piece of legislation out there but why eliminate it? Why not work to make it better...better for EVERYONE, not just the people that are supposed to be working for us. After all...they are millionaires, why do they need ANYTHING for FREE?

..

We spend, per capita, far more than any other nation on the planet, $7,960 per capita vs. "socialist" Sweden spending less than half of that at $3,722. Everybody want the best healthcare here and no wants to pay for it. Neither party has credible plans to deal with the cost and access issues, since they are all paid off by healtcare firms and big pharma who are all busy gorging at the money trough. Romney, Obama, Ryan et al, are all full of it.

[Jolie Rouge]

.
Ann Romney’s full RNC speech
By Max Zimbert | The Ticket – 11 hrs ago.

Ann Romney's speech at the Republican National Convention (as prepared for delivery):

Luce, thank you for that kind introduction.

I want to talk to you tonight not about politics and not about party.

And while there are many important issues we'll hear discussed in this convention and throughout this campaign, tonight I want to talk to you from my heart about our hearts.

I want to talk not about what divides us, but what holds us together as an American family. I want to talk to you tonight about that one great thing that unites us, that one thing that brings us our greatest joy when times are good, and the deepest solace in our dark hours.

Tonight I want to talk to you about love.

I want to talk to you about the deep and abiding love I have for a man I met at a dance many years ago. And the profound love I have, and I know we share, for this country.

I want to talk to you about that love so deep only a mother can fathom it -- the love we have for our children and our children's children.

And I want us to think tonight about the love we all share for those Americans, our brothers and sisters, who are going through difficult times, whose days are never easy, nights are always long, and whose work never seems done.

They are here among us tonight in this hall; they are here in neighborhoods across Tampa and all across America. The parents who lie awake at night side by side, wondering how they'll be able to pay the mortgage or make the rent; the single dad who's working extra hours tonight, so that his kids can buy some new clothes to go back to school, can take a school trip or play a sport, so his kids can feel… like the other kids.

And the working moms who love their jobs but would like to work just a little less to spend more time with the kids, but that's just out of the question with this economy. Or that couple who would like to have another child, but wonder how will they afford it.

I've been all across this country for the past year and a half and heard these stories of how hard it is to get ahead now. I've heard your voices: "I'm running in place," "we just can't get ahead."

Sometimes I think that late at night, if we were all silent for just a few moments and listened carefully, we could hear a great collective sigh from the moms and dads across America who made it through another day, and know that they'll make it through another one tomorrow. But in that end of the day moment, they just aren't sure how.

And if you listen carefully, you'll hear the women sighing a little bit more than the men. It's how it is, isn't it?

It's the moms who always have to work a little harder, to make everything right.

It's the moms of this nation -- single, married, widowed -- who really hold this country together. We're the mothers, we're the wives, we're the grandmothers, we're the big sisters, we're the little sisters, we're the daughters.

You know it's true, don't you?

You're the ones who always have to do a little more.

You know what it's like to work a little harder during the day to earn the respect you deserve at work and then come home to help with that book report which just has to be done.

You know what those late night phone calls with an elderly parent are like and the long weekend drives just to see how they're doing.

You know the fastest route to the local emergency room and which doctors actually answer the phone when you call at night.

You know what it's like to sit in that graduation ceremony and wonder how it was that so many long days turned into years that went by so quickly.

You are the best of America.

You are the hope of America.

There would not be an America without you.

Tonight, we salute you and sing your praises.

I'm not sure if men really understand this, but I don't think there's a woman in America who really expects her life to be easy. In our own ways, we all know better!

And that's fine. We don't want easy. But these last few years have been harder than they needed to be. It's all the little things -- that price at the pump you just can't believe, the grocery bills that just get bigger; all those things that used to be free, like school sports, are now one more bill to pay. It's all the little things that pile up to become big things. And the big things -- the good jobs, the chance at college, that home you want to buy, just get harder. Everything has become harder.

We're too smart to know there aren't easy answers. But we're not dumb enough to accept that there aren't better answers.

And that is where this boy I met at a high school dance comes in.

His name is Mitt Romney and you really should get to know him.

I could tell you why I fell in love with him -- he was tall, laughed a lot, was nervous -- girls like that, it shows the guy's a little intimidated -- and he was nice to my parents but he was really glad when my parents weren't around.

That's a good thing. And he made me laugh.

I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner who was determined that his kids get out of the mines. My dad got his first job when he was six years old, in a little village in Wales called Nantyffyllon, cleaning bottles at the Colliers Arms.

When he was 15, dad came to America. In our country, he saw hope and an opportunity to escape from poverty. He moved to a small town in the great state of Michigan. There, he started a business -- one he built himself, by the way.

He raised a family. And he became mayor of our town.

My dad would often remind my brothers and me how fortunate we were to grow up in a place like America. He wanted us to have every opportunity that came with life in this country -- and so he pushed us to be our best and give our all.

Inside the houses that lined the streets of our town, there were a lot of good fathers teaching their sons and daughters those same values. I didn't know it at the time, but one of those dads was my future father-in-law, George Romney.

Mitt's dad never graduated from college. Instead, he became a carpenter.

He worked hard, and he became the head of a car company, and then the governor of Michigan.

When Mitt and I met and fell in love, we were determined not to let anything stand in the way of our life together. I was an Episcopalian. He was a Mormon.

We were very young. Both still in college. There were many reasons to delay marriage, and you know? We just didn't care. We got married and moved into a basement apartment. We walked to class together, shared the housekeeping, and ate a lot of pasta and tuna fish. Our desk was a door propped up on sawhorses. Our dining room table was a fold down ironing board in the kitchen. Those were very special days.

Then our first son came along. All at once I'm 22 years old, with a baby and a husband who's going to business school and law school at the same time, and I can tell you, probably like every other girl who finds herself in a new life far from family and friends, with a new baby and a new husband, that it dawned on me that I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into.

That was 42 years ago. Now we have five sons and 18 grandchildren and I'm still in love with that boy I met at a high school dance.

I read somewhere that Mitt and I have a "storybook marriage." Well, in the storybooks I read, there were never long, long, rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once. And those storybooks never seemed to have chapters called MS or Breast Cancer.

A storybook marriage? No, not at all. What Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage.

I know this good and decent man for what he is -- warm and loving and patient.

He has tried to live his life with a set of values centered on family, faith, and love of one's fellow man. From the time we were first married, I've seen him spend countless hours helping others. I've seen him drop everything to help a friend in trouble, and been there when late-night calls of panic came from a member of our church whose child had been taken to the hospital.

You may not agree with Mitt's positions on issues or his politics. Massachusetts is only 13% Republican, so it's not like that's a shock.

But let me say this to every American who is thinking about who should be our next President:

No one will work harder.

No one will care more.

No one will move heaven and earth like Mitt Romney to make this country a better place to live!

It's true that Mitt has been successful at each new challenge he has taken on. It amazes me to see his history of success actually being attacked. Are those really the values that made our country great? As a mom of five boys, do we want to raise our children to be afraid of success?

Do we send our children out in the world with the advice, "Try to do... okay?"

And let's be honest. If the last four years had been more successful, do we really think there would be this attack on Mitt Romney's success?

Of course not.

Mitt will be the first to tell you that he is the most fortunate man in the world. He had two loving parents who gave him strong values and taught him the value of work. He had the chance to get the education his father never had.

But as his partner on this amazing journey, I can tell you Mitt Romney was not handed success.

He built it.

He stayed in Massachusetts after graduate school and got a job. I saw the long hours that started with that first job. I was there when he and a small group of friends talked about starting a new company. I was there when they struggled and wondered if the whole idea just wasn't going to work. Mitt's reaction was to work harder and press on.

( continues ...)

[Jolie Rouge]

Today that company has become another great American success story.

Has it made those who started the company successful beyond their dreams?

Yes, it has.

It allowed us to give our sons the chance at good educations and made all those long hours of book reports and homework worth every minute. It's given us the deep satisfaction of being able to help others in ways that we could never have imagined. Mitt doesn't like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point. And we're no different than the millions of Americans who quietly help their neighbors, their churches and their communities. They don't do it so that others will think more of them.

They do it because there IS no greater joy.

"Give and it shall be given unto you."

But because this is America, that small company which grew has helped so many others lead better lives. The jobs that grew from the risks they took have become college educations, first homes. That success has helped fund scholarships, pensions, and retirement funds. This is the genius of America: dreams fulfilled help others launch new dreams.

At every turn in his life, this man I met at a high school dance, has helped lift up others. He did it with the Olympics, when many wanted to give up.

He did it in Massachusetts, where he guided a state from economic crisis to unemployment of just 4.7%.

Under Mitt, Massachusetts's schools were the best in the nation. The best. He started the John and Abigail Adams scholarships, which give the top 25% of high school graduates a four-year tuition-free scholarship.

This is the man America needs.

This is the man who will wake up every day with the determination to solve the problems that others say can't be solved, to fix what others say is beyond repair. This is the man who will work harder than anyone so that we can work a little less hard.

I can't tell you what will happen over the next four years. But I can only stand here tonight, as a wife, a mother, a grandmother, an American, and make you this solemn commitment:

This man will not fail.

This man will not let us down.

This man will lift up America!

It has been 47 years since that tall, kind of charming young man brought me home from our first dance. Not every day since has been easy.

But he still makes me laugh. And never once did I have a single reason to doubt that I was the luckiest woman in the world.

I said tonight I wanted to talk to you about love. Look into your hearts.

This is our country.

This is our future.

These are our children and grandchildren.

You can trust Mitt.

He loves America.

He will take us to a better place, just as he took me home safely from that dance.

Give him that chance.

Give America that chance.

God bless each of you and God Bless the United States of America

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/ann-romney-full-rnc-speech-033907529.html

[Jolie Rouge]

.
Chris Christie’s complete RNC speech
By Max Zimbert | The Ticket – 12 hrs ago.

..

Chris Christie's keynote speech at the Republican National Convention (as prepared for delivery):

This stage and this moment are very improbable for me.

A New Jersey Republican delivering the keynote address to our national convention, from a state with 700,000 more Democrats than Republicans.

A New Jersey Republican stands before you tonight.

Proud of my party, proud of my state and proud of my country.

I am the son of an Irish father and a Sicilian mother.

My Dad, who I am blessed to have with me here tonight, is gregarious, outgoing and loveable.

My Mom, who I lost 8 years ago, was the enforcer. She made sure we all knew who set the rules.

In the automobile of life, Dad was just a passenger. Mom was the driver.

They both lived hard lives. Dad grew up in poverty. After returning from Army service, he worked at the Breyers Ice Cream plant in the 1950s. With that job and the G.I. bill he put himself through Rutgers University at night to become the first in his family to earn a college degree. Our first family picture was on his graduation day, with Mom beaming next to him, six months pregnant with me.

Mom also came from nothing. She was raised by a single mother who took three buses to get to work every day. And mom spent the time she was supposed to be a kid actually raising children — her two younger siblings. She was tough as nails and didn't suffer fools at all. The truth was she couldn't afford to. She spoke the truth — bluntly, directly and without much varnish.

I am her son.

I was her son as I listened to "Darkness on the Edge of Town" with my high school friends on the Jersey Shore.

I was her son as I moved into a studio apartment with Mary Pat to start a marriage that is now 26 years old.

I was her son as I coached our sons Andrew and Patrick on the fields of Mendham, and as I watched with pride as our daughters Sarah and Bridget marched with their soccer teams in the Labor Day parade.

And I am still her son today, as Governor, following the rules she taught me: to speak from the heart and to fight for your principles. She never thought you get extra credit for just speaking the truth.

The greatest lesson Mom ever taught me, though, was this one: she told me there would be times in your life when you have to choose between being loved and being respected. She said to always pick being respected, that love without respect was always fleeting -- but that respect could grow into real, lasting love.

Now, of course, she was talking about women.

But I have learned over time that it applies just as much to leadership. In fact, I think that advice applies to America today more than ever.

I believe we have become paralyzed by our desire to be loved.

Our founding fathers had the wisdom to know that social acceptance and popularity is fleeting and that this country's principles needed to be rooted in strengths greater than the passions and emotions of the times.

Our leaders today have decided it is more important to be popular, to do what is easy and say "yes," rather than to say no when "no" is what's required.

In recent years, we as a country have too often chosen the same path.

It's been easy for our leaders to say not us, and not now, in taking on the tough issues. And we've stood silently by and let them get away with it.

But tonight, I say enough.

I say, together, let's make a much different choice. Tonight, we are speaking up for ourselves and stepping up.

We are beginning to do what is right and what is necessary to make our country great again.

We are demanding that our leaders stop tearing each other down, and work together to take action on the big things facing America.

Tonight, we choose respect over love.

We are not afraid. We are taking our country back.

We are the great grandchildren of men and women who broke their backs in the name of American ingenuity; the grandchildren of the Greatest Generation; the sons and daughters of immigrants; the brothers and sisters of everyday heroes; the neighbors of entrepreneurs and firefighters, teachers and farmers, veterans and factory workers and everyone in-between who shows up not just on the big days or the good days, but on the bad days and on the hard days.

Each and every day. All 365 of them.

We are the United States of America.

Now we must lead the way our citizens live. To lead as my mother insisted I live, not by avoiding truths, especially the hard ones, but by facing up to them and being the better for it.

We cannot afford to do anything less.

I know because this was the challenge in New Jersey.

When I came into office, I could continue on the same path that led to wealth, jobs and people leaving the state or I could do the job the people elected me to do — to do the big things.

There were those who said it couldn't be done. The problems were too big, too politically charged, too broken to fix. But we were on a path we could no longer afford to follow.

They said it was impossible to cut taxes in a state where taxes were raised 115 times in eight years. That it was impossible to balance a budget at the same time, with an $11 billion deficit. Three years later, we have three balanced budgets with lower taxes.

We did it.

They said it was impossible to touch the third rail of politics. To take on the public sector unions and to reform a pension and health benefit system that was headed to bankruptcy.

With bipartisan leadership we saved taxpayers $132 billion over 30 years and saved retirees their pension.

We did it.

They said it was impossible to speak the truth to the teachers union. They were just too powerful. Real teacher tenure reform that demands accountability and ends the guarantee of a job for life regardless of performance would never happen.

For the first time in 100 years with bipartisan support, we did it.

The disciples of yesterday's politics underestimated the will of the people. They assumed our people were selfish; that when told of the difficult problems, tough choices and complicated solutions, they would simply turn their backs, that they would decide it was every man for himself.

Instead, the people of New Jersey stepped up and shared in the sacrifice.

They rewarded politicians who led instead of politicians who pandered.

We shouldn't be surprised.

We've never been a country to shy away from the truth. History shows that we stand up when it counts and it's this quality that has defined our character and our significance in the world.

I know this simple truth and I'm not afraid to say it: our ideas are right for America and their ideas have failed America.

Let's be clear with the American people tonight. Here's what we believe as Republicans and what they believe as Democrats.

We believe in telling hard working families the truth about our country's fiscal realities. Telling them what they already know — the math of federal spending doesn't add up.

With $5 trillion in debt added over the last four years, we have no other option but to make the hard choices, cut federal spending and fundamentally reduce the size of government.

They believe that the American people don't want to hear the truth about the extent of our fiscal difficulties and need to be coddled by big government.

They believe the American people are content to live the lie with them.

We believe in telling seniors the truth about our overburdened entitlements.

We know seniors not only want these programs to survive, but they just as badly want them secured for their grandchildren.

Seniors are not selfish.

They believe seniors will always put themselves ahead of their grandchildren. So they prey on their vulnerabilities and scare them with misinformation for the cynical purpose of winning the next election.

Their plan: whistle a happy tune while driving us off the fiscal cliff, as long as they are behind the wheel of power.

We believe that the majority of teachers in America know our system must be reformed to put students first so that America can compete.

Teachers don't teach to become rich or famous. They teach because they love children.

We believe that we should honor and reward the good ones while doing what's best for our nation's future — demanding accountability, higher standards and the best teacher in every classroom.

They believe the educational establishment will always put themselves ahead of children. That self-interest trumps common sense.

They believe in pitting unions against teachers, educators against parents, and lobbyists against children.

They believe in teacher's unions.

We believe in teachers.

We believe that if we tell the people the truth they will act bigger than the pettiness of Washington, D.C.

We believe it's possible to forge bipartisan compromise and stand up for conservative principles.

It's the power of our ideas, not of our rhetoric, that attracts people to our Party.

We win when we make it about what needs to be done; we lose when we play along with their game of scaring and dividing.

[Jolie Rouge]

For make no mistake, the problems are too big to let the American people lose — the slowest economic recovery in decades, a spiraling out of control deficit, an education system that's failing to compete in the world.

It doesn't matter how we got here. There is enough blame to go around.

What matters now is what we do.

I know we can fix our problems.

When there are people in the room who care more about doing the job they were elected to do than worrying about winning re-election, it's possible to work together, achieve principled compromise and get results.

The people have no patience for any other way.

It's simple.

We need politicians to care more about doing something and less about being something.

Believe me, if we can do this in a blue state with a conservative Republican Governor, Washington is out of excuses.

Leadership delivers.

Leadership counts.

Leadership matters.

We have this leader for America.

We have a nominee who will tell us the truth and who will lead with conviction. And now he has a running mate who will do the same.

We have Governor Mitt Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan, and we must make them our next President and Vice President.

Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths we need to hear to put us back on the path to growth and create good paying private sector jobs again in America.

Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths we need to hear to end the torrent of debt that is compromising our future and burying our economy.

Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths we need to hear to end the debacle of putting the world's greatest health care system in the hands of federal bureaucrats and putting those bureaucrats between an American citizen and her doctor.

We ended an era of absentee leadership without purpose or principle in New Jersey.

It's time to end this era of absentee leadership in the Oval Office and send real leaders to the White House.

America needs Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and we need them right now.

There is doubt and fear for our future in every corner of our country.

These feelings are real.

This moment is real.

It's a moment like this where some skeptics wonder if American greatness is over.

How those who have come before us had the spirit and tenacity to lead America to a new era of greatness in the face of challenge.

Not to look around and say "not me," but to say, "YES, ME."

I have an answer tonight for the skeptics and the naysayers, the dividers and the defenders of the status quo.

I have faith in us.

I know we can be the men and women our country calls on us to be.

I believe in America and her history.

There's only one thing missing now. Leadership. It takes leadership that you don't get from reading a poll.

You see, Mr. President — real leaders don't follow polls. Real leaders change polls.

That's what we need to do now.

Change polls through the power of our principles.

Change polls through the strength of our convictions.

Tonight, our duty is to tell the American people the truth.

Our problems are big and the solutions will not be painless. We all must share in the sacrifice. Any leader that tells us differently is simply not telling the truth.

I think tonight of the Greatest Generation.

We look back and marvel at their courage — overcoming the Great Depression, fighting Nazi tyranny, standing up for freedom around the world.

Now it's our time to answer history's call.

For make no mistake, every generation will be judged and so will we.

What will our children and grandchildren say of us? Will they say we buried our heads in the sand, we assuaged ourselves with the creature comforts we've acquired, that our problems were too big and we were too small, that someone else should make a difference because we can't?

Or will they say we stood up and made the tough choices needed to preserve our way of life?

I don't know about you, but I don't want my children and grandchildren to have to read in a history book what it was like to live in an American Century.

I don't want their only inheritance to be an enormous government that has overtaxed, overspent and over-borrowed a great people into second-class citizenship.

I want them to live in a second American Century.

A second American Century of strong economic growth where those who are willing to work hard will have good paying jobs to support their families and reach their dreams.

A second American Century where real American exceptionalism is not a political punch line, but is evident to everyone in the world just by watching the way our government conducts its business and everyday Americans live their lives.

A second American Century where our military is strong, our values are sure, our work ethic is unmatched and our Constitution remains a model for anyone in the world struggling for liberty.

Let us choose a path that will be remembered for generations to come. Standing strong for freedom will make the next century as great an American century as the last one.

This is the American way.

We have never been victims of destiny.

We have always been masters of our own.

I won't be part of the generation that fails that test and neither will you.

It's now time to stand up. There's no time left to waste.

If you're willing to stand up with me for America's future, I will stand up with you.

If you're willing to fight with me for Mitt Romney, I will fight with you.

If you're willing to hear the truth about the hard road ahead, and the rewards for America that truth will bear, I'm here to begin with you this new era of truth-telling.

Tonight, we choose the path that has always defined our nation's history.

Tonight, we finally and firmly answer the call that so many generations have had the courage to answer before us.

Tonight, we stand up for Mitt Romney as the next President of the United States.

And, together, we stand up once again for American greatness.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/chris-christie-complete-rnc-speech-033352885.html

[Jolie Rouge]

RNC power grab: the aftermath
By Michelle Malkin • August 29, 2012 12:39 PM

There were several inspiring speeches delivered at last night’s Republican National Convention. Talk of “unity” filled the air. Many GOP leaders praised the “grass-roots.” But behind the scenes, the RNC power grab has exacerbated distrust between a diverse group of rank-and-file activists and party bosses.

I have no patience for the Republican party-bots telling these front-line soldiers to shut up in the name of unity — and to hide “in-fighting” because the Left will publicize it. It should be publicized. Conservative activists and Tea Party members have worked their asses off within the system, doing the groundwork of righting the wayward GOP ship from the inside. These are the door-knockers, sign-makers, phone-bankers, and message-spreaders who fueled the Tea Party revolution and who enabled the 2010 GOP midterm victories. They fought for and earned their place at the table.

I also have no patience for the sideline-sitters who gripe that rules fights are booooooring and meaningless. The Tea Party conservative activists are doing what an effective movement is supposed to be: They’ve moved on from protests and rallies to the nuts and bolts of party politics. These battles matter, because exercising grass-roots muscles makes them stronger.

Finally, I have no patience for the addled critics who think we are unable to multi-task. Yes, you can criticize bad GOP maneuvers AND maintain the fight against Obama and the progressives at the same time! It’s easy if you try.

Below, I’m reprinting the after-action report from veteran conservative blogger and South Carolina GOP activist Drew McKissick, who first alerted me to the battle earlier this week.

The bottom line: Get organized, get loud, and stay vigilant. No matter who ends up in the White House in January, no matter what letter follows the names of the people in power in Washington, the grass-roots conservative movement must be prepared to stand its ground. Forewarned is forearmed.


RNC Rules Fight – After Action Report:

First let me say thank-you, thank-you to conservatives everywhere who spoke up and started a national firestorm over this issue. If you’re like me, you know just how important it is to the future of the conservative movement.

With the Rules meeting itself, the first problem was attendance. Many, many of our supporters simply didn’t make it there do to buses that were up to an hour late to pick them up, (Morton Blackwell of Virginia had this problem). Many of them who didn’tmake it would have been additional signatures to our petition. But they started the meeting anyway, introducing a motion to ratify the final report of last Friday with the exception of the rule 16 compromise language taking out candidate veto power over delegates. This final motion passed.

As the meeting was going on, we were circulating our minority report petition. At one point, the male delegate from Massachusetts snatched it out of the hands ot the lady from North Dakota, refusing to give it back after repeated demands, resulting in a shoving match when the delegate from Colorado came to her defense.

After the final vote was over, according to party rules, we had one hour to file our minority reports, and, according to Rules, they have to be filed with either the committee chair, secretary, or convention secretary. Of course, after the meeting, they were no where to be found.

We continued to pick up signatures after the meeting, getting up to 24 our our Rule 12 minority report…but 4 shy of what would have been needed. Again, many people simply weren’t there. Others had their arms twisted. And others, as I learned, were simply “replaced” on the committee by their delegations.

On the Rule 16 issue, we had enough – IF we could have submitted something on paper – but again, no one there…or to be found. So our only option was to re-submit, via email, the pdf of what we submitted last Friday. We emailed this to Sununu and the convention secretary. The problem however would have been that it had 29 signatures, but since Friday, 2 members asked to have their names removed, so it would have been a no-go.

After the vote on the convention floor, it occurred to me that we probably should have just told everyone to “vote no” on the rules entirely…and yell “division” to force a head count…if the rules failed, a new motion substituting the old rules may have been in order…but hindsight is 20-20.

The upside is that as a result of shining a light on what was going on and alerting everyone to it, we were able to force a compromise to get the worst part of the proposed changes removed, (the change that would let campaigns have veto power over delegates).

The downside is that all of the rest of the garbage went through, (i.e. letting the RNC change the rules between conventions, removing a March proportionality rule that will result in a massive front-loaded national primary in 4 or 8 years, forcing some caucus/convention states to bind delegates against their own rules and state law, etc..).

Worst yet, due to the RNC’s new power to change the rules, the [genie] is out of the bottle and, who knows, a proposal for candidates to have delegate veto power may yet be in our future.

This whole debacle verifies what I call “Drew McKissick’s unified theory of political power” – Those who get involved and stay involved have the power. Even idiots eventually get promoted up the chain to their level of incompotence if for no other reason that there is so much apathy that “somebody” has to fill xyz position and “hey, this guy always shows up, give it to him”. And there you go.

The takeaway for conservatives is this: GET INVOLVED – AND STAY INVOLVED. Yes, those boring old precinct meetings matter. Going to county party meetings matters. Running for delegate matters. Who your delegates pick for Platform and Rules Committees REALLY MATTERS. Show up…support good people who can’t be bullied.

Right now we have a campaign – or many campaigns – to win this November. And conservatives should do everything they can to win. But after Election Day remember, the candidates represent the party, not the other way around.

Keep the heat on, and keep them honest. This shook people up. Keep them that way.

Thanks again for all of the support. You have no idea how much it meant.

Sincerely,
Drew McKissick
Delegate, SC





More from Dean Clancy here http://grrc.podomatic.com/entry/2012-08-28T20_19_46-07_00#.UD4McD7seaE.twitter and here http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/dean-clancy/romneys-rnc-power-grab-what-happened :


At a minimum, the effect of the new rules will be to empower insiders over the broad party electorate and to discourage grassroots activists from taking part in the process. They will thus have a chilling effect on intra-party debate, including debate over the National Platform and, of course, on future rules changes. The “Inner Circle” has scored quite a coup.

…Governor Sununu chaired the meeting. Governor Barbour strongly urged “unity” and the need for everyone to set aside “differences” to “defeat Barack Obama.”

The rules package, containing the insider’s compromise, passed by a decisive vote of 78 to 14. Unfortunately, the Rule 12 change (permitting the RNC to change the rules between conventions) remained in the package, unaltered.

The package then went immediately to the full Convention for approval. On the convention floor, Governor Sununu offered it as a “strong governing framework” for the party over the next four years, and with no debate or even mention of the controversy over Rule 12, Speaker Boehner then called for the ayes and noes. The crowd roared loudly, on both sides of the question. Despite the “noes” being (in this hearer’s estimate) louder than the “ayes,” Boehner hastily gaveled the matter closed.

Apparently — and to our surprise and disappointment — the delegates’ did not have the power to call for a recorded vote from the floor. So we had no recourse from Boehner’s declaration that “The ayes have it.” Had we been able to force a roll-call vote, it would have delayed the day’s proceedings by several hours. We had been counting on this fact to provide us with leverage, since we knew Team Romney would have done almost anything to avoid such an embarrassing logistical foul-up on the Convention’s first night. But alas, it seems, that possibility had been foreseen, and the grassroots revolt was forestalled.

After the disappointing outcome, FreedomWorks released the following statement from Matt Kibbe:

I believe that the Republican party has made a huge mistake by effectively disenfranchising grassroots activists who want to be a part of the party process. If the party sincerely wants the support of citizens, shutting them out of the process is not the way to do it. Sooner rather than later the Republican establishment needs to come to terms with the decentralized nature of grassroots organization circa 2012. The terms of engagement can no longer be dictated from the top-down.

The new rules strongly suggest the insiders don’t think they need the grassroots to win in 2012, despite the critical role grassroots voters played in the historic 2010 wave election.


Despite this setback, we’re proud to have come so close to victory on such short notice and while operating under such severe disadvantages, relative to the insiders. This episode confirms just how powerful grassroots action can be in today’s world — and we hope the party insiders are taking note of this fact.

http://michellemalkin.com/2012/08/29/rnc-power-grab-the-aftermath/

[Jolie Rouge]

If last night’s GOP convention seemed to have a stunning lack of diversity…
…you were probably watching MSNBC:
By Doug Powers • August 29, 2012 09:49 AM

http://redalertpolitics.com/2012/08/28/msnbc-cuts-every-speech-made-by-a-minority-from-rnc-speech-coverage/


Senate, took the stage, MSNBC cut away from the Republican National Convention and the Hispanic Republican from Texas’ speech.

MSNBC stayed on commercial through former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis’ speech, as well. Davis, who recently became a Republican, is black.

Then, when Puerto Rican Governor Luis Fortuno’s wife Luce’ Vela Fortuño took the stage minutes later, MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews opted to talk over the First Lady’s speech.

And Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval? Noticeably missing from MSNBC, too.

Mia Love, a black candidate for Congress in Utah, was also ignored by MSNBC.


Hey, if it doesn’t fit the talking points, just don’t show it. VoilÃ*!

If you happened to have been stuck in a place that only had MSNBC on, The Right Scoop has the speeches of Davis, Cruz, Love, etc. posted here. http://www.therightscoop.com/

While we ponder how MSNBC will manage to avoid showing tonight’s speeches by Condoleezza Rice and Governor Luis Fortuño in order for Chris Matthews to have more time to discuss the GOP’s dog whistle racism http://michellemalkin.com/2012/08/27/gingrich-matthews/ enjoy this headline at the Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/did-god-plan-isaac-to-punish-republicans/2012/08/28/80ead6a0-f139-11e1-adc6-87dfa8eff430_blog.html?hpid=z12


Did God plan Isaac to punish Republicans?


Update: Via Instapundit, have a look at NBC’s section featuring Tuesday night’s RNC speeches. The people mentioned above have been erased from history. http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/28/13532831-video-tuesday-nights-rnc-speeches


**Written by Doug Powers http://michellemalkin.com/2012/08/29/gop-diversity/

Sick: Wikipedia entry calls Mia Love ‘dirty, worthless w h o re’ and ‘House Ni g ger’ http://twitchy.com/2012/08/29/



» Despicable MSNBC lapdogs whitewash minority speeches from RNC coverage http://twitchy.com/2012/08/29/despicable-msnbc-lapdogs-whitewash-minority-speeches-from-rnc-coverage/

Clay Aiken late to #negrospotting party, still manages Mormon joke; country star John Rich, others lash back
Posted at 11:01 pm on August 28, 2012
http://twitchy.com/2012/08/28/clay-aiken-late-to-negrospotting-party-still-manages-mormon-joke/


Racist much?

Wil Wheaton, other dishonest libs spin Ann Romney’s RNC speech as slam on gay marriage
http://twitchy.com/2012/08/29/wil-wheaton-other-dishonest-libs-spin-ann-romneys-rnc-speech-as-slam-on-gay-marriage/

[Jolie Rouge]

For those on here (and elsewhere) who say Mitt Romney is "out of touch" because of his wealth, here's an incredible piece from CBS This Morning (YES - I said CBS) about what we don't know about Mitt Romney (and yes, I didn't know most of this stuff either). We conservatives seem to bash the "liberal" mainstream media at any opportunity (which there are a lot). Here's a report from one of those mainstream media outlets that is surprisingly refreshing. REALLY WORTH WATCHING:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/​watch/​?id=7405692n&tag=mg%3Bmostpopvi​deo

[Jolie Rouge]

Condoleezza Rice Hits Obama On Foreign Policy
By GREGORY J. KRIEG | ABC OTUS News – 2 hrs 29 mins ago

Condoleezza Rice never addressed President Obama by name, but the former secretary of state delivered a sharp rejection of his foreign policy tonight, charging that the White House had forsaken past and potential allies, leaving the world to wonder, "Where does America stand?"

"When our friends and our foes, alike, do not know the answer to that question," she told the Republican National Convention, "the world is a chaotic and dangerous place."

Rice picked up on a theme laid out earlier tonight by Sen. John McCain who warned that "if America doesn't lead, our adversaries will, and the world will grow darker, poorer and much more dangerous." Rice criticized the president for taking a backseat to NATO during the battle for Libya and not doing more to stop the bloodshed in Syria.

"We cannot be reluctant to lead," Rice told fellow Republicans, who welcomed her to the stage with enthusiastic applause. "And you cannot lead from behind. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan understand this reality, that our leadership abroad and our well-being at home are inextricably linked."

"Our adversaries must have no reason to doubt our resolve because peace really does come through strength," said Rice, who was secretary of state in President George W. Bush's administration.

Turning to concerns that a growing deficit could undermine American influence abroad, she focused on China.

"Just consider this," she said. "The United States has ratified only three trade agreements in the last few years and those were negotiated in the Bush administration. China has signed 15 free trade agreements and is in the progress of negotiating as many as 18 more. Sadly we are abandoning the field of free and fair trade, and it will come back to haunt us."

Working without a Teleprompter, Rice occasionally looked down at her notes, but mostly drove home her points with a fierce right hand.

And her speech did not stop at the shoreline as she touched on domestic issues, lines that won her some of her evening's most raucous applause.

"On a personal note, a little girl grows up in Jim Crow Birmingham, the most segregated big city in America," Rice said, talking about her childhood in Alabama. "Her parents can't take her to a movie theater or a restaurant, but they make her believe that even though she can't have a hamburger at the Woolworth's lunch counter she can be president of the United States -- and she becomes the Secretary of State."

That dream, she said was in doubt, as economic dislocation crushes opportunity in areas hardest hit by the slow recovery.

"Your greatest ally in controlling your response to your circumstance is in a quality education," Rice said. "Today, when I can look at your zip code and can tell whether you are going to get a good education. Can I really say that it doesn't matter where you came from? It matters where you are going. The crisis in K-12 education is a threat to the very fabric who we are."

It is an issue Rice knows well from her time as provost at Stanford University, which she returned to in 2010 to work as a professor.

http://news.yahoo.com/condoleezza-rice-hits-obama-foreign-policy-020948614.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Paul Ryan: ‘College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms’
By Chris Moody, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 2 hrs 12 mins ago.

TAMPA -- Paul Ryan worked on this speech for weeks.

The Republican vice presidential candidate used his remarks to the 2012 Republican National Convention as an opportunity to introduce his family, promote Mitt Romney's vision for economic recovery, draw contrasts with President Barack Obama and profess the role of faith in his life. He even dropped in a quick line about Led Zeppelin, his favorite band.

Ryan tore into Obama's federal health care law that passed in 2010, the president's most prized legislative accomplishment. Ryan revived an attack from the campaign trail, accusing the president of passing the law "at the expense of the elderly" by trimming the growth in Medicare spending to pay for it. Between the men on the Republican ticket, Ryan is perhaps the better candidate to address health care, given Romney's support for a state-based proposal with similar provisions.

Ryan also made an enthusiastic appeal to young voters, attempting to tie Obama's policies to the unemployment rate among college graduates.

"College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms," Ryan said, "staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life." He went on to paint the future of Americans as an "adventureless journey," that relies on government programs from cradle to grave.

At times, Ryan overstepped, appearing to blame Obama for the closing of a plant in his district that shut down before the president even took office. When he railed against Obama's stimulus program, a massive infusion of government spending that passed in the president's first 100 days in office, Ryan neglected to mention that his own office requested that funds be directed to help businesses in his home state.

As a whole, Ryan portrayed a country that isn't better off than it was four years earlier, one that moves from crisis to crisis without an end in sight.

"It began with a financial crisis; it ends with a job crisis," Ryan said of Obama's first term in office. "It began with a housing crisis they alone didn't cause; it ends with a housing crisis they didn't correct."

The speech, which gave Ryan more exposure to voters than he's ever had in his public career, will likely set the tone for how Romney's campaign will use him for the rest of the fall campaign.

Below are the full prepared remarks: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/full-prepared-remarks-paul-ryan-rnc-speech-023400373.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Below are the full prepared remarks: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/f...023400373.html


Mr. Chairman, delegates, and fellow citizens: I am honored by the support of this convention for vice president of the United States.

I accept the duty to help lead our nation out of a jobs crisis and back to prosperity — and I know we can do this.

I accept the calling of my generation to give our children the America that was given to us, with opportunity for the young and security for the old — and I know that we are ready.

Our nominee is sure ready. His whole life has prepared him for this moment — to meet serious challenges in a serious way, without excuses and idle words. After four years of getting the run-around, America needs a turnaround, and the man for the job is Governor Mitt Romney.

I'm the newcomer to the campaign, so let me share a first impression. I have never seen opponents so silent about their record, and so desperate to keep their power.

They've run out of ideas. Their moment came and went. Fear and division are all they've got left.

With all their attack ads, the president is just throwing away money — and he's pretty experienced at that. You see, some people can't be dragged down by the usual cheap tactics, because their ability, character, and plain decency are so obvious — and ladies and gentlemen, that is Mitt Romney.

For my part, your nomination is an unexpected turn. It certainly came as news to my family, and I'd like you to meet them: My wife Janna, our daughter Liza, and our boys Charlie and Sam.

The kids are happy to see their grandma, who lives in Florida. There she is — my Mom, Betty.

My Dad, a small-town lawyer, was also named Paul. Until we lost him when I was 16, he was a gentle presence in my life. I like to think he'd be proud of me and my sister and brothers, because I'm sure proud of him and of where I come from, Janesville, Wisconsin.

I live on the same block where I grew up. We belong to the same parish where I was baptized. Janesville is that kind of place.

The people of Wisconsin have been good to me. I've tried to live up to their trust. And now I ask those hardworking men and women, and millions like them across America, to join our cause and get this country working again.

When Governor Romney asked me to join the ticket, I said, "Let's get this done" — and that is exactly, what we're going to do.

President Barack Obama came to office during an economic crisis, as he has reminded us a time or two. Those were very tough days, and any fair measure of his record has to take that into account. My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.

A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: "I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years." That's what he said in 2008.

Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that's how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.

Right now, 23 million men and women are struggling to find work. Twenty-three million people, unemployed or underemployed. Nearly one in six Americans is living in poverty. Millions of young Americans have graduated from college during the Obama presidency, ready to use their gifts and get moving in life. Half of them can't find the work they studied for, or any work at all.

So here's the question: Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?

The first troubling sign came with the stimulus. It was President Obama's first and best shot at fixing the economy, at a time when he got everything he wanted under one-party rule. It cost $831 billion — the largest one-time expenditure ever by our federal government.

It went to companies like Solyndra, with their gold-plated connections, subsidized jobs, and make-believe markets. The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst. You, the working men and women of this country, were cut out of the deal.

What did the taxpayers get out of the Obama stimulus? More debt. That money wasn't just spent and wasted — it was borrowed, spent, and wasted.

Maybe the greatest waste of all was time. Here we were, faced with a massive job crisis — so deep that if everyone out of work stood in single file, that unemployment line would stretch the length of the entire American continent. 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.

Obamacare comes to more than two thousand pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines that have no place in a free country.

The president has declared that the debate over government-controlled health care is over. That will come as news to the millions of Americans who will elect Mitt Romney so we can repeal Obamacare.

And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly.

You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover, even with new taxes on nearly a million small businesses, the planners in Washington still didn't have enough money. They needed more. They needed hundreds of billions more. So, they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn't even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we're going to stop it.

In Congress, when they take out the heavy books and wall charts about Medicare, my thoughts go back to a house on Garfield Street in Janesville. My wonderful grandma, Janet, had Alzheimer's and moved in with Mom and me. Though she felt lost at times, we did all the little things that made her feel loved.

We had help from Medicare, and it was there, just like it's there for my Mom today. Medicare is a promise, and we will honor it. A Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare, for my Mom's generation, for my generation, and for my kids and yours.

So our opponents can consider themselves on notice. In this election, on this issue, the usual posturing on the Left isn't going to work. Mitt Romney and I know the difference between protecting a program, and raiding it. Ladies and gentlemen, our nation needs this debate. We want this debate. We will win this debate.

Obamacare, as much as anything else, explains why a presidency that began with such anticipation now comes to such a disappointing close.

It began with a financial crisis; it ends with a job crisis.

It began with a housing crisis they alone didn't cause; it ends with a housing crisis they didn't correct.

It began with a perfect Triple-A credit rating for the United States; it ends with a downgraded America.

It all started off with stirring speeches, Greek columns, the thrill of something new. Now all that's left is a presidency adrift, surviving on slogans that already seem tired, grasping at a moment that has already passed, like a ship trying to sail on yesterday's wind.

President Obama was asked not long ago to reflect on any mistakes he might have made. He said, well, "I haven't communicated enough." He said his job is to "tell a story to the American people" — as if that's the whole problem here? He needs to talk more, and we need to be better listeners?

( continues ...)

[Jolie Rouge]

( continued)



Ladies and gentlemen, these past four years we have suffered no shortage of words in the White House. What's missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell, forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago — isn't it about time he assumed responsibility?

In this generation, a defining responsibility of government is to steer our nation clear of a debt crisis while there is still time. Back in 2008, candidate Obama called a $10 trillion national debt "unpatriotic" — serious talk from what looked to be a serious reformer.

Yet by his own decisions, President Obama has added more debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined. One president, one term, $5 trillion in new debt.

He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.

Republicans stepped up with good-faith reforms and solutions equal to the problems. How did the president respond? By doing nothing — nothing except to dodge and demagogue the issue.

So here we are, $16 trillion in debt and still he does nothing. In Europe, massive debts have put entire governments at risk of collapse, and still he does nothing. And all we have heard from this president and his team are attacks on anyone who dares to point out the obvious.

They have no answer to this simple reality: We need to stop spending money we don't have.

My Dad used to say to me: "Son. You have a choice: You can be part of the problem, or you can be part of the solution." The present administration has made its choices. And Mitt Romney and I have made ours: Before the math and the momentum overwhelm us all, we are going to solve this nation's economic problems.

And I'm going to level with you: We don't have that much time. But if we are serious, and smart, and we lead, we can do this.

After four years of government trying to divide up the wealth, we will get America creating wealth again. With tax fairness and regulatory reform, we'll put government back on the side of the men and women who create jobs, and the men and women who need jobs.

My Mom started a small business, and I've seen what it takes. Mom was 50 when my Dad died. She got on a bus every weekday for years, and rode 40 miles each morning to Madison. She earned a new degree and learned new skills to start her small business. It wasn't just a new livelihood. It was a new life. And it transformed my Mom from a widow in grief to a small businesswoman whose happiness wasn't just in the past. Her work gave her hope. It made our family proud. And to this day, my Mom is my role model.

Behind every small business, there's a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities, the restaurants, cleaners, gyms, hair salons, hardware stores — these didn't come out of nowhere. A lot of heart goes into each one. And if small businesspeople say they made it on their own, all they are saying is that nobody else worked seven days a week in their place. Nobody showed up in their place to open the door at five in the morning. Nobody did their thinking, and worrying, and sweating for them. After all that work, and in a bad economy, it sure doesn't help to hear from their president that government gets the credit. What they deserve to hear is the truth: Yes, you did build that.

We have a plan for a stronger middle class, with the goal of generating 12 million new jobs over the next four years.

In a clean break from the Obama years, and frankly from the years before this president, we will keep federal spending at 20 percent of GDP, or less. That is enough. The choice is whether to put hard limits on economic growth, or hard limits on the size of government, and we choose to limit government.

I learned a good deal about economics, and about America, from the author of the Reagan tax reforms — the great Jack Kemp. What gave Jack that incredible enthusiasm was his belief in the possibilities of free people, in the power of free enterprise and strong communities to overcome poverty and despair. We need that same optimism right now.

And in our dealings with other nations, a Romney-Ryan administration will speak with confidence and clarity. Wherever men and women rise up for their own freedom, they will know that the American president is on their side. Instead of managing American decline, leaving allies to doubt us and adversaries to test us, we will act in the conviction that the United States is still the greatest force for peace and liberty that this world has ever known.

President Obama is the kind of politician who puts promises on the record, and then calls that the record. But we are four years into this presidency. The issue is not the economy as Barack Obama inherited it, not the economy as he envisions it, but this economy as we are living it.

College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life. Everyone who feels stuck in the Obama economy is right to focus on the here and now. And I hope you understand this too, if you're feeling left out or passed by: You have not failed, your leaders have failed you.

None of us have to settle for the best this administration offers — a dull, adventureless journey from one entitlement to the next, a government-planned life, a country where everything is free but us.

Listen to the way we're spoken to already, as if everyone is stuck in some class or station in life, victims of circumstances beyond our control, with government there to help us cope with our fate.

It's the exact opposite of everything I learned growing up in Wisconsin, or at college in Ohio. When I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life. I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself. That's what we do in this country. That's the American Dream. That's freedom, and I'll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.

By themselves, the failures of one administration are not a mandate for a new administration. A challenger must stand on his own merits. He must be ready and worthy to serve in the office of president.

We're a full generation apart, Governor Romney and I. And, in some ways, we're a little different. There are the songs on his iPod, which I've heard on the campaign bus and on many hotel elevators. He actually urged me to play some of these songs at campaign rallies. I said, I hope it's not a deal-breaker Mitt, but my playlist starts with AC/DC, and ends with Zeppelin.

A generation apart. That makes us different, but not in any of the things that matter. Mitt Romney and I both grew up in the heartland, and we know what places like Wisconsin and Michigan look like when times are good, when people are working, when families are doing more than just getting by. And we both know it can be that way again.

We've had very different careers — mine mainly in public service, his mostly in the private sector. He helped start businesses and turn around failing ones. By the way, being successful in business — that's a good thing.

Mitt has not only succeeded, but succeeded where others could not. He turned around the Olympics at a time when a great institution was collapsing under the weight of bad management, overspending, and corruption — sounds familiar, doesn't it?

He was the Republican governor of a state where almost nine in ten legislators are Democrats, and yet he balanced the budget without raising taxes. Unemployment went down, household incomes went up, and Massachusetts, under Mitt Romney, saw its credit rating upgraded.

[Jolie Rouge]

( continues.. )
Mitt and I also go to different churches. But in any church, the best kind of preaching is done by example. And I've been watching that example. The man who will accept your nomination tomorrow is prayerful and faithful and honorable. Not only a defender of marriage, he offers an example of marriage at its best. Not only a fine businessman, he's a fine man, worthy of leading this optimistic and good-hearted country.

Our different faiths come together in the same moral creed. We believe that in every life there is goodness; for every person, there is hope. Each one of us was made for a reason, bearing the image and likeness of the Lord of Life.

We have responsibilities, one to another — we do not each face the world alone. And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak. The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.

Each of these great moral ideas is essential to democratic government — to the rule of law, to life in a humane and decent society. They are the moral creed of our country, as powerful in our time, as on the day of America's founding. They are self-evident and unchanging, and sometimes, even presidents need reminding, that our rights come from nature and God, not from government.

The founding generation secured those rights for us, and in every generation since, the best among us have defended our freedoms. They are protecting us right now. We honor them and all our veterans, and we thank them.

The right that makes all the difference now, is the right to choose our own leaders. And you are entitled to the clearest possible choice, because the time for choosing is drawing near. So here is our pledge.

We will not duck the tough issues, we will lead.

We will not spend four years blaming others, we will take responsibility.

We will not try to replace our founding principles, we will reapply our founding principles.

The work ahead will be hard. These times demand the best of us — all of us, but we can do this. Together, we can do this.

We can get this country working again. We can get this economy growing again. We can make the safety net safe again. We can do this.

Whatever your political party, let's come together for the sake of our country. Join Mitt Romney and me. Let's give this effort everything we have. Let's see this through all the way. Let's get this done.

To view Ryan's full speech, click here: http://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=gwI05x5rmqI

[Jolie Rouge]

August 30, 2012
Checking The Fact Checkers
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2012/08/checking-the-fact-checkers-.html

Truth, put your boots on! The WaPo "fact-checkers", led by Ezra Klein, Dylan Matthews and Glenn Kesler, with Usain Bolt handling the anchor leg, are racing to create a fog bank around Paul Ryan's speech. [MORE: James Downie of the WaPo joins in.]

Let's cut to Dylan Mathews, posting at Ezra Klein's blog:http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/30/the-true-the-false-and-the-misleading-grading-paul-ryans-convention-speech/


FALSE


A GM plant in Ryan’s district shut down on Obama’s watch – From Ryan’s speech:


My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.

A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: “I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.” That’s what he said in 2008.

Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.

The plant shut down in June 2008, when George W. Bush is president. Ryan says it had not yet shut down Obama was elected, that Janesville was “about to” lose the factory at the time of the election. This is false, as Ryan knew in 2008 when he issued a statement bemoaning the plant’s closing.

Before we address the errors and omission in Matthews' analysis, let's note some trouble in Paradise - Glenn Kessler rates this as merely "misleading", and counters with different information:


In his acceptance speech, GOP Vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan appeared to suggest that President Obama was responsible for the closing of a GM plant in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisc.

That’s not true. The plant was closed in December, 2008, before Obama was sworn in. But look how Ryan came close to the line in his speech:

“Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.’ That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.”

Obama gave his speech in February, 2008, and he did say those words. But Ryan’s phrasing, referring to the fact the plant did not last another year, certainly suggests it closed in 2009, when Obama was president.

Getting closer! Here in Realityville, the plant closing was announced in June 2008; the last SUVs rolled off the line in December 2008, while Bush was a lame duck, and the plant was finally idled (to stand-by status) in 2009:


Green was one of 1,200 employees let go when GM ended SUV production at the southern Wisconsin plant.

...

About 50 workers will remain at the Janesville plant to complete an order of small- to medium-duty trucks for Isuzu Motors Ltd. They’re scheduled to finish by May or June, and then the plant will close down for good, GM spokesman Christopher Lee said.

Lest you wonder, GM does not close a plant by way of aerial bombardment. The plant is mothballed and wishful thinkers contined to hope (as of Sept 2011, anyway) that GM would re-open it.

So, what did Ryan actually say? He claimed, and Kessler confirms [or see Captain Ed for more], that Obama promised in Feb 2008 that a sympathetic government could save the plant. As of this writing, that promise has not been kept, even though the Obama-led goverment became the majority owner of GM after Obama's ascension in January 2009.

Presumably the economics did not work out, and the recovery has surely been weaker than expected (which was Ryan's point.) Still, nothing Ryan said is false - Obama promised to save a plant that had been in trouble for years, had the power to do so after his election, yet didn't.

Dylan Matthews didn't even mange to get the timeline right. Glenn Kessler almost nailed the timing (the bulk of the jobs were gone by Dec 2008) but doesn't seem to grasp that closed plants can be re-opened. That is some fine job being done among the self-styled "reality-based" community.

..


MORE: James Downie of the WaPo checks in: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/paul-ryans-dishonest-speech/2012/08/30/16bb62d8-f24f-11e1-adc6-87dfa8eff430_blog.html


Yesterday, at an ABC News panel, Mitt Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said, “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” Wednesday’s speech from Paul Ryan certainly took that disdain for truth to heart, as his address was filled with falsehoods from start to finish.

Let’s start with the chronologically impossible. Ryan spoke about the GM plant in his hometown of Janesville:

...

Set aside the fact that Paul Ryan, in a fit of anti-Randianism, asked for government funds to save the plant. Set aside that he voted for the big-government auto bailout. Ryan also conveniently forgot to mention that GM announced the closure of the plant in early June 2008. In fact, Ryan and then-Wisconsin Sens. Russ Feingold (D) and Herb Kohl (D) sent a letter that month to GM CEO Rick Wagoner asking him to reconsider. This was not just before Barack Obama was inaugurated or even elected; it was the same day he won his own party’s nomination. There was no way Obama could have saved that auto plant without also discovering time travel.


Well, there is no way James Downie can do fact-checking until he discovers Google; the plant was not finally and fully closed until 2009 and could have been re-opened at least until September 2011.

STILL MORE: Jon Cohn of TNR leads with the Janesville plant as one of Ryan's five "misrepresentations" in "the most dishonest convention speech ever" (with a question mark.) Obviously Ryan struck some nerves.

BRING BACK THE JOURNOLIST: I deplore this lack of coordination among the partisan "fact-checkers" of the left. Let's go back to Dylan Matthews: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/30/the-true-the-false-and-the-misleading-grading-paul-ryans-convention-speech/


Wonkblog went about sorting the true from the misleading and the downright false.

TRUE

Obama cut Medicare - Ryan blasted the cuts to Medicare reimbursements and Medicare advantage included in the Affordable Care Act. “They just took it all away from Medicare,” Ryan declared. “Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.” That much is correct– the Affordable Care Act contained over $700 billion in cuts to Medicare reimbursement rates and Medicare advantage. The Obama administration insists the cuts will not hurt quality and are necessary to control costs, while the Romney-Ryan campaign disputes this, but the underlying claim is correct.


Well, sure, but then what do we make of Joan Walsh of Salon? http://www.salon.com/2012/08/30/paul_ryans_brazen_lies/


Paul Ryan gave a feisty anti-Obama speech that will have fact-checkers working for days. His most brazen lie accused President Obama of “raiding” Medicare by taking the exact same $716 billion that Ryan and the House GOP notoriously voted to slash. It was stunning.



( continues ... )

[Jolie Rouge]

I guess not everyone is stunned by the truth. Let's go to Paul Ryan's stunning bit on Medicare: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/paul-ryan-republican-convention-speech-excerpts/2012/08/29/f245c6b6-f21f-11e1-a612-3cfc842a6d89_print.html


The president has declared that the debate over government-controlled health care is over. That will come as news to the millions of Americans who will elect Mitt Romney so we can repeal Obamacare.

And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly.

You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover, even with new taxes on nearly a million small businesses, the planners in Washington still didn’t have enough money. They needed more. They needed hundreds of billions more. So, they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we’re going to stop it.

In Congress, when they take out the heavy books and wall charts about Medicare, my thoughts go back to a house on Garfield Street in Janesville. My wonderful grandma, Janet, had Alzheimer’s and moved in with Mom and me. Though she felt lost at times, we did all the little things that made her feel loved.

We had help from Medicare, and it was there, just like it’s there for my Mom today. Medicare is a promise, and we will honor it. A Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare, for my Mom’s generation, for my generation, and for my kids and yours.

So our opponents can consider themselves on notice. In this election, on this issue, the usual posturing on the Left isn’t going to work. Mitt Romney and I know the difference between protecting a program, and raiding it. Ladies and gentlemen, our nation needs this debate. We want this debate. We will win this debate.

I think that taking money out of Medicare to reduce the projected growth in our national debt is different from taking money out of Medicare to fund yet another entitlement intended to buy votes for the Democrats and insure Obama's legacy. That, at least, is the stunning debate Paul Ryan is prepared to engage.

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2012/08/checking-the-fact-checkers-.html

comments

just commented on the other thread that uses of terms like "brazen" to describe Ryan's speech demonstrate how damning it was.

And I just doublechecked my notes to make sure I could prove how devastating his NV remarks were.

Bingo. And it also dovetails to the Windy City school wars of late 80s where Steve Diamond always assumed Ayers and bo met if they had not met even earlier.

..

Nothing Ryan said is even remotely misleading. Only if your lips are firmly attached to Obama's little member, could you possibly come to the conclusions that Kessler came to. Obama SAID WHAT HE SAID in Janesville. And the plant is closed. As is the Solyndra plant. If you are a moron or a lying LIBTARD, you may see your job as protecting OBAMA. I am neither. Ryans point, was that Obama has made promises he cannot, nor does he have any intention of keeping.

..

Didn't GM keep a plant in Oiho (with more electoral votes than WI) instead of Janesville? It was played that way in the Milwaukee press.

Obama picking winners to keep the Gov in GovMo and the Once in the White House. Not that one old GM plant made more sense than another, heck, all the plants were struggling (bankruptcy is funny that way).

..

A worthy byproduct of this campaign has been the fact that the term "fact-checker" has become risible.

Kessler can yammer all he wants about Obama's "grammatical error" and "context." All we have to do is play the tape, beginning to end. Over and over.

..

TomM say: "I think that taking money out of Medicare to reduce the projected growth in our national debt is different from taking money out of Medicare to fund yet another entitlement intended to buy votes for the Democrats and insure Obama's legacy. That, at least, is the stunning debate Paul Ryan is prepared to engage." And it's a debate Ryan will win with 'persuadable' voters. Why?-- under Obamacare-- It's ALL BORROWED money to pay for Medicaid expansion. So if you're borrowing it for Medicaid, you can't borrow it for Medicare. It's simple arithmatic -- Ryan will teach ALOT of simple arithmatic to persuadable voters. He'll win that debate-- because the only comeback Bam has is -- 'WE'LL BORROW MORE!!!" Goodbye Bam.

..

It looks as if the portion of the Obama/MSM campaign devoted to the economy has come down to this:

(i) You didn't build that business.

(ii) Obama didn't close down that business.

Quite a comedown from hope and change and the oceans receding.

[Jolie Rouge]

Protests Fizzle During GOP Convention
ABC OTUS News – 3 hrs ago

The three dozen chanting anti-GOP protesters hit a lull of silence as they marched through a low-income neighborhood in west Tampa. "What are you guys doing? Taking a nap?" shouted one protester to his cohorts, exhorting them to yell. Another shouted, "You guys are reeeeaaal quiet now!"

Quiet is the right word for protests at the Republican National Convention in Tampa this week. They have been unexpectedly muted and even the protesters know it. Thousands of demonstrators had been expected but only hundreds arrived, mostly Green Party supporters, Occupy Wall Street activists, anarchists and union stalwarts.

Only two arrests have been linked to protests so far — one man for carrying a machete, the other for wearing a bandanna in violation of a city ordinance. That's compared to several hundred in St. Paul, Minn., four years ago. Her streets have been so tranquil that Police Chief Jane Castor canceled news conferences because there was no trouble to report.

Activists blame the threat of Hurricane Isaac, the overwhelming police presence, undercover law enforcement infiltration of their ranks and even the ghost-town nature of downtown during the convention week. Some activists worry they have no momentum built for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., next week, and then the anniversary of Occupy Wall Street next month. "Unless you have the numbers out on the street, you really can't change anything," said Nick Sabatella, 25, an Occupy Wall Street activist from New Jersey.

The protesters were behind the eight ball even before the convention started. The threat of Hurricane Isaac stopped at least 16 busloads of activists from coming to town because bus operators didn't want their equipment and drivers headed into possible danger. Downpours on Monday put a damper on a kickoff march that drew only several hundred protesters, not the 5,000 marchers that had been anticipated. And rain continued off and on throughout the week. "Nobody came down because of this weather," said Jeff Smith, a 38-year-old construction worker from New York, who is part of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Smith also faulted the protest leaders and the tight security. "They don't seem to be too organized down here," he said. "Probably because there are cops on every corner."

Groups of officers are stationed on almost every corner of downtown. They are riding around in packs on bicycles and are using helicopters for surveillance.

While many activists praised the police for their restraint and politeness, they said the number of officers on the streets was overkill. "I'm really sad that every four years there is more of a militarization of the police at these conventions," said Cheri Honkala, the Green Party's vice presidential candidate. "It's a waste of taxpayers' dollars and it really scares me that someday there will be nobody left marching."

The police presence isn't just in uniform. In "Romneyville," a tent village of protesters about a mile from the convention, the residents are well aware that undercover officers have infiltrated their ranks and that they tend to be among the more aggressive "activists." "You know how if you go into Macy's around the holidays and somebody tries to shoplift something, and you then realize there are actually no shoppers, that they're all undercover police officers? That's the case here," Honkala said.

Without hard confirmation, they have let their suspected undercover officers stay. "You can't get rid of people if you can't prove it on the spot," Honkala said.

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn said at a news conference Thursday that he had expected few arrests as the convention wraps up Thursday night. "We have trained so hard and so long for this," Buckhorn said. "When this is said and done, this will be the benchmark that every city should strive for."

Castor said her strategy was to approach the protesters, ask what their goals are and then help them reach them. Often, protesters simply wanted to pose in an intersection for the media. She let them if they didn't intend violence. Officers even took leftover food to Romneyville. "Everyone was to be treated with dignity and respect," Castor said.

The nature of downtown also made it harder for protesters to be heard. Few people live there and many businesses told their workers to stay away during the convention, leaving the streets nearly empty. "We could protest until we're blue in the face but there weren't people normally around to see that," said Darrell Prince, a 35-year-old political fundraiser from New York who is part of Occupy Wall Street. "Whether it was intelligent design or they were just fortunate, it worked out for the RNC."

On Thursday, 16 protesters, watched by 35 officers, marched from Romneyville to Domino's Pizza to protest corporate-owned businesses. Despite the low numbers, protesters eked out some victories. As Paul Ryan was in the midst of a speech accepting the vice presidential nomination on the convention floor, he was disrupted by a pink banner and a yelling protester from the feminist group Code Pink. She was escorted out as some in the crowd shouted "U-S-A, U-S-A."

Many Romneyville residents are relocating their impromptu community to Charlotte and the Democratic convention. They are hoping for bigger crowds and more energy, drawing on Occupy activists from cities along the Eastern seaboard. "Who knows?" Sabattella said. "Maybe it can still happen."

http://news.yahoo.com/protests-fizzle-during-gop-convention-211101677.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Musicians gotta make a living. Performing at a GOP function, however, is apparently the eighth deadly sin of the entertainment industry. Gospel singer BeBe Winans, a registered Democrat, sang tonight as part of an unpaid gig. He would’ve performed at the DNC, too, but for some unknown reason, they pulled their invitation.

The singer received a tsunami of Twitter spewage for his appearance and misinformed criticism for being a sellout. Talent is supposed to transcend partisanship. Not for the conformity-enforcing Left, unfortunately:

http://twitchy.com/2012/08/31/gospel-legend-bebe-winans-inundated-with-hate-for-singing-at-rnc/


Every which way but classy: Tom Brokaw wishes ‘friend’ Clint Eastwood had shut up

NBC’s Tom Brokaw has only tweeted 26 times since joining Twitter last year. But after watching Clint Eastwood mockingly dress down an invisible Obama at the GOP convention, the always objective Brokaw dedicated his 26th tweet to telling his “friend” to shut his trap.


Tom Brokaw✔
@tombrokaw

Clint Eastwood became huge star as a man of few words As a surprise guest on the Tampa stage he had too many words (I say as a friend)

30 Aug 12

http://twitchy.com/2012/08/31/every-which-way-but-classy-tom-brokaw-wishes-friend-clint-eastwood-had-shut-up/


Elderly-bashers diagnose Clint Eastwood with dementia again

When 82-year-old veteran actor/producer Clint Eastwood announced his endorsement of Mitt Romney earlier this month, tolerant liberals could think of only one good reason a Hollywood legend would choose a Republican over Planet Healer and Tinseltown money-grubber Barack Obama:

Dementia.

The disrespectful armchair geriatricians are back. After his memorable, crotchety, completely ad-libbed convention speech tonight, senior citizen-bashers took to Twitter to deride Eastwood’s state of mind:


Mariano@TweetEverstrong

I didn't expect the RNC to televise Clint Eastwood's descent into dementia.

30 Aug 12


Liki@likiwright

Clint Eastwood was disrespectful to the Office of the President to say the least. I'm assuming thats the dementia kicking in #RNC

30 Aug 12

Speaking of faulty memories, the Eastwood haters certainly didn’t treat his Super Bowl auto industry commercial earlier this year — construed at the time as pro-Obama – as the result of an addled mind:


Randy Kessler@BarryNMooch

@TwitchyTeam Odd..they didn't mention dementia when he did the 1/2 time in America spot and they thought he was promoting Obama.

31 Aug 12

http://twitchy.com/2012/08/31/elderly-bashers-diagnose-clint-eastwood-with-dementia-again/

Pull up a chair for the newest Internet craze: #Eastwooding

Old and busted: #Tebowing. The new hotness? #Eastwooding!

Twitter is not going to let Clint Eastwood live down his ad-libbed conversation with an empty chair at the RNC Thursday night. Some managed to convince themselves that the skit just had to be racist. It was anti-Obama, right?


Mike Elk@MikeElk

Eastwood chair rant was RACIST, white man putting dirty words into mouth of black man like a puppet

30 Aug 12

http://twitchy.com/2012/08/31/pull-up-a-chair-for-the-newest-internet-craze-eastwooding/


Set your phasers to ‘stun’: Another Hollywood lefty can’t handle the RNC


Zachary Quinto✔
@ZacharyQuinto

is clint eastwood meant to instill confidence in republicans?! i am legitimately scared of his talking to imaginary obama.

30 Aug 12

The “Star Trek” actor was apparently watching coverage of the Republican National Convention tonight, and he didn’t like what he saw. Clint Eastwood really seemed to stick in his craw:

Cute.

Quinto soon switched gears and went after Mitt Romney for his praise of family, hard work, and success:


Zachary Quinto✔
@ZacharyQuinto

really mitt?! "freedom. freedom to build a life"?! seems like there are some pretty specific qualifiers with our definition.

30 Aug 12

http://twitchy.com/2012/08/31/set-your-phasers-to-stun-another-hollywood-lefty-cant-handle-the-rnc/

[Jolie Rouge]

RNC wrap-up: The narratives that shined
By Michelle Malkin • August 31, 2012 09:32 AM

You know it has been one of my persistent complaints that the Right needs to tell better stories — among the countless real stories of American success, of American achievers, of American businesses and workers harmed under this administration — in order to counter the incurable fabulists at the White House. http://michellemalkin.com/2011/09/27/introspective-obama-hey-im-not-telling-enough-stories

Flashback: http://michellemalkin.com/2012/02/29/the-autoworkers-obama-left-behind-the-autoworkers-obama-left-behind/


The Right needs to forcefully counter the Obama machine’s Alinsky story-telling tactics. The leftists who claim to speak for hard-working people who play by the rules won’t put the names and faces and suffering of Obama’s jobs death toll victims front and center. We must.

That mission was accomplished, and accomplished well, at the RNC. The stars of the convention were Mia Love, Marco Rubio, and the small and large business people who shared their passion, their life stories, their hardships and their failures, and their common gratitude for the blessings of liberty. The stories told by entrepreneurs who testified about the benefits of Bain Capital under Romney’s leadership were also powerful and moving. The corollary narrative of 1st and 2nd generation Americans pursuing the American Dream also soared.

Yes, the media lapdoggies ignored these speeches. But the information blockade can, will, and must be breached this election. It is up to grass-roots conservatives inspired by those stories to amplify them, re-tell them, and add their own.

I’m reprinting the transcript and posting the full video of Rubio’s speech because it speaks for me. It speaks for generations. It is our story, and unlike the fiction that spews forth daily from the White House, this story is cherished and true.

Transcript of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s speech as prepared for delivery at the Republican National Convention:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU-Xauej1Dw&feature=player_embedded


In 1980, I watched my first Republican convention with my grandfather.

He was born to a farming family in rural Cuba. Childhood polio left him permanently disabled. Because he couldn’t work the farm, his family sent him to school, and he became the only one in the family who could read.

As a boy, I would sit on our porch and listen to his stories about history, politics and baseball while he puffed on one of his three daily Padron cigars.

I don’t recall everything we talked about, but the one thing I remember, is the one thing he wanted me to never forget. The dreams he had when he was young became impossible to achieve.

But there was no limit to how far I could go, because I was an American.

For those of us who were born and raised in this country, it’s easy to forget how special America is. But my grandfather understood how different America is from the rest of the world, because he knew what life was like outside America.

Tonight, you’ll hear from another man who understands what makes America exceptional.

Mitt Romney knows America’s prosperity didn’t happen because our government simply spent more. It happened because our people used their own money to open a business. And when they succeed, they hire more people, who then invest or spend their money in the economy, helping others start a business and create jobs.

Mitt Romney’s success in business is well known. But he’s more than that.

He’s a devoted husband, father and grandfather. A generous member of his community and church.

Everywhere he’s been, he’s volunteered his time and talent to make things better for those around him.

We are blessed that soon, he will be the president of the United States.

Our problem with President Obama isn’t that he’s a bad person. By all accounts, he too is a good husband, and a good father — and thanks to lots of practice, a pretty good golfer.

Our problem is he’s a bad president.

The new slogan for the president’s campaign is “Forward.”

A government that spends $1 trillion more than it takes in.

An $800 billion stimulus that created more debt than jobs.

A government intervention into health care paid for with higher taxes and cuts to Medicare.

Scores of new rules and regulations.

These ideas don’t move us “Forward,” they take us “Backwards.”

These are tired and old big government ideas. Ideas that people come to America to get away from. Ideas that threaten to make America more like the rest of the world, instead of helping the world become more like America.

Under Barack Obama, the only “Change” is that “Hope” has been hard to find.

[Jolie Rouge]

Now millions of Americans are insecure about their future. But instead of inspiring us by reminding us of what makes us special, he divides us against each other.

He tells Americans they’re worse off because others are better off. That people got rich by making others poor.

Hope and Change has become Divide and Conquer.

No matter how you feel about President Obama, this election is about your future, not his. And it’s not simply a choice between a Democrat and a Republican.

It’s a choice about what kind of country we want America to be.

As we prepare to make this choice, we should remember what made us special. For most of history almost everyone was poor. Power and wealth belonged to only a few.

Your rights were whatever your rulers allowed you to have. Your future was determined by your past.

If your parents were poor, so would you be. If you were born without opportunities, so were your children.

But America was founded on the principle that every person has God-given rights. That power belongs to the people. That government exists to protect our rights and serve our interests.That we shouldn’t be trapped in the circumstances of our birth. That we should be free to go as far as our talents and work can take us.

We are special because we’ve been united not by a common race or ethnicity. We’re bound together by common values. That family is the most important institution in society. That almighty God is the source of all we have.

Special, because we’ve never made the mistake of believing that we are so smart that we can rely solely on our leaders or our government.

Our national motto is “In God we Trust,” reminding us that faith in our Creator is the most important American value of all.

And special because we’ve always understood the scriptural admonition that “for everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required.”

We are a blessed people. And we have honored those blessings with the enduring example of an exceptional America.

I know that for so many of you, these last few years have tested your faith in the promise of America.

Maybe you are at an age when you thought you would be entering retirement. But now, because your savings and investments are wiped out, your future is uncertain.

Maybe, after years of hard work, this was the time you expected to be your prime earning years. But instead, you’ve been laid off, and your house is worth less than your mortgage.

Maybe you did everything you were told you needed to do to get ahead. You studied hard and finished school. But now, you owe thousands of dollars in student loans. You can’t find a job in your field. And you’ve moved back in with your parents.

You want to believe we’re still that place where anything is possible. But things just don’t seem to be getting better. And you are starting to wonder if things will ever be the same again.

Yes, we live in a troubled time. But the story of those who came before us reminds us that America has always been about new beginnings.

And Mitt Romney is running for president because he knows that if we are willing to do for our children what our parents did for us, life in America can be better than it has ever been.

My mother was one of seven girls whose parents went to bed hungry so their children wouldn’t. My father lost his mother when he was nine. He left school and went to work for the next 70 years.

They emigrated to America with little more than the hope of a better life.

My dad was a bartender. My mom was a cashier, a maid and a stock clerk at K-Mart. They never made it big. They were never rich. And yet they were successful. Because just a few decades removed from hopelessness, they made possible for us all the things that had been impossible for them.

Many nights I heard my father’s keys jingling at the door as he came home after another 16-hour day. Many mornings, I woke up just as my mother got home from the overnight shift at K-Mart

When you’re young, the meaning of moments like these escapes you. But now, as my own children get older, I understand it better.

My Dad used to tell us: “En este pais, ustedes van a poder lograr todas las cosas que nosotros no pudimos” “In this country, you will be able to accomplish all the things we never could.”

A few years ago during a speech, I noticed a bartender behind a portable bar at the back of the ballroom. I remembered my father who had worked for many years as a banquet bartender.

He was grateful for the work he had, but that’s not the life he wanted for us.

He stood behind a bar in the back of the room all those years, so one day I could stand behind a podium in the front of a room.

That journey, from behind that bar to behind this podium, goes to the essence of the American miracle — that we’re exceptional not because we have more rich people here.

We’re special because dreams that are impossible anywhere else, come true here.

That’s not just my story. That’s your story. That’s our story.

It’s the story of your mother who struggled to give you what she never had.

It’s the story of your father who worked two jobs so doors closed for him would open for you.

The story of that teacher or that coach who taught you the lessons that shaped who you are today.

And it’s the story of a man who was born into an uncertain future in a foreign country. His family came to America to escape revolution.

They struggled through poverty and the great depression. And yet he rose to be an admired businessman, and public servant.

And in November, his son, Mitt Romney, will be elected President of the United States.

We are all just a generation or two removed from someone who made our future the purpose of their lives.

America is the story of everyday people who did extraordinary things. A story woven deep into the fabric of our society.

Their stories may never be famous, but in the lives they lived, you find the living essence of America’s greatness. To make sure America is still a place where tomorrow is always better than yesterday, that is what our politics should be about.

And that is what we are deciding in this election.

Do we want our children to inherit our hopes and dreams, or do we want them to inherit our problems?

Mitt Romney believes that if we succeed in changing the direction of our country, our children and grandchildren will be the most prosperous generation ever, and their achievements will astonish the world.

The story of our time will be written by Americans who haven’t yet been born.

Let’s make sure they write that we did our part. That in the early years of this new century, we lived in an uncertain time. But we did not allow fear to cause us to abandon what made us special.

We chose more freedom instead of more government.

We chose the principles of our founding to solve the challenges of our time.

We chose a special man to lead us in a special time.

We chose Mitt Romney to lead our nation.

And because we did, the American Miracle lived on for another generation to inherit.


http://michellemalkin.com/2012/08/31/rnc-wrap-up-the-narratives-that-shined/

[Jolie Rouge]

August 31, 2012
Eastwood: Weird but meaty

I thought Clint Eastwood's conversation-with-chair shtick was pretty awkward. Tweeters who likened him to Grandpa Simpson weren't far off, in my opinion. But Eastwood's substantive remarks to the crowd at the RNC were exactly on target and, well, made my day. http://politicalclownparade.blogspot.com/2012/08/eastwoods-chair-vs-obamas-chair.html Here's some good commentary from Political Clown Parade on Clint's, er . . . unique -- that's it! -- improv performance last night: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80517.html


I don’t care what the Left, whose hair is on fire right now, says about Clint Eastwood’s Q & A with an invisible POTUS last night at the RNC Convention. I don’t care.

This thin-skinned, crybaby of a president has Clint Eastwood in his head. All the evidence anyone needs is that the errand boy sent by grocery clerks responded on Facebook and Twitter saying, “This seat’s taken.”

What’s puzzling about Eastwood’s empty chair is why Obama felt he had to respond to the whimsical superstar? The only answer is he feels threatened. What we see is an actor’s roughest mockery of a politician and the politician lacking the discipline to let it go.

Right. Obama cares, Eastwood doesn't. (You could tell from his hair.)

Here's the meaty part, which was good and red:


Eastwood reminded conventioneers and viewers, “I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we own this country. We, we own it. It is not you (looking down at the empty chair) owning it and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours. And, so they are just going to come around and beg for votes every few years. It is the same old deal. But I just think it is important that you realize that you’re the best in the world. Whether you are a Democrat or Republican or whether you’re a Libertarian or whatever, you are the best. And we should not ever forget that. And when somebody does not do the job, we’ve got to let them go.”

The astute John Hayward has an interesting take: http://www.humanevents.com/2012/08/31/on-eastwood/


Clint was there to tell [independents] it’s OK to find Obama, his ugly campaign operation, and his increasingly shrill band of die-hard defenders ridiculous. It’s OK to laugh at them. [. . .]

We already knew it was OK to make fun of the absurd Joe Biden – which should not diminish anyone’s anger that such an vicious and foolish man was placed a heartbeat from the Presidency – but Clint took it up a notch: “Joe Biden is kind of a grin with a body behind it.” Perfect. [. . .]

And it’s OK to let Obama go, as Eastwood said, in what I think will prove to be his most widely quoted line: “When somebody does not do the job, you’ve got to let them go.” The significance of that statement, coupled with the raspy straight-shooting delivery of Dirty Harry, should not be underestimated.

Was there a method to Clint's madness?


ally, it was interesting to note how hard some of Clint’s deadly serious lines hit, because of the strange comedy surrounding them. Is that what he had in mind all along?

I have no idea. But read the rest.

http://www.punditandpundette.com/2012/08/eastwood-weird-but-meaty.html

I just watched it, and I thought it was very amusing. Not cringe-worthy at all. Empty chair? You couldn't possibly find a better metaphor for the current POTUS. Eastwood is an actor, after all (artistic freedom, etc.). A politician or journalist could not have used this method, but I think it was effective and really don't see what there is to bash. Give me an honest (and yes meaty), if halting, speech any day rather than the smooth, teleprompted drivel that leaks from Obama.

...

I thought the comment about checking with the Russians first before going into Afghanistan was particularly good, especially in light of Obama's off-cuff remark about having more flexibility after the election. The halting delivery was a little difficult at first, until somebody pointed out that Obama tends to speak the same way when working "off-prompter". Overall, an excellent lampooning of the President and showcasing the reasons why the current resident of the White House needs re-locating.

[Jolie Rouge]

Watch it : http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3DGl-4gByV4

Transcript: Clint Eastwood's Convention Remarks
30, 2012

Transcript of actor and director Clint Eastwood's remarks Thursday at the Republican National Convention, as delivered:

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Save a little for Mitt.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, what's a movie tradesman doing out here? You know they are all left-wingers out there, left of Lenin. At least that's what people think. But that's not really the case. There's a lot of conservative people, a lot of moderate people, Republicans, Democrats, in Hollywood. It's just that the conservative people by the nature of the word itself play it a little more close to the vest. They don't go around hot-dogging it. So, uh ... But they're there, believe me, they're there. I just think, in fact, some of them around town, I saw Jon Voigt, a lot of people around here in town.

John's here, an Academy Award winner. A terrific guy. These people are all like-minded, like all of us.

So I — so I've got Mr. Obama sitting here. And he's — I just was going to ask him a couple of questions. But, you know, about, I remember three-and-a-half years ago, when Mr. Obama won the election. And though I wasn't a big supporter, I was watching that night when he was having that thing and they were talking about hope and change and they were talking about, yes we can, and it was dark outdoors, and it was nice, and people were lighting candles. And they were saying, you know, I just thought, this is great. Everybody's crying. Oprah was crying.

I was even crying. And then finally — I haven't cried that hard since I found out that there's 23 million unemployed people in this country.

Now that is something to cry for because that is a disgrace, a national disgrace, and we haven't done enough, obviously — this administration hasn't done enough to cure that. Whatever interest they have is not strong enough, and I think possibly now it may be time for somebody else to come along and solve the problem.

So, so, Mr. President, how do you, how do you handle, how do you handle promises that you've made when you were running for election and how do you handle, how do you handle it?

I mean, what do you say to people? Do you just — you know — I know — people were wondering. You don't? You don't handle it.

Well, I know even some of the people in your own party were very disappointed when you didn't close Gitmo. And I thought, well, closing Gitmo — why close that? We spent so much money on it. But, I thought maybe as an excuse.

Oh, What do you mean shut up?


PBS NewsHour/YouTube
Video: Clint Eastwood's speech, from PBS NewsHour

OK, I thought it was just because somebody had the stupid idea of trying terrorists in downtown New York City. Maybe that was it.

I've got to, I've got to hand it to you. I've got to give credit where credit is due. You did finally overrule that finally. And that's so, now we're moving onward. I know, in the, you were against the war in Iraq and that's OK. But you thought the war in Afghanistan was OK.

You know, I mean — you thought that was something worth doing. We
didn't check with the Russians to see how they did there for 10 years.

But we did it, and it was, it's something to be thought about and I think that when we get to maybe — I think you've mentioned something about having a target date for bringing everybody home and you give that target date, and I think Mr. Romney asked the only sensible question. He says, "Why are you giving the date out now? Why don't you just bring them home tomorrow morning?"

And I thought — I thought, yeah — there's, I'm not going to shut up. It's my turn.

So anyway, we're going to have, we're going to have to have a little chat about that. And then, I just wondered, all these promises and then I wondered about, you know, when the, What? What do you want me to tell Romney? I can't tell him to do that. That. He can't do that to himself.

You're crazy. You're absolutely crazy. You're getting as bad as Biden.

Of course we all know Biden is the intellect of the Democratic party.

Just kind of a grin with a body behind it.

But I just think that there's much to be done and I think that Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan are two guys that can come along. See, I never thought it was a good idea for attorneys to be president anyway, because ... Yeah.

I think attorneys are so busy. You know, they're always taught to argue everything, and always weigh everything and weigh both sides and they're always, you know, they're always devil's advocating this and bifurcating this and bifurcating that. You know all that stuff. But, I think it is maybe time. What do you think for maybe a businessman? How about that?

A stellar businessman. Quote, unquote, a stellar businessman. And I think it's that time. And I think if you just kind of stepped aside and Mr. Romney can kind of take over.

You could still use the plane. Though maybe a smaller one. Not that big gas guzzler when you're going around to colleges and talking about student loans and stuff like that.

You're an ecological man. Why would you want to drive that truck around?

OK, well, anyway. All right, I'm sorry. I can't do that to myself either.

But I'd just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we, we own this country.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yes, we own it. And it's not you owning it and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.

And, so, they're just going to come around and beg for votes every few years. It's the same old deal. But I just think that it's important that you realize and that you're the best in the world.

And whether you're Democrat or whether you're a Republican or whether you're Libertarian or whatever, you're the best. And we should not ever forget that. And when somebody does not do the job, we got to let 'em go.

Let 'em go.

OK, just remember that. And I'm speaking out for everybody out there. It doesn't hurt, we don't have to be ...

I do not say that word anymore.

Well, maybe one last time.

We don't have to be — what I'm saying, we don't have to be metal masochists and vote for somebody that we don't really even want in office just because they seem to be nice guys or maybe not so nice guys if you look at some of the recent ads going out there. I don't know.

But OK.

You want to make my day, huh?

All right.

Go ahead...

(AUDIENCE: Make my day!)

Thank you. Thank you very much.

http://www.npr.org/2012/08/30/160358091/transcript-clint-eastwoods-convention-remarks

[Jolie Rouge]

“Get Off My Lawn…”
By drillanwr, on August 31, 2012, at 12:00 pm

Clint Eastwood is taking some hits from the left over his off-the-cuff speech at the RNC Convention last night. They laughingly suggest the man has "dementia". But you know if he had shown up and given a similar speech in support of Obama at next week's DNC convention they would be praising him as "deeply thoughtful". While I wished he had written something to keep him moving along a lot smoother and added to it while in the process of reading it, he did two very important things last night that are getting lost in the improv...

#1. Four years ago we, who were paying close attention, warned Barack Obama is an empty suit. The left is having fun with Eastwood's "empty chair" jokes. The fact is, Clint simply removed the suit from Obama to expose that emptiness that is painfully obvious today...
http://babalublog.com/wpr/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/clint2-500x392.jpg

#2. As typically brillant as Sen. Marco Rubio was, and as selflessly good Mitt Romney was in their speeches, THE most important lines came from Clint Eastwood...
http://babalublog.com/wpr/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/clint1-500x282.jpg

Clint Eastwood was OFF teleprompter last night and still sounded more lucid than Obama does ... especially when leaving TOTUS at the White House.

BTW, the man is still writing, producing, directing and acting in movies. Even IF he's at the beginning of some "dementia" I would say he's still leaps and bounds above the bulk of Hollywood. Hopefully he's got somebody keeping track of the BS some Hollywood 'Twit' fools are saying about him on Twitter and tells their agents to get bent if they come looking for a job in one of his movies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=z7X2_V60YK8

http://babalublog.com/2012/08/get-off-my-lawn/


comments

Clint is quite the character, nailed Obama in his own unique and wacky way.

The libs and the Hollywood idiots are furious at him today, that's further proof he made his point while hurting Obama with his skit. Make no mistake about it.

...

I have come to the conclusion that Clint's slow delivery was not 'old age', it was so the MSM could follow along. Recall, the MSM told us a couple year into Obama's term that his tendency to ramble/bumble while off TOTUS was because he was so intellectually above us he was struggling to dumb it down for us to understand...

[Jolie Rouge]

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/cb083112dAPR20120831024514.jpg

It's a strange world Obama and Dems try to craft. They cite Romney's millions while ignoring Obama's millions. They fight the execution of mass murderers while demanding funding for Planned Parenthood. And, of course, somehow it's great that Obama gave another 1.7 million illegal aliens de facto amnesty that allows them to stay here and compete with citizens for jobs even though we've gone 42 consecutive months with unemployment at 8% or greater. Then Obama beats his chest about what a great job he is doing about student loans, when there are no jobs available for them to pay off the loans when they graduate. Obama wants to raise taxes on those who make $250,000 or more and yet is silent about the capital gains and dividend tax increases that will effect all retirement plans, 401k's, IRA'a, besides reducting business investments and reinvestments. Dems try to scare us by saying Ryan will cut Medicare when Obama already made $716 billion in cuts to the plan. And, of course, Dems criticize Janna Ryan's dress from Kohl's and Ann Romney's $990 tee shirt while writing fashion statements about Michelle Obama's $6,800 jacket. They keep telling us how bad things will get with Romney and Ryan while totally ignoring Obama's 3 1/2 yrs worth of failures. Other than some kind of Orwellian doublethink, doublespeak nonsense, is there real meaning or substance hidden somewhere in their teeter-totter policy/agenda? Where are their plans to address our faltering economy, lack of jobs and the huge pile of debt they keep at piling on? Or, in their minds, is this election all about gay rights, free condoms, 54.5 mpg in 2025, an imaginary war on women, and student loans?

[Jolie Rouge]

The best speeches I heard last night
August 29, 2012

Not Chris Christie's (meh), and not Ann Romney's (sorry, she has a nice smile but I'm not that interested), but Rick Santorum's and Rep. Arthur Davis's. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol9B_p-VTKw&feature=player_embedded


HuffPo has the text of the prepared version here. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/artur-davis-speech-_n_1831712.html
Here's an excerpt, roughly corrected to match the actual delivery:


Maybe we should have known that night in Denver that things that begin with styrofoam Greek columns and artificial smoke typically don't end well.

Maybe the Hollywood stars and the glamour blinded us a little: you thought it was the glare, some of us thought it was a halo.

But in all seriousness, do you know why so many of us believed? We led with our hearts and our dreams that we could be more inclusive than America had ever been, and no candidate had ever spoken so beautifully.

But dreams meet daybreak: the jobless know what I mean, so do the families who wonder how this Administration could wreck a recovery for three years and counting.

So many of those high-flown words have faded.

Remember, my friends, the President saying of negative politics and untrue ads, "not this time?"

Who knew "not this time" just meant "not unless the economy is still stuck and we can't run on our record?"

Remember when the president said, of his own election, "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal?"

Who knew the plain English version of it was, "middle America, get ready to shell out 60 bucks to fill up your car?"

And in terms of their crown jewel legislative achievement: who knew that when asked, "could government conceivably impose a federal mandate requiring middle class Americans to buy health insurance whether they could afford it or not?" that the Obama answer would be "Yes we can!"

So, this time, in the name of 23 million of our children and parents and brothers and sisters who are officially unemployed, underemployed, or who have stopped looking for work, let's put the poetry aside, let's suspend the hype, let's come down to earth and start creating jobs again.

This time, instead of moving oceans and healing planets, let's pay our bills down and pay down the debt so we control our own future.

And of course, we know that opportunity lies outside the reach of some of our people.

We don't need flowery words about inequality to tell us that, and we don't need a party that has led while poverty and hunger rose to record levels to give us lectures about suffering.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are Americans who are listening to this speech right now who haven't always been with you, and I want you to let me talk -- just to them - for a moment.

I know how loaded up our politics is with anger and animosity, but I have to believe we can still make a case over the raised voices.

There are Americans watching right now who voted for the president, but they're searching right now, because they know that their votes didn't build the country they wanted.

To those Democrats and independents whose minds are open to argument: listen closely to the Democratic Party that will gather in Charlotte and ask yourself if you hear your voice in the clamor.

Ask yourself if these Democrats still speak for you.

When they say we have a duty to grow government even when we cannot afford it, does it sound like compassion to you -- or does it sound like recklessness?

When you hear the party that glorified Occupy Wall Street blast success; when you hear them minimize the genius of the men and women who make jobs out of nothing, is that what you teach your children about work?

When they tell you America is this unequal place where the powerful trample on the powerless, does that sound like the country your children or your spouse risked their lives for in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Do you even recognize the America they are talking about? And what can we say about a house that doesn't honor the pictures on its walls?

John Kennedy asked us what we could do for America. This Democratic Party asks what can government give you. Don't worry about paying the bill, it's on your kids and grandkids.

Bill Clinton took on his base and made welfare a thing you had to work for; this current crowd guts the welfare work requirement in the dead of night and won't tell the truth about it.

Bill Clinton, Jack Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson reached out across the aisle and said meet me in the middle; but their party rammed through a healthcare bill that took over one-sixth of our economy, without accepting a single Republican idea, without winning a single vote in either house from a party whose constituents make up half of this country.

You know, the Democrats used to have a night when they presented a film of their presidential legends: folks, if they do it in Charlotte, the theme song should be this year's hit, "Now You're Just Somebody That I Used to Know."

My fellow Americans, when great athletes falter, their coaches sometimes whisper to them "remember who you are." It's a call to their greatness at a moment when their bodies and spirit are too sapped to remember their strength.

This sweet, blessed, God-inspired place called America is a champion that has absorbed some blows.

But we bend, we do not break.

This is no dark hour, this is no dark hour; this is the dawn before we remember who we are.

So may it be said of this time in our history, 2008 to 2011: lesson learned; 2012: mistake corrected. God bless you, God bless you, Tampa, God bless you, America. Let's take this country back.

[Jolie Rouge]

Then there was Rick Santorum's speech, which was actually quite beautiful, emphasizing the critical importance of traditional families, work instead of dependency, human dignity, and love. You can watch it here http://www.therightscoop.com/rnc-speech-rick-santorum-delivers-a-heart-felt-speech/ and read it here. http://www.therightscoop.com/rnc-speech-rick-santorum-delivers-a-heart-felt-speech/

We watched the speeches on CNN through our Roku, streaming almost live with no talking heads except the ones on stage. The invaluable RightScoop has all the videos.

***

Update: Jim Geraghty reminds me of the stronger passages of Gov. Christie's and Mrs. Romney's speeches.
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/315256/pre-speech-buzz-underestimated-ann-romney-chris-christie

I very much enjoyed the speech from Saratoga Springs Utah Mayor, Mia Love:


"My parents immigrated to the U.S. with $10 in their pocket, believing that the America they had heard about really did exist," Love said. "When times got tough they didn't look to Washington, they looked within ... So the America I came to know was centered in personal responsibility and filled with the American dream."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/28/republican-convention-to-feature-rising-star-mia-love/#ixzz24ygawf59
http://www.punditandpundette.com/2012/08/the-best-speeches-i-heard-last-night.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Sher Valenzuela addresses the 2012 Republican National Convention.
August 28, 2012 | Tampa, FL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=xkNTK2GTA_E

[Jolie Rouge]

‘Fact checker’ Ezra Klein doubles down on Janesville GM auto plant lie
Posted at 10:43 am on August 30, 2012 by Twitchy Staff


TwitchyTeam✔ @TwitchyTeam 30 Aug 12

.@ezraklein what makes you think you are qualified to check facts on TV when your own blog can't even gets facts right? twitchy.com/2012/08/30/mee…

Ezra Klein✔@ezraklein


@TwitchyTeam We are right. politifact.com/wisconsin/stat…

30 Aug 12

Oh, no he didn’t.

Of course, he did.

Last night Ezra Klein’s blog posted a flat-out lie last night about the timing of the Janesville, Wisc., GM auto plant closure.

Here is what was posted on his blog last night by Klein’s colleague Dylan Matthews: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/30/the-true-the-false-and-the-misleading-grading-paul-ryans-convention-speech/


The plant shut down in June 2008, when George W. Bush is (sic) president.
http://nyti.ms/Tx8XdW

Here’s the screencap, in case Klein tries to whitewash the error:
http://twitchy.com/2012/08/30/fact-checker-ezra-klein-doubles-down-on-janesville-gm-auto-plant-lie/klein-lie002/
http://thisistwitchy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/klein-lie002.jpg?w=645&h=93

That is not only really bad grammar, but it is also factually incorrect. The plant began to wind down operations in December 2008. It shut down in the spring of 2009. You may recall that the president at the time was Barack Obama, not George W. Bush.

Matthews linked to a New York Times article that flatly contradicts the claim that the plant shut down in June 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/business/26jane.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all?src=tp The article, written in October 2008, said the Janesville plant “is a shadow of its former self” but still had 1,200 employees. Yes, the plant was still operational in October 2008. Which means it hadn’t yet shut down. How, then, could the plant have closed in June 2008, as Klein’s blog stated?

Rather than correct the mistake, MSNBC’s newest “fact checker” doubled down, standing by the incorrect assertion. http://twitchy.com/2012/08/30/meet-msnbcs-fact-checker-ezra-klein/

But Klein insists there was no error, this time linking to a PolitiFact article to prove his point. The PolitiFact article asserts that the plant was “effectively” shut down on December 23, 2008 but acknowledges that he plant did not actually close until four months later. http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2012/aug/29/paul-ryan/did-barack-obama-break-promise-keep-gm-plant-open/

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel — perhaps a more neutral observer — says the plant closed in 2009: http://www.jsonline.com/business/130171578.html

The Janesville plant stopped production of SUVs in 2008 and was idled in 2009 after it completed production of medium-duty trucks.

People who live in Janesville say the plant closed in 2009:

Chelsea Grunwald@chelseagrunwald

I'm from Janesville, WI. My entire family lives there. I know when the GM plant closed. Obama was definitely in office. #TruthHurts

29 Aug 12

Wikipedia — not known for right-wing bias — says the plant closed in 2009: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janesville_GM_Assembly_Plant


The plant … employed around 7,000 workers at its peak in 1970, but was down to about 1,200 at its closing in 2009.

Even if one chooses to use PolitiFact’s dubious “effective” shut down date of December 23, 2008, the June 2008 date posted on Klein’s blog is incorrect.

This is not the first time Ezra Klein, who lied about his left-wing JournoList, has played fast and loose with facts. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/lachlan-markay/2010/07/23/journolist-revelations-suggest-founder-ezra-klein-not-accurate-chara

Back in April 2006, he falsely stated that U.C. Santa Cruz protesters “frantically called on [Twitchy CEO Michelle] Malkin to remove their [phone] numbers” from a blog post she had published. As Malkin pointed out to Klein via email at the time, this was false. None of the students whose numbers Malkin posted ever contacted Malkin. Klein never retracted the false statement, which remains on the American Prospect website to this day. http://prospect.org/article/hunting-slugs

http://twitchy.com/2012/08/30/fact-checker-ezra-klein-doubles-down-on-janesville-gm-auto-plant-lie/



Obama lied about Janesville GM auto plant, not Ryan http://twitchy.com/2012/08/30/obama-lied-about-janesville-gm-auto-plant-not-ryan/

Meet MSNBC’s fact-checker: Ezra Klein?!? Update: Klein’s blog falsely claims that Janesville auto plant closed in June 2008
http://twitchy.com/2012/08/30/meet-msnbcs-fact-checker-ezra-klein/

Even if you accept the left's dates and premise, you miss the point of what Ryan was saying. Ryan wasn't saying that Obama promised that particular plant that he would personally save it if elected, then allowed it to be closed during his Presidency in violation of his promise. His point was that Obama went to that plant and stated, in a generality, that if you elect him and his policies of governmental intervention, then plants like that would stay open for 100 years.....due to governmental intervention. However, that plant did close, either under Bush or Obama. It doesn't matter when because that had nothing to do with Ryan's point. However, all the stimulus and diverted TARP money and govt intervention that did happen under Obama did not stop the closure or allow the auto industry to reopen the plant since the closing. So Ryan's point, that anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty could see, was that Obama's ideology that the economy and industry can be saved through governmental intervention and by just having enough taxpayer money thrown at problems simply doesn't work. Short version: Ryan said Obama promised everyone that government would be the answer to everyone's problems under him. The past few years have proven that ideology to be wrong. Ryan is not lying. No facts to even check. He was highlighting the failures of Obama's policies by using an example from his hometown. The end.

[Jolie Rouge]

The real problem with Romney’s ‘47 percent’ gaffe
Published: 9:37 PM 09/17/2012

Liberals believe they have found the smoking gun that will doom Mitt Romney’s presidential aspirations forever: a video in which the Republican presidential nominee says that 47 percent of Americans will stick with Barack Obama because they “are dependent on government” and “believe … that they are victims.”

At the very least, liberals hope this will be Romney’s “bitter clingers” to guns and religion moment.

“I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” Romney said of the dreaded 47 percent.

The problem is that Romney isn’t basing that figure on dependency on government programs. He’s using the rough percentage of people who pay no federal income tax.

There are two reasons the percentage of Americans who don’t write checks to the IRS has spiked in recent years: the bad economy, which Romney pledges to ameliorate, and Republican tax cuts, which Romney plans to continue.

When Ronald Reagan signed into law the Tax Reform Act of 1986, he boasted, “Millions of the working poor will be dropped from the tax rolls altogether, and families will get a long-overdue break with lower rates and an almost doubled personal exemption.”

Both the initial Reagan tax cuts of 1981 and indexing income taxes to inflation in 1985 had a similar effect.

In the 1990s, the Republican-controlled Gingrich Congress passed a $500 per child tax credit that also wiped out the income tax liability of many low- to moderate-income households. “Fully 93 percent of the tax relief in our bill goes to taxpayers with annual incomes under $100,000, 76 percent goes to taxpayers with incomes under $75,000,” then-House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer, a Texas Republican, said at the time. “If ever there was a tax plan for America’s forgotten middle class, this is it.”

George W. Bush expanded the child tax credit as president and also signed into law tax cuts that reduced the bottom marginal income tax rate from 15 percent to 10 percent. Both moves increased the percentage of people not paying income tax.

Far from enabling the growth of government, tax relief for the working poor and middle class has made it possible to enact across-the-board tax cuts that apply even to upper-income earners. Ignoring the rising payroll tax burden of the last few decades while dismissing many of those who have borne it as deadbeats could well have the opposite effect. There is little evidence that the people who have stopped paying income tax as a result of Republicans’ policies have moved leftward politically.

Today married parents of children, the kind of people who benefit from the child tax credit, are actually Romney’s strongest supporters.

In 2008, Obama carried voters making from $100,000 to $150,000 and $150,000 to $200,000, albeit by smaller margins than the electorate as a whole. The percentage of Americans paying federal income taxes was far lower when Calvin Coolidge was president than when LBJ was implementing the Great Society.

As National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru put it, “Conservatives cannot really believe that it was a flaw in America’s founding that nobody paid income taxes to the federal government for almost all of the country’s history before the welfare state.”

The logic of this position has led some Republicans, including tea party favorite Michele Bachmann during her presidential campaign, to call for taxing the poor even as she opposed returning to the top income tax rate of the Clinton era.

This is incredibly shortsighted politics and economics.

Applying even a symbolic tax increase to subsistence levels of income earned by people who have been battered by the recession creates a situation where Republicans have literally nothing to offer many voters. Those dollars are better spent having the working poor support their own families instead of supporting government.

To argue otherwise is to indulge in some perverse conservative version of “You didn’t build that.”

Surely making everyone pay “even if it’s just a dollar” won’t prompt people to give up their government benefits.

This also treats non-taxpayers as a permanent class, ignoring the economic mobility conservatives recognize in most other contexts.

Since when has it been the job of Republicans and conservatives to make sure everyone has IRS obligations?

The explosive growth of a deficit-financed welfare state, which increases the number of people who are net government beneficiaries, is the real problem.

Policies leading to lower taxes for everyone, including the 47 percent, are part of the solution.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/17/the-real-problem-with-romneys-47-percent-gaffe/#ixzz26pItD9PZ

What Mitt said was true & common knowledge: people who are collecting benefits from the government are highly likely to vote to keep collecting their benefits...especially if it is something for nothing ---- but for lib politicians the quid pro quo involves votes in return for freebies.

...

[Jolie Rouge]

Why I am now SO voting for Romney
Posted by ColoradoPatriot at 9:39 pm - September 17, 2012.

Well, this could be it.

Today, the 225th anniversary of the Constitution may go down as the day Romney lost the election. Mother Jones comes forth now with a surrepticiously recorded video in which Mitt Romney tells the truth that no president—indeed, no politician at all, it seems—is willing to tell: That there is a constituency in this Nation that is so dependent on government that it is lost to those who would dare stand on the principles of self-determination and individualism. From the governor:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what…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. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax…And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

The most damning part of this quote? It’s true. We can all parse whether or not this was felicitously delivered, but the bottom line is that it’s absolutely accurate.

Want proof? Fewer people are working than when the president took office. More people are claiming disability than are finding new jobs. The entire workforce itself has shrunk to a degree that would otherwise yield an 11+% unemployment rate. There is no way in Hell an incumbent should have even a snowball’s chance of re-election. Yet here we sit with the polls basically tied (and likely, thanks to this recording, to head south for Romney). Just check out the president’s approval rating and his standing in any of the recent polls.

The only explanation can be that Mitt Romney is correct. But just as has been the case recently, I fear, this will be yet another example of the governor coming out timidly in the shadow of having spoken the truth that nobody is willing to hear, let alone speak.

God, I pray I’m wrong. Imagine what it would say about a Nation to elect a man who sees so clearly the cultural problems that are plaguing our Nation and taking their toll on our economy.

I had been saying all along that re-electing Obama would speak volumes about our Nation: That it would mean we’ve become Greece-like in our rapture over state-sourced validity. That the man who so incredibly symbolizes—nay, personifies—the Leviathan State actually won election after the scales had fallen from the eyes of his HopeAndChange worshipers and they actually knew what he was all about…

But I never really saw his election as having the same gravity in a supposed contrapositive as I do now: If Mitt Romney, despite the inevitable upcoming onslaught of character assassination for having been bold enough to tell the truth, can be elected in the Nation he correctly described, then there truly is hope for this great Idea of America.

I have supported Romney all the way through the primaries because I have believed that he was the man who had the turn-around mentality and the clear vision based on his business experience to help this Nation at this time. Inasmuch, my support was mostly mechanical.

But I will vote for Mitt Romney now with a renewed hope and faith in America. His comments, as clumsily as they were delivered, ring so incredibly true. If American voters can see that, then there really is hope. And the real kind this time.

http://www.gaypatriot.net/2012/09/17/why-i-am-now-so-voting-for-romney/

[justice250]

I don't see the uproar. Everything Romney said was true and he probably picked up some more voters for saying it.

[Jolie Rouge]

September 18, 2012
The Democrats think Romney just self-destructed by pointing out, um, THEIR ENTIRE STRATEGY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU9V6eOFO38&feature=player_embedded

I can see why Democrats are so offended. How dare Mitt Romney say they’re dependent on the government? Only Democrats get to say they’re dependent on the government!

Has everybody already forgotten “Julia”? http://www.barackobama.com/life-of-julia/

http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Remember_Julia.png

If you haven’t seen the whole “Life of Julia” slideshow on Obama’s campaign site, or if you need a refresher, check it out. The entire premise is that you’re dependent on the government from cradle to grave, and The Evil Mitt Romney is going to take it all away from you and make you fend for yourself.

http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Julia_the_mooch.png

That’s Obama’s reelection message: “Vote for me or Romney will take away all the free goodies you’ve got coming to you! By the way, can you believe he called you a mooch?” The Democrats based their whole convention around the premise that you need Obama just to survive. (Well, that and killing Bin Laden. Which they suddenly don’t feel like talking about anymore, for some odd reason…)

The economy is collapsing. Our embassies are being overrun. Our diplomats are being murdered, and our own government is blaming it on the First Amendment. And Obama doesn’t know what to do about any of it, except for his usual plan of lying his ass off. So he and his enablers in the media hope you’ll be distracted by Romney’s “gaffe” of criticizing the Democrats’ strategy. They hope you’ll be offended that Romney pointed out what the Dems have been telling you your whole life: that you need the government to provide for you, that you can’t go a single day without a handout. They hope you’re as credulous as the people who voted for them last time.

The economy is collapsing. Our embassies are being overrun. Our diplomats are being murdered, and our own government is blaming it on the First Amendment. And Obama doesn’t know what to do about any of it, except for his usual plan of lying his ass off. So he and his enablers in the media hope you’ll be distracted by Romney’s “gaffe” of criticizing the Democrats’ strategy. They hope you’ll be offended that Romney pointed out what the Dems have been telling you your whole life: that you need the government to provide for you, that you can’t go a single day without a handout. They hope you’re as credulous as the people who voted for them last time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI&feature=player_embedded


If you’ve been watching the news for the past week and you can’t believe how stupid they think you are, that somehow they imagine you can’t see what they’re doing, I have two words for you:

November. Sixth.

P.S. Courtesy of the mighty Iowahawk: Julia’s Circle of Life. http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2012/05/julias-circle-of-life.html

P.P.S. From the Too Good to Be True file: The video came from Jimmy Carter’s unemployed grandson? http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/17/jimmy-carters-looking-for-work-grandson-source-of-romney-video

P.P.P.S. Speaking of secret tapes, remember Rashid Khalidi? The LA Times hopes you don’t. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/226104/i-l-times-i-suppresses-obamas-khalidi-bash-tape/andrew-c-mccarthy


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/18/democrats-think-romney-just-self-destructed-by-pointing-out-um-their-entire-strategy/#ixzz26plntUyj

[Jolie Rouge]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU9V6eOFO38&feature=player_embedded

In secret fundraiser video, Romney doubts two-state solution
By Liz Goodwin, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 20 mins ago

Mitt Romney expressed doubt that Israel and Palestine could ever come to a peaceful two-state agreement. The comments were made in May at a Boca Raton fundraiser where they were secretly taped and released by the liberal Mother Jones magazine.

Romney said he thinks "the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish." Romney added that a former secretary of state told him there was a prospect for peace between the two nations, but that he doubted that. The Republican presidential candidate concluded that the best strategy for the U.S. is to "kick the ball down the field" in hopes that "something will happen and resolve it":


And I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say, "There's just no way." And so what you do is you say, "You move things along the best way you can." You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem. We live with that in China and Taiwan. All right, we have a potentially volatile situation but we sort of live with it, and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it. We don't go to war to try and resolve it imminently.

His full comments are in the video above. Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said in a statement that Romney was describing the many difficult issues that would need to be resolved before a two-state solution could take place. "As he's often said, there is this one obvious truth: Peace will not be possible if the extreme elements of the Palestinian side refuse to come to the table for talks or to recognize Israel's right to exist," she said. "A possible unity government between Hamas—a terrorist organization—in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank would squelch the prospect for peace. Gov. Romney believes that the path to a two-state solution is to ensure the security of Israel and not to throw up any more barriers to the two sides engaging in direct negotiations."

Romney spoke to reporters Monday night to address another video from the fundraiser released by the magazine, in which he said that Obama supporters—according to Romney, 47 percent of the population—do not pay income taxes and think of themselves as "victims" who are entitled to government care. Romney defended the comments but said they were not "elegantly stated."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/secret-fundraiser-video-romney-doubts-two-state-solution-145557313--election.html

Romney stands by comments in video but says they were ‘not elegantly stated’
by Holly Bailey, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 11 hrs ago.

COSTA MESA, Calif.—Mitt Romney stood by his comments captured on a hidden camera at a closed-door fundraiser earlier this year in which he called supporters of President Barack Obama "victims" and said they are reliant on government handouts.

In a hastily arranged news conference Monday night, he called his words "off the cuff" and "not elegantly stated," but given several opportunities to back off the comments, he did not.

Romney said he was merely talking about the "political process of drawing people into my own campaign." He described the incident as a "snippet of a question and answer session" and called on the full video to be released to show the question and his response in its full context.

Asked if he was worried that he had offended the 47 percent of people he mentioned in the statement, Romney did not back off his remarks.

"It's not elegantly stated, let me put it that way," Romney said. "I'm speaking off the cuff in response to a question, and I'm sure I can state it more clearly in a more effective way than I did in a setting like that and so I'm sure I'll point that out as time goes on."

But, he added, "It's a message which I am going to carry and continue to carry."

Still, Romney ignored a question about whether he really believes what he was saying. Asked if his words were reflective of his "core convictions," Romney simply walked away.

Romney's remarks came hours after Mother Jones magazine posted a video shot from inside a fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla., in May, which immediately went viral. Romney, who was headlining a fundraiser here, delayed his appearance to comment on the video to his traveling press corps in hopes of quelling the controversy over his remarks.

Speaking from a conference room inside a performing arts center here, Romney walked to the podium wearing a smile and sounded intentionally upbeat as he read from notes.

Asked what he meant by the word "victims," Romney cast his remarks as simply accentuating the differences between his campaign and Obama's.

"My campaign is about helping people take more responsibility and becoming employed again, particularly those who don't have work," Romney said. "His whole campaign is based on getting people jobs again, putting people back to work. This is ultimately a question about direction for the country. Do you believe in a government-centered society that provides more and more benefits or do you believe instead in a free enterprise society where people are able to pursue their dreams?"

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/romney-stands-comments-video-says-were-not-elegantly-032830339--election.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Thoughts on Romney's 47% Statement
By Aaron Goldstein on 9.18.12 @ 10:30AM

Like Mitt Romney, I would like to see the entire question and answer not just the snippet of video of a fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida in which he said: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/secret-video-romney-private-fundraiser


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 take 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. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax.

Romney went on to state:


(M)y job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the five to ten percent in the center that are independents that are thoughtful, that look voting one way or the other depending upon some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not.

Romney is absolutely right to say that 47% of the people will vote for Obama no matter what. He is also right to say that an increasing number of people are in receipt of money from the federal government while paying no federal income tax. Indeed, our state of economic affairs is not good when there are more people who obtained Social Security Disability Insurance than obtained a job. http://hotair.com/archives/2012/07/06/jobs-report-more-people-went-on-disability-than-got-jobs-in-june/

Yet it would be a mistake to say that all of his vote comes from people in receipt of government entitlements. There are rich people who support Obama and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of hearing him speak. While it's true that some people are content to be receipt of government entitlements, there is an assumption that others in receipt of said entitlements don't want to improve their lives. So when Romney says it's "not his job to worry about those people", it is reminiscient of when he said he's "not concerned about the poor" last February. http://spectator.org/blog/2012/02/01/romneys-poor-remark

With that said, I think it was unnecessary for Romney to call an impromptu press conference last night. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwptutZ4jPA&feature=youtu.be After all, Barack Obama didn't call a press conference after it was revealed that he had called small town Americans "bitter" people who "cling to guns and religion" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTxXUufI3jA at a Democratic fundraiser in San Francisco. Of course, there was no demand for him to do so because not only did the liberal press not question him about it but they were in agreement with him and still are. The liberal press, by and large, holds the values of small town America in low esteem.

I think it was unnecessary for Romney to have the press conference because he was drawing attention to himself on the defensive rather than drawing attention to himself for going on the offensive against Obama. Besides I hardly think this press conference will placate the liberal media.

The silver lining is that Romney still has time to convince people why he should be President and Barack Obama shouldn't. We'll see if Romney can rise to the occasion next month during the debates.

http://spectator.org/blog/2012/09/18/thoughts-on-romneys-47-stateme

comment

I don't think Mr. Romney literally believes that every individual among the 47% who don't pay taxes will vote for Obama "no matter what". His point (and remember who his audience was here) was that if you don't currently pay taxes, you're generally unlikely to be moved by his message of lower taxes (they should be, as it would mean more investment and more job opportunities, but they don't generally have the capacity to see the big picture - which rather explains their present circumstances).

His goal here was to motivate his base and get them to open their wallets, which is generally much easier to do when there's a sense of urgency. Presenting a scenario in which he's spotting Obama 47% of the vote, followed by the message that the goal is still attainable (despite the odds, we only need to convince the 5% of voters who are in the middle) serves to provide both a sense of urgency and a sense that their money won't be wasted (i.e. their investment is both necessary and prudent). It's boilerplate campaign fundraiser strategy and no more shocking than the fact that the sun will rise in the east. BTW - it generally works. So let's not get our panties in a wad over nothing...

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47% automatically for Obama? This is bilge! Even those benefiting from Federal largesse have patriotic impulses from time to time. It's up to Romney and Ryan to bring those feelings to the fore.

Romney's statement regarding the Cairo apology, despite its condemnation by liberals and RINO fools, was a good start. He needs more of that, and a more offensive approach to Obama's mistakes. Of course, offensive tactics without being personally offensive is most desirable.

As for the rest of us, a little less pessimism would be in order. The polls always lean toward the Dems at this stage of the game, and Barack is sure to have more problems going forward. Romney is still the realistic favorite in the race.

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Romney is correct. I have some thoughts on the MSM reaction to this as well: http://asspos.blogspot.com/2012/09/romney-controversy-explodes-election.html

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I hate to parse words, ala Bill Clinton, but I think one has to consider just what Romney meant by "not worrying about the 47%". I doubt if he meant he doesn't give a damn what happens to them but he isn't going to spend a lot of time worrying about getting their vote. Big difference. That said, let's face facts. Of that 47% how many will get off of their apathetic assess on election day to go to the polls? Not that many. Pissing off the 47% doesn't really bother me. I think we need to take Obama's "fair share" argument and apply it to these people. They need to pay their fair share, even if it's only a few dollars a year.

[Jolie Rouge]

Romney’s “secret video” and the Dem politics of “Squirrel!”
By Michelle Malkin • September 18, 2012 11:42 PM


http://s.michellemalkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/cray-cray-democratic-squirrel.jpg

Democrats need to change their party mascot from the donkey to the squirrel. They divert the media and the electorate’s short attention spans with fleeting, fuzzy objects — like the talking dog in the animated Pixar movie “Up,” who was easily distracted from his main thoughts and serious duties by every last little, moving trifle.

Embassy attacks? Quick, find a squirrel!

Warnings ignored? Squirrel!

American troops killed by long-plotting jihadis exploiting security weaknesses? Squirrel!

First Amendment sabotage by White House officials in the name of political correctness? Squirrel!

Chronic joblessness, high gas prices, exploding dependency? Squirrel! Squirrel! Squirrel!

As Election Day draws nearer, the Obama campaign and its surrogates in the Fourth Estate have infested the political arena with an army of tactical and rhetorical rodentia. One week, it’s GOP presidential rival Mitt Romney’s high school hijinks. The next, it’s a heinous smear about Romney killing a steelworker’s cancer-stricken wife.

Or, it’s a hit job on multiple sclerosis survivor Ann Romney’s therapeutic horse. Then, it’s faux-rage over Romney’s firm statement condemning the feckless White House response to the murders of our U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans in Benghazi.

This week, it’s a “secret Romney video” shot undercover at a closed-door dinner with Florida donors in May. Unemployed Democratic operative James Carter IV (grandson of former president and malaise engineer Jimmy Carter) brokered the film to progressive Mother Jones magazine.

Now, the same media lapdogs who had conniption fits when the late Andrew Breitbart and conservative investigative journalist James O’Keefe used undercover video are tripping over themselves to publish glowing profiles of Carter the Fourth and his impressive “furtive efforts” to secure the Romney tapes.

Carter the Fourth found the cameraman on Twitter, invoked his family name, and convinced the mole to leak the tape to Mother Jones’s David Corn. To quote Joe Biden with all due sarcasm: BFD.

But back to the bigger Big, Fluffy Distraction at hand: Let’s reflect for a moment on the Beltway hoo-hah over one small snippet from Romney’s nearly hour-long talk. Here’s the quote that has liberal finger-waggers and Republican wet-finger-in-the-wind windbags in meltdown mode:


“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” Romney explained to an audience member who asked how the candidate was going to change the “we’ll take care of you” mentality of Obama voters. “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…And they will vote for this president no matter what.”

Romney went out to explain that this portion of voters was comprised of “people who pay no income tax…I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

He’s talking, of course, about the Peggy the Moochers and Henrietta Hugheses of the world – savior-based Obama supporters for whom the cult of personality trumps all else. He’s talking about the Sandra Flukes and Julias of the world – Nanny State grievance-mongers who have been spoon-fed identity politics and victim Olympics from preschool through grad school and beyond. And he’s talking about the encrusted entitlement clientele who range from the Section 8 housing mob in Atlanta that caused a near-riot to the irresponsible debt-ridden homeowners who mortgaged themselves into oblivion and want their bailout now, now, now.

Media wonks sliced and diced the words like Hibachi chefs on bath salts. Beltway conservative scribes David Brooks and Bill Kristol denounced Romney as insensitive and out-of-touch. But Romney told hard political truths, which he’s proclaimed openly on the campaign trail before. “If you’re looking for free stuff you don’t have to pay for, vote for the other guy,” he told a heckler in March. “That’s what he’s all about, okay? That’s not, that’s not what I’m about.”

Gasp! He said he’s against freeloaders. Oh, the inhumanity.

In another section of the video that libs don’t want to talk about, Romney received his biggest applause when he defended his success and mentioned what Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio’s Cuban immigrant parents taught him. “When he grew up here poor, they looked at people who had a lot of wealth. His parents never once said, ‘We need some of what they have. They should give us some.’ Instead, they said ‘If we work hard and go to school, someday we might be able to have that.’”

Let the parsers and panicky pundits chase their tails and hurl their nuts. This election is about America’s makers versus America’s takers. Romney should never, ever apologize for making that clear.

http://michellemalkin.com/2012/09/18/romneys-secret-video-and-the-dem-politics-of-squirrel/

[Jolie Rouge]

University of Colorado prediction model points to big Romney win
Published: 3:54 PM 08/23/2012

http://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/electoral-college-png1-300x192.jpg

A presidential election prediction model developed by two University of Colorado professors points to a big win for GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney in November.

The model, the only of its kind to use more than one state-level economic indicator, has correctly predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1980.

It predicts Romney winning the electoral college by a 320-218 margin and winning 52.9 percent of the popular vote when only the two major parties’ candidates are considered, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

Romney, it concluded, will win every state currently considered by pollsters to be a swing state, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire and North Carolina.

The model even predicts Romney will win Minnesota and Maine’s Second Congressional District, the electoral votes of which most pollsters consider to be “safe” for President Obama. Nevada and Iowa are the only swing states it assigns to Obama.

“Based on our forecasting model, it becomes clear that the president is in electoral trouble,” explained Kenneth Bickers, a political science professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder who developed the prediction model with Michael Berry of University of Colorado-Denver.

“The apparent advantage of being a Democratic candidate and holding the White House disappears,” Berry noted, ”when the national unemployment rate hits 5.6 percent. The incumbency advantage enjoyed by President Obama, though statistically significant, is not great enough to offset high rates of unemployment currently experienced in many of the states.”

Bickers said large issues like the economy and the country’s overall direction tend to determine presidential elections. Computerized prediction models “suggest that presidential elections are about big things and the stewardship of the national economy,” he said. “It’s not about gaffes, political commercials or day-to-day campaign tactics. I find that heartening for our democracy.”

Bickers and Berry cautioned, however, that their model used economic data from June, 2012. They intend to update their calculations when new data become available in September.

And many swing states showed close enough to a 50-50 split that factors other than the economy could tilt them in the opposite direction. Bicker and Berry also did not factor in third party candidates, such as Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson, who Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-affiliated polling firm, has noted could significantly diminish Obama’s chances of winning New Mexico.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/23/university-of-colorado-prediction-model-points-to-big-romney-win/#ixzz26wbA2C4t

[Jolie Rouge]

Censured tax cheat Charles Rangel to Mitt Romney:
Unlike you, Americans pay their fair share of taxes
By Doug Powers • September 20, 2012 07:22 PM

Our Hypocrite of the Week winner is Charles Rangel, the congressman who is living proof of a swamp left undrained. Rangel wins for this story that appears on his website: Rangel to Romney: Americans Pay Their Fair Share Of Taxes, Unlike You: http://rangel.house.gov/statements/2012/09/rangel-to-romney-americans-pay-their-fair-share-of-taxes-unlike-you.shtml


New York, NY – Congressman Charles B. Rangel issued the following statement in response to Gov. Mitt Romney’s remarks saying 47% of the American people do not pay federal income taxes and nearly half of voters are “dependent upon government”:

“Nothing can be further from the truth than Gov. Romney’s ridiculous remarks that nearly half of American people do not pay federal income taxes, they pay other federal and state taxes. The 47 percent figure cited by the Republican presidential candidate covers only the federal income tax and ignores the fact that people may pay a higher percentage of their income on a wide variety of taxes.

Flashback to 2010: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/45883.html


Rangel was found guilty by the ethics panel of 11 counts of violating ethics rules, including charges that he improperly solicited millions of dollars from corporate officials and lobbyists for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York, failed to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars of income and assets on financial disclosure forms, maintained a rent-stabilized apartment as a campaign office in a Harlem apartment building and failed to pay income taxes on a villa in the Dominican Republic.

We thank Congressman Rangel for the public reminder that compunction bypass surgery and excision of the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex are covered under Obamacare. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22345371

**Written by Doug Powers http://michellemalkin.com/2012/09/20/tax-cheat-romney-taxes/

The single most distinctive characteristic of Democrats is their complete lack of any personal sense of shame.

There is no self-reflection at all. It’s all psychological projection, all the time.

[Jolie Rouge]

Left outraged Romney paid too MUCH in taxes, gave 30 percent to charity;
Reid, Biden hardest hit; Update: CNN/MSNBC’s commentator Goldie Taylor unhinged
Posted at 2:43 pm on September 21, 2012 by Twitchy Staff

Information about Mitt Romney’s taxes was released today.





Ed Henry@edhenryTV

More Romney: effective tax rate for 2011 was 14.1 percent ... he & his wife donated $4,020,772 to charity in 2011, nearly 30 pct of income

21 Sep 12

The Romneys gave 30 percent of their income to charity. Yes, charity. You know, the thing that does far more good than government bureaucracy ever could. They also paid a higher tax rate. Narrative destroyed!



benshapiro@benshapiro

Romney gave 30% of his income last year to charity. Yes, he's clearly a greedy, selfish one-percenter who doesn't care about the poor.

21 Sep 12

Unreal! Perhaps they are trying to divert attention from the embarrassments known as Joe Biden and Harry Reid. Remember, Senator Reid just repeated his disgusting and scurrilous accusations from the Senate floor: http://twitchy.com/2012/09/19/sen-reid-again-charges-for-all-we-know-romney-hasnt-paid-income-taxes-what-about-charges-against-reid/ “For all we know, Mitt Romney could be one of those who paid no taxes.” You know, because some guy who knows this girl who is dating this other guy, told him. http://twitchy.com/2012/07/31/harryreidfacts-some-guy-totally-told-truther-harry-reid-a-thing-about-romneys-taxes-media-blindly-repeats/


ComfortablySmug@ComfortablySmug

RT @Chris_Moody: In 2007, Biden gave $995 to charity and Obama gave $240K. In 2011, Ryan gave $13K and Romney donated $4 million.

21 Sep 12


David Jesse@davidsjesse

So over 44% of Romney's income in 2011 went to either taxes or charity. Anybody know what Harry Reid donated? weeklystandard.com/blogs/romneys-…

21 Sep 12



Ellen Carmichael@ellencarmichael

Romneys paid an average federal tax rate of 20.20%. Today, the average federal tax rate for Americans is 7.2%. Narrative: destroyed.

21 Sep 12


Yep. The result? Frothing and insane outrage. They are out of their minds, truly.

Update: CNN/MSNBC contributor Goldie Taylor is even more unhinged.
http://twitchy.com/2012/09/21/cable-news-commentator-goldie-taylor-romney-will-do-anything-to-win-no-one-pays-more-taxes/

These people are truly self-parodies now. Cable news (CNN, MSNBC) commentator and author Goldie Taylor took to Twitter to join the ranks of the insane who are outraged that The Romneys paid too MUCH in taxes. Yes, really.


Goldie Taylor@goldietaylor

Never in the history of mankind has anybody purposely paid more taxes than owed...

21 Sep 12

[Jolie Rouge]

‎'The campaign also released a letter from his accountants with a summary of his returns from 1990-2009, which said he paid an effective average of 20.2% over the period, with the lowest return at 13.66%.'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19682947

21 September 2012
Mitt Romney paid 14.1% in tax in 2011

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has released his much-anticipated 2011 tax return, which shows he paid a rate of 14.1%.

Mr Romney paid $1.9m (£1.1m) in taxes in 2011, on $13.7m of income.

The private equity tycoon has already released his 2010 tax return, for which he paid about $3m, a 13.9% rate.

The top rate of income tax in the US is 35%, but Mr Romney lives mainly on income derived from his investments, for which only 15% tax is payable.

Critics, including President Barack Obama, whom Mr Romney will challenge for the White House in November, have called on him to release more tax returns.

Mr Romney's 2011 tax rate of 14.1% compares with a previous estimate of 15.4% for the year by his aides. The Romneys filed their 2011 return with the Internal Revenue Service on Friday after applying for an extension earlier in the year. http://www.mittromney.com/disclosure/mitt/tax-return/2011/wmr-adr-return

The campaign also released a letter from his accountants with a summary of his returns from 1990-2009, which said he paid an effective average of 20.2% over the period, with the lowest return at 13.66%. http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/438467-pwc-letter.html

Obama taxes

The move came amid attempts by the Romney campaign to shift the focus of recent days away from remarks he made at a private donor dinner.

In the video secretly recorded earlier this year, he disparages Obama voters, saying they pay no income tax.

Mr Romney's critics say he should follow the example of his father, former Michigan Governor George Romney, who released a dozen years of tax returns during his own unsuccessful run for president in 1968.

But the former Massachusetts governor has said he is following 2008 Republican White House candidate John McCain's example of releasing two years of taxes.

Mr Obama's 2011 tax return showed he paid an effective rate of 20.5%, on an income of $789,674.

On average, US middle-income families, those making from $50,000 to $75,000 a year, pay 12.8%, according to congressional research.

As he released his 2010 return in January this year, Mr Romney said he had paid "all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more".

But according to Brad Malt, the trustee that controls Mr Romney's wealth as he runs for president, the Romneys donated $4m to charity in 2011, claiming $2.25m of it as a deduction.

"The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the Governor's statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years," Mr Malt said.

The campaign has stressed that the blind trust run by Mr Malt means that the candidate is making no decisions on how his money is invested.

Tax law experts say the release of the 2011 return - and the summary of the past 20 years - will do little to silence questions about Mr Romney's past tax liability, including the source of a $100m retirement account and the tax advantages of his offshore investments.

[Jolie Rouge]

The Democrat spin on Romney’s tax return release will be epic

Posted by: ST on September 21, 2012 at 4:42 pm

Guy Benson’s post on the release of Mitt Romney’s tax returns is awesome. I won’t even excerpt it. The headline says it all:
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2012/09/21/democrats_media_get_punkd_romney_releases_tax_retu rns


Democrats, Media Get Punk’d: Romney Releases Tax Returns

I mean well and truly punk’d. Here’s a hint on one revelation: Romney gave away roughly 30% of his income to charity.

Make sure to read the whole thing, and then sit back and what for the epic spinning of this by the left and their allies in the mainstream press to begin.

Reid: The result of being punch-drunk and an incredibly lucky thief.

Biden: One whose plageristic talents never came across the definition of “charity” as not having to do with anything government. He still believes in that echo chamber he calls his head that charity begins with the theft of money from the middle class to line the pockets of his rich union bosses.

But one has to admit, those two have at least twice as many fans as PMSDNC, and all four of those fans will tell you so.

And Romney? It wouldn’t make any difference if he’d given 100% to charity and wandered the streets in sackcloth and ashes, the socialists would still hate him because he’s not enough of a statist for them.

http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2012/09/21/the-democrat-spin-on-romneys-tax-return-release-will-be-epic/

[Jolie Rouge]

Transcript: Romney’s speech to the Clinton Global Initiative

Mitt Romney spoke to the Clinton Global Initiative in New York. All three major networks broadcast the speech live. He name-checked the Muslim Brotherhood, noting that Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi is a member. Here’s a transcript of his prepared remarks:


If there’s one thing we’ve learned this election season, it’s that a few words from Bill Clinton can do any man a lot of good. After that introduction, I guess all I have to do is wait a day or two for the bounce.

Since serving as President here in America, President Clinton has devoted himself to lifting the downtrodden around the world. One of the best things that can happen to any cause, to any people, is to have Bill Clinton as its advocate. That is how needy and neglected causes have become global initiatives. It is that work that invites us here today.

As I have watched the astounding impact of this Initiative from afar, I have been impressed by the extraordinary power you have derived by harnessing together different people of different backgrounds, and different institutions of different persuasions. You have fashioned partnerships across traditional boundaries — public and private, for-profit and nonprofit, charitable and commercial.

On a smaller scale, I have seen partnerships like this work before. In Massachusetts, two social pioneers brought corporations and government and volunteers together to form City Year, the model for Americorps. I sat with then candidate for President Bill Clinton as he investigated the life-changing successes which occurred when young people came together for a year of service, linked in teams with corporate sponsors. Then, as the head of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, I saw again the stunning success than comes when the disparate elements of a community join together in unity, to overcome challenges that had seemed insurmountable before.

The Clinton Global Initiative has also demonstrated the effectiveness of entrepreneurship and social enterprise. You endeavor to not only comfort the afflicted, but to also change lives thorough freedom, free enterprise, and the incomparable dignity of work.

Free enterprise has done more to bless humanity than any other economic system not only because it is the only system that creates a prosperous middle class, but also because it is the only system where the individual enjoys the freedom to guide and build his or her own life. Free enterprise cannot only make us better off financially, it can make us better people.

Ours is a compassionate nation. We look around us and see withering suffering. Our hearts break. While we make up just 4.5 percent of the world’s population, we donate nearly a quarter of all global foreign aid—more than twice as much as any other country. And Americans give more than money. Pastors like Rick Warren lead mission trips that send thousands of Americans around the world, bringing aid and comfort to the poorest places on the planet. American troops are first on the scene of natural disasters. An earthquake strikes Haiti and care packages from America are among the first to arrive – and not far behind are former Presidents Clinton and Bush.

But too often our passion for charity is tempered by our sense that our aid is not always effective. We see stories of cases where American aid has been diverted to corrupt governments. We wonder why years of aid and relief seem never to extinguish the hardship, why the suffering persists decade after decade.

Perhaps some of our disappointments are due to our failure to recognize just how much the developing world has changed. Many of our foreign aid efforts were designed at a time when government development assistance accounted for roughly 70 percent of all resources flowing to developing nations. Today, 82 percent of the resources flowing into the developing world come from the private sector. If foreign aid can leverage this massive investment by private enterprise, it may exponentially expand the ability to not only care for those who suffer, but also to change lives.

Private enterprise is having a greater and greater positive impact in the developing world. The John Deere Company embarked upon a pilot project in Africa where it developed a suite of farm tools that could be attached to a very small tractor. John Deere has also worked to expand the availability of capital to farmers so they can maintain and develop their businesses. The result has been a good investment for John Deere and greater opportunity for African farmers, who are now able to grow more crops, and to provide for more plentiful lives.

For American foreign aid to become more effective, it must embrace the power of partnerships, access the transformative nature of free enterprise, and leverage the abundant resources that can come from the private sector.

There are three, quite legitimate, objects of our foreign aid.

First, to address humanitarian need. Such is the case with the PEPFAR initiative, which has given medical treatment to millions suffering from HIV and AIDS.

Second, to foster a substantial United States strategic interest, be it military, diplomatic, or economic.

And there is a third purpose, one that will receive more attention and a much higher priority in a Romney Administration. And that is aid that elevates people and brings about lasting change in communities and in nations.

Many Americans are troubled by the developments in the Middle East. Syria has witnessed the killing of tens of thousands of people. The president of Egypt is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Our Ambassador to Libya was assassinated in a terrorist attack. And Iran is moving toward nuclear weapons capability. We feel that we are at the mercy of events, rather than shaping events.

I am often asked why, and what can we do to lead the Middle East to stability, to ease the suffering and the anger and the hate.

Religious extremism is certainly part of the problem. But that’s not the whole story.

The population of the Middle East is young, particularly compared with the population of the West. And typically, these young people have few job prospects and the levels of youth unemployment across the region are excessive and chronic. In nations that have undergone a change in leadership recently, young people have greater access to information that was once carefully guarded by tyrants and dictators. They see the good as well as the bad in surrounding societies. They can now organize across vast regions, mobilizing populations. Idle, humiliated by poverty, and crushed by government corruption, their frustration and anger grows.

In such a setting, for America to change lives, to change communities and nations in the Middle East, foreign aid must also play a role. And the shape that role should take was brought into focus by the life and death of Muhammed Bouazizi of Tunisia, the street vendor whose self-immolation sparked the Arab Spring.

He was just 26-years-old. He had provided for his family since he was a young boy. He worked a small fruit stand, selling to passers-by. The regular harassment by corrupt bureaucrats was elevated one day when they took crates of his fruit and his weighing scales away from him.

On the day of his protest, witnesses say that an officer slapped Bouazizi and he cried out, “Why are you doing this to me? I’m a simple person, and I just want to work.”

I just want to work.

Work. That must be at the heart of our effort to help people build economies that can create jobs for people, young and old alike. Work builds self-esteem. It transforms minds from fantasy and fanaticism to reality and grounding. Work will not long tolerate corruption nor quietly endure the brazen theft by government of the product of hard-working men and women.

To foster work and enterprise in the Middle East and in other developing countries, I will initiate “Prosperity Pacts.” Working with the private sector, the program will identify the barriers to investment, trade, and entrepreneurialism in developing nations. In exchange for removing those barriers and opening their markets to U.S. investment and trade, developing nations will receive U.S. assistance packages focused on developing the institutions of liberty, the rule of law, and property rights.

We will focus our efforts on small and medium-size businesses. Microfinance has been an effective tool at promoting enterprise and prosperity, but we must expand support to small and medium-size businesses that are too large for microfinance, but too small for traditional banks.

The aim of a much larger share of our aid must be the promotion of work and the fostering of free enterprise. Nothing we can do as a nation will change lives and nations more effectively and permanently than sharing the insight that lies at the foundation of America’s own economy–free people pursuing happiness in their own ways build a strong and prosperous nation.

[Jolie Rouge]

When I was in business, I traveled to many other countries. I was often struck by the vast difference in wealth among nations. True, some of that was due to geography. Rich countries often had natural resources like mineral deposits or ample waterways. But in some cases, all that separated a rich country from a poor one was a faint line on a map. Countries that were physically right next to each other were economically worlds apart. Just think of North and South Korea.

I became convinced that the crucial difference between these countries wasn’t geography. I noticed the most successful countries shared something in common. They were the freest. They protected the rights of the individual. They enforced the rule of law. And they encouraged free enterprise. They understood that economic freedom is the only force in history that has consistently lifted people out of poverty – and kept people out of poverty.

A temporary aid package can jolt an economy. It can fund some projects. It can pay some bills. It can employ some people some of the time. But it can’t sustain an economy—not for long. It can’t pull the whole cart—because at some point, the money runs out.

But an assistance program that helps unleash free enterprise creates enduring prosperity. Free enterprise is based on mutual exchange—or, rather, millions of exchanges—millions of people trading, buying, selling, building, investing. Yes, it has its ups and downs. It isn’t perfect. But it’s more durable. It’s more reliable. And ultimately, as history shows, it’s more successful.

The best example of the good free enterprise can do for the developing world is the example of the developed world itself. My friend Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute has pointed out that before the year 1800, living standards in the West were appalling. A person born in the eighteenth century lived essentially as his great-great-grandfather had. Life was filled with disease and danger.

But starting in 1800, the West began two centuries of free enterprise and trade. Living standards rose. Literacy spread. Health improved. In our own country, between 1820 and 1998, real per capita GDP increased twenty-two-fold.

As the most prosperous nation in history, it is our duty to keep the engine of prosperity running—to open markets across the globe and to spread prosperity to all corners of the earth. We should do it because it’s the right moral course to help others.

But it is also economically the smart thing to do. In our export industries, the typical job pays above what comparable workers make in other industries, and more than one-third of manufacturing jobs are tied to exports. Sadly, we have lost over half a million manufacturing jobs over the last three and a half years.

As president, I will reverse this trend by ensuring we have trade that works for America. I will negotiate new trade agreements, ask Congress to reinstate Trade Promotion Authority, complete negotiations to expand the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and create what I call a “Reagan Economic Zone,” where any nation willing to play by the rules can participate in a new community committed to fair and free trade.

I’ve laid out a new approach for a new era. We’ll couple aid with trade and private investment to empower individuals, encourage innovators, and reward entrepreneurs.

Today, we face a world with unprecedented challenges and complexities. We should not forget—and cannot forget—that not far from here, a voice of unspeakable evil and hatred has spoken out, threatening Israel and the civilized world. But we come together knowing that the bitterness of hate is no match for the strength of love.

In the weeks ahead, I will continue to speak to these challenges and the opportunities that this moment presents us. I will go beyond foreign assistance and describe what I believe America’s strategy should be to secure our interests and ideals during this uncertain time.

A year from now, I hope to return to this meeting as president, having made substantial progress toward achieving the reforms I’ve outlined. But I also hope to remind the world of the goodness and the bigness of the American heart. I will never apologize for America. I believe that America has been one of the greatest forces for good the world has ever known. We can hold that knowledge in our hearts with humility and unwavering conviction.

Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you all very much.


comments

Between the Coptic Egyptian filmmaker being taken into custody and detained (although not technically arrested), Obama forgiving billions in debt to the Egypt led by Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, the same Morsi who has issued an arrest warrant so Egypt can kill the blasphemer, and Obama saying the future does not belong to those who slander The Prophet (hey, how come non-Christians don’t refer to Jesus as “The Lord Jesus Christ”? MoeHamHead isn’t a prophet to me…), I’d say besides the obvious appeasement that is Obama, hate speech laws to protect the delicate sensibilities of the head choppers are coming, and First Amendment or not, I can’t be sure a Roberts led Supreme Court would strike down blasphemy laws.

..


Countries that were physically right next to each other were economically worlds apart. Just think of North and South Korea.

I became convinced that the crucial difference between these countries wasn’t geography. I noticed the most successful countries shared something in common. They were the freest. They protected the rights of the individual. They enforced the rule of law. And they encouraged free enterprise. They understood that economic freedom is the only force in history that has consistently lifted people out of poverty – and kept people out of poverty.

The choice we have in this election clearly and concisely articulated by Romney.
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If you understand nothing else get this into your mind. We are NOT a Democracy. We are a Republic. The government belongs to the people. In a democracy the people belong to the government. Learn the difference and learn the Constitution and the other documents. Don’t wait for them to be explained to you by some corrupt socialist government and don’t let a socialist teacher be the one to teach your children the history of our Republic.

[Jolie Rouge]

comments continued...

I, too, was disappointed at the lame “one-world-village” or whatever tone as I began to skim Romney’s speech.

My point is that, at this moment, we go to the election with the candidate that we have – to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld.

We must win this election.

We still have loads and loads of work ahead of us.

But, succeeding in this immedeiately next step is of paramount importance.

Once we win, we can then turn energies to the rest of the work.

But we must win the election in November.

That’s my take on the current situation.

..

I actually detected a hint of nation building in his speech and was pretty angry with him. The only thing I am thinking is that he is trying to get elected and was talking to a group of lefties. He wants to appeal to people who do not like Conservatives. Yes, that is pandering. But he wants to win. I WANT HIM TO WIN. The alternative is unthinkable.

Tearing Romney down is not productive. As Granite said, “One step at a time”. We can’t change everything overnight or in one election. But we have to start by getting rid of Obama and his communist cronies!!! Phil, you have to leave this alone until after the election…then, if Romney is elected, go after him with all you’ve got!! First things first. Why can’t you see that? Start working on a replacement for him in four years. Whatever. But for God’s sakes, we MUST get rid of Obama! Four more years of him and we will no longer have freedom or choices.

..

Whether we like it or not, the world has changed and the days of American dominance are not as they once were. If we are to regain what was lost and given away by politicians who mistakenly believed and still believe America should be content to simply have a place in line, then we need someone who understands that in order to regain our position as the world leader, we must demonstrate our ability to be the innovator, the initiator,and the guiding hand that will lead other nations to enjoy the same prosperity and opportunities America did before the government was sullied by social engineering and apologists for our greatness.

When you strip away all of the facades of politics and religion, when you get to the basic element of who we are, it is primarily the will and want to work and do for ourselves more so than the desire to have a government “wipe our behinds” with their brand of toilet paper.

Romney made his point extremely well and did so in what could be considered enemy territory. He knows who and what Bill Clinton is and he played to Clinton’s exaggerated sense of self importance by using Clinton’s forum to state his case not only as a leader of America but a world class leader in stark contrast to the classic bungler, Barack Obama.

I have been on this earth too many years to expect perfection in any candidate or elected official. That animal simply does not exist, never has, never will. Any candidate will have his or her fair share of ugly warts but at some point, you have to either accept the warts because they do not overshadow every other positive aspect or walk away and pout on the sidelines because of your personal disappointment.

This is what happened in 2008 and you can see where it has brought us. McCain was not my favorite but he was the better of the two by far. Romney was not my first choice but in comparison to Obama, a 100 to 1 comparison cannot begin to compare the preference of Romney over Obama.

The point has been made that Romney believes we are exceptional, is proud of our accomplishments, and wants to continue to build on who and what we are, not what a person who has no real connection to America wants us to become. That is not who we are and if we don’t wake up soon, the nightmare will become reality and our children and grandchildren will never know what this country was and still is capable of achieving.

Apologists believe we must return to our past sins and make compensation for them. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging past wrongs but afterwards, it is time to weigh the good against the bad and understand that the good we have done outweighs the bad by a sizeable amount.

I have met or have been exposed to very few individuals in my life that I totally and completely did not trust one thing about them. To this day, not once have I been wrong or mistaken and I have the “scars” to prove it. The first time I saw Obama speak live and then his campaign commercials, an uneasy feeling come over me. I bought his book, “Dreams from my Father”, read as much as I could about his time in the Illinois state senate, and his time as a US senator. So far, there is no ring of truth or trust to be found in Obama. Everything he does is coldly calculated to reach or accomplish his goal(s). The first he has already stated openly, to change the face of America. If he is re-elected, one essential goal will have been reached. The face of this country will forever be changed and not for the better.

You might not like Romney but if you want this country to continue down the path Obama has set it on now, you have three options. Vote for Obama, vote for Romney, or don’t vote at all. Not voting is the same as casting a vote for Obama.

[Jolie Rouge]

WaPo op-ed: Why isn’t Romney richer?
Doug Powers • October 7, 2012 10:03 AM

First Mitt Romney didn’t pay any taxes. http://michellemalkin.com/2012/08/02/harry-reid-doubles-down/ Then after it was proven he did, he paid too much. http://twitchy.com/2012/09/21/left-outraged-romney-paid-too-much-in-taxes-gave-30-percent-to-charity-reid-biden-hardest-hit/ Now, after being made out as a super-rich corporate fat cat, it’s being asked why Romney isn’t wealthier. The title of an op-ed in the Washington Post gives birth to a possible new angle of attack: Mitt Romney is worth $250 million. Why so little? http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romney-is-worth-250-million-why-so-little/2012/10/05/64128882-0c20-11e2-a310-2363842b7057_story.html


Mitt Romney is indisputably a very rich man. And if he is elected president on Nov. 6, he will become one of the wealthiest people ever to hold the office.

But exactly how wealthy is Romney? The figure that gets tossed around is $250 million in net worth — meaning the total value of his assets, financial and others, minus any debts.

Mitt Romney’s $250 million net worth is much smaller than that of the other big players in the private-equity and leveraged buyout business, as listed in the latest Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America.

It’s a big number, but frankly, it seems low. Given the industry in which he made his fortune (private equity), the era when he made it (the 1980s and 1990s) and the wealth of his peers in that business (mostly billionaires), Romney should be worth a good bit more than that.

Why isn’t he?


Scandal!

A handy graphic accompanies the op-ed so we can see what a loser Romney is compared to others in his field:

http://s.michellemalkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/romneynotrich.jpg


Maybe the comparison we’re supposed to draw is this: if we were to make a similar chart featuring the net worth of big players in the community organizing business, I’m guessing Barack Obama would be one of the wealthier if not the wealthiest in the group. Why is Mitt Romney such a failure in his chosen profession?

The conclusion? You guessed it: “Because Romney should be richer but isn’t, is he qualified to lead on the economy”?


Does it really matter if Romney is worth $250 million, $1 billion or more? Rich is rich after all, right? I think it does, politically as well as substantively.

Politically, the alternatives are not great. If he were perceived as the first real billionaire to run for president, it would only exacerbate popular doubts about how someone living so removed from the concerns of average Americans — or even just 47 percent of them — could effectively represent them.

And if he is not a billionaire, doesn’t it suggest that he was not a great private-equity investor after all, thus torpedoing his claim to understand how to create jobs and get the economy back on track?

Something to keep in mind on Nov. 6.


In the coming days be on the lookout for part two in this series of devastating op-eds that will attempt to answer a question that’s been on all our minds for the past few days: Why isn’t Mitt Romney a better debater?

http://michellemalkin.com/2012/10/07/wa-po-op-ed-romney-richer/

Well when you give so much money away to charity, you can’t reinvest that in other money making ventures, which severely hampers your bottom line down the road.

Kind of like spending other peoples money on things like Solyndra would be a good example.

And when you don’t take a salary for years when you are serving other people and projects, and at the same time are not actively investing, well that takes a toll as well.

Look at Joe Biden and Harry Reid as examples. They have spent years serving our country for a mere pitance, and their net worth is merely millions or tens of millions. How they have suffered! At least Biden didn’t make the mistake Romney did of wasting money on charity, He’s at least earned his net worth.

I could go on, but I think my point is clear. Romney is an evil rich man who should be richer, were it not for the foolish mistakes he has made.

Do we really want a man like that as President? NOT when you consider the alternative.

[Jolie Rouge]

October 30, 2012
Mitt's Royal Slam
By J.R. Dunn

What's the explanation for Mitt Romney's unparalleled breakout? A few weeks ago, the Romney campaign was regarded as dead in the water. The polls (with the exception of Rasmussen) had the campaign uniformly down, giving Obama up to half a dozen points. Voter interest was phlegmatic at best. A combined Chicago-media offensive appeared to have put Romney on the ropes. The consensus was that Obama would cruise to another victory, one paralleling and perhaps even exceeding his triumph over John McCain four years ago.

Today, little more than an electoral-cycle heartbeat later, the situation is utterly reversed. The big mo belongs to Romney. The polls, excepting a few weird left-wing holdouts of the Reuters variety, show Romney with comfortable leads ranging from 2% to 5%. The swing states are trending in his direction. The expectations of the GOP are those of the 3rd Army roaring into the Reich. As for Obama, he has displayed every sign of a man on the run -- desperation moves, incipient hysteria, vast and expensive efforts to magnify minor Romney gaffes, appeals to Big Bird and Gloria Allred. His expression in the debates was that of a man facing his karma, more haggard and haunted with each appearance. At least one person in the campaign knows full well that the game is up.

This remarkable turnaround is unmatched in recent American political history, and as such, it requires an explanation. Not many have been floated as of yet. The most popular so far holds that Anne and Tagg Romney, acting as Mitt's consiglieres, pushed aside most the campaign's professional political operatives in a successful effort to encourage "Mitt to be Mitt."

Everyone involved denies that anything of the sort occurred, and that may well be the truth. Occam's razor applies to politics as much as any other field, and the simplest and best explanation in this case is that no large-scale change occurred within the campaign or without -- that in fact, things are unfolding pretty much as they were planned to. That it's happening this way because it was meant to.

There is no conspiracy, and there was no mistake. What we're seeing is an example of straightforward campaign strategy in action. Romney has been underestimated as a politician all along. This is true to some extent of most politicians. The general view of politicians among political professionals, media, and academics is that they are simple folk who must be led by the hand and told what to say by trained and experienced pros, and in spare moments left in a corner with a shiny object to play with. This may be true in some cases (I recall a Jersey pol whom I encountered at a political meeting called to obtain support for his candidacy. His response to every question was to, without fail, turn and gaze at his campaign manager. He was elected, served three terms, and was considered quite a success by NJ standards), but it's not true of Romney. As a successful businessman in a tough, complex, and cutthroat field, Romney learned as much about strategy, planning, and the vagaries of human nature as it is possible for one mind to hold, and he has not forgotten a single comma of it.

Romney's stature as strategist was first revealed last spring, when he humiliated Rick Santorum on what should have been a day of triumph. On March 10, Santorum won Kansas overwhelmingly, gaining himself 33 delegates. Meanwhile, Romney had won in Wyoming, which gave him only 12 delegates. But Romney had sent his son Matt out to the Marianas, forgotten by all other candidates, including Santorum. Matt brought home a victory, which (along with a victory in the Virgin Islands), provided his father with another 22 delegates, ensuring that Romney actually outdid the "victorious" Santorum in overall gains. A few more lusterless debate performances, and Santorum was history.

After that, it was clear that the primary campaign was going to be a lot more interesting than many had foreseen. It was also clear that Romney was the man to watch -- a politician who overlooked nothing, considered everything, and never missed a trick.

A pattern had already begun to emerge in the early months of the primaries. During the "anyone but Romney" phase that the GOP was going through, a new figure on a white charger was offered every couple weeks as the great hope to take down Obama the Usurper. Almost as soon as they popped up, down again they went. Presidential boots proved slightly too large for Rick Perry. Michele Bachmann was felled by a frustrating tendency for her words to outrun her thoughts, and Herman Cain by his purported eye for the ladies.

The two members of this squadron with real potential of taking the nomination were Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Both were similar -- figures who appealed to the core conservatives of the GOP by means of images that were largely synthetic. Newt Gingrich was the Cincinnatus willing to leave his beloved historical studies to save the country, while Santorum was Ozzie Nelson. As is often case, these roles were a poor fit to the actual individuals.

That was the key element where Romney was concerned. As a businessman, he'd encountered plenty of figures who were all hat and no cattle, who talked a good game but were never around when it came time to toss some change into the kitty. It was in no way difficult to recognize many of the same traits in his GOP competition. So he treated them the same way he would have treated a hustler back in his investment days. He didn't fight them, didn't go blow for blow, didn't so much as answer them back to any real extent. He let them each go through their schtick, until their essential hollowness was inescapable to all but the most hardcore true believers. He then, in the next debate, presented once again the basic Mitt Romney as the natural opposition figure. Newt and Rick both faded.

What Romney found himself facing in the presidential contest was very much the same thing -- to a fault. Obama, the Illinois Redeemer, missionary from the Planet Zong, groveler to sheiks, reincarnation of FDR, and harbinger of the new age, was bogus enough to make Gingrich and Santorum look like avatars of authenticity. Romney's problem was that a large number of voters had bought into one facet or other of this multifaceted political entity back in 2008. The possibility existed that enough voters would remain entranced to sweep Obama into another term full of crazed spending and anti-constitutional mischief.

Obama was also a devotee of the permanent campaign. Though instituted by Bill Clinton, this political methodology could be said to have been perfected by Barack Obama himself, whose entire life has been one single lengthy campaign. In practice, the permanent campaign meant simply never to stand down, to remain in campaign mode at all times, to begin active campaigning as early as the close of the midterms, and essentially campaign, by one means of or another, every last week of the ensuing twenty-four months. Not a moment could be wasted, according to this interpretation. The permanent campaign was the new normal. Anyone who let so much as a week slip through his hands would inevitably lose.

The difficulty with this theory was that nobody had ever bothered to actually demonstrate its validity. It was taken as a given. Clinton won -- but against figures like Bob Dole, with the manly assistance of H. Ross Perot. Joke elections of that type certainly cannot be said to have been a fair test of the thesis.

Evidently, Romney does not accept the concept of the permanent campaign. He essentially gave the late summer months to Obama, to the despair of the GOP, sneers from the Dems, and bewilderment from the political pros. Much as he did during the primaries, Romney let Obama take center stage, well aware that he wouldn't accomplish anything with the time and opportunity he was being given, because he couldn't.

Obama capered. He took the messiah routine to the point of burlesque. He turned himself into a caricature of Mr. Hope and Change, not grasping the facts that it was no longer 2008 and that no one was looking for a savior anymore. His campaign, the national left, and the kept media carried out relentless attacks on Romney, none of which ever stuck because Romney never did anything to draw attention to them.

By the time the debates rolled around, Obama had used up all his ammo and had become one of those pop items nobody wants to see any more of -- last year's hit sitcom, a burnt-out singer, an actress on her fifth or sixth breakdown. So it goes with messiahs who hang on too long.

Romney may have been assisted by events, but luck favors the well-prepared. The Benghazi terrorist raid forced the Obama campaign to release the "47%" tape at least a month prematurely. They no doubt intended to use it during the last week of the campaign, when it would have the greatest effect, but were forced to throw it in as a desperation move to halt the bleeding over Libya. That it failed to do, along with proving a dud at ruining Romney's reputation. It's merely a footnote at this point. (Note that nobody -- not a soul, right, left, or center -- criticized either Obama or his party for the breach of privacy that footage represented. Nobody bothers any longer. It's now an accepted truth, like gravity, mosquitoes in summer, or darkness at night: coarseness, grubbiness, and illegality are what the Democrats do.)

After that, Obama had nothing left to throw. In the first debate, Romney took him apart, as he had long intended to do. From that point on, the Obama campaign was in free-fall.

[Jolie Rouge]

Romney has realized something about the endless campaign that far more sophisticated and experienced figures had overlooked. Namely, everything that happens before the final two months is little more than preparation. It's the final stretch that counts. Why spend your money and waste energy and effort during the summer months, when nobody is paying attention? Obama was similar to a boxer who works himself to abject exhaustion during the run-up to a championship bout, only to flop over on his face on entering the ring. Romney, on the other hand, paced himself, prepared judicially and well, and remained fresh and ready to go the distance.

So he crushed Obama in the first debate; cruised through the second, despite a coordinated attempt to upset him (there is no criminal or civil penalty for the act carried out by Candy Crowley in cooperation with the Obama campaign -- so why would they hesitate? Anybody?); and maintained a cool and benign presidential mien in the third, a visage on which Obama was not able to leave so much as a mark. Before the entire country, Romney transformed Barack Obama into an importunate child, which is better than he deserves, and may well be enough.

Romney is now ahead in the only polls that actually count (5 pts. up on Gallup, 4 pts. on Rasmussen), leading among independents, tied or ahead in almost all the swing states, and making serious inroads in several voting blocs long since written off and belonging to the messiah -- women in particular.

Most of the political world of the early 21st century has forgotten the basics -- the basics that Romney has never neglected, because he could not afford to. Romney treated the campaign the same as he would have treated a new business back in the '80s or '90s: you learn everything about the industry you wish to invest in from the ground up. You visit the factory floor, you talk to people at all levels, you understand all there is to know before you put in a dime. That's how he approached politics. By grasping the basic rules, the basic schedule, the basic rhythm, all of which have been set aside, to one extent or another, by most political technicians.

If he brings this off, if he is elected on November 6, Mitt Romney will stand as the most masterly political strategist of his epoch. He has not forgotten what others have not yet learned.


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/mitts_royal_slam.html#ixzz2AmU1PYHb

[Jolie Rouge]

September 19, 2012
Oops! Turns out Romney 47% tape was 'doctored'
Thomas Lifson

We can take it from the mainstream media themselves that when embarrassing tapes turn out to be missing any portion, they are "doctored" and therefore discredited. By this standard, the tape released of Mitt Romney discussing the 47% -- considered a fatal gaffe by the progs -- must be discarded.

It turns out that despite claims by Mother Jones that the tapes were presented in full, there is an obvious gap in the recordings. Benny Johnson writes in The Blaze: about the videos posted on the MJ site:

[Romney]"We do all these polls - I find it amazing. We poll all these people to see where you stand in the polls but 45 percent of the people vote for the Republicans and 48 or 49-,"

This is where the first part of the video cuts out.

Part two picks up seemingly on a completely different subject: China.

"...about twice as much as China, not 10 times as much like is reported. And we have responsibility for the whole world, they're only focused on one little area of the world, the south china sea..."

Neither the topics nor the pick up points in the sentence are the same in the two videos. Romney himself claimed this video was edited and called for "the person who has the video would put out the full material."

Mother Jones writes that the cries of selectively editing were "not true" and that Romney's comments "were shown in full."

Back in 1992, when embarrassing tapes emerged of conversations between then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton Gennifer Flowers, Anthony Pellicano, touted as an expert on tapes, declared them "doctored" because portions were missing. This enabled the mainstream media to dismiss the tapes from the national conversation.

More recently, the progressives worked themselves into a frenzy hitting Breitbart over publishing an incomplete recording of Shirley Sherrod. So they are on record decrying the practices of presenting less than full, unedited tapes.

Sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander.


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/oops_turns_out_romney_47_tape_was_doctored.html#ix zz2AmdJ5SaK

[hblueeyes]

Regarding Romney being worth more or should be, maybe wealth of money is not what he seeks from life.

Me

[Jolie Rouge]

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/s480x480/522367_287631914686685_252993783_n.png

[Jolie Rouge]

Amazon Election Heat Map 2012
What are Americans Reading?
Presented by Amazon Best Sellers

40% of Purchases Are "Blue" Books
60% of Purchases Are "Red" Book

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/zeitgeist/test/transparent._V135371963_.gif

http://www.amazon.com/gp/election-heatmap/ref=amb_link_364795342_2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=15YT4H8366FYZX4P72X0&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1408874842&pf_rd_i=1286228011