Thread: Romney/Ryan 2012

Sher Valenzuela addresses the 2012 Republican National Convention.
August 28, 2012 | Tampa, FL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&fe...&v=xkNTK2GTA_E

‘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/...ention-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-c.../klein-lie002/


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/bu...ted=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-m...er-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/...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/Janesvi...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...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-c...uto-plant-lie/



Obama lied about Janesville GM auto plant, not Ryan http://twitchy.com/2012/08/30/obama-...lant-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-m...er-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.

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/th...#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.

...

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...ng-for-romney/

September 18, 2012
The Democrats think Romney just self-destructed by pointing out, um, THEIR ENTIRE STRATEGY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU9V6...layer_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/



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.



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=P36x8...layer_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...e-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/ji...f-romney-video

P.P.P.S. Speaking of secret tapes, remember Rashid Khalidi? The LA Times hopes you don’t. http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...rew-c-mccarthy


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/18/de...#ixzz26plntUyj

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU9V6...layer_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/s...-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/r...-election.html

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/...ate-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/2012/07/0...-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...ys-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=Uwptu...ature=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...eys-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...

..

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.

..

Romney is correct. I have some thoughts on the MSM reaction to this as well: http://asspos.blogspot.com/2012/09/r...-election.html

..

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.

Romney’s “secret video” and the Dem politics of “Squirrel!”
By Michelle Malkin • September 18, 2012 11:42 PM




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...s-of-squirrel/

University of Colorado prediction model points to big Romney win
Published: 3:54 PM 08/23/2012



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/un...#ixzz26wbA2C4t

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/2...like-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...-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.