October 31, 2012

Walter Rhett: When A List Of Facts Don’t Tell The Truth

With all the crazy things he says, if Mitt Romney were a student on any of America’s college campuses, he would be profiled on a watch list. His radical speech continually advocating the abolition of the federal government while attending classes with classmates with tuition paid for by federal student loans would register as a blind contradiction and personality disconnect (dissociative identity) that could easily cross the line from blame and denigration to violence. Instead, he is running for President of the United States as a candidate for the Republican Party and ducking questions about his claims, saying conversations about inequity should be held in quiet rooms where, promising to “do more” if he could to cut jobs, he rails against 47% of Americans whose incomes are so low they are exempt from income taxes.

He is not alone in the group home; group homes are normally places where people with special challenges are given love and support and encouraged to break through their veils. But Mitt does a Mitty; his advocacy network of irrational politics has the power to make his cruelest fantasies real and impose them on the rest of us, no matter our own dreams. He and his ilk are well funded by operators who see dollars in the vast disability that shadow hims and others: parts narcissism, delusion, paranoid, manic, a bundle of anti-social behaviors including the lack of empathy, guilt, or remorse for pathological lying, a grandeur that writes its own morality and rules of the game.

For instance, Michael Brown, the infamous “Brownie” who let New Orleans turn into Atlantis, publicly chided President Obama for reacting to hurricane Sandy too soon, claiming the President’s actions were “premature.” Brownie is also on record claiming Obama “wanted” the Gulf oil spill so he could suspend offshore drilling. Brown never saw a disaster he couldn’t make worse or find faults and conspiracies in the tragedy. And he once ran the nation’s emergency response.

Or take Romney’s television and radio commercial claiming GM and Chrysler both intend to send American production jobs to China. Both companies have taken the unusual step of calling the “car guy” a liar. A GM spokesperson cited galactic-length differences between the Romney ads and reality. The spokesperson went on: “no amount of campaign politics at its cynical worse will diminish our record of creating jobs.” Chrysler’s CEO, calling the ads, “inaccurate,” pointed out Chrysler has added 2,900 jobs at downtown Detroit’s Jefferson Avenue plant, which builds Jeep Cherokees. Ironically, Romney’s father built Jeeps in China in the 1980s, as CEO of American Motors. Chrysler will build there, too, for China’s market, the world’s largest...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/10/31/when-a-list-of-facts-dont-tell-the-truth/

October 25, 2012

Nance Greggs: The Judas Goat

To: Nadine Maenza
Executive Director, Patriot Voices:

I was most interested to receive your email this morning, ironically entitled “Don’t Be Fooled,” which began with this statement:

“For months now, the Obama campaign and national Democrats are suggesting that they are the candidates who are looking out for the issues important to women.”

Allow me to enlighten you, to whatever extent women like yourself are educable. The Obama campaign and the Democratic party are not suggesting anything. Instead, what they have consistently done is take action where women’s issues are concerned, while Romney and the Republicans continue to wage war on women’s reproductive rights, access to contraception and abortion, and equal wages for equal work.

You are shamelessly shilling for a party that differentiates between “legitimate rape” and not-really-so-bad-after-all rape, and champions the idea of women being subjected to invasive, humiliating, and totally unnecessary medical procedures as punishment for seeking to exercise their legal right to an abortion, along with promoting a candidate who changes his position on women’s rights as often as he changes his magic underwear...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/10/24/the-judas-goat/

October 24, 2012

Walter Rhett: Abuse Is Always in the Name of Love

Mitt Romney’s latest ploy is to pretend he is Barack Obama. For the past month, he has tried to walk in the President’s footsteps, in a brazen attempt to broaden his appeal. That ploy is a word-thin disguise to attract undecided voters and disgruntled Democrats to his radical-right positions on health, taxes, and women’s rights that these groups would normally reject.

If America accepts such a naked, transparent deceit, it has become an abuse victim, a country willing to ignore reality, past history and bad decisions, to willingly put itself at-risk by embracing all the wrong done in the name of a love for America. What kind of people try to stop the abuse by reuniting with its perpetrators? Especially when the threats to safety and security never stopped, but in the classic fashion of abusers, have increased, becoming more distorted, domineering and shrill?

In fact, Romney wants to deny the abuse and put it on Obama, the blame-shifting that is the hallmark of dysfunction. Fault is always on somebody else. The interior narrative goes, “My errors, of which there are none, were made in good faith. Can’t you see my desire and devotion? And I have to be this way because of what happened.” Abusers rearrange the details of history to fit a narrative of good and evil that distorts and conceals truth and freedom. So the slaps and screams, the seething anger, the spontaneous rage, the stripping away of dignity, the shredding of self-worth, the putdowns and retorts, the demeaning language breaks the victim’s will.

Some in America have brought into the blame-shift. Victims beget victims. Their experience of abuse becomes a template. It recreates itself and perpetuates itself when it hits a tipping point. I have seen this with inner city crack epidemics in eastern cities; an out of control dysfunctionalism that altered the social fabric and changed the arc of success put in place by previous generations. I can tell you that healthy common sense is hard to recover for people conditioned to thinking abuse is a way of life...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/10/24/abuse-is-always-in-the-name-of-love/

October 18, 2012

BrewmanJax: Greed Is NOT Good

The GOP wants government limited and small enough not to interfere with Big Business but to allow deregulation, cut social programs, cut taxes for corporations that ship jobs overseas and for the Top 1%, spend more on defense than the next 10 countries combined, but big enough to stop a woman’s right to choose, allow discrimination against anyone that isn’t white, male, and/or heterosexual, push their religion and other moral issues into the public sphere.

“Small” is a relative term. They don’t really want small or limited government, they want a limited-focus government with the focus on their moral and emotional issues. Some examples are the attacks on women’s right to choose and the latest assault on affirmative action, Fisher vs. University of Texas. It cannot be a coincidence that the recent Supreme Court level of assaults against affirmative action, in this case, affirmative action in higher education, all have young white women, all scorned from their top choice of university, as plaintiffs. Hell hath no fury…

A limited-focus government does not mean small. A LOT of government is required enforce morals and emotional issues. A lot of government also requires a lot of money, so no wonder the GOP talks about tax cuts to solve all of the world’s problems. Tax cuts are a distraction and an excuse. They are an excuse to cut social programs; the distraction is to call those who require government programs “deadbeats” and “irresponsible”― Romney’s infamous 47%. That helps create incentives to cut social spending. When government money is not being spent on social programs, that money is available for defense, prisons, and for Big Business to do as it wants without government interference...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/10/18/greed-is-not-good/

October 17, 2012

TSW #36

Jeff Rosenzweig: TSW #36

John Hinderaker won’t admit it, but I think he haz a sad. It was inevitable, considering that a mere two weeks ago the Power Line co-founder, who manages to store within the same cranium litigation abilities that got him named one of the 100 best lawyers in Minnesota and all the impulse control and political insight of a hyperactive four-year-old, was on an intense sugar high after W. Mitt Romney’s performance in the first presidential debate.

Hinderaker is a guy you might assume is simply too intelligent to believe the utter crap he writes, but time and time again he actually comes off as a sincere believer in the unbelievable and a zealot for the very worst of what the right wing would do to the nation if given an unfettered chance. Hinderaker believes, or would at least have you believe he believes, that Paul Krugman is a “full-time shill for the Obama administration,” that Dick Cheney “oozed” competence, and that “Barack Obama is a world-class liar.”

So his giddy appraisal of Romney’s handling of his first debate against President Obama, while essentially being a patchwork of falsehoods much like his candidate’s performance, was to be expected:

It wasn’t a TKO, it was a knockout. Mitt Romney was in control from the beginning. He was the alpha male, while Barack Obama was weak, hesitant, stuttering, often apologetic…

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/10/17/tsw-36-2/

October 17, 2012

Walter Rhett: Obama Will Make Bad Better

Barack Obama has a modest economic record and here’s why: Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, and others gave him bad advice; his political people, David Axelrod, Patrick Gaspard, David Plouffe and others, had no feel for the broad suffering of America and lacked technical know-how or institutional experience in managing the world’s largest macro-economy; from Europe to Asia, global headwinds stalled job growth, the Council of Economic Advisors was a revolving door, and Barack’s own mastery and knowledge of economic fundamentals is weak. Twenty-nine million Americans looking for working is the result, a dismal record, especially four years past the Great Crisis.

Legislatively, Republicans blocked the recovery by threatening the integrity of American credit, by turning wrongheaded ideas into talking points, by ignoring truth (government does create jobs!), by passing bill after bill never destined to reach the President’s desk, bills never intended to help American families, never proposing a change in the rules that aided families burdened by mortgages and foreclosures, never stimulating demand—the key to job growth. They offered instead cuts in safety nets.

Yet the index for equity markets doubled from their 2009 bottom and more than ever companies saw record profits by 2012. Capital tells a very different story than jobs. Why the contradiction between record profits and job recovery, between community suffering and corporate swag?

Hidden in plain sight, it’s the part Mitt Romney conveniently leaves out of his message. Again, Mitt switches positions to pretend he is something he is not: he has no “know-how” about creating jobs—none. Mitt is a balance sheet guy. He creates capital—not work. He extracts capital gains—he does not increase paychecks. Wealth is profit; labor is an expense. His goal is to take out cash, not increase what workers take home. His entire corporate life, his constant activity has been extracting wealth, trading capital, increasing its return as capital gains. His ideas have a single source: profit, capital wealth...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/10/17/obama-will-make-bad-better/

October 14, 2012

Take Five (Wieners Circle edition)

Jeff Rosenzweig: Take Five (Wieners Circle edition)

ONE: The Boy Can’t Help It

I’m convinced that the Republican Party is running some sort of “say the stupidest thing that pops into your head” contest for its membership. Maybe the reasoning, if there actually is any, is that it keeps their names in the news.

A case in point is Todd Akin. His Senate candidacy notwithstanding, I’m guessing few people had ever heard of Akin before August, when the six-term Congressman decided to share his decidedly pre-Renaissance views on rape and pregnancy with KTVI, a St. Louis television station. Ever since, it’s nearly impossible to get through a day without hearing something from or about him.

Amanda Marcotte, with an assist by the American Bridge 21st Century PAC, introduced another Akin Rhapsody in Ridiculousness recently when she shared C-SPAN video footage of Akin speaking on the House floor in 2008 about abortion providers:

Who wants to be at the very bottom of the food chain of the medical profession? And what sort of places do these bottom-of-the-food-chain doctors work in? Places that are really a pit. You find that along with the culture of death go all kinds of other law-breaking: not following good sanitary procedure, giving abortions to women who are not actually pregnant, cheating on taxes, all these kinds of things, misuse of anesthetics so that people die or almost die. All of these things are common practice, and all of that information is available for America...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/10/14/take-five-wieners-circle-edition/

October 11, 2012

Nance Greggs: Giddy-up!

Last week’s Obama/Romney debate was, according to the MSM, a triumphant “win” for The Mittster – and that call was as predictable as it was inevitable.

Romney could have installed a rotisserie on his podium, roasted a live kitten on it, and glommed it down in front of millions of viewers – and the media still would have chalked up his performance in the “win” column. They had to; they needed a horse race to keep their viewers tuned in, and the first debate was going to be the game-changer they’d hoped for, no matter what.

But in the dawn’s early light, after the fact-checkers had done their work, what should have been the big news story was how many lies Romney had told during the debate – not exaggerations, nor the hyperbole we’ve come to expect from politicians, but out-and-out lies.

In fact, it should have been one of the biggest political news stories of all time: a man running for the highest and most powerful position on the planet had stood before the American citizenry and the world-at-large and lied over and over – without shame, without regret and, most importantly, without any fear of political consequences, thanks to a media that puts its ratings above journalistic integrity and its responsibility to the public...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/10/11/giddy-up/

October 10, 2012

Walter Rhett: Style Points For Lies

It was a stunning performance! No candidate ever boldly told so many cheery, rapid-fire lies in 90 minutes, pushing aggressively to bullet point the base. Romney offered not policies but pledges.

His first pledge stunned America, caught off guard by the bold detail expressed when Romney overlooked Obamacare and leaped forward to announce the first detailed cut included in his budget and tax plan. Kept tightly secret; no leaks, no rumors or predictions; no one was suspicious that something big was about to break.

The self-styled jobs creator’s first announced act, in line with his budget criteria, was to cut Big Bird. Old habits die hard. Always the venture (many say vulture) capitalist, Romney knows how to target and dismantle valuable enterprises to extract value and create outsized capital returns that others miss. He casts a hard eye. With government funds, cuts can reduce the deficit, be used as subsidies, consultant fees, put into private contracts, be given away as tax breaks, or lower debt.

The problem is Big Bird’s annual federal share is less than 1/10th what the Justice Department prosecuted in 2012 federal health care fraud cases against private and corporate doctors and service providers who stole $4 billion in taxpayers’ money. United Technology was fined $75 million early this year for violating US trade laws in selling highly classified, prohibited military materials to China that, if trafficked outside of the company, would have amounted to espionage of state secrets; its fine was 1/6th of Big Bird’s and his whole crew’s annual budget. Big Bird is small potatoes when it comes to federal funding...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/10/10/style-points-for-lies/

October 8, 2012

Nance Greggs: The Great WHITE Hope

An Open Letter to George Will:

Sir,

RE your latest embarrassing journalistic endeavor:

Since the launch of Romney’s disastrous campaign, I have been greatly amused by the lengths to which Republicans have gone to explain why Obama is ahead in the polls. I’ve seen every excuse from that damned (albeit non-existent) librul media viciously attacking poor Mitt, to his not yet having hit his stride – which, according to the GOP, will happen any day now.

And now you’ve come up with this:

“… the nation, which is generally reluctant to declare a president a failure — thereby admitting that it made a mistake in choosing him — seems especially reluctant to give up on the first African American president.”

In bygone days, I would have described the proffering of this theory as the bottom of the barrel having been officially scraped. But given what I’ve heard from GOPers over the past few months, I realize that barrel has become not only a bottomless pit which Republicans continue to mine for the most ridiculous reasons for the failures of their candidate and party, but a veritable cesspool from which to draw stench-imbued mud to fling at their opponents...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/10/07/the-great-white-hope/