(Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney appears to be in the final stages of deciding who to pick as his vice presidential running mate, with speculation growing that he has narrowed his choice down to a short-list of three.
Ohio Senator Rob Portman, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal all offer various strengths to Romney should he decide to pick one of them to join his battle to unseat President Barack Obama and his vice president, Joe Biden, in the November 6 election.
Many Republicans believe Romney will break from tradition and announce his choice well before the party’s convention in Tampa in late August that will formally nominate Romney as the Republican candidate.
Campaign officials were loathe to discuss the selection process or the short list but made clear that Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, had yet to make up his mind.
“No decision has been made. An announcement could happen any time between now and the convention, but it will only happen after a decision has been made and no decision has been made,” said Romney campaign senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom.
John McCain, the Republican Presidential Candidate in 2008 and now a MittFlipRomney supporter went on Fox News yesterday and confirmed to host Chris Wallace that what Mitt Romney has tried to deny since he began running for president over 6 years ago. John McCain confirmed that what Mitt Romney did at Bain Capital was in fact, “cruel.”
“This is the free enterprise system. The only place in the world that I can recall where companies never failed was the old Soviet Union. This is what investors do in the free enterprise and capitalism system. And, yes, the free enterprise system can be cruel. But the problem with this administration is that small businesses have been the ones that have suffered the most, the kind that need investors, the kind that don’t need the hundreds of pages, the thousands of pages of regulations that continue to plague them and have them continue to hold back on hiring and investment.”
Tired of the playground brawl that is the presidential election? Does the thought of two wonky, somewhat unpopular guys playing nyah-nyah get you down? Well, there’s always the drama created by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
But now that’s getting old too.
Yes, it seems as though the GOP’s darling is playing a little thinner these days and his antics don’t carry quite the same weight as they did eight months ago when he was denying himself, and the poor old United States, a run for the presidency.
For the record, Chris Christie will not be Mitt Romney’s running mate, nor will he be the Republican Party’s candidate for president any time soon… if ever. He might be a featured speaker at the GOP convention or get a cabinet post in a Romney administration and leave the frustrations of Trenton behind, but my sense is that he’d get bored being one of the lesser cabinet members and he could conceivably get us into some kind of war if offered State, Defense or Trade Representative. Secretary of Education?
I’ve always disliked the stereotype of a “New Jersey attitude” and believe it to be harmful to the state, but even I won’t deny that Christie does exude a certain Garden State brusqueness. The problem is that it’s getting old here. A few months on the road and you’d see video of people with their mouths agape and eyes aghast at the man. Is he still popular with the base? No doubt. But the rest of the country has some manners, and the governor has shown that at critical times, he doesn’t.
Even worse, if Romney doesn’t win in November, then Christie might get tagged as a loser for supporting him. That would seriously damage his aura.
Don’t get me wrong. Christie can point to some significant legislative accomplishments including a 2% cap on municipal spending and the public worker pension and benefits bill that makes teachers, police and firefighters pay more while allowing him to delay full pension payments to the state. And rumor has it that he’s about to sign a teacher tenure reform bill that streamlines the process of firing an ineffective teacher, but not after two negative evaluations. That he was able to get the New Jersey Education Association [NJEA] to the table on tenure is a win for him, but it’s only a small part of what he wanted to accomplish and he’s frustrated. The suburbs are pushing back on Charter Schools, and the legislature will not give him that tax cut that is the gold standard of every Republican lawmaker looking to win national acclaim.
The problem is that the Democrats will continue to hold the legislature even if Christie wins reelection in 2013. What fun would that be? And how many more YouTube videos can you make berating retired public workers, soldiers and lefties who question his policies? (No, I will not provide links to those videos, but you can find them easily enough.)
So in this summer of discontent, the good governor has some decisions to make. None of them are easy, but all will have long-term impacts on his career. I expect that he will carry on as he has been because what he’s done so far is not an act. It’s who he is. And that might be the biggest problem of them all.
His name is John Weaver. He was an early adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign and he is still a Republican strategist today. He’s been listening to Mitt Romney make excuses after excuses for not releasing his tax returns – a practice for presidential candidates started by Romney’s father George Romney.
John, like many other sane Americans has heard enough and on Friday, he said this:
Mitt Romney is demanding an apology from President Obama for what he claims are actions that are beneath the dignity of his office. Romney was referring to suggestions by President Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manager – Stephanie Cutter, that Romney may have violated the laws and indulged in criminal activities for lying to the SEC.
This was too much for the apparent morally advanced Mitt Flip Romney. He went on five different television news shows on Friday denying all connections with Bain Capital during the time Stephanie Cutter mentioned. Furthermore, Romney wants the President to apologies to him for “the kinds of attacks that are coming from his team.”
“The president needs to take control of these people. He ought to disavow it and rein in these people who are running out of control. He sure as heck ought to say that he’s sorry for the kinds of attacks that are coming from his team.”
So naturally, the President’s campaign team put this video together as an answer to Romney’s pleas.
This one should win an award. But then again, every time Romney opens his mouth someone in the President’s campaign has material for another Romney debunking.
The ad shows Romney singing (if you want to call it that) America The Beautiful – a song that highlights some of the wonders of this country. Meanwhile, in the background, some little known facts pop up about Romney’s so-called love for this nation – his outsourcing of American jobs, his offshore bank accounts etc., etc…
It only makes sense, right? If Republicans and Democrats agree that the middle class should continue their tax cuts in January, then they should both come together now and pass an extension to the Tax law for the middle class. Where the two parties have a problem has to do with the tax cuts for the rich – those making more than $250,000.00 a year. Republicans want those taxes extended, President Obama and the Democrats want those tax cuts ended.
The message the President gave in this week’s Presidential Address was one of compromise: Let’s work together on the tax cuts for the middle class because we believe those taxes should be extended then deal with the rich at a later date.
The only place we disagree is whether we keep giving tax cuts to the wealthiest 2% of Americans. Republicans in Washington want more of those tax cuts. With the deficit we have, I don’t think we can afford them.
But even if we disagree on the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, we all agree that no American should pay more taxes on the first $250,000 of their income. So let’s at least agree to do what we all agree on. That’s what compromise is all about. Let’s not hold the vast majority of Americans and our entire economy hostage while we debate the merits of another tax cut for the wealthy. Let’s skip the unnecessary drama, the needless delays and all the partisan posturing and let’s just do the right thing for the people who sent us here to serve.
By now you have to wonder if Romney and his advisors are singing, Bain Bain go away, come again some other day, as President Obama joined in the chorus of Democrats, some Republicans and Americans in general, all demanding that Mitt Flip Romney release his tax returns.
The longer Romney holds on to this information, the more suspicious the American people becomes. Think about it… if Romney has nothing to hide, if his hands are clean in all his business dealings, if he had nothing to do with the financial empire he created and all his money came from the investments of “a blind trust,” then he should put a stop to all this inquiry. He should just show his papers and prove them all wrong! Instead, Romney has decided that calling President Obama a liar is his only defense.
“You can never satisfy the opposition research team of the Obama organization,” Romney told CBS on Friday while defending his role at Bain Capital. He also demanded an apology from the president for Stephanie Cutter’s suggestion that he, Romney, may be a criminal for lying to the SEC.
“This is simply beneath the dignity of the presidency of the United States,” Romney said.
“There is no whining in politics,” said John Weaver, a Republican strategist. “Stop demanding an apology, release your tax returns.”
This is a campaign for the President of the United States of America – the most powerful job on earth. Over the last few weeks, President Obama has slowly gained in the polls because Romney won’t come clean on his papers. There would be nothing better for Romney if he can prove to the American people that the President’s campaign is lying. If he could prove that, he would see a substantial jump in the polls and the President would lose ground with independent voters.
But there is no evidence to suggest the President’s campaign is lying because Romney cannot supply any. Romney is hiding something and until he demonstrate otherwise, we will all continue believing that whatever he is hiding is more important keep it a secret than for him winning the presidency in November.
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (AP) – An Uzbek man was sentenced Friday to more than 15 years in U.S. prison for plotting to kill President Obama.
Ulugbek Kodirov, 22, had faced up to 30 years in prison.
Defense attorney Lance Bell argued that Kodirov had accepted responsibility for his actions and was trying to straighten out his life. He said Kodirov wasn’t a “big, bad terrorist.”
“I’m not calling him a victim, but he’s a victim to a degree of social media,” Bell said.
Kodirov pleaded guilty in February to threatening to kill Obama, providing material support to terrorism and unlawfully possessing a firearm. He said he came up with the plan to kill the president as he campaigned for re-election after communicating online with a man he believed to be a member of an Uzbek Islamic group the United States classifies as a terrorist organization.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Whisonant said Kodirov would have tried to kill Obama, and a foreign group would have taken credit, if he had not been arrested a year ago.
“This case is an example of how our youth can be radicalized by the propaganda and lies on the Internet,” Whisonant told the judge.
With limited proficiency in English, Kodirov worked seven days a week in a kiosk at a shopping mall in Alabama before his arrest, the defense said.
A complaint said Kodirov contacted an unidentified person trying to buy weapons in early July 2011, and that person became a confidential source for the government. Accompanied by the witness, Kodirov bought an automatic rifle from an undercover agent and made a final threat against the president, authorities said. The agent also gave Kodirov four hand grenades with the powder removed.
Authorities said Kodirov was in the country illegally because he obtained a student visa but never enrolled in school. He faces deportation after his release from prison.
BROWN: Oil companies don’t get subsidies. . . . I’m positive. They’re able to take deduction like every other business. If we’re going to reform the tax code, we should do that.
Refresher: Here are CEO’s of Oil Companies, admitting to Congress that they do get oil subsidies from the American government. Although they claim they don’t need these subsidies.
Mitt Romney – the man whose only foreign experience has to do with his offshore bank accounts betting against the United States dollar and his marvelous ability to ship American jobs overseas – got the seal of approval from Dick Cheney as America’s only hope to deal with foreign crisis.
This approval, coming from the same Dick Cheney who was part of the Bush Administration that allowed the biggest terrorist activity on American soil and who plunged America into debt by starting a trillion dollar war with a country on the guise of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
David Edwards writes: During a Wyoming fundraiser, the former vice president said that his experience in Washington taught him that every president would have to deal with an international crisis that could mean sending U.S. forces into harm’s way.
“When I think about the kind of individual I want in the Oval Office in that moment of crisis, who has to make those key decisions, some of them life-and-death decisions, some of them decisions as commander-in-chief, who has the responsibility for sending some of our young men and women into harm’s way, that man is Mitt Romney,” Cheney said, according to The Associated Press.
For his part, Romney called Cheney a “great American leader,” but avoided mentioning to former President George W. Bush until a question-and-answer session when he contrasted President Barack Obama’s policies with Bush’s “freedom agenda.”
While Cheney has not been a vocal presence during the 2012 campaign season, he may have good reason to trust that Romney will be hawkish on foreign policy.
“Of Romney’s forty identified foreign policy advisers, more than 70 percent worked for Bush,” The Nation’s Ari Berman pointed out in May. “Many hail from the neoconservative wing of the party, were enthusiastic backers of the Iraq War and are proponents of a US or Israeli attack on Iran.”
A D.C. police officer who worked as a motorcycle escort for White House officials and other dignitaries was moved to administrative duty Wednesday after he allegedly was overheard making threatening comments toward Michelle Obama, according to several police officials.
The police department’s Internal Affairs Division is investigating the alleged comments and notified the U.S. Secret Service Wednesday, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give details of the investigation.
The motorman allegedly made the comments Wednesday morning as several officers from the Special Operations Division discussed threats against the Obamas. It was not immediately clear where the alleged conversation took place or exactly how many officers took part in the conversation.
During that conversation, the officials said, the officer allegedly said he would shoot the First Lady and then used his phone to retrieve a picture of the firearm he said he would use. It was not immediately clear what type of firearm was allegedly shown.
An officer overheard the alleged threat and reported it to a police lieutenant at the Division, who immediately notified superiors, the officials said.
“We received an allegation that inappropriate comments were made. We are currently investigating the nature of those comments,” D.C. police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump said in an e-mail. She declined to discuss the matter further.
Police officials declined to identify the officer. Officials from the U.S. Attorney’s office declined comment.
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