Romney flat out lied about Jeep moving production to China. It’s nothing but fear-based speeches now. Romney picks up crackpot pieces from right wing blogs and expounds on them as though they were truth. It’s what got him smacked hard during the second debate, regarding Libya. What does it say about a guy that not only reacts like this, but that doesn’t think through the ramifications of what he’s saying? Can you imagine what his foreign policy would be like given what the crackpot right wing writes about the rest of the world? Again, the story about Jeep moving to China is an outright lie, but this goes deeper than a lie. This is about a guy who is not fit to be in charge. Of anything.
• Romney repeats false claim of Jeep outsourcing to China; Chrysler refutes story: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney repeated a false claim Thursday night that Chrysler Group may move all Jeep vehicle production to China, drawing criticism from the Obama campaign, which said the Michigan native had blatantly skewed a news wire story. Romney’s comments came the same day that the Free Press reported that 1,100 new Chrysler workers will begin making the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs at a plant in Detroit next week. Romney apparently was referencing conservative bloggers who misrepresented a Bloomberg story from Monday that discussed Chrysler’s decision to consider starting Jeep production in China, the world’s largest new-vehicle market.
• From Chrysler, on Jeeps in China: Despite clear and accurate reporting, the take has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. workforce. It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats. Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation. A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.
• “That he would take an article that just described a global expansion and not a shift in jobs and use it to try to get Ohio votes, or to scare people into voting for him, is just another example of why you can’t trust this man,” former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said on a conference call today.
• Friday night, former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and Congressman Tim Ryan appeared on MSNBC to address Romney’s cruel lies. In Defiance, Ohio Mitt Romney fear mongered Ohioans with the lie that Chrysler is moving Jeep operations to China. Strickland said it “showed a lack of judgment and a lack of truthfulness.” Ryan said that Romney didn’t consider the impact of his comments on Ohio’s working families, and “This is the same kind of business that these Republicans do. They troll around on the internet. They find one story that’s made up and they use it.”
• Mitt Romney’s campaign has directed $134.2 million to political firms with business ties to his senior staff, spotlighting the tightknit nature of his second presidential bid and the staggering sums being spent in this election. Nine firms that are run by, or recently employed, top Romney aides have received almost a third of the $435.8 million that Romney’s campaign and a related fundraising committee have spent on operating expenses through Oct. 17, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of federal election finance reports. President Obama’s reelection campaign and a joint fundraising committee have paid about $5.8 million in consulting fees to companies with business ties to senior strategists, according to the finance reports.
Lyin Ryan
• Paul Ryan Offers Mocks Unemployed Man, Then Ignores Him: The video, from 2011, shows one of the vice presidential candidate’s constituents asking the Wisconsin Republican how he plans on bringing jobs back to America. Ryan first tells the man to visit his website, then offers him candy — “No… I just need jobs,” the man replied — and then Mr. Ryan and his wife try to ignore the man until their staffers can shoo him away. Their plasticine smiles are the stuff of political legends.
• Have a nice day, alright? Would you like some candy?: Video evidence of Paul Ryan mocking a constituent before the start of a parade in 2011 has surfaced. The constituent asks Ryan about jobs, and the congressman responds by smiling and asking the man if he wants a piece of candy. The incident took place in Janesville, Wisconsin, Ryan’s hometown around Sept. 2011. While walking with his family to the Janesville Labor Day Parade, Ryan is approached by an unnamed man who attempts to start a conversation.
On Colin Powell
• Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff during his time as Secretary of State, decried John Sununu’s comment that Powell only endorsed Barack Obama because they are both black. “To say that Colin Powell would endorse President Obama because of his skin color is like saying Mother Teresa worked for profit,” Wilkerson told Ed Schultz. “My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people, not all of them, but most of them, who are still basing their decision on race,” Wilkerson said. “Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists. And the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin. And that’s despicable.”
• “I don’t think that there are many people in America who would question Gen. Powell’s credibility, his patriotism, his willingness to tell it straight,” Obama said. “So any suggestion that Gen. Powell would make such a profound statement in such an important election based on anything other than what he thought would be best for America doesn’t make much sense.”
Right Wing freakout
• If Lena Dunham is terrible because of her ad, will the right freak out over Reagan? Eric Kleefeld of Talking Points Memo dug the quote up from a Washington Post article from Nov. 1, 1980: On Thursday night, at a working class bar in Bayonne, N.J., Reagan said, “I know what it’s like to pull the Republican lever for the first time, because I used to be a Democrat myself, and I can tell you it only hurts for a minute and then it feels just great.”
• Cue the right wing meltdown: “Your first time shouldn’t be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy…someone who really cares about and understands women.” – Lena Dunham, 2012
“I know what it’s like to pull the Republican lever for the first time, because I used to be a Democrat myself, and I can tell you it only hurts for a minute and then it feels just great.” – Ronald Reagan, 1980
• The economy grew a little faster than expected in the third quarter (July through September), with the GDP report showing 2% growth. I suggested earlier that the right would likely start pushing conspiracy theories, and I wasn’t kidding: Fox News’ Stuart Varney suggested that third quarter economic growth as measured by the Commerce Department was a conspiracy to help reelect President Obama, pointing to the fact that economic growth was driven in part by increased government spending. [...]
• Conservative columnist Diana West, who has said before that Obama’s birth certificate is likely a forgery, told Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy that last month’s Benghazi attacks could “in a sense” be perceived as a “fortunate event” for the Republican party
• Canadian Anti-Choice Wackos Awarded Diamond Jubilee Medals – Canadian Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Maurice Vellacott recommended two women for medals to award their “civil disobedience to further a just cause.” Now, ladies getting medals for civil disobedience is something I can usually get behind (fight the power, etc.), except for the fact that the women in question are Linda Gibbons and Mary Wagner, anti-abortion zealots who have been charged repeatedly for disturbing women’s health clinics. Not cool, ladies.
• Troopers say Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been taken to the hospital in an ambulance after what appears to be a rear-end crash on an interstate through Las Vegas. Nevada Highway Patrol Office spokesman Jeremie Elliott says he doesn’t know Reid’s condition after the crash, which happened at around 1:10 p.m. Friday on Interstate 15. Officials in Reid’s office said it wasn’t immediately clear where the Democratic Senator was headed, but first lady Michelle Obama is set to give a speech in Las Vegas Friday afternoon, and Reid’s wife Landra was speaking at the event. UPDATE: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was released from the hospital just a few hours after a car crash this afternoon left him with rib and hip contusions, reported the Associated Press. He was able to walk into the hospital himself and was taken by his security staff as a precaution. Earlier reports erroneously claimed that he was taken by ambulance.
• Canada and the United States announced they were launching a joint cybsersecurity plan to protect their digital infrastructure from online threats. The action plan, under the auspices of the US Department of Homeland Security and Public Safety Canada, aims to better protect critical digital infrastructure and improve the response to cyber incidents.
• Could e-voting machines in Election 2012 be hacked? Yes. Security experts say a specific kind of electronic-voting machine is vulnerable to being hacked. Influencing a national election would be difficult, but the advance of malware makes it possible.
• Sandy regained hurricane strength on Saturday after briefly weakening to tropical storm status, the National Hurricane Center said. Air Force hurricane hunter planes registered sustained winds of 75 miles per hour (120 kilometers) as the storm churned northward off the US East coast, the US weather agency said. Dubbed a potential “Frankenstorm,” Sandy was expected to make landfall early next week during the frenzied final week of campaigning before the US elections on November 6.
• The rightwing alliance between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his foreign minister has polarised political forces in Israel ahead of next January’s parliamentary election. Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman’s surprise announcement late on Thursday that their respective Likud and Yisrael Beitenu parties would run on a joint ticket was dubbed “the rightwing Big Bang” by the Israeli press. Alongside the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu, the premier’s right-wing Likud — already predicted to win the vote — would be able to form a broad nationalist bloc leaning strongly to the right.
• “We will absolutely win the next election”: B.C. Liberal Party members displayed a bold optimism Friday about their future prospects as close to 1,000 delegates met in Whistler for their final convention before voters go to the polls in May. The bravado was as much about rallying the troops as anything else — especially in the face of polls that have the party trailing the NDP by as many as 23 points — but behind-the-scenes party strategists say they believe the situation is nowhere near as dire as it may seem.
• The Canadian embassy in Washington was evacuated briefly on Friday because of a suspicious letter, forcing out employees for more than an hour, officials said.
F.D.Brightly
Unnecessary Fantasies And Extravagant Comments
Shorter Question Everything
Character matters.
Romney flat out lied about Jeep moving production to China. It’s nothing but fear-based speeches now. Romney picks up crackpot pieces from right wing blogs and expounds on them as though they were truth. It’s what got him smacked hard during the second debate, regarding Libya. What does it say about a guy that not only reacts like this, but that doesn’t think through the ramifications of what he’s saying? Can you imagine what his foreign policy would be like given what the crackpot right wing writes about the rest of the world? Again, the story about Jeep moving to China is an outright lie, but this goes deeper than a lie. This is about a guy who is not fit to be in charge. Of anything.
• Romney repeats false claim of Jeep outsourcing to China; Chrysler refutes story: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney repeated a false claim Thursday night that Chrysler Group may move all Jeep vehicle production to China, drawing criticism from the Obama campaign, which said the Michigan native had blatantly skewed a news wire story. Romney’s comments came the same day that the Free Press reported that 1,100 new Chrysler workers will begin making the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs at a plant in Detroit next week. Romney apparently was referencing conservative bloggers who misrepresented a Bloomberg story from Monday that discussed Chrysler’s decision to consider starting Jeep production in China, the world’s largest new-vehicle market.
• From Chrysler, on Jeeps in China: Despite clear and accurate reporting, the take has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. workforce. It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats. Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation. A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.
• “That he would take an article that just described a global expansion and not a shift in jobs and use it to try to get Ohio votes, or to scare people into voting for him, is just another example of why you can’t trust this man,” former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said on a conference call today.
• Friday night, former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and Congressman Tim Ryan appeared on MSNBC to address Romney’s cruel lies. In Defiance, Ohio Mitt Romney fear mongered Ohioans with the lie that Chrysler is moving Jeep operations to China. Strickland said it “showed a lack of judgment and a lack of truthfulness.” Ryan said that Romney didn’t consider the impact of his comments on Ohio’s working families, and “This is the same kind of business that these Republicans do. They troll around on the internet. They find one story that’s made up and they use it.”
Mendacious Mittens
• Romney photoshops image to exaggerate crowd size, gets own name wrong. Romney Campaign Exaggerates Size Of Nevada Event With Altered Image. At best, the official Romney Instagram account posted a really bad panorama.
• Why “no apologies” Mitt needs to grow up
• If the Mittmobile does roll into Washington it will be towing behind it the whole anti-intellectual anti-science freak show.
• Mitt Romney’s campaign has directed $134.2 million to political firms with business ties to his senior staff, spotlighting the tightknit nature of his second presidential bid and the staggering sums being spent in this election. Nine firms that are run by, or recently employed, top Romney aides have received almost a third of the $435.8 million that Romney’s campaign and a related fundraising committee have spent on operating expenses through Oct. 17, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of federal election finance reports. President Obama’s reelection campaign and a joint fundraising committee have paid about $5.8 million in consulting fees to companies with business ties to senior strategists, according to the finance reports.
Lyin Ryan
• Paul Ryan Offers Mocks Unemployed Man, Then Ignores Him: The video, from 2011, shows one of the vice presidential candidate’s constituents asking the Wisconsin Republican how he plans on bringing jobs back to America. Ryan first tells the man to visit his website, then offers him candy — “No… I just need jobs,” the man replied — and then Mr. Ryan and his wife try to ignore the man until their staffers can shoo him away. Their plasticine smiles are the stuff of political legends.
• Have a nice day, alright? Would you like some candy?: Video evidence of Paul Ryan mocking a constituent before the start of a parade in 2011 has surfaced. The constituent asks Ryan about jobs, and the congressman responds by smiling and asking the man if he wants a piece of candy. The incident took place in Janesville, Wisconsin, Ryan’s hometown around Sept. 2011. While walking with his family to the Janesville Labor Day Parade, Ryan is approached by an unnamed man who attempts to start a conversation.
On Colin Powell
• Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff during his time as Secretary of State, decried John Sununu’s comment that Powell only endorsed Barack Obama because they are both black. “To say that Colin Powell would endorse President Obama because of his skin color is like saying Mother Teresa worked for profit,” Wilkerson told Ed Schultz. “My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people, not all of them, but most of them, who are still basing their decision on race,” Wilkerson said. “Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists. And the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin. And that’s despicable.”
• “I don’t think that there are many people in America who would question Gen. Powell’s credibility, his patriotism, his willingness to tell it straight,” Obama said. “So any suggestion that Gen. Powell would make such a profound statement in such an important election based on anything other than what he thought would be best for America doesn’t make much sense.”
Right Wing freakout
• If Lena Dunham is terrible because of her ad, will the right freak out over Reagan? Eric Kleefeld of Talking Points Memo dug the quote up from a Washington Post article from Nov. 1, 1980: On Thursday night, at a working class bar in Bayonne, N.J., Reagan said, “I know what it’s like to pull the Republican lever for the first time, because I used to be a Democrat myself, and I can tell you it only hurts for a minute and then it feels just great.”
• Cue the right wing meltdown: “Your first time shouldn’t be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy…someone who really cares about and understands women.” – Lena Dunham, 2012
“I know what it’s like to pull the Republican lever for the first time, because I used to be a Democrat myself, and I can tell you it only hurts for a minute and then it feels just great.” – Ronald Reagan, 1980
• The economy grew a little faster than expected in the third quarter (July through September), with the GDP report showing 2% growth. I suggested earlier that the right would likely start pushing conspiracy theories, and I wasn’t kidding: Fox News’ Stuart Varney suggested that third quarter economic growth as measured by the Commerce Department was a conspiracy to help reelect President Obama, pointing to the fact that economic growth was driven in part by increased government spending. [...]
• Conservative columnist Diana West, who has said before that Obama’s birth certificate is likely a forgery, told Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy that last month’s Benghazi attacks could “in a sense” be perceived as a “fortunate event” for the Republican party
Reproductive Rights
• The Republican Party: The Crazy Ex in Charge of Your Freedom
• Rudy Giuliani thinks if contraception is covered by insurance, viagra should be, too. Doesn’t realize viagra is already covered. In fact, most insurance companies — including plans offered by Catholic institutions — began covering Viagra as soon it became available in 1998.
• Canadian Anti-Choice Wackos Awarded Diamond Jubilee Medals – Canadian Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Maurice Vellacott recommended two women for medals to award their “civil disobedience to further a just cause.” Now, ladies getting medals for civil disobedience is something I can usually get behind (fight the power, etc.), except for the fact that the women in question are Linda Gibbons and Mary Wagner, anti-abortion zealots who have been charged repeatedly for disturbing women’s health clinics. Not cool, ladies.
• This never fails to crack me up: 10 Big Surprises in Store For Tea Partiers Fleeing to Canada if Obama Wins
In other news
• Troopers say Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been taken to the hospital in an ambulance after what appears to be a rear-end crash on an interstate through Las Vegas. Nevada Highway Patrol Office spokesman Jeremie Elliott says he doesn’t know Reid’s condition after the crash, which happened at around 1:10 p.m. Friday on Interstate 15. Officials in Reid’s office said it wasn’t immediately clear where the Democratic Senator was headed, but first lady Michelle Obama is set to give a speech in Las Vegas Friday afternoon, and Reid’s wife Landra was speaking at the event. UPDATE: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was released from the hospital just a few hours after a car crash this afternoon left him with rib and hip contusions, reported the Associated Press. He was able to walk into the hospital himself and was taken by his security staff as a precaution. Earlier reports erroneously claimed that he was taken by ambulance.
• Canada and the United States announced they were launching a joint cybsersecurity plan to protect their digital infrastructure from online threats. The action plan, under the auspices of the US Department of Homeland Security and Public Safety Canada, aims to better protect critical digital infrastructure and improve the response to cyber incidents.
• Could e-voting machines in Election 2012 be hacked? Yes. Security experts say a specific kind of electronic-voting machine is vulnerable to being hacked. Influencing a national election would be difficult, but the advance of malware makes it possible.
• An independent U.N. human rights researcher on Thursday announced plans to launch an investigation into the use of drone attacks and other targeted assassinations by the United States and other governments that result in civilian deaths or injuries.
• Sandy regained hurricane strength on Saturday after briefly weakening to tropical storm status, the National Hurricane Center said. Air Force hurricane hunter planes registered sustained winds of 75 miles per hour (120 kilometers) as the storm churned northward off the US East coast, the US weather agency said. Dubbed a potential “Frankenstorm,” Sandy was expected to make landfall early next week during the frenzied final week of campaigning before the US elections on November 6.
• The rightwing alliance between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his foreign minister has polarised political forces in Israel ahead of next January’s parliamentary election. Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman’s surprise announcement late on Thursday that their respective Likud and Yisrael Beitenu parties would run on a joint ticket was dubbed “the rightwing Big Bang” by the Israeli press. Alongside the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu, the premier’s right-wing Likud — already predicted to win the vote — would be able to form a broad nationalist bloc leaning strongly to the right.
• “We will absolutely win the next election”: B.C. Liberal Party members displayed a bold optimism Friday about their future prospects as close to 1,000 delegates met in Whistler for their final convention before voters go to the polls in May. The bravado was as much about rallying the troops as anything else — especially in the face of polls that have the party trailing the NDP by as many as 23 points — but behind-the-scenes party strategists say they believe the situation is nowhere near as dire as it may seem.
• The Canadian embassy in Washington was evacuated briefly on Friday because of a suspicious letter, forcing out employees for more than an hour, officials said.