Bankrupting Truth

TPM:  Mitt Romney is doubling down on a claim he made earlier this year: that the President’s successful bailout of the auto industry was actually Romney’s idea. 

First, as we always have to do with Willard Romney, we need to set the record straight.  He's lying again.  Not only was it not his idea, but at the time he ripped Obama for doing it. GM had one foot in the door of liquidation and Romney said, and this is a direct quote, "let Detroit go bankrupt."   And now that Obama's fix has turned out to be a spectacular success and GM is posting record profits, Willard's trying to escape history's judgement.

Second, it was Romney's Republican party policy that caused the financial meltdown in the first place and the fact he's trying to subject the country to the same thing again borders on treason.

And last, Romney's views and policies don't always turn out to be wrong for the country because he has bad judgement.  He's a smart guy.  Romney's views and policies always turn out bad for the country because he doesn't act in the best interest of the country.  He acts in the best interest of the transnational CEO and the Chinese factory owner.  He's spent the last 30 years bankrupting American companies, destroying American jobs and screwing American workers out of their pensions.  We don't need somebody like that to be president.

Economic Traitor

TPM:  Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland was on fire tonight in his convention speech. Here’s a key passage 

Mitt Romney has so little economic patriotism that even his money needs a passport. It summers on the beaches of the Cayman Islands and winters on the slopes of the Swiss Alps. In Matthew, chapter 6, verse 21, the scriptures teach us that where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. My friends, any man who aspires to be our president should keep both his treasure and his heart in the United States of America. And it’s well past time for Mitt Romney to come clean with the American people.

And of course the way he made that money is the most unpatriotic thing of all.  Rmoney made millions by bankrupting American companies, destroying American jobs, illegally busting unions, and screwing American workers out of their pensions.  Hell, the Washington post reports he helped pioneer the mass outsourcing that's killing the (American) middle class.  He has a long history of working for trans-national CEO's and foreign factory owners and against America.

Look, we need a president that does right by the United States of America, not an outsourcer-in-chief. Willard should run for president of China.  He's done good work for them. But here at home he's been God-damn-national-disaster. As president he'll be even worse. 

A Million Times Better

Think Progress: Are We Better Off? 10 Headlines From September 2008:

STOCK SHOCK FELT ROUND THE WORLD. Gets ‘nasty’ as Lehman tanks, Merrill vanishes, AIG wobbles [New York Daily News, September 16, 2008]

Depression Coming? Boil Some Beans; Ladies Who Quilt Give Tips On Surviving Tough Times [Albuquerque Journal, September 21, 2008]

One day on the brink On Wednesday, it seemed U.S. economy might collapse [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 21, 2008]

‘Great Depression’ closer than U.S. admits, report finds [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 27, 2008]

Will Bush become the new Hoover? [Politico, September 19, 2008]

Developers bend under housing meltdown [Colorado Springs Gazette, September 27, 2008]

Depression seen possible [Florida News-Press, September 27, 2008]

Wall Street Meltdown Continues [CNN, September 17, 2008]

Is It Really the Next ‘Great Depression’? [NPR, September 19, 2008]

Behind Closed Doors, Warnings of Calamity [The New York Times, September 20, 2008]

That's a good way to look at it.  Another way is this: when Obama took over from Romney's team GOP we were losing nearly 800,000 a month and now we've gained jobs for 27 straight months, usually between 100,000 and 200,000 jobs.  What that means is basically for the last two years we've been a million jobs a MONTH better than the GOP.

Liars

Romney campaign pollster Neil Newhouse “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”

The GOP MO is to take billions of dollars in blood money from the oil companies and the Koch Brothers crowd and lie their way into power.  They even admit it. 

Your Life May Depend On It

(CNN) -- Leslie Elder was always a fighter. But in a message to a friend in the waning days of her life, she seemed exhausted.

The note, written at a time of spiritual darkness, suggested defeat after a decades-long struggle for medical coverage.

"I honestly don't know how much more I can endure," Elder wrote earlier this year in a Facebook message to her friend Liz Jacobs. "I am fighting for (Medicaid) and disability. I can't work I sit in bed I cry a lot. I am still fighting for healthcare and still fighting foreclosure.

"I am so upset but perhaps it was not meant to be. I don't know anything anymore," said Elder, who died in July at age 63 without insurance coverage.

 As she typed the note, Elder could scarcely breathe. Her lungs had filled with fluid over several months; her respiratory system was shutting down. After visits to the emergency room and several free clinics, Elder was finally diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.

But what makes her family bristle: Elder did not have to die.

If she had had health care, "Absolutely she'd still be here," said Jacquelyn Elder, Leslie's daughter, adding that Hodgkin's lymphoma has a high survival rate. "That is something really hard to deal with."

Two things... 1) In Republican America, she did have to die.  They would rather give more tax cuts to billionaires and transnational corporations than make sure Americans have access to healthcare.  And 2) unless you're a millionaire, this can happen to you.

Vote Democrat.  Your life could very well depend on it.  

An Honorable Profession

Huffington Post:   Montana Rep. Denny Rehberg has been pounding Democratic Sen. Jon Tester over lobbyist fundraising in their tight Senate race, but Rehberg declared last year in a meeting with the influence peddlers that he probably would have chosen their profession over his own if he had been "smart."

And further, he declared they were not only honorable, but that he could not do his job without them.
Rehberg made those assertions speaking to the American League of Lobbyists in October at an event that was recorded. The recording was forwarded to The Huffington Post by the Tester campaign.
In the speech, Rehberg recalls how he nearly became a lobbyist.

"A lot of y’all’s type came to me and said, 'What are you nuts? You know, if we had the choice of either run for Congress or be a lobbyist, wouldn’t you like to try the Congress first?' And I fell for it," Rehberg said. "I ran for Congress. I probably, if I had been smart, I would’ve said nope, no, I think I’ll stay out of the political arena and go into lobbying.

"What I’m trying to suggest is I think lobbying is an honorable profession," he said.

See government by the people is bad.  The people who buy it are good.  That's your Republican party... Look, the way to influence democracy is to volunteer your time and your vote.  That's it.  While the Republicans on the Supreme Court may have said otherwise, anything else is illegal, immoral, and a danger to the republic. 

Likely Voters

Daily Kos: If it weren't for that critical component of modern political public opinion polling known as the "likely voter" screen, the banner polling headline today would be that, despite the Paul Ryan "bump" and a mammoth spending advantage, Mitt Romney still trailed Barack Obama in the latest CNN/Opinion Research poll of the presidential race by a gaudy 52-43 margin. 

Alas, said "likely voter" screen does exist, so instead, the headlines (as they have been for most of this cycle) will warn of a coin flip race, with the president staked to a mere 49-47 lead over the Republican challenger. Even worse, it is inevitable that some in the chattering classes will talk of a "bounce" for Romney since the last poll, which showed Obama up 52-45.

Such talk of movement in Mitt's direction is analytical malpractice, of course, because the previous CNN/OR poll did not have said likely voter screen. In the only apples-to-apples comparison we have here (RV to RV), it is the president whose standing has incrementally improved.

Of course "likely voters" these days includes Americans whom the GOP will not likely be able to rob of the right to vote.