Month: September 2012

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Barack Obama Mitt Romney Politics

New Poll Suggest Even Bigger Lead For President Obama In Swing States

The Romney campaign is still saying they’re not panicking. Why? What exactly are they waiting for? Their blindness to see the reality just shows the inept leadership of this Romney campaign. They don’t even know when to start panicking!

Jeeze!

Mr. Obama holds a 10-point lead in Ohio among those who say they will definitely vote, a lead propelled by a 25-point advantage among women. Romney holds an 8-point lead among men. The president holds a 35-point edge among voters under 35 years old, and a 5-point lead among those ages 35-64; the two candidates are effectively tied among Ohio seniors. Sixty-two percent of Ohio likely voters say the auto bailout, which had a significant impact on the state’s economy, was a success, while just 30 percent say it was a failure. Both candidates will campaign in Ohio Wednesday; the president led Romney by six points in the state last month.

Mr. Obama also holds a huge lead among women in Pennsylvania, where his advantage overall stands at 12 points. The president leads his opponent by 21-points among women, and they are split among men. The two candidates also split the support of whites, but the president holds an 87 percent to 11 percent lead among nonwhites. Romney holds a 5-point lead among Pennsylvania seniors, but that is more than offset by the president’s 14-point lead among those ages 35-64 and 34-point lead among those under 35.

In Florida, Mr. Obama’s edge over Romney has risen from three points before the political conventions to nine points today. His gains are due to improved performance among women, white voters and seniors. Nearly half of Florida Democrats now say they are more enthusiastic about voting than in the past – up from 24 percent at the start of August, and only slightly less than the percentage of Florida Republicans who are more enthusiastic. Two in three Florida likely voters support the DREAM Act policies put in place by the president to allow young illegal immigrants who came to the country as children to obtain work permits and not face deportation.

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fail Mitt Romney Newt Gingrich Politics Rick Santorum

It’s Unbelievable The Things Some Republicans Have Said About Mitt Romney – Video

With friends like these who needs enemies? From Rick Santorum to Newt Gingrich, Republicans of all shape and size have shared their opinion of Mitt Romney. The video below features some of their earlier statements, but we have detailed some more recent remarks here and here.

Take a stroll with me, as we watch and listen to these Republicans talk about the man they will now vote for as the next president of the United States.

Categories
Mitt Romney Politics

Joe Scarborough – – “Oh Sweet Jesus” As Romney Chants His Own Name

Conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough cried out for his Savior on Wednesday after viewing video of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney awkwardly trying to get a crowd in Ohio to chant his name.

After Romney gave a shout out to his running mate, Paul Ryan, in Vandalia, Ohio on Tuesday, the crowd got excited and began chanting, “Ryan! Ryan!”

“Wait a second,” Romney said, reminding the crowd that he was at the top of the ticket.

“Romney-Ryan, Romney-Ryan,” the former governor instructed the crowd, although most of them ignored him. “There we go.”

After co-host Mika Brzezinski played the video on Wednesday, Scarborough could only put his hands over his eyes and utter, “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

Categories
Mitt Romney Paul Ryan Politics taxes

Mitt Romney – “I Admit, [President Obama] Did Not Raise Taxes In His First Four Years”

Mitt Romney is shaking things up again, and I do mean the etch-a-sketch. Romney spent a major part of his campaign criticizing President for “raising taxes” on the middle class. But with the debates looming and the realization that he will meet with the President face to face, Mitt Romney is now trying to erase some of the lies.

Now Romney is saying that President Obama did not raise taxes.

Mitt Romney veered off message Tuesday when he told a crowd of supporters in Ohio that President Barack Obama “did not” raise taxes in his first four years in office, undercutting his own line of attack on the president.

“His idea now, he’s got one new, he’s got a new idea,” Romney said during a rally with running mate Paul Ryan. “I admit this, he has one thing he did not do in his first four years, he’s said he’s going to do in his next four years, which is to raise taxes.”

The statement strayed from the Romney campaign’s usual criticism of the president. While Obama’s efforts to let the Bush-era tax cuts on families with an annual income above $250,000 expire have faltered under Republican opposition, Romney’s campaign has repeatedly argued that the president has raised taxes in other ways.

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Benghazi Benghazi Politics

President Obama Remembers Chris Stevens at The United Nations

President Obama spoke today at the United Nations and discussed the unfortunate recent events Libya, where a mob attacked and killed four Americans including Chris Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya.

The attacks on our civilians in Benghazi were attacks on America. We are grateful for the assistance we received from the Libyan government and the Libyan people. And there should be no doubt that we will be relentless in tracking down the killers and bringing them to justice. I also appreciate that in recent days, the leaders of other countries in the region – including Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen – have taken steps to secure our diplomatic facilities, and called for calm. So have religious authorities around the globe.

But the attacks of the last two weeks are not simply an assault on America. They are also an assault on the very ideals upon which the United Nations was founded – the notion that people can resolve their differences peacefully; that diplomacy can take the place of war; and that in an interdependent world, all of us have a stake in working towards greater opportunity and security for our citizens.

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Featured

Right-Winged Radio Host Tells Listeners To “Post Negative Ads About Islam”

Dumb people come a dime a dozen and for some strange reason, ten of the dozen comes from the Republican party. Here’s an example:

A radio host in Sacramento is asking his listeners to post negative ads and comments about Islam and their leader, Prophet Mohammed. I guess the killing of innocent Americans in Islāmic countries and the fact that deployed troops would be in danger means nothing to these wing-nuts if the outcome of their rants is havoc in the world and an opportunity for them to blame President Obama for that havoc.

Jack Armstrong on KSTE’S Armstrong & Getty show asked his listeners to post negative ads about the prophet Mohammad.

“Some of you people that are good with the computer make an anti-Mohammed ad post it to Al Jazeera. We need to swamp them with ads until they grow up,” said Armstrong.

“We just ask for you to respect other faiths just as in the Muslim faith we don’t insult Christians and Jews and other prophets,” said Sacramento area Muslim Tawfiq Morrar. “Couple hundred in the streets of Afghanistan do not represent the 25 million residents of Afghanistan. That said, we know that Jack Armstrong does not represent the majority of Americans.”

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Mitt Romney Politics

Dumb Question Time: Romney Asks Why Airplane Windows Don’t Open

It was a terrible situation. Ann Romney, wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, was in an airplane that experienced some problems in mid flight. With a smoke-filled cabin, the pilot was able to land safely and the passengers, including Ann Romney, walked away from the incident lucky to be alive.

Enter Mitt Romney.

I’ve always thought Mitt Romney was not the smartest man in the room, and his confusion about why airplane windows don’t open proves that what I thought about him, was and is, correct. Romney responded to the incident by saying;

When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem.So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.

I was trying come up with a snippy remark to highlight the wisdom of the man Republicans will vote for as their next president, but  this says it all: “Yeah, great question Mitt. I mean, wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to crack the window when you’re at 35,000 feet? You know, get a taste of that 500+ mile per hour breeze?

It’d be like the mile-high club for Seamus, with the added benefit of asphyxiation induced by the low oxygen levels at cruising altitude—assuming that you manage to avoid having the plane rip apart due to the sudden loss of cabin pressure.

Brilliant, Mitt. Just brilliant.”

Categories
Health Care Healthcare Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney To Americans – Use The Emergency Room As Your Primary Health Care Provider

With 46 days to go before the general election, Romney is shedding some light on his plans for Americans after he repeal ObamaCare. The Mitt Romney Health Care plan for Americans would be to get your healthcare needs from your local emergency room.

No joke. In an appearance on 60 Minutes, host Scott Pelley got Mr. Romney to shed some details on his plans for the millions of uninsured Americans. Romney replied;

“Well, we do provide care for people who don’t have insurance,” Romney said. “If someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care.”

Crazy… yea, I know. Mitt Romney is promising to Repeal ObamaCare – the legislation signed into law by President Obama that finally addresses the health needs of most Americans – and Romney will replace ObamaCare with the suggestion that people get their healthcare from the emergency room.

But wait. That was what Mitt Romney said yesterday. Do we know how he felt about people using the emergency room for their primary care, say… two years ago? We do.

The Huffington Post quotes a Morning Joe interview from two years ago in which Romney said it “doesn’t make a lot of sense” to have millions of uninsured Americans who get “entirely free care” with “no responsibility” from emergency rooms, especially when those people “have sufficient means to pay their own way.”

And in his book, No Apology, Romney recalls the “collective epiphany” that lead to the creation of Romneycare: “The people in Massachusetts who didn’t have health insurance were, in fact, already receiving health care [from emergency rooms].”

He continues:

Under federal law, hospitals had to stabilize and treat people who arrived at their emergency rooms with acute conditions. And our state’s hospitals were offering even more assistance than the federal government required. That meant that someone was already paying for the cost of treating people who didn’t have health insurance. If we could get our hands on that money, and therefore redirect it to help the uninsured buy insurance instead and obtain treatment in the way that the vast majority of individuals did — before acute conditions developed — the cost of insuring everyone in the state might not be as expensive as I had feared.

Categories
Mitt Romney Politics

Another Romney Lie Targets Obama’s “You Can’t Change Washington From Inside” Comment

By now, Americans are so used to the dishonesty of Mitt Romney‘s campaign ads that the Republican presidential candidate is barely even trying to disguise it anymore. On Monday morning, the Romney campaign released an ad (sure to become a weeks-long series) targeting younger voters, based on President Obama‘s recent declaration that “You can’t change Washington from the inside.”

The ad is so clumsy in its execution and self-evident in its dishonesty, though, that even the fifth-grader who wrote it would immediately know that the Romney campaign is twisting the quote out of context.

In case you missed it, here’s what the President actually said at that Univision forum (the day after Mitt Romney’s rigged Univision forum):

You can’t change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside. That’s how I got elected and how the big accomplishments like health care got done – was because we mobilized the American people to speak out. That’s how we were able to cut taxes for middle class families. So, something I’d really like to concentrate on in my second term is being in a much more constant conversation with the American people, so that they can put pressure on Congress to move some of these issues forward.

So the President says that the American people must be involved in the process before any real change can come to Washington, and he makes that statement based on his own experiences. But Mitt Romney, being so comfortable with lying to and misleading the American people, decides to do it again.

Here’s the ad, where Romney takes one sentence of the president’s remarks, and makes a totally baseless claim.

Categories
Mitt Romney Politics

Romney’s Huge Lead Among Seniors Has Disappeared

New polling by Reuters/Ipsos indicates that during the past two weeks – since just after the Democratic National Convention – support for Romney among Americans age 60 and older has crumbled, from a 20-point lead over Democratic President Barack Obama to less than 4 points.

Romney’s double-digit advantages among older voters on the issues of healthcare and Medicare – the nation’s health insurance program for those over 65 and the disabled – also have evaporated, and Obama has begun to build an advantage in both areas.

Voting preferences among seniors could change in the final six weeks of the campaign, but the polling suggests that a series of recent episodes favoring Obama and the Democrats could be chipping away at Romney’s support among older Americans.

Romney’s selection of Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate put the federal budget and Medicare at center stage in the campaign. But the debate over spending and entitlement programs that Romney seemed to be seeking has not unfolded the way Republicans wanted.

At the Democratic convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, on September 5, former President Bill Clinton gave a folksy but blistering critique of Ryan’s plan to revamp Medicare, warning that it could leave seniors unprotected from escalating healthcare costs.

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Barack Obama Mitt Romney Politics

The Issue With Issues

Remember when Paul Ryan’s selection meant that the 2012 campaign was going to be about issues? Like the “Scott Brown Means the End of Healthcare” and “The Supreme Court Will End Obamacare” narratives, this one also might turn out to be wrong. So far this is a campaign about Mitt Romney tripping over his own tongue and Paul Ryan trying to sweep it up from the floor. At some point, though, Mitt will stop saying destructive things and President Obama will need to confront the economy, so this race has some tread on it going forward. Given the polls, though, Romney had better step hard on the gas, and soon.

The Medicare debate does not seem to be hurting Romney in Florida, at least according to the latest poll from the Miami Herald. That’s good news for the Republicans. The problem is that they’re not saying exactly how they would pay for those over 55 to stay on traditional Medicare while weaning those younger onto a voucher system (a teat of a different size?). Perhaps the elderly voters have already internalized that they wouldn’t be touched by the Romney/Ryan plan, so why oppose it? Those who would fall into the voucher zone have plenty of reason to be nervous, suspicious and demanding of details. I wouldn’t hold my breath. This is the same team that says they aren’t going to tell us what taxes they’re going to cut until they get elected. If the polls are correct, that could be years from now.

The economy, which was supposed to be the downfall of the president, doesn’t seem to be hurting him at this point, but there’s still time for the GOP to highlight it every day and remind people about the unemployment rate and the deficit. Mitt’s 47% comments didn’t help him and several polls have shown that Americans now say that Obama would be the better candidate when it comes to fixing our economic house. This is a huge turnaround since the spring and, with women and more enthusiastic Democrats, is providing him with the polling bump he’s received since the Democratic National Convention. Keep in mind that there are two more employment reports to be released between now and election day, so the danger isn’t past for Obama. But now a plurality of voters think that Mitt Romney is an out-of-touch rich guy who can’t be trusted on jobs, so he has his work cut out for him if he hopes to catch up.

Neither party has highlighted the old standby social issues of abortion, marriage equality and prayer in schools, so we’ve been spared the usual fights over who’s more moral. Part of that, I think is that the GOP understands that most young people don’t want to fight those fights and most older people have already staked their territory on those issues. Whatever the reason, it’s good news.

The presidential debates are next week and I’m sure we’ll get an earful on the issues from both candidates. The conventional wisdom says that debate gaffes, missteps or forceful performances will affect people’s votes. The research says that’s not really true. That’s not good news for Romney, who is behind in the key swing states and needs a defining moment to build upon for the final six weeks of the campaign.

With most voters having made up their minds, and with a small slice of independents still on the fence, this election could turn on a mistake by either candidate, so look for them to play it safe and stick to well-worn scripts. It’s not the most interesting way to conduct a campaign, but it’s the system we have.

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Mitt Romney Politics

Mitt Romney Spends $55,000 For Car Elevators, But Vetoed a $40,000 Elevator For The Disabled

By now, you’ve all heard the news of Mitt Romney and the car elevators he had installed in his home. Car elevators – you know, that machine that brings his cars from their storage in his home to the street level. The price tag for such a luxury item is about $55,000, but apparently car elevators are a must have for the Republican presidential candidate.

But did you know that when Romney was governor in Massachusetts he vetoed multiple bills that would provide elevators to the disabled? The report;

On June 26, 2006 Romney vetoed an improvement project with the price tag of $40,000 with his line item veto. The project would have allocated the money to Woburn Development Authority for improvements to an elevator to meet the standards set in the ADA.

Also on that day Romney vetoed an additional $25,000 to the Braintree, Massachusetts Council on Aging. The money was again proposed to meet improvements with the ADA.

Romney justified the cuts saying the programs along with others he vetoed “would be nice to have, but which we cannot justify paying for out of rainy day funds. A smaller number of these projects are just pure pork.”

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