August 30, 2012 3:45 P.M. By James C. Capretta
Ryan and His Panicky Critics
The president’s apologists correctly sense peril for their favored candidate.
Paul Ryan’s speech accepting the Republican party’s nomination for vice president was everything that could have been hoped for by the Romney campaign and more. It made the case against President Obama in devastating terms — using humor and memorable line after memorable line to drive home the main point that the president has been a miserable failure in office. The speech is likely to have lasting impact in this campaign.
Which perhaps explains the panicky reaction of the mainstream press and Ryan’s liberal critics. Almost from the moment Ryan finished his speech, apologists for the president (including the Washington Post) have come out swinging, quite plainly indignant that Ryan landed so many punches when the usual media filters couldn’t stop him.
And, so, not surprisingly, these same apologists have resorted to the usual kind of smear tactics — accusing Ryan of offering up misleading arguments and even “lies.”
These criticisms of Ryan’s speech are absurd. Everything Ryan said is factual and a fair reading of the record and prior events.
Let’s start with Medicare. Ryan’s critics are beside themselves that the Romney campaign has effectively pinned $716 billion in Medicare cuts on the Obama administration. Two arguments are made to defend the president. First, it is said that Ryan’s own budget cut Medicare by the same amount. But the Ryan budget not only repealed all of Obamacare’s spending, it also doesn’t specify the kinds of Medicare cuts Obamacare does: It calls for the same level of savings but doesn’t spend the money elsewhere and leaves room for Congress to pursue those savings in ways that don’t rely on price controls and the elimination of benefits. Moreover, both Romney and Ryan have said that they, in a Romney administration, would meet their budgetary goals without Obamacare’s Medicare cuts by trimming elsewhere in the budget. And it is certainly the case that Romney and Ryan will have much greater flexibility than Ryan did as House Budget Committee chairman to make cuts wherever they can find them.
Ryan’s critics also take exception to the implication that the Medicare “cuts” will do any harm to the health care provided to seniors, arguing that the savings come from “targeted cuts to providers,” not seniors. This is utter nonsense. Among the cuts in Obamacare is a deep and permanent reduction in payments to Medicare Advantage plans. According to the Medicare trustees, that cut will force 4 million seniors out of their Medicare Advantage plans. There is no question that these seniors will lose thousands of dollars per year in health benefits because of these cuts. Moreover, the chief actuary for the Medicare program has projected that, by the end of this decade, 15 percent of facilities will have to stop taking Medicare patients because of Obamacare’s cuts. That will directly impair access to care for millions of seniors, and the percentage of hospitals and nursing homes dropping out of Medicare will grow to 25 percent by 2030.
Ryan’s critics are also up in arms over his mention of the closed GM plant in Janesville, Wis. They claim that Ryan blamed President Obama for the closing of the plant — but Ryan explicitly said that the plant was already closing when then-candidate Obama came to Janesville in 2008: “We were about to lose a major factory,” Ryan said last night. Second, it is worth recalling that Obama, in a June 2008 statement, said that, if elected president, he would “lead an effort to retool plants like the GM facility in Janesville.” This is further confirmation of Ryan’s point that Obama essentially promised to find a way to keep the plant open after he became president — and did not deliver.
But let’s step back and look at Ryan’s larger point. He was making the argument that, even with the Obama bailout, the Obama economy is so bad that the plant is still closed and, what’s worse, there’s no prospect that other vibrant industries will take its place. That’s absolutely a fair indictment of the Obama record, especially so because Obama went to the plant and promised hope and change in 2008.
Then there is the business of the U.S. credit downgrade and the Bowles-Simpson commission. In his speech, Ryan properly excoriated the president for his profligate spending and for his indifference to the nation’s debt crisis. During the president’s term, the national debt will rise by more than $5 trillion. Ryan pinned S&P’s decision to lower the credit rating for debt issued by the U.S. government on the president’s failure to lead on fiscal matters, and chastised him specifically for appointing the Bowles-Simpson commission and then doing nothing with the commission’s recommendations. Ryan’s critics say he is being hypocritical because Ryan himself also opposed the Bowles-Simpson recommendations.
But when Ryan opposed that plan (because it left in place Obamacare’s massive new entitlement spending), he proposed an alternative and passed it through the House of Representatives. What did President Obama do? Nothing. He appointed the commission to buy time during the 2010 campaign season, and then, in 2011, decided that leading on the deficit wasn’t in his political interest. So he proposed no plan of his own. And then when Ryan proposed his plan to actually head off a fiscal crisis, the president attacked it in the most partisan and demagogic terms possible. Is it any surprise, with this kind of behavior from the president, that the parties weren’t able to come to an amicable agreement? Any fair reading of the record shows that the president has abdicated his leadership responsibilities on fiscal matters. He richly deserves the blame for the downgrade.
Finally, Ryan’s critics cannot stomach the fact that Ryan refuses to play along with their caricatures of him as an uncaring Randian, obsessed with individualism and indifferent to the needs of the vulnerable. In his speech, Ryan specifically noted that a society should be measured by how well the strong protect the weak. That’s entirely consistent with the budget plan he favors. As usual, his critics want the world to equate more governmental programs and spending with improvement in the lives of the poor. And yet, after trillions in spending, poverty and dependence are on the rise under President Obama.
Under Romney and Ryan, there will be plenty of room for generous government spending on a safety net for those who are truly incapable of taking care of themselves. That’s as it should be. But what the poor really need is opportunity, for better-paying jobs and mobility up the wage scale. There is a mountain of evidence that what will help the poor more than anything else is a vibrant free-market economy. Moreover, the reason welfare reform was such a success in 1996 was not that it limited government spending (although it did do that) but that it improved the lives of millions of lower-income American families by emphasizing work over dependence. That’s a lesson that Ryan’s critics, the president included, still have not learned.
Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech was a tour de force, and a clear success. One measure of that success is the intensity and emptiness of the attacks coming his way. The irony is that these attacks — intended to damage Ryan by undermining his credibility — are more likely to be seen by the electorate for what they really are: desperate and dishonest tactics from those willing to say and do anything to hang on to power.
— James C. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Democrat Hags Have the Gaul to Come into the RNC....I'd Throw Their Asses Out!
August 30, 2012
Sandra Fluke, Debbie Wasserman Schultz crash GOP convention
TAMPA, Fla. — Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, and liberal contraception activist Sandra Fluke crashed the Republican National Convention on Thursday, the day Mitt Romney will give his speech officially accepting the GOP’s presidential nomination.
As of 1:30 p.m. EST, Fluke and Wasserman Schultz have been strolling through the convention center doing media appearances. Both were spotted on Radio Row, an area where noted convention figures go to make multiple subsequent radio appearances. Wasserman Schultz then visited an area downstairs in the convention center where several reporters are working.
Fluke has endorsed President Barack Obama for re-election and has campaigned with him around the country. She is expected to be a featured speaker at next week’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.
An RNC spokesperson told The Daily Caller they had “no comment” on Wasserman Schultz and Fluke crashing the GOP convention.
Sandra Fluke, Debbie Wasserman Schultz crash GOP convention
TAMPA, Fla. — Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, and liberal contraception activist Sandra Fluke crashed the Republican National Convention on Thursday, the day Mitt Romney will give his speech officially accepting the GOP’s presidential nomination.
As of 1:30 p.m. EST, Fluke and Wasserman Schultz have been strolling through the convention center doing media appearances. Both were spotted on Radio Row, an area where noted convention figures go to make multiple subsequent radio appearances. Wasserman Schultz then visited an area downstairs in the convention center where several reporters are working.
Fluke has endorsed President Barack Obama for re-election and has campaigned with him around the country. She is expected to be a featured speaker at next week’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.
An RNC spokesperson told The Daily Caller they had “no comment” on Wasserman Schultz and Fluke crashing the GOP convention.
Obama's Scared to Death of Ryan....
It's just disgusting how Obama and his goons will take things out of context and craft an ad, a message so it says what they want it to say...not the truth...
For example Paul Ryan did vote against Simpson/Bowles, but not because he was against the concept, but because he couldn't agree with all the details ....
And finally is Obama REALLY trying to infer that Ryan is worse than "bumbling" Joe Biden?????? ...Hell Ryan is more qualified and competent than Obama is today...trust me they are targeting Ryan because he's scared to death of the threat Ryan poses to his reelection.....
New Obama video drafts media against Paul Ryan
Published: 10:59 AM 08/30/2012 By Neil Munro
President Barack Obama has drafted a corps of media people into his latest attack video against Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP’s vice presidential candidate.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and John King, National Journal’s Ron Fournier and Fox’s Mike Wallace are pressed into service in the Aug. 30 video that bombards Ryan’s speech with adjectives, such as “false… misleading… wrong… wrong.”
The 129-second video also deploys regular GOP critics such as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, CNN’s Gloria Borger and talk show host Michael Smerconish.
David Gergen plays a supporting role, even though the video does not include any of his statements.
The involuntary enlistment of the media people in the anti-Ryan attack video comes after CBS’ Bob Schieffer complained in July about his inclusion in a “very tough ad” run by Mitt Romney.
“Obviously, I have no connected with the Romney campaign. This was done without our permission. It comes as a total surprise to me… that’s where we are in politics,” Schieffer said, shortly he lobbed a softball question to progressive columnist Frank Rich on his Sunday talk show.
Obama’s new video doesn’t parse Ryan’s nuanced statements, but instead juxtaposes his speech with media statements that may or may not be related to Ryan’s statements.
For example, the video shows Ryan declaring that “candidate Obama said, ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another 100 years.’ As it tuned out, that plant didn’t last another year.”
The plant was an auto factory operated by General Motors, which had been slated in 2008 for closure in 2009.
The video declares the statement “misleading,” and then shows a quote from CNN’s King saying, “that plant was shut down under the [George W.] Bush administration.”
The video did not address Ryan’s argument that Obama over-promised and failed to deliver an economic recovery.
“When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory,” Ryan told his convention audience.
“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,” said Ryan.
“That’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.”
Similarly, the video shows Ryan blasting Obama’s $831 billion 2009 stimulus “as case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism at their worst.”
The video labels Ryan’s statement as “wrong,” and then appends a non sequitur from Smerconish, who correctly said that Ryan’s office asked for some of the stimulus money to be sent to two companies in his district, which also includes the closed GM factory.
The short video ends with a kicker volunteered by MSNBC’s Matthews, which declared that Ryan’s peroration “was a very constricted, a very negative, a very nasty speech.”
AND MAYBE Paul Ryan did tell the truth
Here's Another Article about the truthfulness of Ryan's speech last night...
Paul Ryan Spoke the Truth About Obamacare
2:35 PM, Aug 30, 2012 • By JAY COST
Shortly after Paul Ryan’s speech ended last night, the left wing blogosphere and commentariat launched an attack on the vice presidential nominee for his supposed mendacity. They attacked from many angles, but the most substantial assault was on Medicare.
This is a complicated issue, and it is important for the facts of the situation to be laid bare for all to see, unvarnished and plain.
Last night, Paul Ryan said this about Medicare:
And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obama Care came at the expense of the elderly. You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover, even with the new law and 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, $716 billion funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.
This is an entirely true statement. In fact, some have been suggesting for years that the Democrats would pay a dear price for their raid on Medicare. And the time has come to pony up.
Here are the facts:
(1) Obamacare cost about $1 trillion dollars over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Democrats raised roughly half of that money through new taxes, and the other half was “raised” from cuts in Medicare.
(2) If they had cut Social Security, Democrats would not have been able to apply that revenue to Obamacare because money that comes from Social Security actually belongs to the Social Security Trust Fund. When the federal government uses it for other purposes, it is actually borrowing the money, to be paid back with interest at a later date. The exact same is true of Medicare; the catch is that the rules of CBO budgeting allowed the Democrats to count it as an offset to the new spending. So, Obamacare looked deficit neutral on paper, when in fact half of it was paid for with borrowed money.
(3) The $500 billion in cuts to Medicare do not amount to cuts in benefits to patients, at least nominally. However, government accountants believe that is what effectively will happen. Obamacare imposes efficiency requirements on doctors and hospitals that, over time, will be virtually impossible to maintain. Richard Foster, the government’s chief accountant for Medicare, estimates that 15 percent of all hospitals will fall into the red because of these cuts. Thus, seniors will have the same benefits on paper – but, much like those in the Medicaid program, they will find it difficult to find a doctor or hospital willing to provide the service.
(4) The original version of the Ryan budget retained these cuts. However, there was an important difference: the money was not funneled out to sponsor a new entitlement. Instead, it was credited back to the Medicare Trust Fund, thus strengthening our long term deficit situation. [In my opinion, this was a mistake: Medicare needs reforms that lower its costs, but the Obamacare cuts are poorly designed and impractical.]
(5) The Romney-Ryan plan restores all of the lost funding to Medicare.
His criticism of Obamacare is perfectly legitimate. It is a simple matter of mathematics, and the verdict of the government’s top accountant for the program: Obama cut $500 billion from the program; he used that money to cover the cost of Obamacare; the cuts are likely going to result in barriers to access for seniors.
Democrats made a terrible political mistake with Obamacare. They should not have used Medicare funds as a way to pay for it; Republicans were always going to burn them on this (just as Democrats burned the GOP in 1996 for the same kind of trick). And in fact, conservative analysts everywhere were commenting on this in 2009 and 2010. Democrats blithely ignored them, and now their chickens have come home to roost.
Jay Cost is a staff writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD and the author of Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic, available now wherever books are sold.
Here's Another Article defending Ryans Comments from last night and exposing the Liberal Media and the Obama Gang.....
Fact Check: Paul Ryan's convention address
By James Rosen Published August 30, 2012 FoxNews.com
Jim Messina, the campaign manager for Obama for America, wasn't mincing words Thursday morning.
In a fundraising email blasted out at 4:37 a.m., he said flat-out that GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan "lied" about Medicare and the stimulus bill in his convention speech the night before.
Messina and the Democrats are zeroing in on two particular aspects of Ryan's 36-minute address, as Mitt Romney prepares for his own nomination address.
The first passage concerns what was once the largest employer in Ryan's hometown of Janesville, Wis.
"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," Ryan said.
It is true that President Obama, when he was running for president in February 2008, toured the GM plant in Janesville. But Democrats point out that the plant actually closed in December of that year, under President George W. Bush -- who in that same month authorized an emergency loan of $14 billion to GM and Chrysler.
That was not enough to prevent GM from moving forward with plans it had already announced: to shutter the Janesville facility and lay off its remaining 1,200 workers.
His aides point out -- and GM confirms -- that the plant was not shut down per se but idled, meaning it could be reactivated at any time.
However, nothing Ryan said in his speech about the plant was factually untrue.
Ryan stated in his convention speech that "we were about to lose a major factory" in the town at the time Obama showed up there. And though he compressed then-Sen. Obama's remarks, Ryan did not distort them.
This is what Obama said at the time: "I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years."
In October 2008, after the plant's fate was announced, then-Sen. Obama issued a statement that inched closer to promising to help the factory, which in its prime employed some 7,000 people. "As president, I will lead an effort to retool plants like the GM facility in Janesville so we can build the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow and create good-paying jobs in Wisconsin and all across America," Obama said at the time.
The other part of the Ryan speech that Democrats are attacking is the passage concerning the so-called "Simpson-Bowles" commission, a bipartisan group empaneled two-and-a-half years ago by Obama to tackle the deficit.
Obama did not fully adopt the panel's recommendations, which included a mix of spending cuts and revenue enhancements -- otherwise known as tax hikes -- to put the country on a path to erase its now-$16 trillion debt.
"They came back with an urgent report. He thanks them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing," Ryan said.
However, Ryan also served on that commission and opposed the final report.
Ryan aides explained Thursday the congressman partnered with a Democratic member of the panel, Clinton-era White House budget director Alice Rivlin, to address entitlement reform -- the real driver of U.S. debt -- and their plan was voted down by the commission. And that is why Ryan voted against the final recommendations, they said.
However, it was probably untrue for Ryan to say Obama "did nothing but dodge and demagogue this issue" -- as Obama put forth his own debt-reduction plan and did negotiate personally, albeit unsuccessfully, with House Speaker John Boehner.
For example Paul Ryan did vote against Simpson/Bowles, but not because he was against the concept, but because he couldn't agree with all the details ....
And finally is Obama REALLY trying to infer that Ryan is worse than "bumbling" Joe Biden?????? ...Hell Ryan is more qualified and competent than Obama is today...trust me they are targeting Ryan because he's scared to death of the threat Ryan poses to his reelection.....
New Obama video drafts media against Paul Ryan
Published: 10:59 AM 08/30/2012 By Neil Munro
President Barack Obama has drafted a corps of media people into his latest attack video against Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP’s vice presidential candidate.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and John King, National Journal’s Ron Fournier and Fox’s Mike Wallace are pressed into service in the Aug. 30 video that bombards Ryan’s speech with adjectives, such as “false… misleading… wrong… wrong.”
The 129-second video also deploys regular GOP critics such as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, CNN’s Gloria Borger and talk show host Michael Smerconish.
David Gergen plays a supporting role, even though the video does not include any of his statements.
The involuntary enlistment of the media people in the anti-Ryan attack video comes after CBS’ Bob Schieffer complained in July about his inclusion in a “very tough ad” run by Mitt Romney.
“Obviously, I have no connected with the Romney campaign. This was done without our permission. It comes as a total surprise to me… that’s where we are in politics,” Schieffer said, shortly he lobbed a softball question to progressive columnist Frank Rich on his Sunday talk show.
Obama’s new video doesn’t parse Ryan’s nuanced statements, but instead juxtaposes his speech with media statements that may or may not be related to Ryan’s statements.
For example, the video shows Ryan declaring that “candidate Obama said, ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another 100 years.’ As it tuned out, that plant didn’t last another year.”
The plant was an auto factory operated by General Motors, which had been slated in 2008 for closure in 2009.
The video declares the statement “misleading,” and then shows a quote from CNN’s King saying, “that plant was shut down under the [George W.] Bush administration.”
The video did not address Ryan’s argument that Obama over-promised and failed to deliver an economic recovery.
“When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory,” Ryan told his convention audience.
“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,” said Ryan.
“That’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.”
Similarly, the video shows Ryan blasting Obama’s $831 billion 2009 stimulus “as case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism at their worst.”
The video labels Ryan’s statement as “wrong,” and then appends a non sequitur from Smerconish, who correctly said that Ryan’s office asked for some of the stimulus money to be sent to two companies in his district, which also includes the closed GM factory.
The short video ends with a kicker volunteered by MSNBC’s Matthews, which declared that Ryan’s peroration “was a very constricted, a very negative, a very nasty speech.”
AND MAYBE Paul Ryan did tell the truth
Here's Another Article about the truthfulness of Ryan's speech last night...
Paul Ryan Spoke the Truth About Obamacare
2:35 PM, Aug 30, 2012 • By JAY COST
Shortly after Paul Ryan’s speech ended last night, the left wing blogosphere and commentariat launched an attack on the vice presidential nominee for his supposed mendacity. They attacked from many angles, but the most substantial assault was on Medicare.
This is a complicated issue, and it is important for the facts of the situation to be laid bare for all to see, unvarnished and plain.
Last night, Paul Ryan said this about Medicare:
And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obama Care came at the expense of the elderly. You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover, even with the new law and 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, $716 billion funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.
This is an entirely true statement. In fact, some have been suggesting for years that the Democrats would pay a dear price for their raid on Medicare. And the time has come to pony up.
Here are the facts:
(1) Obamacare cost about $1 trillion dollars over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Democrats raised roughly half of that money through new taxes, and the other half was “raised” from cuts in Medicare.
(2) If they had cut Social Security, Democrats would not have been able to apply that revenue to Obamacare because money that comes from Social Security actually belongs to the Social Security Trust Fund. When the federal government uses it for other purposes, it is actually borrowing the money, to be paid back with interest at a later date. The exact same is true of Medicare; the catch is that the rules of CBO budgeting allowed the Democrats to count it as an offset to the new spending. So, Obamacare looked deficit neutral on paper, when in fact half of it was paid for with borrowed money.
(3) The $500 billion in cuts to Medicare do not amount to cuts in benefits to patients, at least nominally. However, government accountants believe that is what effectively will happen. Obamacare imposes efficiency requirements on doctors and hospitals that, over time, will be virtually impossible to maintain. Richard Foster, the government’s chief accountant for Medicare, estimates that 15 percent of all hospitals will fall into the red because of these cuts. Thus, seniors will have the same benefits on paper – but, much like those in the Medicaid program, they will find it difficult to find a doctor or hospital willing to provide the service.
(4) The original version of the Ryan budget retained these cuts. However, there was an important difference: the money was not funneled out to sponsor a new entitlement. Instead, it was credited back to the Medicare Trust Fund, thus strengthening our long term deficit situation. [In my opinion, this was a mistake: Medicare needs reforms that lower its costs, but the Obamacare cuts are poorly designed and impractical.]
(5) The Romney-Ryan plan restores all of the lost funding to Medicare.
His criticism of Obamacare is perfectly legitimate. It is a simple matter of mathematics, and the verdict of the government’s top accountant for the program: Obama cut $500 billion from the program; he used that money to cover the cost of Obamacare; the cuts are likely going to result in barriers to access for seniors.
Democrats made a terrible political mistake with Obamacare. They should not have used Medicare funds as a way to pay for it; Republicans were always going to burn them on this (just as Democrats burned the GOP in 1996 for the same kind of trick). And in fact, conservative analysts everywhere were commenting on this in 2009 and 2010. Democrats blithely ignored them, and now their chickens have come home to roost.
Jay Cost is a staff writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD and the author of Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic, available now wherever books are sold.
Here's Another Article defending Ryans Comments from last night and exposing the Liberal Media and the Obama Gang.....
Fact Check: Paul Ryan's convention address
By James Rosen Published August 30, 2012 FoxNews.com
Jim Messina, the campaign manager for Obama for America, wasn't mincing words Thursday morning.
In a fundraising email blasted out at 4:37 a.m., he said flat-out that GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan "lied" about Medicare and the stimulus bill in his convention speech the night before.
Messina and the Democrats are zeroing in on two particular aspects of Ryan's 36-minute address, as Mitt Romney prepares for his own nomination address.
The first passage concerns what was once the largest employer in Ryan's hometown of Janesville, Wis.
"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," Ryan said.
It is true that President Obama, when he was running for president in February 2008, toured the GM plant in Janesville. But Democrats point out that the plant actually closed in December of that year, under President George W. Bush -- who in that same month authorized an emergency loan of $14 billion to GM and Chrysler.
That was not enough to prevent GM from moving forward with plans it had already announced: to shutter the Janesville facility and lay off its remaining 1,200 workers.
His aides point out -- and GM confirms -- that the plant was not shut down per se but idled, meaning it could be reactivated at any time.
However, nothing Ryan said in his speech about the plant was factually untrue.
Ryan stated in his convention speech that "we were about to lose a major factory" in the town at the time Obama showed up there. And though he compressed then-Sen. Obama's remarks, Ryan did not distort them.
This is what Obama said at the time: "I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years."
In October 2008, after the plant's fate was announced, then-Sen. Obama issued a statement that inched closer to promising to help the factory, which in its prime employed some 7,000 people. "As president, I will lead an effort to retool plants like the GM facility in Janesville so we can build the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow and create good-paying jobs in Wisconsin and all across America," Obama said at the time.
The other part of the Ryan speech that Democrats are attacking is the passage concerning the so-called "Simpson-Bowles" commission, a bipartisan group empaneled two-and-a-half years ago by Obama to tackle the deficit.
Obama did not fully adopt the panel's recommendations, which included a mix of spending cuts and revenue enhancements -- otherwise known as tax hikes -- to put the country on a path to erase its now-$16 trillion debt.
"They came back with an urgent report. He thanks them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing," Ryan said.
However, Ryan also served on that commission and opposed the final report.
Ryan aides explained Thursday the congressman partnered with a Democratic member of the panel, Clinton-era White House budget director Alice Rivlin, to address entitlement reform -- the real driver of U.S. debt -- and their plan was voted down by the commission. And that is why Ryan voted against the final recommendations, they said.
However, it was probably untrue for Ryan to say Obama "did nothing but dodge and demagogue this issue" -- as Obama put forth his own debt-reduction plan and did negotiate personally, albeit unsuccessfully, with House Speaker John Boehner.
Another Good Reason to Make Certain That Obama Does NOT get Reelected....
Defending America Takes More Than "Hope"
Speaking to veterans at the American Legion conference this week, President Obama said, "Today, every American can be proud that the United States is safer, stronger and more respected in the world."
That's quite a statement from a President who has granted legitimacy to extremist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and promised the Russians he would be "flexible" toward their demands on missile defense, while slighting American allies like Poland and the Czech Republic.
Heritage defense experts call Obama's defense strategy "a strategy of hope": "a hope that big wars are a thing of the past; a hope that America's allies will do more; and a hope that fewer resources do not jeopardize the lives of American soldiers."
These are flimsy hopes in the face of hostile nations and terrorist groups that want nothing more than the destruction of America.
If we do not reverse course—strengthening our military instead of gutting it, providing true security for our allies, and getting real about the groups that want us dead—the cost will be American lives.
The Administration has made a lot of noise about "pivoting" America's security focus toward Asia. It is a vital region, but Obama's policies of cutting the size of the military are the opposite of what we need to secure the country's interests around the world. Heritage's Bruce Klingner and Dean Cheng explain:
A smaller Navy, Air Force, Army, and Marine Corps means a reduced U.S. presence overseas and, due to an even higher operational tempo, a greater strain on existing forces and equipment. Underfunding defense requirements could restrict potential U.S. policy options and increase the danger to U.S. forces during any future Asian engagements. And, ultimately, the price of such underfunding will be mission failure or American servicemen's lives.
Though Asia is important, the American homeland is still a target for terrorists, and terrorists are still training in the Middle East. Heritage's James Carafano has warned that "President Obama's determination to pull out from Afghanistan means the U.S. will leave the field with the enemy still standing." While al-Qaeda affiliates in Iraq are continuing violence daily, Carafano says that in Afghanistan, "after the American withdrawal, the Taliban may well sweep back and re-establish control of parts of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda could well follow, even as it continues to build up bases of operations elsewhere, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa."
As it stands now, America faces these threats with a military that is being hollowed out. Terrorists continue to try attacking us here at home. Our leaders must make defending America a priority and commit the resources to meet its challenges both at home and abroad.
As Carafano put it, "A belligerently aggressive Iran...an anti-democratic Russia...an expansive China...a wet-behind-the-ears 'Dear Leader' in North Korea...enduring threats from narco-terrorists and Islamist terrorists...there is every sign that, when Obama's four years are up, the world will be a potentially far more dangerous place than it was when he first took office."
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Another Obama Sneak Attack that Will Cost you MONEY.....!
Obama’s Sneaky, Deadly, Costly Car Tax
By Michelle Malkin • August 29, 2012 09:17 AM
My column today looks at the latest radical maneuver by the Obama administration — slipped through yesterday while much of the media’s attention was on Hurricane Isaac and the RNC convention. GOP leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee issued a related statement today on the flawed, rushed rules that were cooked up in secret.
“The rule finalized today by the Obama Administration will hurt American consumers by forcing them to drive more expensive and less safe automobiles. The Administration drafted these standards in secret, strong-arming automakers and short-circuiting the deliberative regulatory process to achieve a purely political result, abandoning sound science and objectivity to appease its political allies in the extreme environmentalist lobby,” Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif, said in a statement on the oversight panel’s website. “I support the goal of higher fuel efficiency, but this rule will only add to the burdens American small businesses and middle class families face under the heavy hand of the Obama Administration.”
Remember in November.
***
Obama’s Sneaky, Deadly, Costly Car Tax
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012
While all eyes were on the Republican National Convention in Tampa and Hurricane Isaac on the Gulf Coast, the White House was quietly jacking up the price of automobiles and putting future drivers at risk.
Yes, the same cast of fable-tellers who falsely accused GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney of murdering a steelworker’s cancer-stricken wife is now directly imposing a draconian environmental regulation that will cost untold American lives.
On Tuesday, the administration announced that it had finalized “historic” new fuel efficiency standards. (Everything’s “historic” with these narcissists, isn’t it?) President Obama took a break from his historic fundraising drives to proclaim that “(by) the middle of the next decade, our cars will get nearly 55 miles per gallon, almost double what they get today. It’ll strengthen our nation’s energy security, it’s good for middle-class families, and it will help create an economy built to last.”
Jon Carson, director of Obama’s Office of Public Engagement, took to Twitter to hype how “auto companies support the higher fuel-efficiency standards” and how the rules crafted behind closed doors will “save consumers $8,000” per vehicle. His source for these claims? The New York Times, America’s Fishwrap of Record, which has acknowledged it allows the Obama campaign to have “veto power” over reporters’ quotes from campaign officials.
And whom did the Times cite for the claim that the rules will “save consumers $8,000″? Why, the administration, of course! “The administration estimated that the new standards would save Americans $1.7 trillion in fuel costs,” the Times dutifully regurgitated, “resulting in an average savings of more than $8,000 a vehicle by 2025.”
The Obama administration touts the support of the government-bailed-out auto industry for these reckless, expensive regs. What they want you to forget is that the “negotiations” (read: bullying) with White House environmental radicals date back to former Obama green czar Carol Browner’s tenure — when she infamously told auto industry execs “to put nothing in writing, ever” regarding their secret CAFE talks.
Obama’s number-massagers cite phony-baloney cost savings that rely on developing future fuel-saving technology. Given this crony government’s abysmal track record in “investing” in new technologies (cough — Solyndra — cough), we can safely dismiss that fantasy math. What is real for consumers is the $2,000 per vehicle added cost that the new fuel standards will impose now. That figure comes from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
War on Middle-Class Consumers, anyone?
Beyond the White House-media lapdog echo chamber, the economic and public safety objections to these sweeping rules are long grounded and well founded.
For years, free-market analysts and government statisticians have warned of the deadly effect of increasing corporate auto fuel economy standards (CAFE). Sam Kazman at the Competitive Enterprise Institute explained a decade ago: “(T)he evidence on this issue comes from no less a body than the National Academy of Sciences, which issued a report last August finding that CAFE contributes to between 1,300 and 2,600 traffic deaths per year. Given that this program has been in effect for more than two decades, its cumulative toll is staggering.”
H. Sterling Burnett of the National Center for Policy Analysis adds that NHTSA data indicate that “322 additional deaths per year occur as a direct result of reducing just 100 pounds from already downsized small cars, with half of the deaths attributed to small car collisions with light trucks/sport utility vehicles.” USA Today further calculated that the “size and weight reductions of passenger vehicles undertaken to meet current CAFE standards had resulted in more than 46,000 deaths.”
These lethal regulations should be wrapped in yellow police “CAUTION” tape. The tradeoffs are stark and simple: CAFE fuel standards clamp down on the production of larger, more crashworthy cars. Analysts from Harvard to the Brookings Institution to the federal government itself have arrived at the same conclusion: CAFE kills. Welcome to the bloody intersection between the Obama jobs death toll and the Obama green death toll.
By Michelle Malkin • August 29, 2012 09:17 AM
My column today looks at the latest radical maneuver by the Obama administration — slipped through yesterday while much of the media’s attention was on Hurricane Isaac and the RNC convention. GOP leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee issued a related statement today on the flawed, rushed rules that were cooked up in secret.
“The rule finalized today by the Obama Administration will hurt American consumers by forcing them to drive more expensive and less safe automobiles. The Administration drafted these standards in secret, strong-arming automakers and short-circuiting the deliberative regulatory process to achieve a purely political result, abandoning sound science and objectivity to appease its political allies in the extreme environmentalist lobby,” Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif, said in a statement on the oversight panel’s website. “I support the goal of higher fuel efficiency, but this rule will only add to the burdens American small businesses and middle class families face under the heavy hand of the Obama Administration.”
Remember in November.
***
Obama’s Sneaky, Deadly, Costly Car Tax
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012
While all eyes were on the Republican National Convention in Tampa and Hurricane Isaac on the Gulf Coast, the White House was quietly jacking up the price of automobiles and putting future drivers at risk.
Yes, the same cast of fable-tellers who falsely accused GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney of murdering a steelworker’s cancer-stricken wife is now directly imposing a draconian environmental regulation that will cost untold American lives.
On Tuesday, the administration announced that it had finalized “historic” new fuel efficiency standards. (Everything’s “historic” with these narcissists, isn’t it?) President Obama took a break from his historic fundraising drives to proclaim that “(by) the middle of the next decade, our cars will get nearly 55 miles per gallon, almost double what they get today. It’ll strengthen our nation’s energy security, it’s good for middle-class families, and it will help create an economy built to last.”
Jon Carson, director of Obama’s Office of Public Engagement, took to Twitter to hype how “auto companies support the higher fuel-efficiency standards” and how the rules crafted behind closed doors will “save consumers $8,000” per vehicle. His source for these claims? The New York Times, America’s Fishwrap of Record, which has acknowledged it allows the Obama campaign to have “veto power” over reporters’ quotes from campaign officials.
And whom did the Times cite for the claim that the rules will “save consumers $8,000″? Why, the administration, of course! “The administration estimated that the new standards would save Americans $1.7 trillion in fuel costs,” the Times dutifully regurgitated, “resulting in an average savings of more than $8,000 a vehicle by 2025.”
The Obama administration touts the support of the government-bailed-out auto industry for these reckless, expensive regs. What they want you to forget is that the “negotiations” (read: bullying) with White House environmental radicals date back to former Obama green czar Carol Browner’s tenure — when she infamously told auto industry execs “to put nothing in writing, ever” regarding their secret CAFE talks.
Obama’s number-massagers cite phony-baloney cost savings that rely on developing future fuel-saving technology. Given this crony government’s abysmal track record in “investing” in new technologies (cough — Solyndra — cough), we can safely dismiss that fantasy math. What is real for consumers is the $2,000 per vehicle added cost that the new fuel standards will impose now. That figure comes from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
War on Middle-Class Consumers, anyone?
Beyond the White House-media lapdog echo chamber, the economic and public safety objections to these sweeping rules are long grounded and well founded.
For years, free-market analysts and government statisticians have warned of the deadly effect of increasing corporate auto fuel economy standards (CAFE). Sam Kazman at the Competitive Enterprise Institute explained a decade ago: “(T)he evidence on this issue comes from no less a body than the National Academy of Sciences, which issued a report last August finding that CAFE contributes to between 1,300 and 2,600 traffic deaths per year. Given that this program has been in effect for more than two decades, its cumulative toll is staggering.”
H. Sterling Burnett of the National Center for Policy Analysis adds that NHTSA data indicate that “322 additional deaths per year occur as a direct result of reducing just 100 pounds from already downsized small cars, with half of the deaths attributed to small car collisions with light trucks/sport utility vehicles.” USA Today further calculated that the “size and weight reductions of passenger vehicles undertaken to meet current CAFE standards had resulted in more than 46,000 deaths.”
These lethal regulations should be wrapped in yellow police “CAUTION” tape. The tradeoffs are stark and simple: CAFE fuel standards clamp down on the production of larger, more crashworthy cars. Analysts from Harvard to the Brookings Institution to the federal government itself have arrived at the same conclusion: CAFE kills. Welcome to the bloody intersection between the Obama jobs death toll and the Obama green death toll.
Let's Give Obama a Chance to play on the PGA after he loses reelection in November....
McConnell: Obama prepping for PGA, not presidency
August 29, 2012 | 4:18 pm
TAMPA, Fla. - Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been prosecuting a two-year case against Barack Obama's reelection, charges in his Republican Convention speech Wednesday night that the president has spent more time practicing for a golf tournament than fixing the nation's ills.
"For four years, Barack Obama has been running from the nation's problems. He hasn't been working to earn reelection. He's been working to earn a spot on the PGA tour," the sometimes tart-tongued McConnell says, according to excerpts provided to Secrets.
What's more, he adds, the president hasn't spelled out what he would do in a second term. "We know what the president's got on his iPod, but we don't know what he plans to do about a looming tax hike that could trigger yet another serious recession that would result in even more Americans losing their jobs. Ladies and gentlemen: America cannot afford another four years of this."
The Senate leader has been rapped by Democrats for being so tough on Obama and for his early-on public call to defeat the president. But those criticisms haven't quieted the Kentucky lawmaker. In fact his convention speech steps it up a notch.
"As we meet here tonight, America is suffering through an economic calamity of truly historic dimensions. Some are calling it the slowest recovery in our nation's entire 236-year history. To call this a recovery is an insult to recoveries," he says.
And of the policies the president has pushed so far, McConnell says that they are out of touch with the mainstream of American life and further damaging the economy.
"What this administration has in mind for America isn't a renewal, it's a great leveling out. It wants the kind of government-imposed equality that in a single generation transformed Western Europe from a place where for centuries high achievement and discovery and innovation were celebrated and prized, to a place where they have elections about whether people should have to work. Where they make promises they can't keep and write checks they can't cash."
McConnell also gives a full-throated endorsement to Mitt Romney. "When Mitt Romney looks down the road, he sees a country that's ready for a comeback. I firmly believe he's the man to lead it," says McConnell. On Tuesday, convention keynote speaker New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was criticized by some for not giving a similar strong endorsement of Romney.
Fox News...#1 on the First Night of Republican Convention.....
Media Results for Night #1 of the Republican Convention....No Surprise that FoxNews was #1.....and MSNBC was dead last.....I am a little surprised that NBC was as high as it was.....This bodes well for Fox and well for Romney...
REPUBLICAN CONVENTION NIGHT 1
FOXNEWS 6,878,804
NBC 4,770,050
CBS 3,118,927
ABC 2,862,656
CNN 1,473,885
MSNBC 1,468,348
REPUBLICAN CONVENTION NIGHT 1
FOXNEWS 6,878,804
NBC 4,770,050
CBS 3,118,927
ABC 2,862,656
CNN 1,473,885
MSNBC 1,468,348
Hillary ....Getting as far away from Obama's Stink as possible...She'll be no where near the Democratic National Convention...
Hillary Clinton to leave the hemisphere during Democratic convention
Published: 12:01 PM 08/29/2012 By Neil Munro
Where are the Cook Islands?
They are where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be Aug. 31, rather than preparing to attend the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.
The Cook Islands are a chain of 15 small islands in the Pacific, about halfway between California and New Zealand. Their capital is Rarotonga, and they play a very minor role in international power-politics.
They’re named after an English explorer, Captain James Cook, who discovered them in 1770.
For good measure, Clinton will also visit Vladivostok while the rest of her party nominates President Barack Obama — her boss — as their candidate for 2012.
Vladivostok is in the part of Russia closest to Manchuria, a province of China, where she will also visit.
China’s economy is rapidly growing while the U.S. economy’s growth has stalled under Obama’s leadership.
U.S. unemployment, debts and deficits are at record heights, while wages and investment are in decline.
Clinton’s departure prevents Obama from using her popularity to boost his outreach to swing-voting unmarried and married women.
Instead, Obama has awarded a speaking slot to her husband, former President Bill Clinton. That could be risky, because relations between the two presidents have been frosty, and the former president may subtly undercut the current president.
Clinton’s high-profile exit from the country and from party politics forcefully underlines her effort to distance herself from Obama’s waning political fortunes.
But it also protects her fortunes, just in case she decides to run in 2016.
She reportedly declined an informal offer from Obama’s top aide, Valerie Jarrett, to take over the vice presidential slot.
That slot is still held by Joe Biden, although he has been given a minimal role in Obama’s campaign this week.
Biden’s announced plan to campaign around the GOP convention in Tampa, Fla., was cancelled because of Hurricane Isaac, according to official statements. Instead, this week Biden is attending meetings in the White House and elsewhere, says his calendar.
Few observers expect Biden to be replaced by another figure, partly because Obama tweeted out his endorsement Aug. 23. “Today marks four years since I chose @JoeBiden to be my running mate. Here’s to an outstanding Vice President and a great friend. –bo,” the tweet
Seals don't Respect Obama, Can't Stand Biden....and say the story released by Obama isn't true....So what's new?
SEAL book raises questions about bin Laden’s death
By Kimberly Dozier Associated Press Wednesday, August 29, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) — A firsthand account of the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden contradicts previous accounts by administration officials, raising questions as to whether the terror mastermind presented a clear threat when SEALs first fired upon him.
Bin Laden apparently was hit in the head when he looked out of his bedroom door into the top-floor hallway of his compound as SEALs rushed up a narrow stairwell in his direction, according to former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette, writing under the pseudonym Mark Owen in “No Easy Day.” The book is to be published next week by Penguin Group (USA)’s Dutton imprint.
Bissonnette says he was directly behind a “point man” going up the stairs. “Less than five steps” from top of the stairs, he heard “suppressed” gunfire: “BOP. BOP.” The point man had seen a “man peeking out of the door” on the right side of the hallway.
The author writes that bin Laden ducked back into his bedroom and the SEALs followed, only to find the terrorist crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood with a hole visible on the right side of his head and two women wailing over his body.
Bissonnette says the point man pulled the two women out of the way and shoved them into a corner and he and the other SEALs trained their guns’ laser sites on bin Laden’s still-twitching body, shooting him several times until he lay motionless. The SEALs later found two weapons stored by the doorway, untouched, the author said.
In the account related by administration officials after the raid in Pakistan, the SEALs shot bin Laden only after he ducked back into the bedroom because they assumed he might be reaching for a weapon.
White House spokesman Tommy Vietor would not comment on the apparent contradiction late Tuesday. But he said in an email, “As President Obama said on the night that justice was brought to Osama bin Laden, ‘We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country.’”
“No Easy Day” was due out Sept. 11, but Dutton announced the book would be available a week early, Sept. 4, because of a surge of orders due to advance publicity that drove the book to the top of the Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com best-seller lists.
The Associated Press purchased a copy of the book Tuesday.
In another possibly uncomfortable revelation for U.S. officials who say bin Laden’s body was treated with dignity before being given a full Muslim burial at sea, the author reveals that in the cramped helicopter flight out of the compound, one of the SEALs called “Walt” was sitting on bin Laden’s chest as the body lay at the author’s feet in the middle of the cabin.
The publisher says the author used pseudonyms for all the SEALs.
Bissonnette also writes disparagingly that none of the SEALs were fans of President Barack Obama and knew that his administration would take credit for ordering the May 2011 raid. One of the SEALs said after the mission that they had just gotten Obama re-elected by carrying out the raid.
But he says they respected him as commander in chief and for giving the operation the go-ahead.
Bissonnette writes less flatteringly of meeting Vice President Joe Biden along with Obama at the headquarters of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment after the raid. He says Biden told “lame jokes” no one understood, reminding him of “someone’s drunken uncle at Christmas dinner.”
Beyond such embarrassing observations, U.S. officials fear the book may include classified information, as it did not undergo the formal review required by the Pentagon for works published by former or current Defense Department employees.
Officials from the Pentagon and the CIA, which commanded the mission, are examining the manuscript for possible disclosure of classified information and could take legal action against the author.
In a statement provided to The Associated Press, the author says he did “not disclose confidential or sensitive information that would compromise national security in any way.”
Bissonnette’s real name was first revealed by Fox News and confirmed to the Associated Press.
Jihadists on al Qaeda websites have posted purported photos of the author, calling for his murder.
Chuck Todd....Chris Matthews is more Reflective of MSNBC than you think...
Somebody needs to tell Chuck Todd that Chris Matthews is more reflective of MSNBC and NBC than he thinks....look at the cast of actors....Rachel Maddow??? Ed Schultz??? Al Sharpton???? Lawrence O'Donnell???....Why would a Republican waste their time going on this network??? Nobody watches MSNBC anyway....
Talk About Racial.....MSNBC presented the racially biased message that fits their distorted liberal viewpoint!
Last night I did flip through MSNBC as I was monitoring the coverage of the Republican Convention and I often can't resist seeing and hearing the distorted opinions that these communist/socialist commentators spew...AND last night it WAS very obvious that they were not televising or commenting on any speakers unless they were white!
That's the impression they wanted to convey (even though it was not accurate) because it fits the distorted message they want to communicate. With all the racial talk from bloated Chris Matthews this all sounds racial to me...They are a total disgrace to the American Media and even to the contingent of State-Run Media.
MSNBC abandons GOP convention during every speech by a minority
Published: 11:18 PM 08/28/2012 By Jeff Poor
One of the left’s favorite attacks on the Republican Party is that it is the party of old white people, devoid of diversity and probably racist.
If you were watching MSNBC’s coverage of the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Tuesday night, you might believe those assertions, since missing from the coverage was nearly every ethnic minority that spoke during Tuesday’s festivities.
In lieu of airing speeches from former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis, a black American; Mia Love, a black candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Utah; and Texas senatorial hopeful Ted Cruz, a Latino American, MSNBC opted to show commentary anchored by Rachel Maddow from Rev. Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes and Steve Schmidt.
Throughout this convention, Matthews has accused the Republicans of playing dog-whistle racist politics while on scene in Tampa. It isn’t clear, however, if Matthews will hurl accusations of racism at Davis, Love or Cruz for speeches his network failed to broadcast.
That's the impression they wanted to convey (even though it was not accurate) because it fits the distorted message they want to communicate. With all the racial talk from bloated Chris Matthews this all sounds racial to me...They are a total disgrace to the American Media and even to the contingent of State-Run Media.
MSNBC abandons GOP convention during every speech by a minority
Published: 11:18 PM 08/28/2012 By Jeff Poor
One of the left’s favorite attacks on the Republican Party is that it is the party of old white people, devoid of diversity and probably racist.
If you were watching MSNBC’s coverage of the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Tuesday night, you might believe those assertions, since missing from the coverage was nearly every ethnic minority that spoke during Tuesday’s festivities.
In lieu of airing speeches from former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis, a black American; Mia Love, a black candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Utah; and Texas senatorial hopeful Ted Cruz, a Latino American, MSNBC opted to show commentary anchored by Rachel Maddow from Rev. Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes and Steve Schmidt.
Throughout this convention, Matthews has accused the Republicans of playing dog-whistle racist politics while on scene in Tampa. It isn’t clear, however, if Matthews will hurl accusations of racism at Davis, Love or Cruz for speeches his network failed to broadcast.
Chris Matthews and the Democrats....They are the real Racists....
The Democrats are always the ones that cry RACE....this arguement that Chris Matthews is spewing just doesn't make any sense as outlined in this piece. It is so out of touch with reality that it will NOT be believed by the American People....his rants and raves show one thing...HIS PERSONAL RACIAL BIAS....
IT's a shame that MSNBC would keep someone on their staff that is so racially motivated and so one sided....He is one that certainly keeps me from ever watching MSNBC and often keeps me from watching NBC in total...
August 29, 2012 4:00 A.M. By The Editors
Who Racializes Welfare Reform?
The Romney campaign criticizes the Obama administration for gutting welfare reform, and the Democratic chorus sings the familiar refrain: “Racist!” Leading the choir is tingly countertenor Chris Matthews of MSNBC: “When you start talking about work requirements,” he thundered at Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, “you know what game you’re playing, and everybody knows what game you’re playing: It’s a race card.” This judgment was immediately confirmed by Thomas Edsall of the New York Times and Timothy Noah of The New Republic, among others.
There is racial politics at work here, and, as usual, it is a Democratic initiative.
Before proceeding to the question of Democratic race-baiting, it is worth paying a moment’s attention to the substantive policy question here. As Mr. Noah disingenuously puts it, the Obama administration says it has the authority to give waivers to states “allowing them to experiment with alternative ways to meet the work requirement” imposed by the Clinton-Gingrich welfare reforms. One of the ways in which states could be allowed to “meet the work requirement” is by not meeting the work requirement, i.e., by sending out welfare checks without requiring that nearly half the recipients perform 30 hours of work-related activities (which is not a particularly burdensome standard to begin with). This is important because, as Jim Manzi and others have shown, work requirements are one of the only policy innovations that have been shown in real-world trials to be effective in moving people from welfare to work. Undermine the work requirement and you undermine welfare reform in toto.
The Left never accepted the legitimacy of welfare reform, even though it came with Bill Clinton’s signature on it, and always regarded the initiative as being tainted by racism. Erasing welfare reform now is the Left’s opportunity to scrub away what it wrongly believes to be a blight on the record of the Democratic party rather than the key achievement of the Clinton administration.
Mr. Matthews’s accusations were, as is his style, presented without evidence or argument, and indeed without anything that might even charitably be called intellectual content. That he immediately connects welfare in his mind with race is of course telling: The majority of American welfare recipients are white. Blacks are disproportionately represented on the welfare rolls, it is true. That is not the only place in which black Americans are overrepresented: As conservatives have been shouting from the rooftops for a couple of years now, the black unemployment rate is a national scandal — reason enough to fire Barack Obama on its own. But the majority of unemployed people, like the majority of welfare recipients — and the majority of the country, of course — are white. Reducing the welfare rolls, like reducing the unemployment rate (and the two are not unrelated), is necessary to rebuilding the economic and human strength of the country for Americans of all races. Mr. Matthews here exhibits a crude, zero-sum view of politics and the economy, and then takes the extra step of attributing that crude, zero-sum view to his opponents. This is startling in its simplemindedness.
Mr. Noah takes a depressingly similar tack, arguing that the alleged Republican racism is (inevitably) “subtle” and encompasses attacks on the health-care law, inasmuch as such attacks consist in accusing “Obama of taking money away from (mainly white recipients of) Medicare to fund (majority non-white recipients of) Obamacare.” But it’s far from clear that the beneficiaries of Obamacare will be mostly non-white; the vast majority of those Americans who do not receive insurance through their employers will be eligible for either subsidized premiums or Medicaid. This is a childish shell game: If Romney wants to repeal Obamacare to support Medicare, he’s a racist; if he wants to reform Medicare, he hates old people.
Democrats’ proprietary attitude toward African-Americans is a disgrace, one that nine in ten black voters unfortunately reinforce at every electoral opportunity. Welfare reform is not about limiting the transfer of money from white taxpayers to non-white welfare recipients, but about ensuring that programs intended to help the poor and ease their transition into the productive economy do not in the end damage the poor, corrupt public institutions, and constrain the economy. The Democrats know that a voter dependent on the government — whether a welfare recipient or an EPA employee — is a Democratic voter, and they actively cultivate that dependency. President Obama’s economy is driving more Americans onto President Obama’s swelling welfare rolls. Republicans seek to reverse both of those trends, which would be self-evidently good for all Americans. The best the Democrats can do in such a situation is to shout “Racist!” and so they will.
IT's a shame that MSNBC would keep someone on their staff that is so racially motivated and so one sided....He is one that certainly keeps me from ever watching MSNBC and often keeps me from watching NBC in total...
August 29, 2012 4:00 A.M. By The Editors
Who Racializes Welfare Reform?
The Romney campaign criticizes the Obama administration for gutting welfare reform, and the Democratic chorus sings the familiar refrain: “Racist!” Leading the choir is tingly countertenor Chris Matthews of MSNBC: “When you start talking about work requirements,” he thundered at Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, “you know what game you’re playing, and everybody knows what game you’re playing: It’s a race card.” This judgment was immediately confirmed by Thomas Edsall of the New York Times and Timothy Noah of The New Republic, among others.
There is racial politics at work here, and, as usual, it is a Democratic initiative.
Before proceeding to the question of Democratic race-baiting, it is worth paying a moment’s attention to the substantive policy question here. As Mr. Noah disingenuously puts it, the Obama administration says it has the authority to give waivers to states “allowing them to experiment with alternative ways to meet the work requirement” imposed by the Clinton-Gingrich welfare reforms. One of the ways in which states could be allowed to “meet the work requirement” is by not meeting the work requirement, i.e., by sending out welfare checks without requiring that nearly half the recipients perform 30 hours of work-related activities (which is not a particularly burdensome standard to begin with). This is important because, as Jim Manzi and others have shown, work requirements are one of the only policy innovations that have been shown in real-world trials to be effective in moving people from welfare to work. Undermine the work requirement and you undermine welfare reform in toto.
The Left never accepted the legitimacy of welfare reform, even though it came with Bill Clinton’s signature on it, and always regarded the initiative as being tainted by racism. Erasing welfare reform now is the Left’s opportunity to scrub away what it wrongly believes to be a blight on the record of the Democratic party rather than the key achievement of the Clinton administration.
Mr. Matthews’s accusations were, as is his style, presented without evidence or argument, and indeed without anything that might even charitably be called intellectual content. That he immediately connects welfare in his mind with race is of course telling: The majority of American welfare recipients are white. Blacks are disproportionately represented on the welfare rolls, it is true. That is not the only place in which black Americans are overrepresented: As conservatives have been shouting from the rooftops for a couple of years now, the black unemployment rate is a national scandal — reason enough to fire Barack Obama on its own. But the majority of unemployed people, like the majority of welfare recipients — and the majority of the country, of course — are white. Reducing the welfare rolls, like reducing the unemployment rate (and the two are not unrelated), is necessary to rebuilding the economic and human strength of the country for Americans of all races. Mr. Matthews here exhibits a crude, zero-sum view of politics and the economy, and then takes the extra step of attributing that crude, zero-sum view to his opponents. This is startling in its simplemindedness.
Mr. Noah takes a depressingly similar tack, arguing that the alleged Republican racism is (inevitably) “subtle” and encompasses attacks on the health-care law, inasmuch as such attacks consist in accusing “Obama of taking money away from (mainly white recipients of) Medicare to fund (majority non-white recipients of) Obamacare.” But it’s far from clear that the beneficiaries of Obamacare will be mostly non-white; the vast majority of those Americans who do not receive insurance through their employers will be eligible for either subsidized premiums or Medicaid. This is a childish shell game: If Romney wants to repeal Obamacare to support Medicare, he’s a racist; if he wants to reform Medicare, he hates old people.
Democrats’ proprietary attitude toward African-Americans is a disgrace, one that nine in ten black voters unfortunately reinforce at every electoral opportunity. Welfare reform is not about limiting the transfer of money from white taxpayers to non-white welfare recipients, but about ensuring that programs intended to help the poor and ease their transition into the productive economy do not in the end damage the poor, corrupt public institutions, and constrain the economy. The Democrats know that a voter dependent on the government — whether a welfare recipient or an EPA employee — is a Democratic voter, and they actively cultivate that dependency. President Obama’s economy is driving more Americans onto President Obama’s swelling welfare rolls. Republicans seek to reverse both of those trends, which would be self-evidently good for all Americans. The best the Democrats can do in such a situation is to shout “Racist!” and so they will.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
I thought Chris Christie was Great........
Chris Christie: The Statesman
Chris Christie makes the case for touching the third rail.
By Robert Costa
Tampa, Fla. — He may be a YouTube sensation, best known for arguing with lefty hecklers, but Governor Chris Christie’s keynote speech late Tuesday was a temperate oration, forceful yet muted.
“Frankly, that is the Chris Christie I know,” says Pennsylvania congressman Pat Meehan, a former United States attorney who has been friends with the New Jersey governor for years. “The attack-dog part is what the media covers, but he has been a positive, forward-thinking, aggressive guy since the first time I met him.”
In front of a raucous crowd of delegates and conservative activists, Christie weaved personal anecdotes, including a moving tribute to his mother’s inspiration, with thoughts about his experience in the Garden State, where he has brokered bipartisan legislative reforms. Since Ann Romney spoke earlier Monday, one GOP official says it was critical to stay close to the night’s warm but serious theme.
Christie’s approach was a marked departure from previous Republican keynote addresses, which have often featured a rising politician willing to blast the Democratic nominee. Christie, for his part, did not once mention President Obama by name. Instead, his 2,600-word speech introduced the country to his singular brand, which blends a brusque rhetorical style with a reform agenda.
“We are demanding that our leaders stop tearing each other down, and work together to take action on the big things facing America,” Christie said. “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.’”
“It was a conscious decision,” says former Minnesota congressman Vin Weber, a senior Romney adviser. “When the keynote speaker, who usually assumes the attack role, doesn’t attack, that’s not an accident. It signals that the campaign believes that the country has a negative opinion of Obama and that it has to offer a different vision.”
Christie was clearly well received, especially among the GOP faithful on the convention floor. Inside the Tampa Bay Times Forum, the atmosphere was electric, and the applause raucous. “He offered a stark contrast,” says Ron Christie, a Republican consultant. “We couldn’t have a more voracious and animated speaker in that slot. He set the tone for the entire campaign.”
According to his confidants, Christie spent two weeks preparing for the speech and practiced the final draft at the governor’s summer home in Island Beach State Park, on the Atlantic coast. The speech went through multiple drafts, an adviser says, but, surprisingly, the Romney campaign let Christie write the vast majority of his speech. Christie wanted to keep things personal and highbrow, and Romney’s high command was reportedly comfortable with that.
“Romney and the Republicans are trying to build a majority coalition,” says David Winston, a Republican pollster. “To be able to effectively govern, you need to have a vision, and part of Christie’s purpose was setting up Governor Romney’s message.”
The speech began with a glance at his middle-class roots and especially his parents, Bill and Sondra Christie. His mother, who died in 2004, was cited as someone who compelled him to commit to a career in public service. Christie has shared a version of this story at various town-hall meetings, but this was the first time he has used his upbringing to such effect on the national stage.
“[My parents] came from nothing,” Christie said. “[My mom] 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.” He also touched on his adolescence, when he listened to “Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town with my high-school friends on the Jersey Shore.”
Another key moment in Christie’s speech was his extended riff about leaders. He believes they should aim to be respected, not loved. Part of the problem with the current administration, he argued, is their desire to be popular instead of being driven to solve complicated problems. Politics, he lamented, is paralyzed by the desire of politicians to win support in opinion polls. To fix the bloated budget, there will be difficult decisions, he warned.
“The greatest lesson Mom ever taught me was this one: She told me there would be times in your life when you have to choose between being loved and being respected,” Christie said. “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,” Christie chuckled, but the larger political point was obvious to the cheering delegates.
“Christie is one of the party’s role models,” says Bill Bennett, a former education secretary in the Reagan administration. “As with Scott Walker and Paul Ryan, he is one of the people out there leading on policy. Having him give this speech reflects the sheer joy the Christies and Walkers of the world have brought to the party.”
Christie’s prime-time speaking spot also reflects the growth of the Republican party into the largely liberal enclaves of the Northeast. “Look at the shift,” Bennett says. “This once southern, Evangelical Christian party has moved very much to the North and the Midwest, and keeps the South with it. Christie’s speech is another testament to the growth of the party, and an important one.”
Christie’s fundamental case was that his experience in New Jersey should be a lesson to Washington’s leaders, and that Romney is a kindred spirit who believes in similar conservative principles and shares his impulse to “govern,” rather than politick.
“They said it was impossible to touch the third rail of politics,” Christie said. “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 pensions. We did it.”
Later, Christie emphasized that the steps he has taken to reform New Jersey’s pension system, though difficult, are a variation of what Romney would prioritize. “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,” he said.
Ultimately, however, the speech was about a philosophy of leadership rather than the ascent of Romney or specific policies. People respond to conservative ideas, he said, but Americans need to elect a president who can communicate those ideas, not only on television but also on Capitol Hill. He praised Representative Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, as an able and willing legislator.
“America needs Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, and we need them right now,” Christie said. “It’s time to end this era of absentee leadership in the Oval Office and send real leaders to the White House. “
“With the pick of Christie to give the keynote, and the pick of Ryan as vice president, Mitt Romney has shown us a lot of reformist angles,” says Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary. “Mitt Romney is buttoned down, but if he’s the real deal like these Republican governors, these things suggest that there is another side to Romney, a real reformist side, that we don’t know about.”
Earlier Tuesday, Christie told the convention’s Michigan delegation, in a brief speech, that he was not wary of but energized about stepping into the spotlight. “I’m just hoping to break out of my shell tonight,” he said, to laughs. “I think by 10:30 tonight I’m going to be a little bit like that horse in the gate at the Kentucky Derby, waiting for the bell to go, banging up against the gate.”
And on ABC’s Good Morning America, Christie pledged to stay true to his personality. “I think if the American people watch tonight, leave the speech by saying, ‘Yep, that’s him, that’s who I heard about, seems genuine to me,’ then I think I will have done my job for me,” he said. “And if they say, ‘I like the vision he has laid out for the country and for his party for the next four years,’ then I will have done the job for my party and my country.”
Christie has given high-profile speeches before, most notably a speech at the Ronald Reagan presidential library last year, and at a recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Chicago. At the Reagan library, Christie told the crowd to take the high road, even when it is tempting to vilify Democrats. “We are a better people than that, and we must demand a better nation that that,” he said. “We have failed to live up to our own tradition of exceptionalism.”
But this speech, though similar in tone to the Reagan talk, was different. It was Christie rallying the troops as expected but also an attempt to elevate the debate, and to celebrate a presidential nominee who, in his opinion, is doing just that. Instead of excoriating the unmentioned president, he bluntly urged delegates to make a worthy argument about the future. And he did this mostly with broad strokes, not by pounding Obama’s record.
“The disciples of yesterday’s politics underestimated the will of the people,” Christie said. “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.”
To all the naysayers, Christie said, “I have faith in us.”
“We have never been victims of destiny,” Christie said. “We have always been masters of our own. I won’t be part of the generation that fails that test, and neither will you.”
In the end, there was humor, and there were soaring lines. Most of all, though, it was the presentation of a governor not as a pit bull but a statesman.
MSNBC distorts the Truth Again....
This is absolutely true...as painful as it is I do watch MSNBC sometimes just to see what the communists/socialists are saying and from their broadcast youwould think every person at the convention was white and male.....The Bias is so evident that it is sickeningl.....Chris Matthews is nothing short of a total racist....he is unstable mentally and MSNBC should release him from employment...As they should with Rachel Maddow another distorter of the truth....It's not wonder that NO ONE watches MSNBC.....
MSNBC abandons GOP convention during every speech by a minority
Published: 11:18 PM 08/28/2012 By Jeff Poor
One of the left’s favorite attacks on the Republican Party is that it is the party of old white people, devoid of diversity and probably racist.
If you were watching MSNBC’s coverage of the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Tuesday night, you might believe those assertions, since missing from the coverage was nearly every ethnic minority that spoke during Tuesday’s festivities.
In lieu of airing speeches from former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis, a black American; Mia Love, a black candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Utah; and Texas senatorial hopeful Ted Cruz, a Latino American, MSNBC opted to show commentary anchored by Rachel Maddow from Rev. Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes and Steve Schmidt.
Throughout this convention, Matthews has accused the Republicans of playing dog-whistle racist politics while on scene in Tampa. It isn’t clear, however, if Matthews will hurl accusations of racism at Davis, Love or Cruz for speeches his network failed to broadcast.
MSNBC abandons GOP convention during every speech by a minority
Published: 11:18 PM 08/28/2012 By Jeff Poor
One of the left’s favorite attacks on the Republican Party is that it is the party of old white people, devoid of diversity and probably racist.
If you were watching MSNBC’s coverage of the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Tuesday night, you might believe those assertions, since missing from the coverage was nearly every ethnic minority that spoke during Tuesday’s festivities.
In lieu of airing speeches from former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis, a black American; Mia Love, a black candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Utah; and Texas senatorial hopeful Ted Cruz, a Latino American, MSNBC opted to show commentary anchored by Rachel Maddow from Rev. Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes and Steve Schmidt.
Throughout this convention, Matthews has accused the Republicans of playing dog-whistle racist politics while on scene in Tampa. It isn’t clear, however, if Matthews will hurl accusations of racism at Davis, Love or Cruz for speeches his network failed to broadcast.
Letterman - an Adulterer....a Sexual harrasser...Just an Old Angry Liberal Guy that Isn't Funny Any Longer....
Letterman is nothing but an adulterer....a sexual harrasser....an old angry liberal guy that unfortunately isn't funny any longer.....If he worked for a network with any integrity he would have lost his job long ago, but liberal CBS puts up with his crap....He needs to be looking at the lies HIS GUY, Obama, is feeding to the American People every day....
I am getting tired of "entertainers" that are so partisan that a large percentage of America has stopped paying any attention to them...
I am getting tired of "entertainers" that are so partisan that a large percentage of America has stopped paying any attention to them...
Who give a damn what Jimmy Carter thinks????
Not that anybody gives a damn what Jimmy Carter thinks or says...but he ought to be thanking Obama for being the only President that has been WORST than he was....Obama will definitely be ranked last in performance in the history of America when this is all over...
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Herman Cain is Correct....Boycott MSNBC until they fire Chris Matthews.....
I think Herman Cain is absolutely correct....I emailed MSNBC this morning to tell them they would never get an audience if they kept people like Chris Matthews in their employ....He's as bad, if not worse than Keith Olbermann was...
Video streaming by Ustream
I would Suggest to Everyone that they also email MSNBC and demand Chris Matthews get fired...
Video streaming by Ustream
I would Suggest to Everyone that they also email MSNBC and demand Chris Matthews get fired...
Joe Biden is Becoming the Laughing Stock of America....
Dennis Miller slams ‘moron’ Joe Biden
Published: 1:00 PM 08/28/2012 By Jeff Poor
On NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” Monday night, comedian and radio talk show host Dennis Miller called Vice President Joe Biden a “moron.”
Miller, a registered Republican who says he is liberal on social issues, unloaded on Biden for his recent string of missteps during President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign.
“I just don’t like it when it gets this rancorous,” Miller said. “And I don’t think the president does himself a service having that moron, Joe Biden, fronting for him out there. Listen: Biden, to me — they say Paul Ryan has six percent body fat, I guarantee you Biden’s got eight between his ears, OK?”
Miller told host Jay Leno he expected the upcoming debate between Biden and Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan to be a lopsided defeat for the vice president.
“That debate is going to be a bloodbath,” Miller said. “At this point, Biden’s sphincter must be twitchier than a college kid who drank tap water in Mexico on spring break, for God’s sake. He’s going to get laid out.”
“You know, at this point Biden is so silly they ought to put one of those plastic dog collars around his neck that they give your dog when they snip his balls so he doesn’t hurt himself. He’s a crazy man.”
Democrats must really be Proud of their guy....he's really addressing the real issues facing America....NOT!!!!
Obama submits to another arduous interview
By Doug Powers • August 27, 2012 04:43 PM
If the Obama campaign’s media strategy gets any softer it’s going to be sponsored by Downy.
From Politico:
Yet another push in President Barack Obama’s soft-media strategy, unearthed this morning by WWD’s Erik Maza:
Editor-in-Chief Cindi Leive flew to Portland, Ore., last month to sit down with the president for an interview that will appear in the magazine’s November issue. It is not the first time Obama has sat down with Glamour — he did so in 2008, along with John McCain — but it is his first time as a sitting president. …
Glamour pitched them on a big audience, said Washington editor Linda Kramer Jenning. “There’s a lot of attention being paid to young, women voters,” Jenning said. “That’s the calling card that opens the door.” It took five months to lock down some face time.
Even though the interview was conducted before the Todd Akin mess, ten bucks says Obama’s people will find a way to secure a follow-up to tack on some extra comments before this thing goes to press.
By Doug Powers • August 27, 2012 04:43 PM
If the Obama campaign’s media strategy gets any softer it’s going to be sponsored by Downy.
From Politico:
Yet another push in President Barack Obama’s soft-media strategy, unearthed this morning by WWD’s Erik Maza:
Editor-in-Chief Cindi Leive flew to Portland, Ore., last month to sit down with the president for an interview that will appear in the magazine’s November issue. It is not the first time Obama has sat down with Glamour — he did so in 2008, along with John McCain — but it is his first time as a sitting president. …
Glamour pitched them on a big audience, said Washington editor Linda Kramer Jenning. “There’s a lot of attention being paid to young, women voters,” Jenning said. “That’s the calling card that opens the door.” It took five months to lock down some face time.
Even though the interview was conducted before the Todd Akin mess, ten bucks says Obama’s people will find a way to secure a follow-up to tack on some extra comments before this thing goes to press.
I Predict More Hypocrisy from Obama and Democrats.....
Just watch the Democrats and Obama will be critical of the Republicans continuing with their convention today because of the impending tropical storm Issac hitting the gulf coast, but our pathetic leader Barack Obama has continued to campaign and won't even be in Washington when the storm makes landfall.....Watch the hypocrisy...it's coming.....
Obama feels he's done his job...he's talked with Big Sis...he's made a couple of phone calls...he's made another egotistical short statement on TV telling everyone what "HE" has directed and now he's off to continue to try to save his job....
What an embarrassment Obam is for America!
Katrina Anniversary: Obama Plans to Campaign in Va. While Isaac Lands in La.
By Penny Starr August 27, 2012
(CNSNews.com) – The White House announced on Monday that President Barack Obama plans to campaign in Charlottesville, Va., on Wednesday--the day the National Hurricane Center predicts Hurricane Isaac will hit the Gulf Coast.
Wednesday, Aug. 29, is also the seventh anniversary of the day that Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast in 2005.
According to the center, Tropical Storm Isaac is predicted to become a Category One Hurricane by Monday night and will make landfall along the Louisiana and Mississippi coastline late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
According to the center, Isaac will have maximum sustained winds of 70 miles per hour with storm surges up to 12 feet.
National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service fall under the umbrella of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.
The National Weather Service issued a hurricane warning at 1:42 p.m. CDT for New Orleans, stating that Isaac was strengthening and becoming more organized. It advised New Orleans residents to "rush to completion of preparations for the protection of life and property. Evacuate if directed to do so by local officials ... or if your home is vulnerable to high winds or flooding."
Isaac "is currently forecast to make landfall as a Category One hurricane near the southwest pass of the Mississippi River Tuesday night," said the warning.
The warning had not been updated at the time of publication.
On Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans with 90 mph sustained winds, according to the weather service. The storm surge caused levees to fail, and more than 1,800 people died.
On Monday, the White House also released a news release on Obama’s briefing with Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Rick Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center.
“During the briefing, the President directed Administrator Fugate to make sure FEMA continues to coordinate closely with state and local officials in potentially impacted states and address the needs of local communities as the storm approaches,” the news release said.
The release states that FEMA has deployed teams to Florida and Louisiana ahead of the storm to support state and local preparations, and that the Obama administration is “in communication with Alabama and Mississippi and other southeastern states that could be impacted.”
Following the briefing, Obama spoke with Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who has decided not to speak at the GOP National Convention taking place in Tampa this week.
“The President told the Governor the people of Florida are in his thoughts during this time,” the release states.
Obama feels he's done his job...he's talked with Big Sis...he's made a couple of phone calls...he's made another egotistical short statement on TV telling everyone what "HE" has directed and now he's off to continue to try to save his job....
What an embarrassment Obam is for America!
Katrina Anniversary: Obama Plans to Campaign in Va. While Isaac Lands in La.
By Penny Starr August 27, 2012
(CNSNews.com) – The White House announced on Monday that President Barack Obama plans to campaign in Charlottesville, Va., on Wednesday--the day the National Hurricane Center predicts Hurricane Isaac will hit the Gulf Coast.
Wednesday, Aug. 29, is also the seventh anniversary of the day that Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast in 2005.
According to the center, Tropical Storm Isaac is predicted to become a Category One Hurricane by Monday night and will make landfall along the Louisiana and Mississippi coastline late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
According to the center, Isaac will have maximum sustained winds of 70 miles per hour with storm surges up to 12 feet.
National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service fall under the umbrella of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.
The National Weather Service issued a hurricane warning at 1:42 p.m. CDT for New Orleans, stating that Isaac was strengthening and becoming more organized. It advised New Orleans residents to "rush to completion of preparations for the protection of life and property. Evacuate if directed to do so by local officials ... or if your home is vulnerable to high winds or flooding."
Isaac "is currently forecast to make landfall as a Category One hurricane near the southwest pass of the Mississippi River Tuesday night," said the warning.
The warning had not been updated at the time of publication.
On Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans with 90 mph sustained winds, according to the weather service. The storm surge caused levees to fail, and more than 1,800 people died.
On Monday, the White House also released a news release on Obama’s briefing with Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Rick Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center.
“During the briefing, the President directed Administrator Fugate to make sure FEMA continues to coordinate closely with state and local officials in potentially impacted states and address the needs of local communities as the storm approaches,” the news release said.
The release states that FEMA has deployed teams to Florida and Louisiana ahead of the storm to support state and local preparations, and that the Obama administration is “in communication with Alabama and Mississippi and other southeastern states that could be impacted.”
Following the briefing, Obama spoke with Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who has decided not to speak at the GOP National Convention taking place in Tampa this week.
“The President told the Governor the people of Florida are in his thoughts during this time,” the release states.
The Truth About Medicare....And Obama Again is Not Telling the Truth!!!
How Obamacare Robs Medicare and Hurts Seniors
The rhetorical Medicare wars have heated up this week, after President Obama declared in his Saturday radio address that his proposed reforms "won't touch your guaranteed Medicare benefits. Not by a single dime."
This is incorrect. Obamacare cuts $716 billion from Medicare over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and uses these "savings" from Medicare to fund other entitlement expansions mandated by Obamacare. Medicare becomes a cash cow for Obamacare, and the Medicare "savings" from payment cuts are not put back into making Medicare solvent. Such massive payment cuts do impact Medicare benefits, as well as seniors' access to those benefits.
Heritage's Alyene Senger explains how this hurts America's seniors:
The impact of these cuts will be detrimental to seniors' access to care. The Medicare trustees 2012 report concludes that these lower Medicare payment rates will cause an estimated 15 percent of hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and home health agencies to operate at a loss by 2019, 25 percent to operate at a loss in 2030, and 40 percent by 2050. Operating at a loss means these facilities are likely to cut back their services to Medicare patients or close their doors, making it more difficult for seniors to access these services.
The President also said on Saturday, "As President, my goal has been to strengthen these programs now, and preserve them for future generations." But Obamacare imposes new taxes on present and future generations—including a new Medicare "payroll tax" that doesn't even go toward Medicare. Senger details:
The payroll tax funds Medicare Part A, the trust fund that is projected to become insolvent as soon as 2024. Obamacare increases the tax from 2.9 percent to 3.8 percent, which is projected to cost taxpayers $318 billion from 2013 to 2022. However, for the very first time, Obamacare does not use the tax revenue from the increased Medicare payroll tax to pay for Medicare; the money is used to fund other parts of Obamacare, much like the $716 billion in cuts are.
The same set of dollars "saved" from Obamacare's massive across-the-board Medicare payment cuts cannot be used to enhance Medicare solvency, reduce the federal deficit, and fund Obamacare's entitlement expansions all at the same time. This is only a fraction of the dishonesty and budgeting shell games surrounding Medicare.
The Heritage Foundation advocates reforming Medicare into a premium support plan. What does that mean? Seniors would be given a choice between the fee-for-service Medicare of today or private plans. "Premium support" simply means that the government funding that goes toward their traditional Medicare plan now would be transferred directly to the plan of a senior's choice, just as it is today in the Medicare drug program that already serves most senior citizens.
Not only would this change stimulate intense competition to control costs among private health plans, as well as the traditional Medicare program, but it would widen the scope of seniors' options and give them greater control over their own health care.
Two important things to note:
Under all of the major premium-support proposals unveiled on Capitol Hill, traditional Medicare would remain. Seniors would have the right to stay in traditional Medicare or pick a better plan if they wished to do so. To quote President Obama, "If you like your plan, you can keep it"—truly.
Shifting to premium support would not take away seniors' benefits. All major versions of premium support guarantee beneficiaries at least the Medicare benefits or the level of benefits they get today. In addition, they would have access to new plans with even higher levels of coverage at competitive prices tomorrow.
Some liberal opponents of Medicare reform pretend that reforms would suddenly bring private insurers into the mix. In fact, private health plans have been part of Medicare since the 1970s. The New York Times did a good job of explaining that private insurers are working very well within Medicare today—and they are playing a role in expanding benefit options while controlling costs. On August 25, the Times's Robert Pear reported:
Even as President Obama accuses Mitt Romney and Representative Paul D. Ryan of trying to privatize and "voucherize" Medicare, his administration crows about the success of private health plans in delivering prescription drug benefits and other services to Medicare beneficiaries.
More than a quarter of the 50 million beneficiaries receive coverage through private Medicare Advantage plans, mostly health maintenance organizations, and Medicare's drug benefits are delivered exclusively by private insurers, subsidized by the government.
Obama administration officials, lawmakers from both parties and beneficiaries have generally been satisfied with the private plans.
Medicare must be reformed. President Obama has a very different vision of what "reform" means. Join Heritage in debunking Medicare reform myths as this debate continues.
You Have to LOVE Newt!.....And Chris Matthews Has To Go...It's a disgrace that MSNBC allows him to Stay employed....
Newt Gingrich asks Chris Matthews, ‘What kind of racist thinking do you have?’
Published: 6:33 PM 08/27/2012 By Jeff Poor
In an appearance on MSNBC’s “Hardball” on Monday from the Republican National Convention, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich took on host Chris Matthews, who accused the Republican Party of playing the “race card” throughout the day on MSNBC.
Gingrich turned the tables on Matthews, asking: “Why do you assume ‘food stamp’ refers to black? What kind of racist thinking do you have? Why are you being a racist, because you assume he’s referring to black?”
In a testy exchange, Matthews asked Gingrich why his party was using what he deemed coded racist dog whistles.
“I find your assumption so absurd that it’s hard to answer your question,” Gingrich responded. “Let me take the birther thing for a second — what Mitt Romney did the other day, people say, ‘You ought to relax, you ought to be a little bit lighter’. So he tells a joke. Now, it tends to be a joke that serves him in a totally different way that you’re calculating. It reminds everybody in Michigan that he was born in Michigan.”
But Matthews wouldn’t back down from his premise.
“You know, it’s amazing how — you know how African-Americans generally, at least people who have emailed me in the last couple of hours, how they react to this?” Matthews said. “Do you understand they have a reaction? They think this is racial talk. That this whole thing about welfare cheats is relentless stuff.”
Gingrich said those readers had probably been influenced by Matthews and noted a previous segment with former RNC chairman Michael Steele, a black man who faced questions from Matthews and The Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman over his inability to recognize the racial implications of certain topics.
“I think there are a lot of people in America who listen to people like you who tell them all day how racist — you just had a panel with a guy who was black who was telling the two guys who were white they were nuts,” Gingrich said. “Two guys who are white [are telling him] ‘why are you not more sensitive to being black?’ I think Michael Steele knows he’s black. I don’t think it’s a great shock to him.”
Larry Kudlow is Correct....Obama would rather see the nation's economy fail than address America's Economic Problem
CNBC host Kudlow: Obama would rather ‘punish’ the wealthy than ‘fix the economy’ [VIDEO]
Published: 11:02 PM 08/27/2012 By Nicholas Ballasy
TAMPA, Fla. — Larry Kudlow, host of “The Kudlow Report” on CNBC, warned of a recession if current tax rates for all income brackets expire and the planned automatic spending cuts take effect.
He also told The Daily Caller that President Barack Obama would rather “punish” the wealthy than deal with America’s current economic challenges.
“I really think the fiscal cliff, which is really a tax cliff — it’s a tax-hike cliff — depends on the election. I mean, I think that the [Congressional Budget Office] CBO is right: If we don’t fix it, we’re going to have a recession. At the moment, I see no effort by Obama to deal with it. I mean, if I were he, and I were running in a close race, honest to God, I would call people together and sit down and hammer out a deal right away and you know what? That could possibly win the election for him. But he shows no evidence, no inclination to do that,” Kudlow told TheDC in Tampa after speaking at “Newt University” — a public policy forum sponsored by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich during the Republican National Convention.
“All he wants to do is bash rich people and bash businesses. It’s crazy to me. So I think that, I think that if Romney wins, I take, Ryan told me this Thursday, the first order of business is going to be to fix the fiscal cliff and avoid the recession. And I hope to hell that’s right. We can’t, I mean — here’s the deal: After what we’ve been through with this awful recession and this awful recovery, I personally do not believe this country can take another recession.”
Kudlow said another recessing would be “devastating” in “psychological terms” for the country.
“Our enemies around the world would just lick their chops if America stumbles again, and that bothers me a lot,” Kudlow said, specifically citing Russia, China and Iran.
He also opposes Obama’s call to only extend the current Bush-era tax rates for families making under $250,000 per year.
“I wouldn’t be raising anybody’s taxes,” Kudlow said. “I don’t think Obama understands, if he does he doesn’t want to acknowledge it, that the so-called rich people are among other things the important investors that supply the capital for growth. Why penalize them? And, secondly, [they] are the leading small business owners that supply the torque and the jobs and the animal spirits. Why go after them? Why?”
“This whole class warfare thing is so un-American to me. It just doesn’t make any sense, but it doesn’t make economic sense.”
TheDC also asked Kudlow why he thinks Obama has not done more to prevent the U.S. from going over the fiscal cliff.
“You’re asking the right question and the only thing I can come up with is he’s just driven by this ideology where, to him, punishing the upper end is more important than fixing the economy,” said Kudlow, the former associate director for Economics and Planning in the Office of Management and Budget during Ronald Reagan’s first term in the White House.
“He’s [Obama] surrounded by left-wing advisers. I’m not being personal — I’m just saying from what I gather. Valerie Jarrett, Axelrod and Plouffe, these guys are card-carrying left-wing advisers, and they’d rather make an ideological point than a good economic growth point. I don’t think Obama’s a growth guy — I think he’s a redistribution guy and I think his leftist attitude covers, obscures, it blinds him to the consequences. I think that’s the problem.”
Young Congressman makes the case why Young Americans Need to Support Romney......
Rep. Schock: Obama has ‘failed’ young voters [VIDEO]
Published: 10:45 PM 08/27/2012 By Nicholas Ballasy
Following a series of speeches by President Barack Obama aimed at garnering support among college students, Illinois Republican Rep. Aaron Schock told The Daily Caller that young people should vote for Obama’s opponent, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, claiming that the current “CEO” of America has “failed” on “every financial front.”
“They’ve [young people] been hit hardest by the recession; 50 percent of college graduates last May are still unemployed today; 50 percent of college graduates last May had to move back in with their parents because they couldn’t find adequate employment; can’t think of a better reason than having to move home with mom and dad to vote for a different president,” Schock told TheDC in Tampa, Fla., during the Republican National Convention on Monday.
“Every dollar of debt is a future tax increase on the next generation of Americans. Debt is not funny money, debt has to be paid back by someone and so every time we pile on a dollar of debt, somebody meaning the future generations have to pay it back. Our debt has climbed at a faster rate under President Obama.”
Schock, 31, said Obama’s efforts to deal with the rising cost of higher education have not worked.
“College costs have skyrocketed despite a ton of money being pumped into Pell grants and the like. Clearly, subsidizing the system as it is now is not the solution,” said Schock.
He also criticized Obama for not working with Congress to pass a budget for the fiscal year 2012 and not presenting a plan to reform Social Security and Medicare.
“Anybody who looks not at the personalities but at the facts, at the cold hard black and white numbers, would be foolish as a young American to continue with the current CEO that we have in the White House who’s failed us on nearly every financial front,” he said.
“He’s been the president for four years and he’s not been able to get a single Democrat to vote for his budget. I mean, what greater repudiation than to be the CEO of the largest organization on earth and not be able to get Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid to be able to vote for your budget?”
Schock, who spoke with The Daily Caller after addressing “Newt University,” a forum sponsored by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan saves the entitlement program for future generations.
“Medicare blows up in 2024, that’s not a Republican opinion or Democrat opinion, that’s the Medicare trustees saying that if nothing is done, Medicare will be completely exhausted by 2024 and we will have to raise the Medicare tax by 47 percent just to make good on current Medicare enrollees,” Schock told TheDC.
“So, that means young people today in twelve years, that will not be on Medicare, young people today in twelve years will have to pay a 47 percent increase in their Medicare tax that they’re paying on their income just to keep the current program solvent with no changes. Social Security goes broke in the next 20 years and again Paul Ryan, House Republicans are the only ones with a solution to save it.”
Obama - the "distractor in chief".....Republican Governors setting a Great Example for the Nation for what is Working.....
There's no question that Obama is the "Distractor in Chief" doing anything he can to distract America from his record as President....whether it's abortion, the war on women, Romney's tax returns, etc etc he wants to talk about ANYTHING but his failure as President....and the Republican Governors have a great case to take to the American people about what programs are working today in America....whether it's Virginia, New Jersey, Wisconsin or Indiana states run by Republicans are winning despite Obama's failures....
Gov. McDonnell: Obama, Democrats focusing on abortion to distract from ‘failed’ record
Published: 11:45 PM 08/27/2012 By Matthew Boyle
TAMPA, Fla. — Virginia Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell told The Daily Caller he thinks President Barack Obama‘s re-election campaign is trying to use things like the recent national focus on abortion issues to distract from his “failed” record as president.
“If you’ve got a horrible record on jobs and the economy and on debt and deficit, and you have no energy plan, then of course, you’re going to change the subject,” McDonnell said in a phone interview. “That’s why you see so much attention from the Obama campaign on Romney’s tax returns, on Bain Capital, on social issues. It’s a very small-ball campaign — a campaign of division and fear — very different than the hope and change that you saw four years ago, which was uplifting and positive.”
“It’s because, if the election gets to be solely about jobs and the economy, debt, deficit and energy, Obama loses big because he has not produced on those policies,” he continued. “He’s failed and everybody knows it. He’s trying to make it about personality and small-ball issues.”
Social issues — especially abortion — have peaked as an issue in the national political discourse in the last week after Missouri Republican Rep. Todd Akin, the state’s GOP candidate for U.S. Senate, used the phrase “legitimate rape” when arguing against abortion on local television.
The Obama campaign sent out a fundraising appeal from Democratic strategist Donna Brazile Monday seeking to tie Akin to Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
McDonnell said this election isn’t about those social issues — it’s really about the economy — even though Democrats, he said, will use that type of thing to distract voters.
“The top line issue is which candidate has got the best ideas to get the greatest country on earth out of debt and back to work,” McDonnell said. “That’s what this campaign is all about. And, it’s the vision and plans of Mitt Romney versus the record of Barack Obama.”
“No matter how you slice the cake or how you wordsmith it on the left, when you look at 42 months in a row with over 8 percent unemployment rate, 23 million Americans either unemployed or underemployed, and you look at a $16 trillion debt — the highest in American history — and that this president has added $5 trillion to — that is just an indefensible record,” the Virginia governor charged. “The president has tried his policies, and they haven’t worked. It’s time for a change, and Mitt Romney is that change.”
McDonnell, the chairman of the national Republican Governors Association, also told TheDC he thinks GOP governors’ nationwide will play a “huge” role in the upcoming election.
“That’s going to be part of my speech [at the Republican National Convention] tomorrow night,” he said. “That is, Republican governors are doing something different than Democratic governors. We’re getting results on debt, on jobs, on energy — and doing much better than Democratic governors. So, if you like what we’re doing now, then you’ll really like what Mitt Romney will do in the White House. He’s a former governor, he’s all about balancing budgets without raising taxes and creating jobs. He’s done it in the public and private sector. And, he’s not going to make excuses and blame other people. Governors can’t do that. The buck stops at your desk. That’s why he’ll be a much more effective leader than President Obama.”
McDonnell said one “very good case study” of how liberal policies don’t work and how conservative ones do is the dichotomy between his state and Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley’s Maryland.
“We’re at a 5.9 percent unemployment rate [in Virginia],” McDonnell said. “Maryland is at 7 [percent unemployment]. They’re having to increase taxes, and increasing gambling, they’re doing all kinds of things to feed the spending machine. We’ve been reforming government and cutting spending and so we’ve had $1.4 billion in surpluses over the past three years. It’s a good contrast, and I think it’s a good contrast for what the differences are in an Obama White House versus a Romney White House.”
Above all, though, McDonnell said “the bottom line is: fiscal conservative principles work.”
“At the end of the day, that’s what this election is about,” McDonnell added. “It’s not about personalities, it’s not about who you like the best. It’s about results. Right now, we’ve got a lot of rhetoric in D.C. but no real action. Mitt Romney’s a business guy and he’s all about getting results — and that’s what we need right now.”
McDonnell also expects Romney to win in his Virginia — a major swing state in this election.
“He’s making great progress [in Virginia],” McDonnell said of Romney. “We were down 8 points just about four or five months ago. Now, it’s a dead heat. Actually, a poll or two had him [Romney] up by one. The trend is very good, the enthusiasm gap is on the Republican side unlike four years ago when it was on the Democrats’ side. We’ve got the best grassroots effort that I’ve seen in 21 years in office in terms of the number of phone calls, door-knocks, offices. I think if these trends continue, we’ll win Virginia
Gov. McDonnell: Obama, Democrats focusing on abortion to distract from ‘failed’ record
Published: 11:45 PM 08/27/2012 By Matthew Boyle
TAMPA, Fla. — Virginia Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell told The Daily Caller he thinks President Barack Obama‘s re-election campaign is trying to use things like the recent national focus on abortion issues to distract from his “failed” record as president.
“If you’ve got a horrible record on jobs and the economy and on debt and deficit, and you have no energy plan, then of course, you’re going to change the subject,” McDonnell said in a phone interview. “That’s why you see so much attention from the Obama campaign on Romney’s tax returns, on Bain Capital, on social issues. It’s a very small-ball campaign — a campaign of division and fear — very different than the hope and change that you saw four years ago, which was uplifting and positive.”
“It’s because, if the election gets to be solely about jobs and the economy, debt, deficit and energy, Obama loses big because he has not produced on those policies,” he continued. “He’s failed and everybody knows it. He’s trying to make it about personality and small-ball issues.”
Social issues — especially abortion — have peaked as an issue in the national political discourse in the last week after Missouri Republican Rep. Todd Akin, the state’s GOP candidate for U.S. Senate, used the phrase “legitimate rape” when arguing against abortion on local television.
The Obama campaign sent out a fundraising appeal from Democratic strategist Donna Brazile Monday seeking to tie Akin to Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
McDonnell said this election isn’t about those social issues — it’s really about the economy — even though Democrats, he said, will use that type of thing to distract voters.
“The top line issue is which candidate has got the best ideas to get the greatest country on earth out of debt and back to work,” McDonnell said. “That’s what this campaign is all about. And, it’s the vision and plans of Mitt Romney versus the record of Barack Obama.”
“No matter how you slice the cake or how you wordsmith it on the left, when you look at 42 months in a row with over 8 percent unemployment rate, 23 million Americans either unemployed or underemployed, and you look at a $16 trillion debt — the highest in American history — and that this president has added $5 trillion to — that is just an indefensible record,” the Virginia governor charged. “The president has tried his policies, and they haven’t worked. It’s time for a change, and Mitt Romney is that change.”
McDonnell, the chairman of the national Republican Governors Association, also told TheDC he thinks GOP governors’ nationwide will play a “huge” role in the upcoming election.
“That’s going to be part of my speech [at the Republican National Convention] tomorrow night,” he said. “That is, Republican governors are doing something different than Democratic governors. We’re getting results on debt, on jobs, on energy — and doing much better than Democratic governors. So, if you like what we’re doing now, then you’ll really like what Mitt Romney will do in the White House. He’s a former governor, he’s all about balancing budgets without raising taxes and creating jobs. He’s done it in the public and private sector. And, he’s not going to make excuses and blame other people. Governors can’t do that. The buck stops at your desk. That’s why he’ll be a much more effective leader than President Obama.”
McDonnell said one “very good case study” of how liberal policies don’t work and how conservative ones do is the dichotomy between his state and Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley’s Maryland.
“We’re at a 5.9 percent unemployment rate [in Virginia],” McDonnell said. “Maryland is at 7 [percent unemployment]. They’re having to increase taxes, and increasing gambling, they’re doing all kinds of things to feed the spending machine. We’ve been reforming government and cutting spending and so we’ve had $1.4 billion in surpluses over the past three years. It’s a good contrast, and I think it’s a good contrast for what the differences are in an Obama White House versus a Romney White House.”
Above all, though, McDonnell said “the bottom line is: fiscal conservative principles work.”
“At the end of the day, that’s what this election is about,” McDonnell added. “It’s not about personalities, it’s not about who you like the best. It’s about results. Right now, we’ve got a lot of rhetoric in D.C. but no real action. Mitt Romney’s a business guy and he’s all about getting results — and that’s what we need right now.”
McDonnell also expects Romney to win in his Virginia — a major swing state in this election.
“He’s making great progress [in Virginia],” McDonnell said of Romney. “We were down 8 points just about four or five months ago. Now, it’s a dead heat. Actually, a poll or two had him [Romney] up by one. The trend is very good, the enthusiasm gap is on the Republican side unlike four years ago when it was on the Democrats’ side. We’ve got the best grassroots effort that I’ve seen in 21 years in office in terms of the number of phone calls, door-knocks, offices. I think if these trends continue, we’ll win Virginia
Monday, August 27, 2012
Mitt Romney is "LIKEABLE" to Me.....
Why Mitt Romney is “Unlikable”
A lot is being said in the media about Mitt Romney not being "likable" or that he doesn't "relate well" to people. Frankly, we struggled to understand why. So after much research, we have come up with a Top Ten List to explain this "unlikablility."
Top Ten Reasons To Dislike Mitt Romney:
1. Drop-dead, collar-ad handsome with gracious, statesmanlike aura. Looks like every central casting's #1 choice for Commander-in-Chief.
2. Been married to ONE woman his entire life, and has been faithful to her, including through her bouts with breast cancer and MS.
3. No scandals or skeletons in his closet. (How boring is that?)
4. Can't speak in a fake, southern, "black preacher voice" when necessary.
5. Highly intelligent. Graduated cum laude from both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School...and by the way, his academic records are NOT sealed.
6. Doesn't smoke or drink alcohol, and has never done drugs, not even in the counter-culture age when he went to college. Too square for today's America?
7. Represents an America of "yesterday", where people believed in God, went to Church, didn't screw around, worked hard, and became a SUCCESS!
8. Has a family of five great sons....and none of them have police records or are in drug rehab. But of course, they were raised by a stay-at-home mom, and that "choice" deserves America's scorn.
9. Oh yes.....he's a MORMON. We need to be very afraid of that very strange religion that teaches its members to be clean-living, patriotic, fiscally conservative, charitable, self-reliant, and honest.
10. And one more point.....pundits say because of his wealth, he can't relate to ordinary Americans. I guess that's because he made that money HIMSELF.....as opposed to marrying it or inheriting it from Dad. Apparently, he didn't understand that actually working at a job and earning your own money made you unrelatable to Americans.
My goodness, it's a strange world, isn't it?
*****************************************************
Personal Information:
His full Name is: Willard Mitt Romney
He was Born: March 12, 1947 and is 65 years old.
His Father: George W. Romney, former Governor
of the State of Michigan
He was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
He is Married to Ann Romney since 1969; they havefive children.
Education:
B.A. from Brigham Young University,
J.D. and M.B.A. from Harvard University
Religion:
Mormon - The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints
Working Background:
After high school, he spent 30 months in France as a
Mormon missionary.
After going to both Harvard Business School and
Harvard Law School simultaneously, he passed the Michigan
bar exam, but never worked as an attorney.
In 1984, he co-founded Bain Capital a private equity
investment firm, one of the largest such firms in the
United States.
In 1994, he ran for Senator of Massachusetts and lost
to Ted Kennedy.
He was President and CEO of the 2002 Winter OlympicGames.
In 2002, he was elected Governor of the State of
Massachusetts where he eliminated a 1.5 billion deficit.
Some Interesting Facts about Romney:
Bain Capital, starting with one small office supply store
in Massachusetts, turned it into Staples; now over
2,000 stores employing 90,000 people.
Bain Capital also worked to perform the same kinds
of business miracles again and again, with companies
like Domino's, Sealy, Brookstone, Weather Channel,
Burger King, Warner Music Group, Dollarama,
Home Depot Supply and many others.
He was an unpaid volunteer campaign worker for
his dad's gubernatorial campaign 1 year.
He was an unpaid intern in his dad's governor's
office for eight years.
He was an unpaid bishop and state president of
his church for ten years.
He was an unpaid President of the Salt Lake
Olympic Committee for three years.
He took no salary and was the unpaid Governor of
Massachusetts for four years.
He gave his entire inheritance from his father to charity.
Mitt Romney is one of the wealthiest self-made men
in our country but has given more back to its citizens
in terms of money, service and time than most men.
And in 2011 Mitt Romney gave over $4 million to charity,
almost 19% of his income.... Just for comparison purposes,
Obama gave 1% and Joe Biden gave $300 or .0013%.
Mitt Romney is Trustworthy:
He will show us his birth certificate
He will show us his high school and college transcripts.
He will show us his social security card.
He will show us his law degree.
He will show us his draft notice.
He will show us his medical records.
He will show us his income tax records.
He will show us he has nothing to hide.
Mitt Romney's background, experience and
trustworthiness show him to be a great leader and
an excellent citizen for President of the United States.
You may think that Romney may not be the best
representative the Republicans could have selected.
At least I know what religion he is, and that he won't
desecrate the flag, bow down to foreign powers,
or practice fiscal irresponsibility.
I know he has the ability to turn this financial debacle
that the current regime has gotten us into. We won't
like all the things necessary to recover from this
debt, but someone with Romney's background can do it.
But, on the minus side, he never was a "Community
Organizer", never took drugs or smoked pot, never
got drunk, did not associate with communists
or terrorists, nor did he attend a church whose pastor
called for God to damn the US.
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