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.
So, first off, the RNC convention is what I thought it would be. A bunch of white blowhards, sucking off the rich and kicking the poor in the teeth. Chris Christy didn't talk about Romney until 3/4 of the way into his speech. No one was there to cheer on Romney, they were there to rip on the black guy in the White House and that's about it. There was Paul Ryan's speech that was supposed to be the policy guy's main huzzah, but there were few details and a lot of lying. There's also his logical fallacy of using the 'We Built This' as their motto for the convention. President Obama was talking about roads and bridges, and the GOP took him out of context and says the president means businesses, which also means the rich shouldn't pay taxes or something like that. If the GOP wanted to have an honest conversation about these things, basing the entire premise on a lie isn't a good start. Also Ryan says if your business failed, it's the government's fault in his speech... umm... so is it you built this or the government failed to build this? I'm confused, but I'm sorry, using logic, reason, and a period of time that goes back more than 48 hours... my bad.
Then there's Clint Eastwood... wow. I'm not going to go into how nutty the speech itself was. I will talk a little shit about Hot 96, which is a local radio station that plays pop music. They defended Eastwood by saying that he stuttered (his craziness in the speech was much more than a little stuttering), because.... he wasn't using a teleprompter. Really? REALLY? That's your nonsensical, intellectually devoid excuse for a reason behind this old man's apparent senility, not to mention his logical fallacies? Considering everyone else at this borderline KKK rally was using one. You have an articulate black man who is the president. He sounds far more intelligent than the last sad excuse for a human being you had in the White House, so you cut off that positive attribute by claiming it's only because he's reading his lines. I'm sorry, but at least he can read, unlike Dubya, not to mention Romney uses one, and so does the pretty boy Ryan. If it's something to rile up liberals, then whatever, but at least act like you have two braincells to rub together.
Secondly, I guess Eastwood didn't remember his Super Bowl commercial. The GOP went nuts and attacked him non stop for like a week or two, because he showed faith in America. The GOP wants the US to fail to make Obama look bad and they proved it in their reaction to Eastwood's commercial (not to mention the quote from Mitch Mcconnell). That's the side he's chosen. He's pro gay marriage and was attacked by these lunatics and this is the side he's chosen. I, like most people, enjoy a lot of movies he's been in and still will, but goddamn.
As far as the rest of the convention goes, well there's this:
This isn't that surprising. The GOP have been hyping up racism for a while, and quite a bit more since Obama's become president. This is the side they've chosen, that's part of their team. They could run away from it, but Romney made a birther joke recently, so they have no interest in not being racists or in the very least appealing to them. It's disgusting and even though the people were escorted out, I think Romney and co. probably had a chuckle on the camerawoman's behalf.
Also Ryan and Co. touched on 'Obamacare'... well it's the same as Romneycare, so I'm sure that type of criticism will work out great in the debates, which I'm soooooo looking forward to. Obama is going to destroy Romney... I know he'll lie and stand by those lies, but we'll see what happens when he's not surrounded by yes men and people that agree with his 'birthright'. Maybe we'll get another, 'Coorporations are people my friend,' or 'These locally baked cookies taste like shit (not exact quote)'. One can hope.
I don't know how anyone can look at this convention and say, "This is what I want to vote for." I just don't. Unless your brain is so clogged with Fox News shit, and that you think that the teleprompter and birther jokes are legit and/or funny, then I see why you would... because you're an idiot. Period. I could go on, but I don't think there's a lot more to say about it right now. I'll put up another blog in a couple of days.
On a personal note, I have found a job after looking for months. It will pay more than my previous one, but the physical work will be a lot harder. I'm okay with that, I'll keep writing in all of my blogs/freelance articles.
So, my grandmother, like most of my family, is a christian. She went to church a lot, etc, etc. My mom by extension also goes to church.
The preacher at the funeral started off talking about my grandmother, but then went into scripture nonstop. Then said if you're not a christian, then you're going to hell and my grandmother isn't. I almost walked out. I refused to shake the man's hand. I don't know what happens when we die, most likely with our brains shut down, we just don't exist. It sucks and I hope that's not the case, but it's the most likely one. That's the truth, and the truth matters more than my fear of death. That being said, it was insulting that he didn't even flinch when saying this crap. Not a question in his mind. I frankly just saw it as a ploy to increase his paycheck by scaring people into the pews. He needs that new car and how dare you suggest that churches pay taxes. Sorry, off topic.
First off, it was a funeral, not a sermon. It always seems that's what these things turn into. I was okay with people praying and verses being spoken, but having shit like that thrown into my face was disgusting. I guess he thought he was in safe hillbilly company. I guess he didn't think there were Jews or Muslims there either. He started talking about Scientology, like that was likely. I guess it was the safe route, because if he talked shit about 'God's people' he would be anti-Semitic. Nobody gives a crap about Scientology. One has to ask though, how is what they believe, less ridiculous than what you believe?
If it had been anything other than my grandmother's funeral, I would have gone into full debate mode, but I'm not a prick... not like this douchebag. He also said before he began his 30 minute, 'Your ghost is going to be tortured' rant, he said he wasn't there to be an evangelist. Well guess what. You lied.
This is just stuff that Atheists have to deal with. It sucks, but most of society wants us to die and have our ghosts tortured forever. Not only that, but apparently, we deserve it. I normally would have thrown down in a debate. How do you know that that's true? Oh your book says so? So how does a book written by bronze age goat herders apply to today and how is that more believable than Greek myths? How are you with slavery in the bible or killing disobedient children? Oh, I'm going to hell... that's nice, I win. Bitch.
First off, I haven't written anything in a while. My grandmother died last week. It was hard on my family and the amount of time at my disposal. Also, last week was my wife's birthday and last but not least; one of my friends was kicked out of his girlfriend's house, so he's living with me now. Busy, busy, busy.
The Romney/Ryan Kill Medicare Budget
So what do I have to say about the current state of things. Well Paul Ryan was announced as Romney's VP a little over a week ago. He might as well have been giving us a gift. The Romney/Ryan budget, is now really the Romney/Ryan Budget. They've been trying to swing things back and say The Affordable Healthcare Act is taking away from Medicare (it eliminates waste and fraud and therefore costs), but when you're trying to turn Medicare into a coupon program for private insurance, it's hard to make that argument. The other half of that equation is that they're peddling the whole 'Repeal and Replace Obamercares'. Well they haven't put anything forward, other than keeping the already activated provisions (keeping your kid on your plan until they're 26, etc), but who knows if they're lying about that. So that means the Romney/Ryan healthcare plan would simply be to repeal the AHCA. So combining these two things (Repeal and the Romney/Ryan kill Medicare budget) means that you could be denied insurance due to pre-existing conditions again. So how is a 65 (or older if the GOP gets their way) year old person supposed to get on a new healthcare plan without getting outright rejected? Not to mention that even if they do it'll cost them between $6,000 and $6,500 more a year according to all estimates.
My grandmother was in a nursing home for about 6 months before she died. She COULD NOT have afforded that without Medicare. COULD. NOT. She worked in nursing homes most of her life, ironically. She needed 24/7 around the clock care due to her brain tumor. Without Medicare in it's current form, she would have been in the street or dead years ago. Even if my mother or myself could have taken her in (I would obviously have done that if needed), I can't buy her the medical care she needs with no insurance. My mom couldn't have either. Neither of us have $6,000 to fill in the cracks if she couldn't get on private insurance. We are just one story. This is what the country would turn into with the Romney/Ryan kill Medicare budget. Period.
Another story is one of the roommate of my grandmother. She had to have a roommate for a little while. She was on her deathbed more or less. I checked her 'About Me' sheet that was posted on the wall. She had been a waitress all of her life. She couldn't have afforded her end of life care (Oh I'm sorry, DEATH PANELS!!!!!!!!!) without Medicare. The more strain on the children of the elderly, the fewer goods that are bought and the more the economy suffers.
The thing is that these things probably wouldn't take full effect until a Democrat won the White House again. All of the horrible things that would result from this would be blamed on him/her. The Bush Economic Crash is constantly thrown at Obama's feet. We were losing 600,000 jobs a month the month Obama was inaugurated. We gained 160,000 last month. I think a million job per month turn around is a hell of a feat. Things would be better without the Obstructionist House/the least popular Congress in US history. The stimulus should have been bigger, but hindsight is 20/20.
Rapebies and Todd Akin
So yeah... legitimate rape. If you don't know what I'm talking about then here...
The thing is that in 2006, I remember that conservatives were all like, "Oh were against abortion, except in cases of rape or incest or mother's life being in danger."
I responded with, "Well, I don't believe you. I think that's a convenient position, and eventually it will lead to all cases. Period."
"Up yours, lib."
Sure. Whatever. The position that Todd Akin has taken is the same as Paul Ryan and the GOP Platform that was confirmed last week. Rape and incest will no longer be GOP abortion ban exceptions. This is disastrous for the GOP. This will be the end of them. Period. They will lose women because of this. Ryan said in an interview that... well here.
The method of conception doesn't matter. By that logic, women's lives being in danger will be on the platform of no exceptions by the next presidential election. There will be no exceptions. Period. But let's just use the current platform as the reference. This is punishing rape victims. This leads back to religion hurting the country. When I was a christian in my youth, we watched a video with some scar faced, ugly bitch talking about how she was a rapeby (rape baby). She was glad her mother had her and getting an abortion is murder no matter what. Then she went on about how she's not getting laid... blah blah blah.
First off, I would rather not exist than have my mother be raped and go through with the pregnancy. I would think that a 'selfless christian' would feel the same way... I guess not. Also, I would die to keep my mother from being raped or anyone really. This is why you cannot call abortion, especially early term abortion murder, because by that logic, then rape isn't a good reason for one. But it isn't murder. If it is, then miscarriages are manslaughter. I guess if the mother's life is in danger, it would be killing in self defense?
It used to be late term abortions, then rape, incest, life of the mother exceptions and now life of the mother is the only exception. This is where liberals told you the GOP was going with their anti choice horse shit. Hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.
RNC Convention
I don't have a ton to say about this. It's been delayed due to the hurricane.
I can laugh at how the family values conservatives multiply the strip club business. I can scoff at how they are having parties for the billionaires that give them money.
I can do a lot of things, but I'll wait until the convention is underway to really go for it. I wish they would celebrate the American middle class and not the billionaire that inherited money and a company from his daddy, or as I like to call it, The Romney Way.
They may kick Todd Akin out of the convention, but they are backing his policies. The reason people are pissed about this is, yes Akin is stupid for believing this shit, but who is the worst person of the group? The person who believes that rape victims can't get pregnant, but is too stupid to not know that is false? Or the person who knows they can get pregnant, but doesn't give a shit?
