Category: Politics

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Politics

Spineless Democrats Taking Romney’s Side – Throws President Under The Bus

What’s the major difference between Democrats and Republicans? No, it’s not that Republicans think the solution to our economic woes is giving more money to very rich people while Democrats think the rich aren’t paying their fair share. And no, it’s not that Democrats appear to represent the needs of the middle class people while Republicans definitely go to bat for Corporations. The major difference between the two is one group will go to the grave defending their beliefs, no matter how wrong those beliefs are, while the other group have proven time and time again that they have no backbone.

The unfortunate and early passing of Andrew Breitbart is a perfect example of how Republicans are. Andrew was a hero among his fellow conservatives especially when he was wrong. We all remember how the conservative bloggers, news agencies like Fox News and even some Republican politicians jumped to Breitbart’s defense when it was proven that he falsified a video of Shirley Sherrod, wrongly claiming that she was racially biased against a white farmer. And although the facts later showed that Breitbart was wrong, he refused to apologize. On March 1st. 2012,  Andrew Breitbart died and while many expressed happiness in his passing, I was only able to issue the following tweet:

But on the Democratic side, things are totally different. Democrats it seems are on a mission to throw each other under the bus especially when they are on the right side of an issue, and this week, we’ve seen multiple examples of this.

It started with Cory Booker on Meet The Press. Although Mr. Booker is considered a surrogate of the Obama administration, Booker went against the administration and sided with Mitt Romney on an issue Democrats should easily be winning. The issue that caused Booker to abandon the Democratic ship has to do with Mitt Romney’s claims of being a better “Jobs Creator” than President Obama. Romney cites his “business experiences” as his primary qualifier for being president and regularly tells his audience how beneficial this experience would be in “fixing the economy.”

As it turns out, Romney’s business experience has  nothing to do with “creating jobs.” Over the course of his work at Bain Capital, Mitt Romney’s primary objective was making a profit for himself and his partners by any means necessary. Often times, thousands of hardworking middle class Americans lost their jobs, pensions and health care so that Mitt Romney could achieve his primary objective. The profit-making goal of what Romney did at Bain was often called “Destructive Capitalism,” and that description came from Mitt Romney himself.

So it would seem that an examination of Romney’s record at Bain is not only warranted, but necessary. And the Obama re-election team are putting out web ads almost daily, detailing how Romney was more of a job destroyer than a job creator. Seems like the right thing to do, right? Not if you’re Cory Booker. Sunday on Meet The Press, Booker – the Obama surrogate – said this;

 I have to say from a very personal level, I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. It’s to me, we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America. Especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they have done a lot to support businesses to grow businesses and this to me, I’m very comfortable.

The last point I’ll make is, this kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. It’s nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough, stop attacking private equity, stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop.

Realizing the huge political mistake he made, Booker later explained that he is for Obama and would do all he can to help the President win re-election. But the damage was already done as the Romney campaign took Booker’s words and made their own ad in support of Romney’s Bain activities.

Cory Booker however, was not the only Democrat to throw the President under the bus on this issue. Ed Randell, a former Governor of Pennsylvania told Buzzfeed that he too was “very disappointed” in the Obama ads questioning Romney’s business accolades.

“I think they’re very disappointing,” Rendell said of the ads attacking Bain. “I think Bain is fair game, because Romney has made it fair game. But I think how you examine it, the tone, what you say, is important as well.”

As for Booker, “I admire him,” Rendell said. “People in politics should tell the truth. He could have qualified it better, he could have framed it better, but if you’re in this business, none of us like negative ads.

The Hill is reporting at least a half-dozen high profile Democrats joining the chorus against the President including “Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a widely respected member of Congress, who stopped short of criticizing the president, but made it clear that the campaign should pivot.

“It’s done,” she said. “Go on to other things now.”

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told The Hill, “I think the average American … hopes that this campaign will focus on competing visions for how to strengthen our economy, help create jobs and move the country forward.”

It is still young in the 2012 Presidential campaign season. With the huge donations flowing to Congress from Wall Street and private equity firms like Bain Capital, expect more Democrats to agree with Romney and come out against the President. We all know that Republicans cater to the rich and their big donors, and now we can safely say that Democrats do the same thing too.

And that’s one thing the two parties have in common – kissing the ring of the rich for more donations.

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Mitt Romney Politics

President Obama Responds to Cory Booker. Hits Romney’s Failed Jobs Record Too

President Obama was asked about the whole Cory Booker situation today and below is his response. I sense a little hint of someone who is fired up and ready to go… with a little annoyance mixed in. A great combination.Can you tell?

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New Jersey Politics

Cory Booker Received Huge Huge Donations from Bain Capital in 2002

So on Sunday’s Meet The Press, Cory Booker made some news. He criticized the Obama administration for running ads questioning Mitt Romney’s connection to Bain and Romney’s claims of being a job creator. Booker called the ads “nauseating.”

Needless to say Booker – a Democratic Mayor from Newark New Jersey – received a huge amount of backlash from the social media and other prominent Democrats, causing him to later release a web video praising President Obama and expressing his everlasting love and support of the President.

But it was too late, the damage was already done.

And now we’re starting to see why this very popular Democratic Mayor spoke up against the Obama administration and in defense to the Romney campaign. Thanks to some investigative work by Think Progress, it seems that Romney’s Bain was a huge donor to the Booker 2002 campaign.

A ThinkProgress examination of New Jersey campaign finance records for Booker’s first run for Mayor — back in 2002 — suggests a possible reason for his unease with attacks on Bain Capital and venture capital. They were among his earliest and most generous backers.

Contributions to his 2002 campaign from venture capitalists, investors, and big Wall Street bankers brought him more than $115,000 for his 2002 campaign. Among those contributing to his campaign were John Connaughton ($2,000), Steve Pagliuca ($2,200), Jonathan Lavine ($1,000) — all of Bain Capital. While the forms are not totally clear, it appears the campaign raised less than $800,000 total, making this a significant percentage.

He and his slate also jointly raised funds for the “Booker Team for Newark” joint committee. They received more than $450,000 for the 2002 campaign from the sector — including a pair of $15,400 contributions from Bain Capital Managing Directors Joshua Bekenstein and Mark Nunnelly. It appears that for the initial campaign and runoff, the slate raised less than $4 million — again making this a sizable chunk.

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job creation Mitt Romney Politics

A Moment Of Laughter – Romney Aide Says Romney Created More Jobs Than Obama LOL!

Appearing on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Show today, Mitt Romney’s senior campaign adviser said that Mitt Romney created more jobs during his time as Massachusetts Governor, than President Obama created nationwide. Said Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s adviser;

“With respect to Mitt Romney’s period of time as the governor of Massachusetts — in that four years as governor he created between 30k and 40k jobs. That is more than President Obama has created for the entire nation. And at Bain Capital, of course the mission was to create value, that’s how the free enterprise system works, but when you create value, when you add value as they did in trying to improve companies, you also add employment, and a rough back-of-the-envelope estimate of how many jobs they created is well in excess of 100,000.”

The Hill is reporting that “Romney made a similar claim early in the Republican primary season, but seemed to walk the number down after it was challenged by his GOP presidential rivals. At later points during the cycle, Romney has said he created “tens of thousands” or “thousands” of jobs.

The Romney campaign has not detailed the method it’s using to come to these estimates, but critics say Romney is taking credit for jobs created after his tenure, not subtracting out jobs that were eliminated after his tenure, or taking credit for business deals that he had little to do with.”

But here are some figures everyone can understand, everyone that is, except Mitt Romney and his coons. CNN took a look at just one of President Obama’s policy initiative – the original Stimulus. The report found that:

The stimulus bill passed by Democrats in 2009 with almost universal Republican criticism was split into three parts: Just over $200 billion in tax cuts, about $300 billion in direct spending on projects and other aid to states, and just under $300 billion in social safety-net spending through items such as extended unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the parts of the program that got the most criticism — actual spending on projects and aid packages — was the most effective in creating jobs.

Tax cuts for middle income workers were less effective while tax cuts for the wealthy were deemed the least effective.

Still, the CBO estimates that at least 1.4 million jobs were created and saved by the direct spending alone, and that as many as 3.6 million jobs were produced while stimulus funds were being spent.

And that’s just on the Stimulus. Not being counted in this 3.6 million figure are the jobs created or saved from the auto bailout, or the jobs gained from the 17 different tax cuts the president signed for small businesses. Compare 3.6 million jobs created by the Obama Administration to the “30 to 40 thousand” created by Romney. Anyone with common sense and the most basic knowledge of Math knows which figure is higher. Romney and his surrogates however, are content in preaching to their base.

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Mitt Romney Politics quotes

Mitt’s Brain Power at Work – “I Can’t Remember What I Said, But I Stand By What I Said, Whatever It Was”

This man is now the leader of the Republican party and fittingly so. For Republicans have slowly became a group of people who are hellbent on doing everything they possible can to lower the education level of Americans. They are actually trying to end the Education Department. So hearing Mitt Romney make this statement earlier this week was not only practical, it was very appropriate.

Oh, and the Obama Re-Election Team created this ad below showing some other things Romney has said. The purpose of the video is to question if Romney remembers these statements, and whether he stands by them too.

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Politics weekly address

President’s Weekly Address – Wall Street Reform Must Be Fully Implemented

In the wake of the over two billion dollars lost at JP Morgan Chase, President Obama used his weekly address to call on Congress to fully implement the Wall Street Reforms he recently signed into law, a law that would protect consumers and make Wall Street accountable for their actions.

…We’ve put in place Wall Street reform with smarter, tougher, commonsense rules that serve one primary purpose:  to prevent a crisis like that from ever happening again.  And yet, for the past two years, too many Republicans in Congress and an army of financial industry lobbyists have actually been waging an all-out battle to delay, defund, and dismantle Wall Street reform.

Recently, we’ve seen why we can’t let that happen.  We found out that a big mistake at one of our biggest banks resulted in a two billion dollar loss.  While that bank can handle a loss of that size, other banks may not have been able to.  And without Wall Street reform, we could have found ourselves with the taxpayers once again on the hook for Wall Street’s mistakes.

That’s why it’s so important that Members of Congress stand on the side of reform, not against it; because we can’t afford to go back to an era of weak regulation and little oversight; where excessive risk-taking on Wall Street and a lack of basic oversight in Washington nearly destroyed our economy.  We can’t afford to go back to that brand of ‘you’re-on-your-own’ economics.  Not after the American people have worked so hard to come back from this crisis.

We’ve got to keep moving forward.

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Barack Obama Mitt Romney Politics

The Campaign Cometh – Brace Yourself

If anything is clear about the presidential election so far, it’s that nothing is very clear at all. We have reached the first phase of the campaign where the key is for both candidates to define themselves and each other in diametrically opposite terms. Where does the race stand so far?

Both men are winning North Carolina, according to the latest polls. This might have something to do with both of their policy pronouncements concerning marriage equality, which seems to be hurting Obama in some polls, but the long-term trend in the country points decisively towards more people accepting marriage equality. In the end, if most North Carolinians voted to ban marriage equality and Obama just came out in support of it, that leads me to believe that the state might be out of his reach.

Electoral College projections have been fairly consistent so far, with Obama leading 243-170 in RCP (Wisconsin was just moved from Obama back to toss-up), by 303-235 at electionprojection.com and by 284-170 at HuffPost/Pollster. Most of those state polls were taken last month, so let’s see what May’s data shows. Mitt has seen a bump since the primaries ended and that will probably raise his state profiles a bit.

And what about the issues of the day? That depends on the issue. Obviously the economy is the country’s number one concern and my view is that May’s jobs numbers, to be released in June, might be his last opportunity to claim that the employment picture is improving sufficiently to show that the economy is moving in a positive direction. Most people will not pay attention in July and August, although if gas prices drop enough, people might feel better about their prospects for the fall.

Word now is that the GOP is going to press the debt battle over the summer and force the president’s hand on raising the debt ceiling, which really doesn’t need to be done until December. John Boehner believes that this is a winner for his party, but I’m not so sure. Much of this election will also be fought over Medicare and if Obama frames the issue correctly, he can run against any severe cuts the Ryan budget proposes. He can also say that Romney favors the wealthy and the military over health care. If the Supreme Court invalidates the health care law, then Romney will have a freer hand to say he’ll keep the most popular parts of the law (both of them) and make responsible additions once he’s elected.

If the Republicans really want to lose this election though, then running anti-Obama ads focusing on Reverend Jeremiah Wright, as reported in Thursday’s New York Times, is just the way to do it. As a strategy, this might appeal to the far right wing of the party, but these ads will spark a tremendous backlash against Romney. Americans like Barack Obama, but are not terribly pleased with his policies. Going after him personally is exactly the wrong way to defeat him. Plus, I’m sure there will also be ads aimed at his support for marriage equality. Has the Republican Party gone so far right that they think it would benefit them to run a racist, anti-gay campaign? It’s possible, but I’m thinking that cooler heads will prevail and will be able to walk them back from the precipice. Mitt’s already come out against the ads. Let’s hope that’s enough to convince the PAC not to run them.

Please join the conversation at  www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and on Twitter @rigrundfest 

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Mitt Romney Politics

TDAmeritrade and Chicago Cubs Owner Decide Against Jeremiah Wright Ads

Joe Ricketts, the founder of TDAmeriTrade and owner of the Chicago Cubs decided to scrap his plans to run a $10 million ad campaign against President Obama using the Republican created political boogeyman name Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Mr. Ricketts plan would have followed the same unsuccessful playbook Republicans used against Mr. Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign, where they tried to scare Americans into thinking that because the President went to Jeremiah Wright’s church, Mr. Obama had to be a crazy America-hating psycho.

Both Republicans and Democrats considered Mr. Ricketts proposed ad campaign a dumb move. “Right now, the story the voters are moved by, and tuned in to, is the economy,” said Republican Rick Wilson, who helped create some of John McCain’s ads in 2008. That statement was echoed by Republican House Speaker John Boehner who said, “I don’t know what these other people do or why they do it. All I know is the American people vote with their wallets.” Even Mitt Romney found the courage to make a statement, saying that he “repudiate that effort. I think it’s the wrong course for a PAC or a campaign.”

John McCain stayed away from the Jeremiah Wright issue in 2008 and when news of Mr. Ricketts plans came to light, McCain also issued a statement saying he is proud of the decision he made to not air ads featuring Jeremiah Wright, and if he had to do it all over again, nothing would change.

Even Joe Ricketts’ own daughter disagreed with her father. She told the Chicago Tribune exactly what she thought President Obama. “My view is that the president is doing a wonderful job,” she said. “He’s a great leader.”

With all the backlash from his own party, Mr. Ricketts came to the conclusion that reviving a dead issue may not be his best option.

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Wisconsin Wisconsin Union Bashing

With Three Weeks to Recall, Walker Leads in Wisconsin

A new Marquette Law School Poll in Wisconsin shows that with three weeks to go until the recall election Gov. Scott Walker (R) has taken a six point lead over Tom Barrett (D), 50% to 44%, among likely voters.

Three weeks ago, Walker’s lead was just one point.

Said pollster Charles Franklin: “While both parties show unusual levels of involvement in the campaign, Republicans appear to hold an advantage in likely turnout, although Democrats are more likely to have been contacted by a campaign. In a close election with so few undecided voters, enthusiasm, turnout and campaign contact with voters may make the difference.”

[Political Wire]

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Mitt Romney Politics

Romney Donor Wants His Money Back. He Now Supports Obama

“You have chosen to be on the wrong side of history and I do not support your run for president any longer,” said Bill White, a one time Romney supporter and donor. Mr White is the chairman and CEO of the New York-based consulting firm Constellations Group. He was previously the president of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum – the cultural and educational institution whose major presence is the floating World War II Intrepid aircraft carrier sitting on the Hudson River.

According to a letter addressed to Mitt Romney and obtained by CNN, Mr. White is also asking the Republican presidential candidate for his money back, saying “I feel that I no longer wish to support your presidential campaign and ask that you please return the maximum contribution that I gave to you last year.”

So why the change? Mr. White said it’s because of the President’s full evolution on gay marriage. Mr. White continued;

“I had a very visceral reaction to [Romney] – he had a great opportunity… to get on the right side of history, and to be someone to the country that helps to unite us, versus what divides us. And I just think his very proactive intention to pounce on this issue now has sent me to the other side.

“Now, I feel like he’s declared war on my marriage. And I could just sit back and not say anything. Or I could do something about it. And I’ve chosen to do something about it.”

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new mexico governor Politics

Romney’s Potential Veep Asks, What the heck is “Self-Deportation?”

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, who is sometimes mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick, is critical of Mitt Romney’s stance on immigration.

Martinez’s criticism of Romney’s call for self-deportation is mentioned in a Newsweek article that was posted online yesterday.

“Self-deport? What the heck does that mean,” Martinez is quoted as saying. “I have no doubt Hispanics have been alienated during this campaign. But now there’s an opportunity for Gov. Romney to have a sincere conversation about what we can do and why.”

Romney has advocated that illegal immigrants already in the USA should “self deport” and leave the country voluntarily. He has often described a situation in which illegal immigrants would apply for legal status and wait their turn to come back legally.

[USA Today]

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Politics

Most Not Affected By Obama’s Support for Gay Americans – Poll

Maybe these people are finally beginning to realize that their Religious views and the Constitution are two different things, and as President – his political job as the leader of this nation – Mr. Obama must do what the Constitution demands.

A new Pew Poll finds that roughly half of Americans (52%) say Barack Obama’s expression of support for gay marriage did not affect their opinion of the president. A quarter (25%) say they feel less favorably toward Obama because of this while 19% feel more favorably.

There are wide partisan and age differences in reactions to Obama’s expression of support for gay marriage, according to the latest weekly survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted May 10-13 among 1,003 adults.

[Pew Research Poll]

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