Thanksgiving 2012 - 10 Things Americans Can Be Thankful For

Thanksgiving 2012 - 10 Things Americans Can Be Thankful For

Following a long presidential campaign full of policy battles and disagreements, progressives have a lot to be thankful for this holiday season. Here are 10 things we can all celebrate:

We are thankful for the millions of Americans serving our country at home and abroad. This includes 1.4 million Armed Services members, 80,000 AmeriCorps members, and 8,073 Peace Corps volunteers and trainees, 6 million teachers and public school employees, 1.1 million professional and volunteer firefighters, and 22 million total public employees.

We’re thankful for Obamacare. After surviving dozens of repeal votes in Congress, the Supreme Court, and a presidential election, the Affordable Care Act is on track to extending insurance coverage to 30 million Americans and lowering health care spending. Millions of seniors and young people have benefited from the law and inefficient insurers are distributing rebates to consumers.

We’re thankful for the social safety net. Nutrition assistance, welfare, unemployment compensation, Social Security, and other social programs keep millions of Americans out of poverty each year. Though the programs aren’t as robust as they could be, they help provide food, health care, and educational opportunity to America’s neediest families.

We’re thankful for historic progress against the War on Drugs. In passing laws to legalize and regulate marijuana in Washington and Colorado, supporters joined many local jurisdictions that have decriminalized some drug offenses in signaling their willingness to better tailor drug policy to public health and safety goals. Timed to the year when the film The House I Live In is opening new eyes to the War’s decimation of minority communities, the time is ripe to end the War that, since its declaration 40 years ago by President Richard Nixon, has cost the U.S. both money and lives while failing to curb drug use.

We’re thankful for the advocates who protected our right to vote. The past few years saw a raft of new voter suppression laws and tactics, but most of the worst laws were blocked at least temporarily by the courts or repealed by lawmakers. The challenge going forward will be to maintain these victories as litigation in several of these cases continues and the U.S. Supreme Court considers a challenge to the Voting Rights Act.

We’re thankful for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB, created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, has been working on new rules to protect Americans from predatory lenders, bogus credit card deals, and shady mortgage peddlers. It has also won American consumers hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds for credit card scams.

We’re thankful for Occupy Wall Street. Since its street protests last year, Occupy Wall Street has kept busy with several important projects. Occupy Our Homes saved many Americans from unfair foreclosures, while Occupy Hurricane Sandy provided aid to victims of the superstorm that battered the northeast. Occupy’s latest project, the Rolling Jubilee, raised millions of dollars in order to buy and then abolish debt.

We’re thankful for the most diverse Congress in history. On Election Day, Americans ensured that the 113th Congress will contain the widest range yet of ethnicities, religious affiliations, and sexual orientations. The incoming freshman class contains 4 African Americans, 5 Asian Americans, 10 Latinos, 24 women, the first openly bisexual congresswoman, as well as the country’s first Buddhist senator and two Hindu representatives.

We’re thankful for religious freedom. The U.S. is a nation of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians, non-believers, and religious and spiritual sects of all stripes. Unlike some other countries, the U.S. protects Americans’ freedom to practice the religion of their choice without fear of repercussion, suppression, or forced religious adherence.

We’re thankful for growing LGBT equality. The sweeping victories for LGBT equality and out candidates in this election demonstrated that this country is on track to providing full benefits and protections to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. While there is still work to be done, schools are becoming safer, families are becoming more secure, and visibility and awareness are helping to lower discrimination rates.

Conservatives are eating some well deserved crow for running for office n one of the most regressive anti-American platforms in modern U.S. history. They wanted to turn back the clock to the glory days of 1850. They declared war on women and pretty much everyone else except rich old white guys who hate everyone.

Dumb tweet of the day: Victoria Jackson’s GMO theory

Dumb tweet of the day: Victoria Jackson's GMO theory (Credit: Wikipedia/Jlamont)

    Victoria Jackson @vicjackshow

    My friend thinks GMO's, genetically modified food might be affecting hormone levels and making more men gay these days.

Fox's Andrea Tantaros Treats Food Stamps As A Diet Plan: "Do You Know How Fabulous I'd Look?"

Mitt Romney and Family Are Not Capitalists, They're Looters and Plutocrats

 Mitt Romney and Family Are Not Capitalists, They're Looters and Plutocrats

Marc Leder, a wealthy investor, played host to Mitt Romney last May at a private fundraiser at his $4 million home in Boca Raton. Little did Leder know at the time, however, that someone would videotape the event and later leak it to the world, revealing the GOP standard-bearer in the act of caustically dismissing 47 percent of the country as too “dependent upon government” even to consider voting for him this year.

Leder attempted to duck the ensuing storm of media attention, telling Fortune that he had simply “hosted a fundraiser for an old friend.” But Leder’s ties to the candidate run deeper than campaign contributions or an old friendship. As an investor, he is part of a network of links to the Romney family business empire that will acquire enormous relevance if the GOP nominee manages to ascend to the White House.

In 2008, soon after Romney ended his first bid for the presidency, his eldest son Tagg and his chief fundraiser, Spencer Zwick, formed Solamere Capital, a private equity firm named after the exclusive community in Utah where Romney owned a vacation ski lodge.

What Tagg lacked in experience in the world of high finance, he made up for with a vast network of political connections forged through his father, who seeded the firm with $10 million and was the featured speaker at its first investor conference in January of 2010. Romney also reportedly gave strategic advice to the company, which secured prominent campaign donors as some of its first investors.

Unlike most private equity firms dedicated to analyzing and buying companies, Solamere specializes in something else: billing itself as a “fund of funds” with “unparalleled networks,” it provides investors with “unique access” to an elite set of other private equity firms and hedge funds. Sun Capital Partners, the fund founded by Leder, is one of at least thirteen Romney-linked firms in Solamere’s network, according to a prospectus circulated among potential investors and uncovered by The Boston Globe last year. Solamere also has an investment relationship with Bain Capital, the pioneering fund founded by Mitt Romney.

Solamere, a firm predicated on its founders’ relationship with Romney, presents a channel for powerful investors to influence the White House if he wins. Private equity executives looking to lobby a Romney administration may very well have a leg up if they are already doing business with the firm that the president created for his son.

Requests for comment from a Solamere representative for this article were not answered.

The looming conflicts range from general matters that affect all private equity firms—such as tax changes or the new rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill—to more specific concerns relating to businesses owned or controlled by Solamere’s partner firms. Many of these businesses, in fact, depend on government contracts; indeed, some have been accused of fleecing taxpayers (which is ironic given that many private equity titans claim to support Romney for his unabashed belief in small government and free enterprise). A Romney administration could directly affect the profitability of these companies—and, by extension, potentially the success of Tagg’s venture.

“It’s absolutely a conflict of interest,” says Adam Smith, the communications director for the group Public Campaign, which works on issues concerning money in politics. “Romney can’t un-know that his son’s investment company could benefit financially from his policies. And the other investors—many of whom are likely Romney campaign donors—will have extra access and influence in a Romney administration.”

* * *

Take Leder, Romney’s Boca Raton host, whose Sun Capital firm bought a stake in the Scooter Store last year. The company, known for its ubiquitous television ads promising seemingly free motorized wheelchairs for Medicare beneficiaries, has struggled as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that governs the programs, implements rules to curb rampant billing fraud. As a CMS report noted last year, 80 percent of the claims for scooters and power wheelchairs did not meet Medicare requirements, meaning that $492 million a year is being improperly spent.

In 2007, the Scooter Store gave up $13 million in Medicare payments and paid $4 million to settle with the Justice Department over allegations that it had overbilled for its electric wheelchairs. The company, which has been bleeding money over the years as regulators moved to curb waste, still faces challenges that could make or break its business model—challenges that could be mitigated by pressure from the executive branch.

A Romney administration, for example, would have a role in the fate of a recently launched pilot program ensuring that patients see a doctor face to face to determine if a Medicare scooter is medically necessary—a program that has reportedly already reduced billings to the Scooter Store. Another challenge for the company is Section 3136 of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act. If Romney wins and repeals significant portions of the ACA, would he retain this provision, which compels Medicare to have a competitive bidding process for motorized wheelchairs?

Leder, who has donated nearly $300,000 to Romney and other Republicans in this campaign and another $225,000 to a pro-Romney Super PAC, didn’t respond to a request for comment. Disclosures, however, suggest that pressuring the government is the only way his investment in the Scooter Store can turn a profit.

Since Leder’s firm invested in the Scooter Store, the company has spent nearly $900,000 on lobbyists to push back on these two latest challenges to its motorized-scooter empire. Lobbyists not only try to influence legislation; they are also paid to gather information. Tips about government regulatory decisions can be as good as gold to investors who can act before the information is public knowledge. But what if the company had the ultimate lobbyists: the president’s oldest son, brother and personal fundraiser?

The Birth of Solamere

Shortly after his father conceded the Republican nomination to John McCain in 2008, Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick went to dinner at a San Diego resort with John R. Miller, the CEO of National Beef Packing Company. The pair had a proposition for Miller: that he should invest in their new business venture.

Miller, who has served as a top fundraiser in both of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns, signed on and even became an operating partner at Solamere. The scene, recounted earlier this year by The New York Times, is one of the precious few details made public about Solamere’s investment portfolio and client list, both of which are kept secret.

What is known has been drawn largely from a trail of documents filed by the investment group. Records indicate the firm was incorporated at the same Boston office where Romney’s campaign headquarters had been located, and later shared an office address with Romney’s PAC.

Zwick first worked for Romney during the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. A student at Brigham Young University at the time, he has been at Romney’s side ever since, serving on his campaigns, working as an aide and leading his fundraising efforts since 2007. He has been referred to as Romney’s “sixth son.” And by all accounts, he’s one of the most trusted advisers in Romney’s circle. “When you’re talking to him, you know he’s got the ear of the candidate,” one Romney donor remarked to the press.

Two weeks after Romney’s concession speech in February 2008, Solamere Capital registered with the State of Massachusetts. Zwick and Tagg joined with Eric Scheuermann, a former Jupiter Partners executive, as the three managing partners of the firm.

Scheuermann was the only one with prior experience in private equity; Zwick had none, and Tagg’s previous experience ranged from working at the Monitor Group, an international consulting firm, to sports marketing jobs with Reebok and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

However, success for the firm seemed preordained. A press release the following year hinted at the type of assistance Solamere was enjoying from the Romney network. It announced that Lee Scott, the former Walmart CEO, was joining the firm as an operating partner. Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s longtime press aide, was listed as the contact name on the release. The former Walmart chief’s entry came after G. Scott Romney, Mitt’s brother, signed up as an adviser with the firm. So did Matt Blunt, the former Republican governor of Missouri.

Solamere surpassed its $200 million fundraising goal with help from an elite set of “high net worth” individuals, many of whom are close Romney allies. Meg Whitman, the former eBay executive, current Hewlett-Packard CEO and Republican gubernatorial nominee in California two years ago, invested with Solamere (and her son scored a job at the firm). Two Romney donors, L. Scott Frantz, an investor and Connecticut state senator, and Mark Chapin Johnson, the CEO of a medical supply company, were also among the sixty-four investors to entrust Solamere with their money.

As a managing partner of Solamere, Tagg stands to make millions of dollars. The three managing partners will receive $16.8 million in management fees over the first six years, as well as “performance-based incentive” pay, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Little is known about the exact investment decisions at the firm. A tax return filed by Mitt and Ann Romney, made public in September, showed that Solamere has used an array of Cayman Islands entities to reduce its investors’ tax liability on its income. Rebecca Wilkins, a tax expert with Citizens for Tax Justice, says that Solamere likely uses “blocker corporations” to help its tax-exempt investors avoid paying the unrelated business income tax.

It seems that Tagg has taken after his father, whose former firm Bain Capital also uses these offshore structures. Most of the offshore entities do not have to file a tax return in the US or anywhere else in the world, making them an ideal shelter for Solamere’s investors, says Wilkins. “To me, the most egregious part of this is that they’re facilitating tax evasion.”

A complaint filed in August with the US Office of Government Ethics argues that Mitt Romney’s investment portfolio violates the Ethics in Government Act because so much of his money rests in opaque funds, like private equity firms and limited partnerships. The law states that presidential officeholders must disclose their investments and their investments’ underlying assets worth more than $1,000. The law, however, carries an exemption for qualified blind trusts.

In June, the Romney campaign announced that if he’s elected, the candidate would move his assets into a federally qualified blind trust, and would also likely sell off any assets that “are not fully compliant with federal disclosure and other rules applicable to the office of the presidency.” But if Romney wins, there’s almost no chance that the underlying assets of his son’s firm, Solamere, will be revealed. Solamere could have assets involved in healthcare, energy, telecommunications or any number of other industries, but the public will be left in the dark.

According to Republicans they're all risk takers that build stuff. Pull back the curtain and they're just mostly lazy pigs feeding at the trough.

How The Media Used Biden's Smile To Deflect From Ryan's Dishonesty

At The Vice Presidential Debate: Ryan Told 24 Myths In 40 Minutes. Ryan arrived thinking that it was not a debate, but a race to see how many falsehoods and bizarro conservative talking points he could spew. Ryan should not be vice president or a congressman or allowed anywhere near government. He is barely qualified to walk a dog much less govern this great country.

Can Magic Solve Real Problems, Mitt Romney Seems to Think So

Can Magic Solve Real Problems, Mitt Romney Seems to Think So

At last week’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.

He punched and parried, feigning the great Muhammad Ali.

Any likeness between the two is, however, mere illusion. America has seen victory by Muhammad Ali. America worked through disputes with Muhammad Ali. Now America admires Muhammad Ali. And Mitt Romney is no champion. Instead, Romney's a magic man. He employs sleight of hand. He uses smoke and mirrors to confuse and obscure. Unlike President Obama, Mitt doesn't do math. He performs tricks, sorta like Muhammad Ali said in his rhyme – Now you see severely conservative Romney, now you don’t. The GOP nominee asks Americans to engage in magical thinking – to believe his hocus-pocus is not just a stage show but will actually painlessly solve problems.

Last week, Romney promoted his magic show during the debate. He promised his performance as president would be fabulous, stupendous, unprecedented! He bragged [2]:

    “My plan is not like anything that’s been tried before.”

Specifically, he was talking about his tax plan. Romney has pledged to reinstate the Bush tax cuts [3] should they expire at year’s end as scheduled, then further slash income taxes by 20 percent for everyone [4]. Also, Romney has vowed to eliminate and cut other federal taxes [3], including the estate tax.

Here’s the part where Romney promises to accomplish something never done before: he says he’ll slash and burn all these taxes but not add a dime to the deficit or to the tax burden of the middle class. When Ronald Reagan made a similar promise, George Bush I called it voodoo economics. George Bush II tried this magic trick and failed. Bush gave everyone, particularly the rich, tax breaks. Then the federal deficit skyrocketed.  To quote a bumbling former Republican presidential candidate, “Whoops.”

Romney says that won’t happen when he performs as president. He’s too good. The illusionist swore to the nation Wednesday night [2]:

    “My, my number one principal is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that: no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”

He hasn’t specified how he’d accomplish that because, as you know, magic tricks are proprietary secrets. He’s offered a couple of enticing tidbits, however.

One is that he’d close tax loopholes and deductions to recoup income lost because of all those tax cuts. But he won’t say which ones [5] because, again, those proprietary magic secrets.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) analyzed Romney’s proposal and concluded it didn’t add up – even when they gave him lots of breaks because his plan is clandestine. To get back $1 from closed loopholes for every $1 in tax cuts, the TPC determined that Romney would have to eliminate breaks favored by the middle class, [6] such the mortgage deduction. And that means Romney’s plan would cost middle class families an additional $2,000 a year on average [7], the TPC said.

Still, Romney assured the American people last week [2]:

    “I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families. I will lower taxes on middle-income families.”

Abracadabra!

Romney insists his bag of tricks contains one that will enable him to defy the math of the TPC economists, who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations [8]. One way would be to do what Bush did, just cut taxes and increase the deficit. Romney contends that’s not in his repertoire: [2]

     “I won't put in place a tax cut that adds to the deficit. That's part one. So there's no economist can say Mitt Romney's tax plan adds $5 trillion if I say I will not add to the deficit with my tax plan.”

Nobody can say it if Mitt Romney says they can’t! He dismisses pesky economic experts with a wave of his magic wand.

Just as he’d heal the budget, Romney would patch up the nation’s health care system -- with pixie dust.

First, he says he’d repeal Obamacare on day one [9]. Second, he told debate listeners: [2]

    “What I support is no change for current retirees or near-retirees to Medicare.”

Logically, or mathematically, or realistically, that won’t work. As of August, 5.4 million seniors had saved $4.1 billion [10] on prescription drugs, about $768 each, because Obamacare closes the Medicare prescription plan donut hole. And, under Obamacare, this year more than 18 million Medicare recipients [10] received at least one preventive service for free. Killing Obamacare would mean seniors would have to pay those costs once again from their own limited funds. This would be a costly change to Medicare for current retirees and near-retirees.

Also, Obamacare extended the life of Medicare by eight years. [11] It did so by reducing payments to medical facilities by $716 billion over a decade, reductions accepted by the providers when the law was negotiated. [12] Romney says he will eliminate the savings to Medicare and give those payments to the medical facilities. [2] That, logically, would snuff out the life of Medicare eight years earlier, which would be a tragic change to Medicare for current retirees and near-retirees.

But, you know, presto-chango, Romney says it ain’t so.

Many aspects of Obamacare are beloved by those who have benefitted, including extending coverage for young adults on their parents’ plans, eliminating coverage caps and instituting rebates when insurers charge too much. But perhaps the most important Obamacare protection was the specification that insurers can’t deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Repealing Obamacare would eliminate that benefit. Romney’s response at the debate: [2]


    “In fact, I do have a plan that deals with people with pre-existing conditions.”

Romney’s plan could exclude millions, however, since it guarantees insurance only if the person with a pre-existing condition has maintained coverage without a lapse longer than three months [13].

But, no worries. In Romney’s magical world, if we all just clap loudly enough, Tinker Bell won’t die!

Like any good magician, Romney keeps the details of his plans for America hidden up his sleeve. Taking a cue from that Muhammad Ali rhyme, he believes:

Your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see.

If the average American's accountant, banker or tax prep helper said the made the kind f crazy statements that Romney makes, most reality based Americans would run to the door. Yet  - who knows why - he has a nice haircut and wears a white shirt and has the nerve to claim he loves America and has values, some of those same common sense Americans are willing to vote for him. Like P.T. Barnum once said, there is a sucker born every minute.

Which way is Romney's foriegn policy wind sock blowing today, Romney Endorses Middle East Peace Process He Mocked


Even neon-confederate traitors like Republican alcoholic, wuss wearing camos and nut job Ted Nugent get equal time. being wacko has become cool - Ted Nugent: Discovery Channel Special Will Advance My View In "Culture War". Ted is a prime example of wing-nut welafre. He has no job skills so the conservative noise machine pays him to teach as many Americans as possible how to be a traitor.

Sen. Scott Brown Says He Would Stalk Pussycat Dolls 

People wonder why government does not work. Scott Brown is the poster boy for being a puppet for special interests. He makes it his job to make sure the government is by and for the Koch brothers, not by and for the people. But hey he runs around in a truck pretending to be a an average citizen. People should vote for Brown if they want to gut Medicare, widens the wage disparity gap, make the too big to fail banks even less accountable and give yet more tax cuts to billionaires.

William Jacobson of Cornell Commits Egregious Ethical Lapse in Smear Against Elizabeth Warren

William Jacobson of Cornell Commits Egregious Ethical Lapse in Smear Against Elizabeth Warren

At Legal In.sur.rec.tion, Professor Jacobson contends that Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Senate candidate, liberal firebrand, and Harvard law professor, has  engaged or appears to have engaged in the unauthorized practice of law in the state of Massachusetts.  In support, Professor Jacobson points to numerous briefs either filed by Ms. Warren or with her listed as being “of counsel” in various federal courts around the country in which her office address is listed as being in Massachusetts.  As Ms. Warren is not, and does not appear to have ever been, licensed to practice law in Massachusetts, but instead appears to have been licensed only in New Jersey and/or Texas at all pertinent times, Professor Jacobson argues that Ms. Warren’s actions constituted the unauthorized practice of law in violation of Massachusetts law.

If Professor Jacobson’s analysis is correct, this is an extraordinarily serious charge for which Professor Warren should be held accountable both at the ballot box and before the appropriate ethics panel.  However, and with all due respect to Professor Jacobson, none of the facts alleged would constitute the unauthorized practice of law nor any other violation of relevant ethics rules.

In making his arguments, Professor Jacobson makes a fatal error by assuming that merely preparing legal briefs in (seemingly non-Massachusetts) federal cases or providing advice on federal law while located in Massachusetts and maintaining a primary office in Massachusetts constitutes the “practice of law in Massachusetts.”    Although he cites several cases for this proposition, these cases do not go nearly as far as Professor Jacobson assumes, as they each involve cases wholly within the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts courts, specifically Massachusetts real estate transactions and Massachusetts probate matters.

He further errs in deeming “on point” a 1976 case in which the Massachusetts state bar issued an ethics opinion prohibiting a law firm from listing a “Boston Office” address on its letterhead where the firm lacked any Massachusetts-admitted attorneys but instead sought to claim that a Massachusetts firm with which it had a relationship falling short of an “associate” or “partnership” relationship constituted its “Boston Office.”   This case, however, is not “on point,” as it is not an unauthorized practice of law case but is instead a misleading communications case in which the firm was prohibited from “holding itself out to the public” as having a Massachusetts office.  Jacobson incorrectly assumes that merely listing an office location in a court filing, rather than a communication “to the public” constitutes “holding oneself out to the public” as being licensed in the jurisdiction in which one’s office is located.

But most importantly, Professor Jacobson ignores Massachusetts Rule of Professional Conduct 5.5(d), which states that:

    “A lawyer admitted in another United States jurisdiction, and not disbarred or suspended from practice in any jurisdiction, may provide legal services in this jurisdiction that…are services that the lawyer is authorized to provide by federal law or other law of this jurisdiction.”

The Official Comments to Rule 5.5(d) further elaborate to make explicit that 5.5(d) permits such an attorney to have even a “systematic and continuous presence in [Massachusetts] for the practice of law as well as provide legal services on a temporary basis.”

As the cases to which Professor Jacobson has drawn our attention are entirely cases from the federal courts, and indeed appear to be cases lying even outside the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts federal courts, and as there seems to be no allegation that Professor Warren was unauthorized to appear in those cases, the Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct appear to explicitly exempt Professor Warren’s actions in those cases from the prohibitions on the unauthorized practice of law.

Although it is true that Rule 5.5(d) does “not authorize communications advertising legal services to prospective clients in [Massachusetts] by lawyers who are admitted to practice in other jurisdictions,” merely listing the location of one’s office in an official court filing in which one is properly authorized to appear cannot possibly be construed as a “communication advertising legal services.”   To hold otherwise would be to make Rule 5.5(d) meaningless since attorneys are typically required to list their office addresses in official court filings, and in fact I am aware of no authority that stands for the proposition that an official court filing may constitute an “advertisement for legal services” merely because it lists the attorney’s office address.

UPDATE 9/24 10:45 PM: Suggesting the same conclusion as my analysis here, please see this article from Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, which includes a quote from the General Counsel for the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers that also suggests there is no UPL issue here, albeit for reasons that do not even require going as far in the analysis as I have.

Jacobson seems to become both a semi-stalker of Warren and attack dog for the poor defenseless Scott Brown. In doing  so with such zeal that he has maliciously disregarded the truth, he may be guilty of libel - knowingly making false statements that smear someone character in a way that damages their reputation. Since Jacobson is in New York it might be incumbent on the New York Bar Association to open an inquiry into Jacobson's sleazy and unethical behavior. Cornell University should also consider taking appropriate action against Jacobson for scurrilous behavior that also reflects on the university.

Conservative Group Claims Obama Has ‘Communist Beliefs,’ Compares His Policies To Hitler’s
This  conveniently ignores the fact that real life Nazis are part of the Republican Party

Fox Wins Straw-Man Argument Against Taxing Millionaires At 100 Percent. Who does a wuss pick a fight with, a straw-man. That is why Republicans set up arguments that were never made and show everyone how right they were. Its the only way they can win. If they had to be truthful, ethical and argue with facts, they would lose. Very sad commentary on the integrity of the right-wing conservative movement.

Is John Hinderaker America's Sleaziest and Most Dishonest Republican Blogger

Is John Hinderaker America's Sleaziest and Most Dishonest Republican Blogger. JH churns out a litany of disinformation for the cause of social-Darwinism, turning back the clock of social and economic progress, bizarre takes on reality that are along the lines of an acid tripping paranoid on former Time Magazine blog of the year. He writes in a post fancifully called Is Barack Obama America’s Most Dishonest Politician?

A lot of politicians are dishonest, but Barack Obama may be in a league by himself. He appeared on the David Letterman show last night, and Letterman asked him about the national debt (somewhat surprisingly). Obama’s answer was a masterpiece of prevarication. He described how the debt originated, and claimed, falsely, that he inherited a $1 trillion deficit. In fact, this country had never run a deficit anywhere near $1 trillion until FY 2009, the first year of the Obama administration.

Call me a dreamer, but I tend to think when a blogger regulatory dispenses political analysis they would have a grasp of basic facts. Fiscal year 2009 was the Bush budget and the deficit that year - a legacy of the Bush years was $1.2 trillion according to the Congressional Budget Office. One realizes that John's audience is composed of zombies who eat whatever putrid lies Johnny boy feds them, but what if, you know, someone who is not brain dead or high on the konservative kool-aid checks his facts and his childish exaggerations. One assumes he has no concept of leaving a legacy of honor and integrity. These virtues mere excess baggage in the anti-American cause of radical conservatism.(insert name of almost any Republican pundit here)...Falsely Claims Obama "Created A Gigantic Deficit"

In Fact, Experts Attribute Deficit To Bush-Era Tax Cuts, Wars, Economic Downturn

CBO Projected $1.2T Deficit In January 2009 Based On Spending Bush Authorized; Actual Deficit Was $1.4T. In a January 7, 2009, report, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected, based on spending authorized under the Bush administration, that the federal deficit in FY2009 would total $1.2 trillion. According to the CBO, the actual federal deficit for FY2009, which began during the Bush's last year in office, was $1.4 trillion. [CBO, January 2009 and January 2010]

CAP: "Single Most Important [Cause Of The Deficit] Is The Legacy Of President George W. Bush's Legislative Agenda." In an August 2009 analysis, the Center for American Progress (CAP) concluded that about two-thirds of the then-projected budget deterioration for 2009 and 2010 could be attributed to either Bush's policies or the economic downturn:

Deficit Chart - at top.

The report explained:

    As for the deficit's cause, the single most important factor is the legacy of President George W. Bush's legislative agenda. Overall, changes in federal law during the Bush administration are responsible for 40 percent of the short-term fiscal problem. For example, we estimate that the tax cuts passed during the Bush presidency are reducing government revenue collections by $231 billion in 2009. Also, because of the additions to the federal debt due to Bush administration policies, the government will be paying $218 billion more in interest payments in 2009.

    Had President Bush not cut taxes while simultaneously prosecuting two foreign wars and adopting other programs without paying for them, the current deficit would be only 4.7 percent of gross domestic product this year, instead of the eye-catching 11.2 percent--despite the weak economy and the costly efforts taken to restore it. In 2010, the deficit would be 3.2 percent instead of 9.6 percent.

    The weak economy also plays a major role in the deficit picture. The failure of Bush economic policies--fiscal irresponsibility, regulatory indifference, fueling of an asset and credit bubble, a failure to focus on jobs and incomes, and inaction as the economy started slipping--contributed mightily to the nation's current economic situation. When the economy contracts, tax revenues decline and outlays increase for programs designed to keep people from falling deep into poverty (with the tax impact much larger than the spending impact). All told, the weak economy is responsible for 20 percent of the fiscal problems we face in 2009 and 2010.

    President Obama's policies have also contributed to the federal deficit--but only 16 percent of the projected budget deterioration for 2009 and 2010 are attributable to those policies. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, designed to help bring the economy out of the recession is, by far, the largest single additional public spending under this administration. [CAP, 8/25/09]

CBPP: "[V]irtually The Entire Deficit Over The Next Ten Years" Due To Bush Policies, Economic Downturn." The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) published an analysis of federal deficits in December 2009, which was most recently updated on June 28, 2010, titled, "Critics Still Wrong on What's Driving Deficits in Coming Years: Economic Downturn, Financial Rescues, and Bush-Era Policies Drive the Numbers." The report noted:

    Some critics continue to assert that President George W. Bush's policies bear little responsibility for the deficits the nation faces over the coming decade -- that, instead, the new policies of President Barack Obama and the 111th Congress are to blame. Most recently, a Heritage Foundation paper downplayed the role of Bush-era policies (for more on that paper, see p. 4). Nevertheless, the fact remains: Together with the economic downturn, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years.

The report also graphed the effects of Bush's policies and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the deficit. From the report:


[CBPP, updated 6/28/10, emphasis in original]

Harvard Business Review Group Director: "[T]he Giant Deficit Is Mainly The Result Of The Collapse In Tax Receipts Brought On By The Recession." In an October 2010 post on his Reuters blog, Justin Fox, editorial director of the Harvard Business Review Group, analyzed the deficit and concluded that it was "mainly the result of the collapse in tax receipts brought on by the recession":

    The Treasury Department reported on Oct. 15 that the deficit in fiscal 2010, which ended Sept. 30, was $1.294 trillion. That's less than FY 2009's $1.416 trillion, but it's still really really big. Why is it so big, though? Is it because of all that stimulus and bailout spending? Or is something else going on?

    To find out, I created a fantasy world. I figured out how fast federal spending and revenue grew over the last business cycle, from 2000 through 2007, and calculated where we'd be today if those growth rates had continued through 2010. I was originally motivated to do this for a commentary that's supposed to air tomorrow night on Nightly Business Report. But I'm thinking there's not a huge overlap between Felix Salmon readers and Nightly Business Report viewers, so I'll go ahead and share what I learned.

    In my no-financial-crisis, no-bailout, no-recession, no-stimulus scenario, spending kept growing at 6.22% a year, and revenue kept growing at 3.45%. You can see from the difference between the two numbers that this was an unsustainable path. But it clearly could have been sustained for a few more years.

    Where would it have left us in fiscal 2010? With $2.843 trillion in federal revenue and $3.270 trillion in spending, leaving a deficit of $427 billion. The actual revenue and spending totals for 2010 were $2.162 trillion and $3.456 trillion. So spending was $186 billion higher than if we'd stuck to the trend, and revenue was $681 billion lower. In other words, the giant deficit is mainly the result of the collapse in tax receipts brought on by the recession, not the increase in spending. Nice to know, huh? [Justin Fox,blogs.reuters.com, 10/25/10, emphasis added]

Sleaze Bag Liar Mitt Romney Is At It Again, Deceptively Edits Video To Put Words In President's Mouth About Bailing Out Every Industry

Sleaze Bag Liar Mitt Romney Is At It Again, Deceptively Edits Video To Put Words In President's Mouth About Bailing Out Every Industry

The Romney campaign, which has apparently exhausted the selectively edited clip of President Obama saying “you didn’t build that,” has seized on a new soundbite to distort. The campaign sent an email blast Thursday afternoon featuring a video of an Obama rally in Colorado from earlier that day and falsely claimed that he wants the government to bail out every industry. “I Want To Do The Same Thing With Manufacturing Jobs … In Every Industry,” it read.

The distortion comes from Obama’s speech in Pueblo, Colorado, touting his administration’s successful revival of the auto industry, which came back from the brink of collapse to add thousands of jobs and is now poised for its strongest sales since 2007. Obama said he wanted to help other flagging industries experience the same kind of success. Conservatives, however, are using the clip to make it sound like Obama wants to bail out every industry.

Here is what he actually said:

    OBAMA: I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back and GM is number one again. So now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs not just in the auto industry, but in every industry. I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China. I want them taking root in places like Pueblo.

Just a few months ago, Romney tried to “take a lot of credit” for the auto industry’s rescue. Now, his campaign is warning against boosting similar prosperity in other industries that have suffered in the economic downturn.

The Drudge Report also featured a huge front and center link to a disparaging Politico story, which has since been “updated to reflect the president’s intent to express his support for manufacturing success. An earlier version was unclear about his intent.”

Deliberate misinterpretation is now a standard tactic from the Romney campaign playbook, starting with Romney’s very first ad, which ran a clip of Barack Obama saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” Obama was in fact using the quote to criticize his 2008 presidential opponent, John McCain on his refusal to discuss the economic crisis.

For those who have not heard of Matt Drudge, he is an Anti-American proto-fascist who acts as a propaganda outlet for the disinformation put out by conservatives. 

This election cycle has seen quite a bit of deceptively edited video by people who claim they have values and claim to be patriots. Romney video deceptively edits Obama speech to make it sound anti-business. So much for having good values and real patriotism. Would a patriot act like the propaganda minister for a right-wing regime.

New Groundwater Study Exposes Deep Folly of Fracking

Republicans don't hate women, they just want to treat them like plantation slaves, Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri: Ban The Morning-After Pill

Mitt Romney's Contempt For Morality. Romney's Three Biggest Lies, Just This Week

Mitt Romney's Contempt For Morality. Romney's Three Biggest Lies, Just This Week

“I Have Paid Taxes. Every Year. A Lot of Taxes.”

Romney has been dogged by questions about his tax returns, exacerbated by his steadfast refusal to release more than one year’s worth of taxes. (He’s promised to release one more year in the fall.) Romney faced added scrutiny over the last week, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said that a reliable source told him that Romney paid no federal income tax for several years, and that is the reason he won’t release his returns.

Romney and Republicans have demanded that Reid retract the statement, but so far, Romney has been unwilling to release the tax returns that could prove Reid a liar. Instead, Romney chose to go before his supporters and declare that he has too paid taxes — trust him.

“Let me also say categorically: I have paid taxes every year. A lot of taxes. A lot of taxes,” Romney said Friday. That is, of course, almost certainly true. Romney likely paid sales taxes and property taxes and gasoline taxes, just like everyone else. Of course, Romney left a very important word out of his defense: “income.”

Romney was careful not to claim he paid income taxes every year, which are the taxes Reid was talking about. Does that mean Reid is right? Well, without seeing Romney’s tax returns, it’s impossible to say.

One other part of Romney’s statement is a lie: the part where he says he paid “a lot” of taxes. Romney only paid 14 percent of his income in taxes in 2010. That’s because most of his income was investment income, which is taxed at a far lower rate than job income is. Certainly, the dollar amount Romney paid was higher than your average Joe, but the percentage Romney paid is far from burdensome.

...Obama is Going to “Gut Welfare Reform”

For those of you who are either too young to remember the late 20th century (or for those of you who’ve chosen to block it out), welfare reform was once a great Republican bugaboo, the “immigrants are stealing your jobs” of the Reagan era. Ronald Reagan himself once decried the “strapping young bucks” who used welfare to buy “t-bone steaks,” and if that sounds incredibly racist, you’re right.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton helped Republicans achieve their goal of slashing — er, reforming — welfare. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act made it harder to get public assistance, especially for women who were seeking post-secondary degrees. While the act did have the effect of kicking a lot of people off of assistance, the initial reports of its significant benefits in reducing poverty were primarily due to the roaring economy of the tech boom.

Why do I mention this? Because Mitt Romney’s base is made up of people who were well into adulthood when the PRWOA was signed into law, people who remember welfare reform as a salient issue. Romney is attempting to appeal to those voters with his second-biggest lie of the week, the lie that President Obama wants to “gut welfare reform.”

Romney’s lie hinges on waivers that the Obama administration is issuing to states that want flexibility to adjust work requirements in the face of the current recession. As the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein wrote last month, “The actual language is rather strict and rules out a number of potential waiver applications.” Job requirements are not going to be eliminated; rather, states will be able to use increased flexibility to help move recipients toward long-term employment.

Given the Republican love of giving the states more power, this may seem like something they would support the president in doing, or at the very least, have trouble arguing against. Romney makes the argument simpler by lying; in the ad, the campaign says, “Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check and welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare.”

Incidentally, if you’re wondering where Barack Obama could have gotten the idea of giving states more flexibility on welfare requirements, it may have come from this 2005 letter from the Republican Governor’s Association requesting exactly that from then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. The second signature on the request was then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who was for Obama’s welfare rule changes before he was against them.

....“I’ll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them.”

Mitt’s biggest lie of the past week is a doozy. Romney claimed that Barack Obama was trying to limit the voting rights of members of the military in Ohio, because of a lawsuit filed in the state over Ohio’s decision to eliminate early voting except for members of the military. Was Obama trying to “undermine” the rights of soldiers? In a word, no. Instead, Obama and the Democratic Party sought to give everyone in Ohio the same rights as Ohio wanted to give soldiers — in other words, to give everyone the opportunity to vote early.

Nevertheless, Romney took to Facebook to play more-patriotic-than-thou, lambasting Obama for “claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period,” something Romney said was an “outrage.” Of course, Obama wants to keep those early voting privileges in place for the military, and extend it for everyone — including veterans. Romney would refuse to give veterans early voting privileges. Who’s undermining voting rights now?

Indeed, Romney’s bald-face lie drew a rejoinder from John Soltz of VoteVets.org, who said, “Obviously with the narrative the Romney campaign is pushing, they probably don’t have a lot of people around them who have actually served. We also agree, like the president does, that someone who served in World World II in the Battle of the Bulge or someone who lost their legs in Vietnam has just as much of a right to vote as today’s veteran.”

With three whoppers in the last week, it’s tempting to ask why Romney thinks he can lie with impunity, but of course, the answer is simple: the media won’t call him on it. Given over to fake even-handedness, the media is stuck saying things like this:

The last president we had who was a serial lying sleaze bag sent off over 4,000 Americans to Iraq to die for a lie. He and his Congressional conservative partners in crime also tanked the economy. Romney has exactly the same arrogant attitude.

Anti-American Fox News and The America Hating Steve Doocy Hides Religious Accommodation For Reproductive Health Mandate 

Fox News' Steve Doocy falsely claimed that the Obama administration was forcing churches to provide contraception coverage to employees, ignoring an exemption that explicitly exempts religious institutions.

On Fox & Friends, Doocy reported on tensions between Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan and President Obama due to a Health and Human Services (HHS) rule mandating that all health insurance plans cover women's reproductive health. After religious leaders, including Dolan, protested the move, the Obama administration exempted churches and other religious groups from the mandate.

But Doocy not only ignored the religious accommodations made by the administration on the contraception mandate; he falsely claimed that the mandate still applied to the Catholic Church:

Don't ask me why Fox and Doocy hate America, religious freedom and women's reproductive rights, they just do. Perhaps Steve would be happier in Iran where they believe pretty much the same things Steve and his boss Rupert Murdoch do.

The Mystery Candidate For King of America, Mitt Romney

The Mystery Candidate For King of America, Mitt Romney

Presidential candidates try as best they can to control their public image. But by modern standards, Mitt Romney has taken his quest for secrecy to extraordinary lengths. Here's all there is to know about what we don't know about Romney.

His Old Emails

Reporters looking for emails and other records from Romney's tenure as Massachusetts governor are out of luck.

In the final months of Romney's four-year stint as governor, as the Boston Globe reported, 11 of his top staffers purchased the hard drives in their government-issued computers, preventing state archivists from accessing any of their emails. In its final days, the Romney administration also replaced computers and scrubbed state government servers of all the administration's emails. As the top attorney for Romney's replacement, Deval Patrick, put it: "The governor's office has found no e-mails from 2002-2006 in our possession."

The Romney administration did turn over to state archivists hundreds of boxes of records, including memos, emails, and other communications among state agencies and cabinet members. However, the boxes containing those records were hand-picked and given over voluntarily by Romney's staff. It stands to reason that any embarrassing or revealing information—say, internal planning or deliberations about Romney's universal health care legislation—did not make it into the Romney administration's record dump.

Pam Wilmot, the director of Common Cause Massachusetts, the Bay State affiliate of the good-government lobbying group, says no previous administration went to the same lengths as Romney's to keep its communications secret from reporters and the public. "In retrospect, there does seem to be a substantial difference between [Romney's] administration and other administrations on transparency," Wilmot says.

Offshore Accounts

Mitt Romney might not see anything wrong with putting his money into offshore investment holdings to avoid US taxes, but he hasn't been especially keen on letting the public know how much he's done it. According to a recent story by the Associated Press, Romney failed to include more than 20 investment holdings on his federal financial disclosure reports. Of those, at least seven were in foreign countries.

The only reason the public knows about these financial instruments now is that Romney, under duress, finally released his 2010 tax returns, which showed the existence of dozens of investments, many of which were never included on his state or federal disclosure forms. Among them was Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which is based in Bermuda, a notorious tax haven. Romney used Sankaty, which he owned, as his partnership stake in many Bain Capital deals in the late 1990s. Sankaty was involved in Bain's takeover of Domino's Pizza and also controlled 50,000 shares of Global-Tech Appliances, the Chinese appliance firm that profited handsomely from the outsourcing of American jobs.
Romney never listed his ownership of Sankaty on Massachusetts disclosure forms when he ran for governor. And then, in 2003, Romney transferred Sankaty to his wife's trust the day before he was sworn in as governor of Massachusetts. The transfer did not have to be made public, and it allowed him to keep the investment secret by describing it in disclosure forms as simply part of a blind trust that held "various investments and securities," according to AP.

Romney's 2010 tax returns show that Sankaty doesn't have any assets at the moment, but tax experts told AP that it could still be used for future tax benefits with his remaining Bain investments. But he has refused to answer any questions about why he still has the Bermuda company, or what he plans to do with it.


Bundlers

The Obama campaign returned $200,000 dollars in February after the New York Times discovered it had been raised by two men whose brother was angling for a presidential pardon that would exonerate him for fraud and drug-related criminal charges. Despite the president's pledge not to take money from lobbyists, several of his big bundlers are connected to special interests in Washington. Former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine was one of Obama's biggest bundlers, but he has since come under investigation and the campaign has returned the money.

The reason we know all this is that Obama, like every other recent presidential candidate, discloses his bundlers—those well connected elites with the social ties to raise huge sums of money for their preferred candidate while getting around regulatory limits on how much one person can give. Romney runs ads attacking Obama as a "crony capitalist" for supposedly rewarding his most generous campaign contributors, but he will not say who his own bundlers are. Romney is not required by law to do so—but previous candidates have.


"Since bundling became one of the prominent means of raising money, the presidential candidates of the two main parties have released that list," says Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, a group that supports campaign finance reform. "It's hard to assess who are the real kingpins in [the Romney] campaign."

Romney's stance makes it hard for voters to figure out what his donors might want in exchange for their cash, argues Kathy Kiely, managing editor of the Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group, which reports on transparency and campaign finance issues. "If someone's running for public office, the voters have an interest in knowing who's writing the big checks and how much they're writing," Kiely says. "If nobody knows that this person, or this company, has written you a seven-figure check, it makes it a lot easier to do them a favor."

Mitt's Correspondence Gap

George Romney, Mitt's father, relished the letters he exchanged with his four children. The elder Romney's archives—nearly 450 boxes of letters, clippings, microfilm, and more held at the University of Michigan—include a trove of letters between him and his children who were at college, on their Mormon missions abroad, or who had moved out of the family home.

Romney wanted details on everything: from his children's academic progress to their living arrangements and even their love lives. In a November 3, 1959, letter, Romney writes to Scott, then an undergraduate at Stanford University, that he was "always interested in the girls you are dating." George Romney continues, "Have you looked up that little blonde girl over at church—the Driggs girl?…Are there any good-looking Mormon girls going to Stanford?" In another letter to Scott, Romney chides his son for failing to maintain regular correspondence, a source of annoyance for Scott's mother, Lenore.

Yet all but absent from the Romney archives is correspondence with Mitt. The lone letter of note is one from Mitt to his parents while Mitt worked in France as a missionary. The letter's cheery tone belies the fact that Mitt had nearly died in a car crash one month earlier near the village of Beaulac. The wife of Duane Anderson, president of the Mormon mission in France and a mentor for Mitt, died from injuries sustained in the crash.

In the letter to his parents, Mitt writes that his missionary work "is going really well." He ends by urging his parents to share "his letters" with his siblings, suggesting that other letters exist. But those other letters aren't included in the Romney archives.

George Romney's archives span the years 1939 to 1973. It's unclear why so few of Mitt Romney's letters made it into his father's archive, or who possesses the letters today. What is apparent is that, in the sole public archive that his beloved father wanted the public to remember him by, Mitt is glaringly absent.

Tax Returns

Romney has released only one year of tax returns, and has said last year's return, once finalized, is as much as he's willing to disclose. He fears that the information in previous years' returns could be used against him by Democrats: "The opposition research of the Obama campaign is looking for anything they can use to distract from the failure of the president to reignite our economy," he told National Review. "I'm simply not enthusiastic about giving them hundreds or thousands of more pages to pick through, distort, and lie about."

Partisan attacks may be a risk of Romney releasing more tax returns—but his eschewing transparency raises questions about what the GOP candidate wants to hide. Previous presidential candidates have released multiple years of tax returns, either during the presidential race or prior runs for public office.

"If you don’t want people…to be suspicious, be open about it, and if you don’t want to be open about it, why are you running for public office?" Kiely says. "You've made a contract with the public: 'I'm asking you to trust me, so I should put my stuff out there.' So to the extent you're not doing that, I think it raises suspicions."

IRA Details

According to financial-disclosure firms he's filed, Romney's Individual Retirement Account—a tax-advantaged retirement plan—is worth at least $20.7 million and as much as $101.6 million. It grows tax-free. But it's unclear how Romney's IRA grew so large. The annual limit for contributions to an IRA is currently $17,000, which employers can match if they choose. The limit for personal and matching contributions combined was around $30,000 per year when Romney was at Bain, suggesting that the most he could have put into his IRA was around $450,000. But his IRA could be worth 200 times that. (Even if Romney released several years worth of tax returns, it may not explain why his IRA grew so large.)

Some financial and tax experts believe Romney may have used a complicated, highly technical tax dodge called a "blocker corporation" to get such a large amount of money into the IRA. Others have suggested that Romney put in some of his partnership shares in Bain Capital itself and valued them at zero because they represented future income—another obscure tax maneuver unavailable to most Americans. It's impossible to know for sure, because, as with so much else, Romney won't talk about it.

All of this sleazy behavior is fine with conservative Republican voters. Look back at the history of who conservatives vote into Office: Nixon- Watergate/self sabotaging peace talks with the North Vietnamese. Reagan - Iran-Contra ( using arms smuggling profits to make for hostage release), the HUD scandals, the second worst recession since 1929. They voted in known criminal Rick Scott as governor of Florida. They believed every lie Bush 43 told about Iraq even though there was plenty of information available that said he was greatly exaggerating and lying. Conservatism is the culture of moral corruption, so of course morally corrupt candidates don't bother conservative voters. It even seems that the sleazier their candidates are the more they like them. There is nothing remotely patriotic about that.

The Pravda Chanel or as some call it, Fox News is "Doubling Down" On Deceptively Edited Comments

Fox News accused President Obama of "doubling down" on comments they helped characterize as "insulting" to business owners, but in doing so, Fox itself doubled down on its campaign to strip Obama's statements out of context to further a political agenda.

Obama spoke at a campaign event and pointed out how benefits such as American infrastructure factor in the success of small businesses. Fox deceptively edited the president's remarks to accuse him of telling small business owners that if they have a business, "you didn't build that."

This morning, Fox returned to the scandal they helped to manufacture, reporting that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called Obama's comments "insulting" to business owners. Fox then turned its sights on another campaign event and accused President Obama of "doubling down." Here's the portion of the remarks that Fox chose to play as evidence:

    OBAMA: We did not build this country on our own. We built it together. And if Mr. Romney doesn't understand that, then he doesn't understand what it takes to grow this economy in the 21st century for everybody.

But the only way these comments can be portrayed as doubling down on an insult to business owners is to completely strip them of context. In the portion of Obama's speech that Fox chose to ignore, it's clear that he  explicitly touted the "drive and ingenuity of Americans who start businesses" as crucial to "what makes us such a robust dynamic economy." Here is what Obama actually said:

    OBAMA: As I said, I believe with all my heart that it is the drive and ingenuity of Americans who start businesses that lead to their success.  And by the way, that's why I've cut taxes on small businesses 18 times since I've been President.  (Applause.)  I believe the ability for somebody who is willing to work hard, and sweat and sacrifice to turn their idea into a profitable business, that's what makes us such a robust, dynamic economy.  We prize that.

    But I also believe that if you talk to any business owner -- small or large -- they'll tell you what also helps them succeed alongside their hard work, their initiative, their great ideas, is the ability to hire workers with the right skills and the right education.

    What helps them succeed is the ability to ship and sell their products on new roads and bridges and ports and wireless networks.  What helps them succeed is having access to cutting-edge technology, which like the Internet often starts with publicly funded research and development.  (Applause.)  And what helps them succeed is a strong and growing middle class, so they've got a broader base of customers.

Why is every Republican with access to the media distorting President Obama's reality based comments? Simple, conservative cannot win elected office without lying. That should tell every American something about the deep moral corruption and anti-Americanism of the Republican movement.

Jewish Voters, Republican Chutzpah

Don't Have a Job? Say Thanks to Conservative Republicans

Don't Have a Job? Say Thanks to Conservative Republicans

New numbers released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the economy added a mere 80,000 jobs in June. That’s down from an average of 150,000 jobs a month for the first part of the year, and far too little to keep up with population growth.

Republican intransigence on economic policy has been a key contributor to the sluggish recovery. As early as 2009, Republican fear-mongering over spending and their readiness to filibuster in the Senate helped convince the White House economic team that an $800 billion stimulus was the most they could hope to get through Congress. Reporting has since revealed that the team thought the country actually needed a stimulus on the order of $1.2 to $1.8 trillion. The economy’s path over the next three years proved them right. Here are the top five ways the Republicans have sabotaged the economic recovery since:

    1. Filibustering the American Jobs Act. Last October, Senate Republicans killed a jobs bill proposed by President Obama that would have pumped $447 billion into the economy. Multiple economic analysts predicted the bill would add around two million jobs and hailed it as defense against a double-dip recession. The Congressional Budget Office also scored it as a net deficit reducer over ten years, and the American public supported the bill.

    2. Stonewalling monetary stimulus. The Federal Reserve can do enormous good for a depressed economy through more aggressive monetary stimulus, and by tolerating a temporarily higher level of inflation. But with everything from Ron Paul’s anti-inflationary crusade to Rick Perry threatening to lynch Chairman Ben Bernanke, Republicans have browbeaten the Fed into not going down this path. Most damagingly, the GOP repeatedly held up President Obama’s nominations to the Federal Reserve Board during the critical months of the recession, leaving the board without the institutional clout it needed to help the economy.

    3. Threatening a debt default. Even though the country didn’t actually hit its debt ceiling last summer, the Republican threat to default on the United States’ outstanding obligations was sufficient to spook financial markets and do real damage to the economy.

    4. Cutting discretionary spending in the debt ceiling deal. The deal the GOP extracted as the price for avoiding default imposed around $900 billion in cuts over ten years. It included $30.5 billion in discretionary cuts in 2012 alone, costing the country 0.3 percent in economic growth and 323,000 jobs, according to estimates from the Economic Policy Institute. Starting in 2013, the deal will trigger another $1.2 trillion in cuts over ten years.

    5. Cutting discretionary spending in the budget deal. While not as cataclysmic as the debt ceiling brinksmanship, Republicans also threatened a shutdown of the government in early 2011 if cuts were not made to that year’s budget. The deal they struck with the White House cut $38 billion from food stamps, health, education, law enforcement, and low-income programs among others, while sparing defense almost entirely.

There have also been a few near-misses, in which the GOP almost prevented help from coming to the economy. The Republicans in the House delayed a transportation bill that saved as many as 1.9 million jobs. House Committees run by the GOP have passed proposals aimed at cutting billions from food stamps, and the party has repeatedly threatened to kill extensions of unemployment insurance and cuts to the payroll tax.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, those policies — the payroll tax cut, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and discretionary spending for low-income Americans — have the highest multipliers, meaning more job boosting potential per dollar.

Since the tea baggers voted in a majority in the House of Representatives in 2010 and Republicans in the Senate - even though they are the minority - have used the filibuster or threats of one to kill any jobs bills, there is not much Obama can do. In a round about way Mitt Romney agrees. H/T to here for this video,
Gov. Romney on Poor Job Growth in Massachusetts: ‘To Suggest That Somehow the Day I Got Elected, Jobs Should Have Immediately Turned Around, Well, That Would Be Silly’

[When] Romney himself was running a government, in his case the state of Massachusetts, he was even more defensive about his lack of control of the employment picture than Obama is today. A new video unearthed by the liberal research group American Bridge shows Romney at a press conference in June 2006 admonishing reporters on disappointing jobs data. “You guys are bright enough to look at the numbers. I came in and the jobs had been just falling right off a cliff, I came in and they kept falling for 11 months,” he explains.

    “And if you are going to suggest to me that somehow the day I got elected, somehow jobs should have immediately turned around, well that would be silly. It takes awhile to get things turned around. We were in a recession, we were losing jobs every month,” he added.

USA Today's Uninformed Campaign To Shame The Poor - A USA Today editorial is downplaying poverty and food insecurity in America, and using Fox News talking points to justify a push to cut vital and effective anti-poverty programs.