Romney can lie all he wants. It doesn’t change what he’s said. What he said in private, when he believed he was speaking to people just like him, is more telling than the weasel words coming out of him now. A month before the election and he’s waffling now?
• Mitt Romney’s Disdain For The Middle Class: He Said It, He Meant It
And don’t trust Ryan either.
• Paul Ryan says 60 percent of Americans are ‘takers,’ not ‘makers’. Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan said in 2010 that 60 percent of Americans receive more financial benefits from the government than they pay in taxes, making them “takers,” rather than “makers,” according to a 2010 video of Ryan speaking with Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.). Not mentioned in the HuffPost story, and buried at the end of their video showing Ryan repeatedly mentioning “takers” and “makers,” is Ryan accusing “takers” – 60% of the country – of not being “American,” not “want[ing] the American dream,” and not “believ[ing] in the American idea.” Particularly troubling is what Ryan says at the end of the Huffington Post video: “The good news is, most people in America don’t want to be a ‘taker,’ they want to be American, they want to be a ‘maker’.”
This is how they both talk about most of the people in the country. This is what they think of them, and this is how they treat them.
• Sensata Technologies, a company owned by Bain Capital is closing down its Freeport, IL plant and moving it to China. The company’s 175 workers will lose their jobs. The employees wrote a letter to Bain’s founder, Mitt Romney, last week asking him to help save their jobs. He has not responded as yet. Bain Capital is determined to get those unemployment numbers back up, dammit.
Where it stands: the debate
UPDATE: On my posting yesterday about Romney bringing notes with him into the debate. The Romney team claims it was a handkerchief, and maybe that’s what it was. I have no idea. It’s not like there’s never been a case where a Republican brought in a cheat sheet. Could there have been a handkerchief with some handy dandy notes inside? Sure. But the post yesterday got an update, and I’m updating here as well, that the Romney camp says it was a handkerchief.
• In the first debate, Mitt Romney sacrificed the facts in order to mislead and confuse voters about where he stands on important issues to the middle class. On one issue—Social Security—it’s worth clarifying where President Obama and Governor Romney agree and where they disagree. Both President Obama and Mitt Romney know that the program is solvent for more than two decades and that there’s a need for gradual reforms to the benefits that millions of seniors have worked for, paid for, and earned. But that’s where their agreement ends. While President Obama is committed to keeping the promise of guaranteed Social Security benefits for current and future generations, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have supported plans to privatize the program, and have put forward a plan that would slash benefits for current workers.
• The conventional wisdom has spoken: Mitt Romney trounced Barack Obama in the first debate. But there was a squirrely sneakiness to Romney’s behavior as if Eddie Haskell from “Leave It to Beaver” had grown up and somehow won the Republican presidential nomination.
• [O]n closer examination, the record as governor [Romney alluded to in the 1st presidential debate] looks considerably less burnished than Mr. Romney suggested. Bipartisanship was in short supply; Statehouse Democrats complained he variously ignored, insulted or opposed them, with intermittent charm offensives. He vetoed scores of legislative initiatives and excised budget line items a remarkable 844 times, according to the nonpartisan research group Factcheck.org. Lawmakers reciprocated by quickly overriding the vast bulk of them.
Just for laughs…
• RoboRomney! Mitt Romney agrees with you…no matter where you stand, Romney’s said something before to pander, um, agree, with whatever position you’ve got!
Voter Suppression
• Authorities in Florida said they had opened a criminal probe into the activities of Strategic Allied Consulting, the firm hired by the Republican Party to register new voters in the crucial swing state ahead of next month’s presidential election. A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) said the agency had found enough evidence to warrant a full-blown investigation of Strategic Allied, a Virginia-based voter registration company doing work for the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Florida.
• A federal appeals court on Friday reinstated in-person early voting in the swing state of Ohio on the final three days before Election Day, returning discretion to local boards of elections. Husted said his office was still reviewing the 6th Circuit’s decision, and that no action would be taken on Friday or this weekend.
• Tea Party voter suppression group under investigation for possible ‘criminal conspiracy’. The Tea Party organization launching a multi-pronged voter suppression effort this election is under investigation by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) for a possible “criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.” Cummings sent a letter to True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht warning her that the Ohio branch of the group, in suing to throw thousands of students, trailer park residents, homeless people and African Americans off the voting rolls, may be violating the law: “At some point, an effort to challenge voter registrations by the thousands without any legitimate basis may be evidence of illegal voter suppression. If these efforts are intentional, politically motivated and widespread across multiple states, they could amount to a criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.”
• A liberal group in New Mexico claims to have undercover video showing the vice chair of the Sandoval County Republican Party training poll challengers to use illegal tactics that could suppress voters’ rights. ProgressNow New Mexico on Wednesday published video of a September 26th official “Poll Challenger Training,” in which former Republican Sandoval County Commission candidate Pat Morlen misinformed voters about ID requirements and assistance for Spanish-speaking citizens.
Alternate realities
• With the unemployment rate falling to 7.8, the right wing falls to conspiracies and craziness to explain it all away. That falling unemploment number came in spite of right wing obstruction. It came in spite of right wing states firing public sector workers. Just think of how low that number could be (and how better off the American public would be) if the jobs bill had passed, and if public sector workers had been hired back.
• Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch admitted to Hardball host Chris Matthews Friday that he had no evidence to support his accusation that President Barack Obama’s administration had falsified new employment statistics, yet refused to take it back.
• [I]t’s hard to see how the unemployment truthers are helping Mitt Romney here. By launching into a full blown angry panic about improving jobs numbers, they only draw attention to, and reinforce, the idea that the economy is, in fact, improving — and, worse, that the prospect of economic improvement is terrible news for Romney’s presidential prospects.
• Credit where it’s due: Paul Ryan sends a copy of Pres. Obama’s birth certificate to rightwingers who contact him with birther nonsense. TPM began asking questions about Ryan’s handling of the birth certificate issue after a Freedom of Information Act request to the Federal Election Commission last month turned up a document, dated Dec. 2, 2008, that showed a Ryan staffer had inquired about “Obama citizenship.”
• “The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state,” Scalia said at the American Enterprise Institute.
• “God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.” – Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun, who serves on the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
• The Mormon owners of a Mexican cafe in Denver say that they have gotten death threats, hate calls and fake orders after refusing to allow Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to make campaign stop at their restaurant. “One person who called said, ‘Watch your back. We know where live and we’re going after you,’” Oscar Aguirre, the son of the owners of Rosa Linda Mexican Cafe, told KMGH New Media Producer Wayne Harrison. “We just didn’t want our business used as a campaign stop.” “We did say ‘no’ because we are not Republicans, nor are we Democrats. We will welcome any sitting President of the United States. But, we did not want to be a campaign stop.”
In other news
• The FBI said Friday that a U.S. Border Patrol agent killed in Arizona earlier this week was likely a victim of friendly fire, CNN reported. “There are strong preliminary indications that the death of United States Border Patrol Agent Nicholas J. Ivie, 30, and the injury to a second agent was the result of an accidental shooting incident involving only the agents,” Special Agent James Turgai said in a statement. According to The Associated Press, Ivie was shot while responding to a possible undocumented immigrant crossing at a portion of the U.S-Mexico border near Bisbee, Arizona when he and another two agents responding to the same call mistook each other for hostile gunmen…. Ivie’s death was soon cited by Republican lawmakers; Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) said it was an example of lax border security, while Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) blamed it on the failed “Fast and Furious” gun operation carried out by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tax and Firearms.
• Another mortar shell from Syria struck Turkish territory on Saturday, prompting a fourth day of retaliatory artillery fire from Turkey, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
• People who are infected by the AIDS virus but have little risk of passing it to others do not have to disclose their HIV status, Canada’s top court said Friday.
F.D.Brightly
Lie all you want
Shorter Question Everything
Romney can lie all he wants. It doesn’t change what he’s said. What he said in private, when he believed he was speaking to people just like him, is more telling than the weasel words coming out of him now. A month before the election and he’s waffling now?
• Mitt Romney’s Disdain For The Middle Class: He Said It, He Meant It
And don’t trust Ryan either.
• Paul Ryan says 60 percent of Americans are ‘takers,’ not ‘makers’. Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan said in 2010 that 60 percent of Americans receive more financial benefits from the government than they pay in taxes, making them “takers,” rather than “makers,” according to a 2010 video of Ryan speaking with Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.). Not mentioned in the HuffPost story, and buried at the end of their video showing Ryan repeatedly mentioning “takers” and “makers,” is Ryan accusing “takers” – 60% of the country – of not being “American,” not “want[ing] the American dream,” and not “believ[ing] in the American idea.” Particularly troubling is what Ryan says at the end of the Huffington Post video: “The good news is, most people in America don’t want to be a ‘taker,’ they want to be American, they want to be a ‘maker’.”
This is how they both talk about most of the people in the country. This is what they think of them, and this is how they treat them.
• More coming out about that Romney Ohio ad using coal miners. Not only did they lose a day’s pay. Not only were they forced to attend. They were also forced to contribute, and contribute more than once, to Romney campaign as well as other right wing political campaigns. [PDF]
• Sensata Technologies, a company owned by Bain Capital is closing down its Freeport, IL plant and moving it to China. The company’s 175 workers will lose their jobs. The employees wrote a letter to Bain’s founder, Mitt Romney, last week asking him to help save their jobs. He has not responded as yet. Bain Capital is determined to get those unemployment numbers back up, dammit.
Where it stands: the debate
UPDATE: On my posting yesterday about Romney bringing notes with him into the debate. The Romney team claims it was a handkerchief, and maybe that’s what it was. I have no idea. It’s not like there’s never been a case where a Republican brought in a cheat sheet. Could there have been a handkerchief with some handy dandy notes inside? Sure. But the post yesterday got an update, and I’m updating here as well, that the Romney camp says it was a handkerchief.
• In the first debate, Mitt Romney sacrificed the facts in order to mislead and confuse voters about where he stands on important issues to the middle class. On one issue—Social Security—it’s worth clarifying where President Obama and Governor Romney agree and where they disagree. Both President Obama and Mitt Romney know that the program is solvent for more than two decades and that there’s a need for gradual reforms to the benefits that millions of seniors have worked for, paid for, and earned. But that’s where their agreement ends. While President Obama is committed to keeping the promise of guaranteed Social Security benefits for current and future generations, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have supported plans to privatize the program, and have put forward a plan that would slash benefits for current workers.
• The conventional wisdom has spoken: Mitt Romney trounced Barack Obama in the first debate. But there was a squirrely sneakiness to Romney’s behavior as if Eddie Haskell from “Leave It to Beaver” had grown up and somehow won the Republican presidential nomination.
• [O]n closer examination, the record as governor [Romney alluded to in the 1st presidential debate] looks considerably less burnished than Mr. Romney suggested. Bipartisanship was in short supply; Statehouse Democrats complained he variously ignored, insulted or opposed them, with intermittent charm offensives. He vetoed scores of legislative initiatives and excised budget line items a remarkable 844 times, according to the nonpartisan research group Factcheck.org. Lawmakers reciprocated by quickly overriding the vast bulk of them.
Just for laughs…
• RoboRomney! Mitt Romney agrees with you…no matter where you stand, Romney’s said something before to pander, um, agree, with whatever position you’ve got!
Voter Suppression
• Authorities in Florida said they had opened a criminal probe into the activities of Strategic Allied Consulting, the firm hired by the Republican Party to register new voters in the crucial swing state ahead of next month’s presidential election. A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) said the agency had found enough evidence to warrant a full-blown investigation of Strategic Allied, a Virginia-based voter registration company doing work for the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Florida.
• A federal appeals court on Friday reinstated in-person early voting in the swing state of Ohio on the final three days before Election Day, returning discretion to local boards of elections. Husted said his office was still reviewing the 6th Circuit’s decision, and that no action would be taken on Friday or this weekend.
• Tea Party voter suppression group under investigation for possible ‘criminal conspiracy’. The Tea Party organization launching a multi-pronged voter suppression effort this election is under investigation by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) for a possible “criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.” Cummings sent a letter to True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht warning her that the Ohio branch of the group, in suing to throw thousands of students, trailer park residents, homeless people and African Americans off the voting rolls, may be violating the law: “At some point, an effort to challenge voter registrations by the thousands without any legitimate basis may be evidence of illegal voter suppression. If these efforts are intentional, politically motivated and widespread across multiple states, they could amount to a criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.”
• A liberal group in New Mexico claims to have undercover video showing the vice chair of the Sandoval County Republican Party training poll challengers to use illegal tactics that could suppress voters’ rights. ProgressNow New Mexico on Wednesday published video of a September 26th official “Poll Challenger Training,” in which former Republican Sandoval County Commission candidate Pat Morlen misinformed voters about ID requirements and assistance for Spanish-speaking citizens.
Alternate realities
• With the unemployment rate falling to 7.8, the right wing falls to conspiracies and craziness to explain it all away. That falling unemploment number came in spite of right wing obstruction. It came in spite of right wing states firing public sector workers. Just think of how low that number could be (and how better off the American public would be) if the jobs bill had passed, and if public sector workers had been hired back.
• Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch admitted to Hardball host Chris Matthews Friday that he had no evidence to support his accusation that President Barack Obama’s administration had falsified new employment statistics, yet refused to take it back.
• [I]t’s hard to see how the unemployment truthers are helping Mitt Romney here. By launching into a full blown angry panic about improving jobs numbers, they only draw attention to, and reinforce, the idea that the economy is, in fact, improving — and, worse, that the prospect of economic improvement is terrible news for Romney’s presidential prospects.
• Credit where it’s due: Paul Ryan sends a copy of Pres. Obama’s birth certificate to rightwingers who contact him with birther nonsense. TPM began asking questions about Ryan’s handling of the birth certificate issue after a Freedom of Information Act request to the Federal Election Commission last month turned up a document, dated Dec. 2, 2008, that showed a Ryan staffer had inquired about “Obama citizenship.”
• “The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state,” Scalia said at the American Enterprise Institute.
• “God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.” – Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun, who serves on the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
• The Mormon owners of a Mexican cafe in Denver say that they have gotten death threats, hate calls and fake orders after refusing to allow Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to make campaign stop at their restaurant. “One person who called said, ‘Watch your back. We know where live and we’re going after you,’” Oscar Aguirre, the son of the owners of Rosa Linda Mexican Cafe, told KMGH New Media Producer Wayne Harrison. “We just didn’t want our business used as a campaign stop.” “We did say ‘no’ because we are not Republicans, nor are we Democrats. We will welcome any sitting President of the United States. But, we did not want to be a campaign stop.”
In other news
• The FBI said Friday that a U.S. Border Patrol agent killed in Arizona earlier this week was likely a victim of friendly fire, CNN reported. “There are strong preliminary indications that the death of United States Border Patrol Agent Nicholas J. Ivie, 30, and the injury to a second agent was the result of an accidental shooting incident involving only the agents,” Special Agent James Turgai said in a statement. According to The Associated Press, Ivie was shot while responding to a possible undocumented immigrant crossing at a portion of the U.S-Mexico border near Bisbee, Arizona when he and another two agents responding to the same call mistook each other for hostile gunmen…. Ivie’s death was soon cited by Republican lawmakers; Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) said it was an example of lax border security, while Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) blamed it on the failed “Fast and Furious” gun operation carried out by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tax and Firearms.
• Another mortar shell from Syria struck Turkish territory on Saturday, prompting a fourth day of retaliatory artillery fire from Turkey, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
• People who are infected by the AIDS virus but have little risk of passing it to others do not have to disclose their HIV status, Canada’s top court said Friday.