So Romney's 47% video situation is getting worse. He claimed that what he was saying was out of context and the whole video should be released. The whole video has since been released and it's so much worse than we thought. Not in an evil scheming sort of way, but in a 'this guy should NOT be president' sort of way. First off here's the full video.
Here's the part by itself that I'm going to talk about:
In my last post I talked about his famous 47% comments, but these comments aren't as well known as of yet. So what's the problem with this statement? Other than Romney and his recycled Bush foreign policy team beating off at the thought of invading Iran, he doesn't know what a dirty bomb is. Rachel Maddow talked about this last night, but I had a memory pop up about an economics class I had in college.
So first off, a dirty bomb is not a nuclear bomb. You don't need fissile material to make one. It's merely a normal bomb with radioactive material in it. The radius isn't that big and the amount of people who would die from one might be slightly lower than a normal bomb. This shows how little Mitt Romney knows about... well everything. This is a serious national security matter and directly affects how we deal with Iran's possible nuclear program and Romney's behind on the lingo... and is confused about what a nuclear Iran actually means.
So what does this have to do with my ITT Macro Economics Class? Well I have a conservative teacher that I sparred with from time to time. At the time I was working full time and going to school full time, something he would never know about. He started to talk about dirty bombs one day (I think he might have been confused about what one was also) and how there was no way we could stop one from getting into the U.S. and detonating. This was during the George W. Bush days. This was spinning excuses for W.'s shitty job already at this point (9/11 and Iraq anyone?). I guarantee if Obama were in office, he would have contributed it to weakness in Obama that made us look vulnerable and whatnot. This also reminds me of how conservatives are already making excuses for losing the 2012 election with 'We weren't conservative enough!!!", but that's a post for another day.
I found all of the specifics (yes on wikipedia, but if you want me to source those sources, I would be happy to) within minutes. I knew they were not the same thing, but I didn't know how bad a dirty bomb would be, which is not as bad as a conventional explosive. Maybe if Mitt took some Google/Bing time, he wouldn't put his expensive shoe covered foot in his mouth a little less often.
Just when Romney couldn't fuck things up more than he has.... here's this:
Wow... wow. He really thinks everyone who votes for the pres is a freeloader. He isn't backing down from these statements either. The most screwed up thing is that he's using a Fox News talking point, like he believes in it. That surprises me. He's talking to rich donors here, not the slack jawed tea bagging audience you see in videos meant to be public. This means he's not just spinning bullshit when he's talking, at times he believes what he says.
But let's scratch a little deeping about what he said. USA Today writes:
"According to the non-partisan Tax
Policy Center, about 46% of Americans paid no income tax in 2011. However,
nearly two-thirds of households that don't pay income tax pay payroll taxes. Of
the people who don't pay income or payroll taxes, more than half are elderly.
The center says more than one-third of those who don't pay income or payroll
taxes have incomes of less than $20,000."
So either the elderly, who are on Social Security, which they paid for, or the very poor, don't pay income taxes. This according to Romney is not taking responsibility. These people, much to Fox News' chagrin, pay a payroll tax, which is basically the same thing. When I was working (and in a week or so when I get the final word on my new job), I got paid hourly, which I'm sure Romney has never done in his life. My taxes were automatically pulled out for Medicare, Social Security, and other state and federal taxes.... this is called a Payroll Tax. It's basically the same thing as an Income Tax, except Income Taxes are paid after the fact. Mitt pays a proportionally lower tax rate than me, so how can I be freeloading off of this system?
The other half of the 'Romney is a douche in this video' equation, is that he is alluding to giving middle class and poor people higher taxes. This goes off of the whole Fox News narrative that the rich are burdened by their taxes. Number by number, their taxes are higher than mine, but proportionately, they are much lower. Besides, at the end of the day, if their taxes were the same as mine, they would still be rich as hell. Still not wanting for anything in the world, while I hold my breathe for a $16 per hour job to pay my school loans and maybe start a family next year. If you care that much about rich people and you are not rich, then you have really messed up priorities. Don't give me the whole, rich people have the spending power, crap. Corporations are sitting on $2 Trillion worth of cash and not hiring that many people with it. Trickle down economics didn't work, deal with it. If you are rich, then you are working for your self interests, but are a greedy waste of skin.
Hopefully this puts a nail in Romney's coffin. The Santorum 'Smart people won't vote for us,' thing was funny, but he's not running for jack shit, this could change the election. Also, the Santorum thing isn't taken out of context, he was talking about the media, etc, but that doesn't negate what he said and that he meant what that sounds like and evidentally... he's right.
In the end, it's funny that Romney really is as gullable as his base. It might be an ego stroking mechanism, but when he raises my taxes to make the rich richer, turns Medicare into a voucher program, destroys Social Security, and starts a couple more wars (Bush foreign policy advisors are Romney's), I won't care about his motives, just that we needed to vote for Obama more than ever.
I don't do this to be super partisan, but I don't see a lot of other assessments of why I would title this post as such, but it's the truth. Romney doesn't care. If he did, he would at least talk about keeping portions of The Affordable Health Care Act, but he won't. There has been no explanation for what they would replace it with.
The cold hard truth is, if Romney is elected, this little girl will die. If you vote for Romney, you will be an accomplice or at the very least, ignorant of the consequences of your vote. If you're reading this, you are no longer ignorant.
This election isn't about shoving the other side's face in defeat or victory. It has real consequences. I see responses to the first lady's speech.
Conservatives call her Moochelle, then claim it isn't to compare her to a cow, but to say she mooches off of tax payer money. Guess what chuckles, so would Ann Romney if you consider that mooching. I also don't buy that explanation, the bagger was lying. He also compared insulting The First Lady to someone on the Internet insulting Nikki Manaj for her Romney support... yeah, because that means the First Lady deserves it, right? I'm surprised that they haven't started dropping the n word outright on Fox News.
Anyway, you can see the racist vitriol in their words on youtube, or where ever you see this speech. I can't imagine how they'll respond to The POTUS' speech.
Paul Ryan lied a lot in his RNC speech.... a lot a lot. I thought I would lay out the lies. Some of these are my opinion, and some backed up by cold hard facts. I'll site the facts as I can, but the opinion, obviously can't be sourced. Originally I was going to look up lies on other site, but after I started to read the transcript, it wasn't hard to pick them out. So this is straight from the speech and I'm going through the transcript and looking up non partisan sources.
1. They’ve run out of ideas. Their moment came and went. Fear and division are all they’ve got left.
(Opinion)
He's talking about the Obama administration of course. Fear and division is what the GOP thrives off of. They didn't run out of ideas, there is a jobs bill the Obama team has drafted that the House strikes down and the Senate filibusters. Their moment came and went. You were the ones under 'He Who Didn't Speak At The RNC', who you've conveniently forgotten about and swept under the rug. You have 8 years with a surplus and after 9/11, the goodwill of the world to make things better. Instead you took that political capital and literal capital and squandered it.
You gave the literal capital to the rich and tried to privatize Social Security... by the way. If Dubya had succeeded in that endeavor and all of the Social Security accounts were in an IRA or some other private Merrill Lynch type account. The 2008 economic collapse would have destroyed the elderly in this country. The elderly are actually doing okay, more or less (see previous posts on my grandmother's death).
Then there's the political capital. The Democrats got behind you in a way your party would never think about doing in any situation. If Al Gore had been president, you would have attacked him right off. The country and the world was behind you and you wasted it by fucking around in Iraq. Getting people killed for your golden boy's daddy issues. Anyone who questioned you was unpatriotic and a traitor (at least online, publicly they used the term 'poor judgement').
2. With all their attack ads, the president is just throwing away money – and he’s pretty experienced at that.
That's why Clinton had over a $200 billion surplus (taking that much money per year vs. spending it) and Bush had a $1.2 trillion deficit (Spending vs. taking in). Obama's deficit will be at $1.33 trillion. The money that's tacked on in comparison: Bush vs. Clinton: $1.4 trillion VS Bush vs. Obama $130 billion, is nominal in comparison. The Bush White House didn't put the wars on the budget either, which is part of that figure. Obama was blocked when he tried to get rid of the Bush tax cuts for the rich, which would have dealt with some of the debt. He was chided for getting out of Iraq, which will lower the debt as we send less resources there. Even if you don't buy any of those reasons as part of the problem, you have that stark contrast of 700% increase under Bush vs. 10% increase under Obama, yeah he sure can waste money compared to the other guy. Also, you know, having to save the economy didn't cost anything and the amount of money people aren't making as a result of that economy shouldn't factor into that calculation either.
3. 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.
Everyone knows by now that this plant announces it's closing in the summer of 2008. If you didn't, there you go. It closed in December of 2008, but stayed open for a couple of months for the Isuzu section, but were planning on closing that down in either case. If you can stretch that Obama caused the closure of one section of the plant that was already going to be closed no matter what, especially in his first month, then sure... I guess.. if you're stupid.
4. Right now, 23 million men and women are struggling to find work. Twenty-three million people, unemployed or underemployed. Nearly one in six Americans is living in poverty. Millions of young Americans have graduated from college during the Obama presidency, ready to use their gifts and get moving in life. Half of them can’t find the work they studied for, or any work at all. So here’s the question: Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?
I'm not even considering this an opinion. Neither Romney or Ryan will do anything to help these people. Their plan will cut the rich's taxes (which by the way hasn't worked in the last 12 years to stimulate job growth, this source is partisan, but the sources they sight are legit). The bottom 20% would see their taxes go up. This won't even come close to balancing the budget, but it's punishing those who have the least and giving those who have the most... more? Even under Obama's most intense tax policy, the rich WOULD STILL BE RICH! Frankly, if they keep fighting it and bitching, maybe we should give them a taste of the pre-Reagan tax rates of 90% on the richest. One can only hope. How is that going to help those under or unemployed? The underemployed issue can be attributed partially to places like retail stores that purposely give people part time positions to avoid giving them benefits. Would Romney try to fix that? No. Will Obama? Maybe. Romney doesn't care. His response on how to help college students?
My mother didn't have the money to help me and I'm in debt. The college I went to had crap programs, and that sucks for me, but regulations would stop bad colleges like ITT Tech from existing. I'll deal with it, but others should be protected. Also, a little tuition price regulation/subsidising wouldn't hurt. I don't have to worry about eating bad food, this is no different. I'm not looking for a handout either, just a little understanding. Someone who was born a multi-millionaire can never understand us.
5. The first troubling sign came with the stimulus. It was President Obama’s first and best shot at fixing the economy, at a time when he got everything he wanted under one-party rule. It cost $831 billion – the largest one-time expenditure ever by our federal government. It went to companies like Solyndra, with their gold-plated connections, subsidized jobs, and make-believe markets. The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst. You, the working men and women of this country, were cut out of the deal. What did the taxpayers get out of the Obama stimulus? More debt. That money wasn’t just spent and wasted – it was borrowed, spent, and wasted.
The job losses the month Obama came into office were at about 740,000 (the figures are different depending on the time to look for the figures, they get revised with new data, but the original figures are at around 600,000). We had around 160,000 in gains last month. That's a 900,000 job per month turn around (1,000,000 if you take the best month of the administration). That by any account isn't a waste.
The red is Bush, the blue is Obama, you can figure the rest out. The stimulus almost automatically made things better. Once we were in gains, it would take a long time to pull ourselves out. Stimulus wasn't always a bad word, but since Obama became president, everything he does is horrible and must be made into a buzz word for the conservative base. Obama did say that the unemployment wouldn't go over 8%, this is in reference to his original plan, which was scaled back to get GOP/Blue Dog votes. You'd think in this type of situation, he wouldn't have to convince them to save the country, but I guess some things are more important to the Republicans:
That was in 2009. Also the Solyndra thing is nothing compared to how much oil company ween the GOP sticks in their mouth hourly. That's a topic for another day. The amount 'wasted' on Solyndra was a 1000th of the cost of the Iraq war.
6. Obamacare comes to more than two thousand pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines that have no place in a free country.
First off, I guess laws have no place in a free country? Secondly, it's the exact model that Romney put together in Massachussets.
Paul Ryan trashing Romneycare in 2010. At least he's consistent... sort of.
This is why the debates are going to be soooo.... awesome. I know Romney will lie, but Obama is going to have to keep going after him with facts and make him look like the liar he is.
7. You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover, even with new taxes on nearly a million small businesses, the planners in Washington still didn’t have enough money. They needed more. They needed hundreds of billions more. So, they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we’re going to stop it."
The other reason I'm looking forward to the debates is the Ryan budget. Ryan is talking about Obama killing Medicare? Ryan's 2010 Budget would destroy Medicare and turn it into a voucher system. There is no way if the Affordable Healthcare Act is repealed and pre-existing conditions will get you denied for private insurance again, that a 65 year old person will be able to get on a new plan. End of life care would be destroyed. Nursing homes run off of Medicaid in a lot of cases and Ryan wants to cut that dramatically. Obama's 'cuts' in Medicare are focused on fraud and closing the pharma donut hole. It will NOT affect benefits. Period. Paul Ryan is just flat out lying and projecting what he would do to Medicare onto Obama.
That's the whole speech for the most part. I didn't mean to make it that long, but goddamn this POS lies a lot. I only had one 'opinion' point, where I thought I would have a lot more without sourcing. Facts are easy to find if you want them. More updates on the DNC convention sometime this week.
