Mitt Romney Campaign Muddles Response To Lilly Ledbetter Act Question Again 18OKT12

DISREGARD mitt robme romney's and lyin' paul ryan's positions on abortion, birth control, family planning, women's health and all their other lies and deceptions. Ignoring all that, why would any woman vote for them when they are against equal pay for equal work? They are opposed to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (lyin' paul ryan voted against it in the House), showing they have absolutely no respect for women at all. From HuffPost.....
WASHINGTON -- Thursday morning brought additional confusion over what Mitt Romney would have done had the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act come to his desk while he was president.
The Republican nominee has deftly avoided answering that specific question, choosing instead to say he wouldn't repeal the law, which makes it easier for women to sue over wage discrimination. Following Tuesday night's presidential debate, top adviser Ed Gillespie said Romney had opposed the bill while it was being debated, only to walk that statement back hours later.
"I was wrong when I said last night Governor Romney opposed the Lily Ledbetter act," Gillespie's statement read. "He never weighed in on it. As President, he would not seek to repeal it."
By Thursday, however, that position too seemed to have been reversed, with an anonymous Romney aide telling CBS News that he did, indeed, oppose the Lilly Ledbetter Act in 2009.
"Gov. Romney fully supports equal pay for equal work for women and for everyone and he would in no way want to repeal or change the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act," the adviser told CBSNews.com. When asked why Romney had opposed it in 2009, the adviser said that "every bill has certain aspects to it that people might find concerning but the equal pay for equal work part was of no concern."
The Huffington Post reached out to the Romney campaign for comment. An aide said that Gillespie's second statement -- the one saying Romney had had no position on the Lilly Ledbetter Act at the time -- was the operative statement.
"This is a blind quote," the aide said of the CBS story. "Ed addressed this issue on the record yesterday. That explains our position."
It's a bit baffling that the campaign's message is so muddled on this topic. Yes, conservatives opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Act when it was passed under the belief that it was a gift to trial lawyers. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Romney's running mate, is one of the lawmakers who voted against it. But Romney has moved away from conservative doctrine on a number of fronts in the past few weeks. And whereas on several occasions he had to contradict his previous positions to do so, the fact that he hadn't taken a stance on the Lilly Ledbetter Act gave him an opportunity to say he supported it from the get-go without being accused of flip-flopping.
Instead, he's opened himself to criticism that he's too timid to weigh in on women's issues.
"I don’t know why this is so complicated. Gov. Romney still won't say whether or not he supported a law to protect that right no matter how many times he is asked. This is not that hard," President Barack Obama said at a rally in Manchester, N.H., on Thursday.
"Would you have signed the Lilly Ledbetter equal pay law? No answer," former President Bill Clinton said at a Thursday rally in Ohio. "He can't even say whether he would sign a law that is already on the books ... what he wants to do is convince the moderate voters that he is a new man without explicitly disavowing a single solitary commitment he made in the two years he said he was severely conservative Mitt Romney."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/18/mitt-romney-lilly-ledbetter_n_1980527.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications

Why Biden Won 12OCT12

JOE BIDEN blew lyin' paul ryan out of the arena in the debate last night!!!! To all those whinny little bitch pundits I saw on Charlie Rose after the debate who could only complain about Joe's style more than about lyin ryan's lack of honesty and information need to get lives. Gwen Iffil swam against the tide as the lone person wanting to discuss policy and agendas of the candidates. Check this out from Robert Reich on HuffPost....
I thought Biden won last night's debate because he came off as genuine, passionate and brimming with conviction. Ryan, by contrast, seemed like a wooden marionette, a kid out of his depth relative to someone who not only knew the facts but lived them.
On taxes, Ryan couldn't come up with any details about what loopholes he and Romney would close, or how their magic arithmetic (giant tax cut for the wealthy plus $2 trillion more for the military than the joint chiefs of staff want) can possibly be paid for without socking it to the middle class.
By contrast, Biden made the case for average working people whose wages have barely risen in 30 years but who are bearing a higher total tax burden (payroll, sales, property, income) on a higher percent of their income than high rollers like Romney -- and why the well-off should do more.
On Medicare, Ryan couldn't explain why his plan wasn't a voucher program that "saved" money only by shifting the costs on to seniors who would end up holding the bag as medical costs rose. Biden effectively defended the president's plan to save Medicare by cutting excessive payments to providers.
Biden also pointed out that Ryan and his allies had tried to privatize Social Security. Score another one for Joe.
On abortion, Ryan had to admit he and Romney would work to prevent women from having the right to choose an abortion if they needed and wanted one. Biden made it clear his religious beliefs about when life began should not, in his view, force anyone who didn't share them to follow them.
I thought Biden's closing could have been tougher, drawing a sharper contrast between the Romney-Ryan "you're on your own" worldview, and the "we're in it all together" belief that has built America -- and which Obama and Biden represent.
But overall it was Biden's night. He not only trounced Ryan, but also, in the process, trounced Romney. Joe Biden is an average Joe solidly grounded in America's working middle class -- nothing pretentious or devious about him -- in contrast to the plutocrat who heads the Republican ticket, and the billionaires who are backing him.
ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage," now available in paperback. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-biden-won_b_1962939.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications 

Repeat After Me: Obama Cut the Deficit and Slowed Spending to Lowest Level in 50 Years 10OKT12

mitt robme romney, lyin' paul ryan and their host of repiglican and tea-bagger acolytes keep repeating lies about the Obama administration, government spending and the deficit. It is a constant drum beat in their presidential propaganda campaign, but the facts are the opposite of what they are telling the American people. From HuffPost.....
Illustrative of his contempt for the truth, Mitt Romney's campaign website continues to host the following statement: "Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history."
On Friday, we discovered yet another reason why this is a super-colossal lie.
With the end of fiscal year 2012, the Congressional Budget Office announced the 2012 federal budget deficit: $1.1 trillion. Taken purely at face value, this number is enormous. Yet every Democrat, and especially the Obama campaign, ought to be telling anyone who will listen: Not only has the president cut the deficit by $312 billion during his first term (so far), but he's cut the deficit by $200 billion in the past year alone. And the CBO projected that the 2013 Obama budget, if enacted as is, would shrink the deficit to $977 billion -- a four year total of nearly $500 billion in deficit reduction.
Okay, yeah, I get it. It's risky to mention the deficit, but not when you couch it in math and the facts.
As I've documented before, the CBO reported in January, 2009 that the federal budget deficit for that fiscal year, which began on October 1, 2008, was already $1.2 trillion. President Obama's additional '09 spending added another $200 billion to the deficit, bringing the total to $1.412 trillion. Unprecedented and huge, but given the enormity of the financial crisis and the depth of the recession, there weren't many other options on the table. Add two wars into the mix and there you go.
But since then, deficit spending has dropped precipitously. Why? Chiefly because President Obama signed the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act in February, 2010, which mandates that new spending be offset with spending cuts or new revenue. Yes, a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress passed this legislation. Guess how many congressional Republicans voted for the law. Zero. Not one. Perhaps during this week's debate, Vice President Biden could ask Rep. Paul Ryan who voted against the bill.
Consequently, the president is responsible for the lowest government spending growth in 60 years, according to the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch.

Once again, Mitt Romney's website still contains the words: "Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history." Pants on fire times a thousand.
Fact: the president's record is exactly the opposite of what Romney says. And how long ago was this statistic released by the Wall Street Journal and subsequently affirmed by fact checkers? Five months ago. On September 26, when asked about his record of mendacious claims, Mitt Romney told CNN's Jim Acosta, "We've been absolutely spot on. And any time there's been anything that's been amiss, we correct it or remove it." Oh yeah? Well, Mr. Romney, you missed a whopper.
Another whopper: during Romney's "winning" debate against the president last week, he claimed, "The president said he'd cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it." Another lie. Yes, the president said he'd cut the deficit in half -- but he absolutely did not double it. As I've outlined here, he's cut the deficit by 22 percent so far -- 35 percent by the end of 2013.
Furthermore, I can name two Democratic presidents who've cut the deficit through the duration of their presidencies: Clinton and Obama. And what about Republican presidents? Bush 43? He turned a $200 billion surplus into a $400 billion deficit by the end of his first term, and a $1.2 trillion deficit by the end of his second term. Bush 41? No. Reagan? No. Ford? No. Nixon? No. The last Republican president who cut the deficit was Eisenhower. By the way, I'm sick of hearing the farcical line about Congress "controlling the purse strings." Any six-year-old child who's watched a Schoolhouse Rock cartoon knows the president signs all legislation before it becomes law, including appropriations bills. The House can't magically spend money without a presidential signature. Besides, if the president is to be blamed for the size of the deficit -- and the Republicans have been merciless on the president in this area in spite of reality, and their own party's record -- it's only fair that he should get credit when the deficit is reduced.
Yet without objections, the Romney campaign and the Republicans continue to champion their status as "fiscal hawks" even though the facts prove that to correlate "fiscal responsibility" and "Republican Party" is absurd on its face. Even though Romney's plan for the deficit and the economy is as shifty, murky and ambiguous as he is, there appears to be nothing -- absolutely nothing -- about the Romney plan that's any different from every Republican presidential plan in recent history, but we're supposed to believe that Romney will cut the deficit anyway. In fact, as we all know by now, Romney is proposing $5 trillion in un-funded tax cuts, as well as massive increases in military spending, and, if Romney wins, you can bet the Republicans will jettison their deficit and debt hawkery into the next nearest memory hole to be forgotten until another Democrat enters the White House.
If the Obama campaign and the Democrats can talk about the deficit in these terms, it undercuts one of the leading Republican attacks and becomes a winning issue for the president. Plus it helps to cement the reality of Mitt Romney The Pathological Liar.
Cross-posted at The Daily Banter.
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Memo to Joe, Re: Debate 10OKT12

THIS is what we expect from VP Joe Biden, good advise from Robert Reich. Godspeed Joe!

TO: VPOTUS
FROM: Robert Reich
RE: Debate
Beware: Paul Ryan will appear affable. He's less polished and aggressive than Romney, even soft-spoken. And he acts as if he's saying reasonable things.
But under the surface he's a right-wing zealot. And nothing he says or believes is reasonable -- neither logical nor reflecting the values of the great majority of Americans.
Your job is to smoke Ryan out, exposing his fanaticism. The best way to do this is to force him to take responsibility for the regressive budget he created as chairman of the House Budget Committee.
Ryan won't be able to pull a Romney -- pretending he's a moderate -- because the Ryan budget is out there, with specific numbers.
It's an astounding document that Romney fully supports. And it fills in the details Romney has left out of his proposals. Mitt Romney is a robot who will say and do whatever he's programmed to do. Ryan is the robot's brain. The robot has no heart. It's your job to enable America to see this.
I suggest you hold up a copy of the Ryan budget in front of the cameras. You might even read selected passages.
Emphasize these points: Ryan's budget turns Medicare into vouchers. It includes the same $716 billion of savings Romney last week accused the President of cutting out of Medicare -- but instead of getting it from providers he gets it from the elderly.
It turns Medicaid over to cash-starved states, with even less federal contribution. This will hurt the poor as well as middle-class elderly in nursing homes.
Over 60 percent of its savings come out of programs for lower-income Americans -- like Pell grants and food stamps.
Yet it gives huge tax cuts to the top 1 percent -- some $4.7 trillion over the next decade. (This is the same top 1 percent, you might add, who have reaped 93 percent of the gains from the recovery, whose stock portfolios have regained everything they lost and more, and who are now taking home a larger share of total income than at any time in the last eighty years and paying the lowest taxes than at any time since before World War II.)
As a result it doesn't reduce the federal debt at all. In fact, it worsens it.
On top of all this, Ryan is on record -- as is Romney -- for wanting to repeal both ObamaCare (taking coverage away from 30 million Americans) and the Dodd-Frank law (thereby giving cover to Wall Street).
Your challenge will be get this across firmly and clearly, with an appropriate degree of indignation -- on a medium that rewards style over substance, glibness over detail, and optimistic happy talk over grim reality.
My suggestion: Be cheerfully aggressive. Take Ryan on directly and sharply but do so with a smile. Force him to take responsibility for the regressiveness of his budget and the radicalism of his ideology.
Prepare your closing carefully (unlike the President seemed to have done last week), and tell America the unvarnished truth: Romney and Ryan plan to do a reverse Robin Hood at a time in our nation's history when the rich have never had it so good while the rest haven't been as economically insecure since the Great Depression.
Their agenda is all the more remarkable in that we have a growing budget deficit to deal with, along soaring healthcare costs and aging boomers without enough to retire on because their net worth went down the drain with their homes.
The fundamental question is whether we're still all in it together -- whether as American citizens we continue to have obligations to one another to assure equal opportunity and help for those who need it -- or we're on our own, without a common bond or a common good. Romney and Ryan represent the latter view, a view utterly at odds with what we have accomplished as a nation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/biden-ryan-vp-debate_b_1955964.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications

Wisconsin Lawmaker Claims ‘Some Girls Rape Easy’ 10OKT12

WHAT is it with these repiglicans and tea-baggers? How is it they can have so little or even no respect for girls and women. One has to wonder what the lives of the women in their lives is like, what kind of misery they experience daily, and probably resent to the point they become silent victims of the boys and "men" who control them or raging Schlempe a la queen ann romney, ann coulter, michelle bachman and Fotze sarah palin. This from ThinkProgress...

Roger Rivard with Paul Ryan

A Wisconsin state lawmaker endorsed by Paul Ryan has come under criticism for suggesting that “some girls rape easy.” While discussing a case in which “a 17-year-old high school senior was charged with sexual assault for having sex with an underage girl in the school’s band room,” State Rep. Roger Rivard (R) told the Chetek Alert newspaper in December that his father taught him that some girls will portray a sexual encounter as rape if they become pregnant. He is now claiming that those remarks were taken out of context and has issued a statement condemning sexual violence:

On Wednesday, Rivard told the Journal Sentinel the article did not provide full context of his comments and that his father’s exact words had been slightly different from how they appeared in the Chetek Alert.
He told the Journal Sentinel that his father had advised him not to have premarital sex, and he took that seriously.
“He also told me one thing, ‘If you do (have premarital sex), just remember, consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry,’ ” Rivard said. “Because all of a sudden a young lady gets pregnant and the parents are madder than a wet hen and she’s not going to say, ‘Oh, yeah, I was part of the program.’ All that she has to say or the parents have to say is it was rape because she’s underage. And he just said, ‘Remember, Roger, if you go down that road, some girls,’ he said, ‘they rape so easy.’
“What the whole genesis of it was, it was advice to me, telling me, ‘If you’re going to go down that road, you may have consensual sex that night and then the next morning it may be rape.’ So the way he said it was, ‘Just remember, Roger, some girls, they rape so easy. It may be rape the next morning.’
“So it’s been kind of taken out of context.”

Ryan endorsed Rivard on August 9, just two days before he was selected to be Mitt Romney’s running mate. “Roger needs to be reaffirmed to get this job done and fix the State of Wisconsin,” Ryan said.
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/10/10/989981/wisconsin-lawmaker-claims-some-girls-rape-easy/?mobile=nc

VIDEO: Paul Ryan's Version of "47 Percent"—the "Takers" vs. the "Makers" 5OKT12

lyin' paul ryan's views of average Americans, those of of who don't have the money to buy our vice presidential candidate his place on the campaign ticket (like david koch did when he paid $100 million to the super pacs supporting romney to make lyin' paul ryan the v.p. pick for the repiglican / tea-bagger ticket Uygur: Did David Koch buy Paul Ryan the VP slot? 25AUG12 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/uygur-did-david-koch-buy-paul-ryan-vp.html   ). We are all takers, leeches sucking away the wealth of the rich, sucking the federal welfare tit dry. He makes these accusations, as did mitt robme romney, to divide the opposition. Vilifying the recipients of different entitlement and social safety net programs, he uses fear of loosing these programs to turn people against each other in a vain attempt to protect what they have. His strategy is divide and conquer, luring different groups of people with lies, deception and manipulation into believing everyone else but the wealthy are the real threat to their economic livelihood and electing the romney-ryan ticket is the only way to protect what they have left after the great recession. Nothing could be farther from the truth as exposed in the article and video below from Mother Jones and in the suggested reading list that follows it. The romney-ryan campaign is waging class warfare against the vast majority of the American people, and there is a real danger they just might win...

Mitt Romney's "47 percent," meet Paul Ryan's "takers."
Romney is finally backing off his controversial comments, but the theme that the nation is divided into makers and government-dependent takers is one of long standing for both Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan. The GOP vice presidential candidate has repeatedly made statements that suggest he sees America in Ayn Randian terms—that many citizens are just takers, parasites who leech off productive citizens, the makers. As this collection of rarely seen videos shows, this has been a recurrent talking point for Ryan in small gatherings for years.

What Ryan also said about America: "Let's make this country a tax shelter."

"Right now about 60 percent of the American people get more benefits in dollar value from the federal government than they pay back in taxes," he said on the June 2010 edition of Washington Watch. "So we're going to a majority of takers versus makers." By November 2011, in an address he gave at an American Spectator event, Ryan put the number of takers at 30 percent. (That remark was first reported by Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post.)
Ryan has also warned about President Barack Obama creating "more of a permanent class of government dependents"—language that echoes Romney's take on the "47 percent who are with [Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it."

As you can see in this series of charts, "government dependents" aren't who you necessarily think they are. Many people who don't pay federal income taxes are superrich or well off. Another 60 percent of Americans who don't pay income tax are working; they just don't make enough money to owe taxes. Most of the rest are retired folks, students, and members of the military serving in combat zones.
Full original videos posted by YouTube users (in order of clip appearance):

• RepPaulRyan (Washington Watch with Rep. Walter Jones—June 2010)
• HouseBudgetCommittee (Economic Club of Chicago—May 16, 2011)
• prosperityaction (In car, following Heritage Foundation event—October 26, 2011)
• AmerSpectator (The American Spectator's 2011 Robert L. Bartley Gala Dinner—November 1, 2011)
• Todd Osborn (Wisconsin State Rep. Evan Wynn fundraiser—June 15, 2012)
• RepPaulRyan (Washington, DC—November 7, 2009)
• MacIver Institute (August 2, 2012)

Brett Brownell

Multimedia Producer

Brett Brownell is the Multimedia Producer at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. RSS | Twitter

Nick Baumann

News Editor

Nick Baumann covers national politics and civil liberties issues for Mother Jones' DC Bureau. For more of his stories, click here. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Email tips and insights to nbaumann [at] motherjones [dot] com. RSS | Twitter

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  http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/paul-ryans-47-percent-takers-vs-makers-video?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NickBaumann+%28MoJo+Author+Feeds%3A+Nick+Baumann+|+Mother+Jones%29 

Mitt Romney Tax Policy Studies: Candidate Seemingly Contradicts Their Conclusions 14SEP12

mitt robme romney and lyin' paul ryan can't offer any substantial studies supporting their budget / tax plan because there isn't one. They are lying to the electorate because they know once voters know just what the 99% will loose to pay for the lifestyles of the 1% they will loose the election. They are deliberately lying, deceiving and misleading the American people, not for the benefit of the nation (and I don't think anyone using those tactics does so for the benefit of the nation), but for the benefit of their rich (sheldon adelson) and corporate masters (koch brothers) who have bought and paid for their campaign. From HuffPost.....

WASHINGTON -- Over the past few weeks, the Romney campaign has repeatedly pointed to five separate studies supporting the candidate's contention that a dramatic, across-the-board, reduction in tax rates can be paid for by economic growth and the elimination of deductions and exemptions for high-income earners.

Romney himself referenced these five studies in an interview with Meet the Press on Sunday. His running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), said the same during his run through the Sunday show circuit.

A closer examination, however, calls into question the fact that there are even five studies at all. Last week, the Romney campaign passed along the five documents that the candidate had referenced on NBC's Meet the Press. Three of the five are blog posts or op-eds (as opposed to academic literature), and two of those three are written by the same author: Harvard economist Martin Feldstein.

Of the remaining two studies, one is the tax reform white paper authored by Romney-backing economists and paid for by Romney for President, Inc. (in an email to PolitiFact, the Romney campaign highlighted several Wall Street Journal editorials in place of the campaign white paper as the "fifth" study).
The final study, produced by Princeton University's Harvey Rosen, backs the Romney campaign's assertions by arguing that people will work more, accumulate more income, pay more taxes, and seek out fewer loopholes if their tax rates are lowered. But even that report has several nuances that complicate the candidate's use of it.

Romney is not without philosophical support with respect to his tax plan. The Wall Street Journal editorials that his campaign sent PolitiFact, for one, argue that sharp reductions in tax rates will spur economic growth, which, in turn, will allow for increases in tax revenues. Those pieces have helped the campaign push back on a critical study by the Tax Policy Center, which concluded that Romney would have to eliminate tax deductions on things like home mortgage interest payments, charitable donations, and employer-provided health insurance in order to have his plan be deficit-neutral.

But even Feldstein has said that to make Romney's math work, some of those deductions would have to be eliminated on incomes over $100,000. In his August 28 Wall Street Journal piece, what Romney calls a "study," Feldstein writes that Romney could generate $191 billion by scrubbing these deductions, "more than enough to offset the revenue losses from the individual tax cuts proposed by Gov. Romney."

In other words, the economist who has written two of the five studies that the Romney campaign highlights has conceded that Romney would have to eliminate tax preferences for people making over $100,000 per year in order to make his plan work. And yet, when asked in an interview with "Good Morning America" on Friday morning if he would remove those deductions and exemptions for incomes over $100,000, Romney said "no."

"That’s not what I propose," he said. "And, of course, part of my plan is to stimulate economic growth. The biggest source of getting the country to a balanced budget is not by raising taxes or by cutting spending."

The statement follows months of refusals from the Romney campaign to actually detail what kind of deductions and exemptions the candidate would seek to eliminate once in office. George Stephanopoulos, hosting GMA, pushed back, noting that Romney was now actually distancing himself from a study he routinely cites as supportive.
Romney responded by saying he hadn't "seen [Feldstein's] precise study" but that there were five studies in total "that point out that we can get to a balanced budget without raising taxes on middle income people." Romney would define middle income as $200,000 to $250,000 per year and lower.
With that measure of middle class, Princeton economist Rosen's study may still suffice. Rosen argued that Romney could get his tax plan to deficit neutrality by eliminating deductions for income over $200,000 a year. But in a separate interview with Reuters on Friday, he seemingly revised that figure downward to $100,000 per year
"What the political system would find feasible, I don’t know,” Rosen said. “It’s mathematically possible."
Even then, there are questions that surround the study's conclusions. Rosen depends on assumptions that he acknowledges are not made by the Treasury Department or the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation about how high-income earners respond to changes in tax rates. Unlike those government bodies, he assumes that the wealthy will not seek to take advantage of as many tax loopholes if their overall tax rate is lower. More importantly, he assumes that Romney's tax plan will grow wage and capital income by at least three percent. This could be viewed as an aggressive assumption. Under President Bush, the entire economy (not just tax policy) resulted in total personal income growth that varied between 2.8 percent and 6.7 percent.
Romney may agree with Rosen's data when it comes to wage growth. But he is now on record opposing the idea that certain exemptions and deductions would need to be eliminated above a $100,000-a-year threshold in order to make the plan work.

The situation seems to leave the Romney campaign with supportive economists, but no purely supportive academic study.
In addition to Rosen's work and Feldstein's two articles, the Romney campaign has highlighted a post by Matt Jensen of the American Enterprise Institute. But that post is primarily a rebuke of a small sliver of the Tax Policy Center analysis -- Jensen argues that, contrary the TPC, Romney could get tens of billions in revenue by eliminating the exclusion of interest on tax-exempt bonds and interest on life insurance savings. The Romney campaign's own white paper, authored by Romney-backing economists, doesn't attempt to lay out how mathematically his plan will work. Instead, it says that the former governor will "broaden the base to ensure that tax reform is revenue neutral."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/14/romney-tax-policy_n_1884527.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications 

National Police Union Refuses to Endorse Romney, First Such Refusal in 98 Years 10SEP12

HERE'S a lack of endorsement that speaks volumes about mitt robme romney and lyin' paul ryan....

Thanks to the DailyKos community for getting this up on the Recommended List! Please join our fight for working families at Working America.org/join.
For the first time in 98 years, the 330,000-member Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) will not endorse a candidate for president this year. The FOP supported the Republican candidate for President in 2008, 2004, and 2000, and its non-endorsement is seen as a refutation of Mitt Romney.
Why the change? One big reason was Mitt Romney's support of Senate Bill 5 in Ohio, which stripped collective bargaining rights from police officers.

People familiar with the group's decision said leaders had been disturbed by Mr. Romney's statements of strong support for several antiunion initiatives, particularly the move in Ohio to restrict the collective-bargaining rights of public-union employees, including police and firefighters. The measure was overturned by voters in Ohio last year.

Certainly, this isn't front page news – but perhaps it should be. A couple of the swing states that Romney needs to win in November happen to have a great number of FOP members:

In recent presidential elections, the group's backing has been much sought after because of the heavy concentration of law enforcement officers in several of the key states. The group counts 39,225 members in Pennsylvania alone and another 24,181 in Ohio and 19,912 in Florida.

The Republican Party's rabid attack on collective bargaining rights in 2011, particularly in Ohio and Wisconsin, is taking a political toll in 2012. Turns out that many traditionally Republican voters believe that their fire departments should be able to negotiate for adequate safety equipment or that the police officers who risk their lives on the streets should have a seat at the bargaining table. In Ohio, Senate Bill 5 would have infringed on those rights – and lifelong Republican voters in law enforcement are responding in kind.
One telling anecdote comes from Alec MacGillis' article on the battleground in Ohio, where he interviewed Sergeant T.K. Assion, the president of FOP Lodge 141 in Youngstown:

"I myself have been a registered Republican my entire life, but that changed this time." (snip)
"Some of my members have flat-out said, 'I will never again vote for someone who has an R next to their name because of what John Kasich did.' I will not be voting for Mitt Romney, because he was with the Senate Bill Five people, congratulating them, and has the belief that America should be a right-to-work country. In my opinion, he has no respect for the working man, and, for that alone, I will not vote for him."

Another former Republican who will cross the aisle in 2012 because of Senate Bill 5 is Ohio firefighter Doug Stern, who went from voting for the GOP his whole life to speaking at the Democratic National Convention last week.
The GOP war on public workers isn't only hurting Romney. Senator Sherrod Brown received the endorsement of the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police in July, becoming the first Democrat to receive the group's endorsement since 1988.
By Doug Foote - Reposted from Working America's Main Street Blog

Originally posted to Working America on Mon Sep 10, 2012 at 03:03 PM PDT.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/10/1130147/-National-Police-Union-Refuses-to-Endorse-Romney-First-Such-Refusal-in-98-Years?detail=hide 

Ryan Buys Ads for His House Race 12SEP12

lyin paul ryan is hedging his bets on winning the presidential election with mitt robme romney! HAHAHAHA!!!!
Paul Ryan is definitely concerned with unemployment--his. So as a backup against losing his bid to become Vice President, he is also running for his House seat as well and has started running ads in Milwaukee urging voters to elect him to Congress again. Wisconsin law allows candidates to run for multiple offices at the same time, but if they are elected to more than one, have to make a choice. Ryan's House opponent is Rob Zerban, a former Kenosha County official. When the Democrats chose Zerban, they did not know Ryan would be on the national ticket. Had they foreseen this, they would have surely chosen a higher-profile candidate. The downside of running for the House for Ryan is the accusation that he has little faith in his chances on the national ticket, so he wants a backup job, just in case.

Paul Ryan buys TV ads for House race

By TARINI PARTI

Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan will spend $2 million on TV ads asking Wisconsin voters to send him back to the House of Representatives, POLITICO has learned.
Ryan’s congressional campaign manager Kevin Seifert confirmed that House Budget Committee chairman plans to spend $1.5 million on ads on local broadcast stations and cable in Milwaukee. The campaign will spend an additional $500,000 on ads in Madison between Oct. 18 and Nov. 6.

On the Milwaukee NBC affiliate alone, Ryan for Congress has already spent $65,000 on ad buys this month, according to records filed with the Federal Communications Commission. The ads will air from Sept. 12 through Sept. 25 on programs including local news broadcasts, Meet the Press, The Tonight Show, and Sunday Night Football.

The ads will be funded by his congressional campaign committee, which had $5.4 million in its coffers in July, before he was named as Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s running mate.
Ryan is facing Rob Zerban, a former Kenosha County official. Zerban had $558,000 in his campaign reserves in July, according to federal reports.
Zerban spokesperson Karthik Ganapathy said the campaign was not surprised to hear about Ryan’s ad buy.
“We knew this was coming for quite a while now,” Ganapathy told POLITICO. “He’s spending $2 million on ads this cycle in the district. That’s more than he has spent in the past. He’s clearly worried about something.”
Ganapthy said Zerban’s campaign has become more optimistic about their chances of defeating the seven-term congressman since he was named Romney’s running mate.
“We’ve seen a lot more media attention and money come in,” he said. “A lot of people are excited about the possibility of beating Paul Ryan.”
Ryan is allowed to appear on the ballot simultaneously as Mitt Romney’s running mate and as a House candidate, but cannot serve in both offices at the same time.Two Democratic VP candidates in recent years have appeared twice on the ballot — Joe Biden running for re-election to the Senate in Delaware in 2008, and Joe Lieberman running for re-election to the Senate in Connecticut in 2000. Both won their Senate races.
Ryan campaign manager Seifert told the Associated Press, which first reported the ad buys, that the first ad will focus on “the importance of electing leaders who are capable of advancing solutions that get America back on track and provide a prosperous future for our children and grandchildren.

Author:

• Tarini Parti (@tparti)
•  http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81056.html?hp=t3_3

Romney Rips Paul Ryan: Calls Running Mate’s Vote For Defense Cuts ‘A Big Mistake’ 8SEP12

THE gop / tea-bagger presidential ticket is already turning on each other with mitt robme slamming the repiglican controlled House (including lyin' paul ryan, his running mate) for voting for sequestration, which, if enacted, will mandate huge cuts in defense spending. His vote for sequestration isn't stopping lyin' ryan from now condemning his own vote on the campaign trail. Oh what a tangled web they are weaving. The question is, how many voters are going to be stupid enough to get caught in it? From ThinkProgress....

By Judd Legum

Mitt Romney, campaigning in Virginia today, hammered President Obama for supporting cuts in defense spending.
NBC’s David Gregory, in an interview with Romney scheduled to be aired in full tomorrow, noted that the cuts were part of the compromise to end the debt ceilling crisis and were supported by the entire GOP leadership. An excerpt:

MITT ROMNEY: Well, I want to maintain defense spending at the current level of the GDP. I don’t want to keep bringing it down as the president’s doing. This sequestration idea of the White House, which is cutting our defense, I think is an extraordinary miscalculation in the wrong direction.
DAVID GREGORY: Republican leaders agreed to that deal to the extend the debt ceiling.
MITT ROMNEY: And that’s a big mistake. I thought it was a mistake on the part of the White House to propose it. I think it was a mistake for Republicans to go along with it.

Among the GOP leaders who made “a big mistake” and voted for the cuts was his running mate, Paul Ryan. That hasn’t stopped Paul Ryan, however, from also crticizing the sequestor on the campaign trail.
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/09/08/816571/romney-rips-paul-ryan-calls-running-mates-vote-for-defense-cuts-a-big-mistake/?mobile=nc

James Hoffa, Teamsters President, Says Romney 'Wants To Annihilate Organized Labor' 8SEP12

THE decline of the American worker began with the take back of pension and health care benefits by companies not taking these actions to survive but to increase obscene executive pay and benefits and the immoral profit margins of investors. Unions, who brought us paid sick time, paid vacation, FMLA and company pensions were decimated by companies first moving to right to work states, where employees can be exploited and paid less. Then the real blow came with the explosion of outsourcing to the prc, India and other places in the Third World. Now American workers, still the most productive in the world, are faced with stagnant and declining wages, unemployment, and anemic 401-K pensions along with attacks on the social safety net programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that many of us will be dependent on upon retirement. The repiglican / tea-bagger economic plan of mitt robme and lyin paul ryan will continue the assault on organized labor in this country, and with every victory they achieve American workers fall further behind. The goal of robme and ryan is nothing less than a Third World American workforce that remains docile and is controlled by fear of their employers and their own government. From HuffPost.....

Teamsters President James Hoffa says Mitt Romney opposes organized labor.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The way Teamsters President James P. Hoffa sees it, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney would be happy if an already weakened American labor movement ceased to exist altogether.
"He wants to annihilate organized labor as we know it," Hoffa told HuffPost outside the Democratic National Convention this week. "It's on his website. I'm not making this up. He's for a national right-to-work law. The Republican Party has veered dangerously to the right. It's rather incredible, in 2012, if you think about it."
Indeed, Romney's official stance on labor isn't kind to unions. His campaign website suggests that unions have outlasted their significance, "driv[ing] up costs and introduc[ing] rigidities that harm competitiveness and frustrate innovation." He supports states pursuing right-to-work laws, which weaken the clout of unions, and his party last week approved a platform pushing for national right-to-work legislation. He'd also like to prohibit automatic union dues-deduction from employee paychecks.
Hoffa isn’t the only labor leader who visited Charlotte this week and sees a hostility toward unions in Romney's positions. Mary Kay Henry, head of the 2 million-member Service Employees International Union, told HuffPost earlier this week that Romney "wants to take us out."
The Romney campaign didn't respond to Hoffa or Henry's comments.
Rank-and-file union members said they often feel taken for granted by Democrats in office. Among many labor activists, the enthusiasm for the Obama-Biden ticket appears to stem in large part from a loathing and distrust of the alternative. But Hoffa, like other labor figures who headed to Charlotte, insisted the current White House has been good to unions over the past four years.
Rather than dwell on disappointments -- like Obama's failure to push the Employee Free Choice Act through Congress when Democrats held both chambers, or to pass a raise in the minimum wage -- Hoffa touted the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the stimulus bill, the rescue of the auto industry and the actions of the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that enforces labor law.

The NLRB has issued decisions and rules during Obama's tenure that conservatives have decried as too friendly to unions, such as a rule that would require businesses to hang placards in the workplace informing workers of their right to unionize. By contrast, during the George W. Bush presidency, union members believed the NLRB catered to businesses.
"The NLRB has gotten civilized again," said Hoffa, the Teamsters president since 1998 whose famous father, Jimmy Hoffa, was president throughout the 1960s. "People aren’t afraid to go there anymore. They're getting good results from the NLRB. And when I say good, I mean fair. Fairness is all we want.
"These are things that are meaningful to us, that make it easier for us to organize," Hoffa added.
One place where it's extremely difficult for unions to organize is North Carolina, a fact that created some awkwardness between the Democratic Party and organized labor, given the selection of Charlotte as the DNC's host city. (North Carolina has the lowest unionization rate in the nation.) Hoffa was one of the few union heads who appeared willing to knock the party for the choiceit, albeit lightly.
"I think that the Democratic Party, the DNC, could have consulted us," Hoffa said. "I would have thought there were much better venues, like St. Louis, like Detroit, but they have their own thinking and obviously they didn’t talk to us."
The Teamsters are currently locked in a high-profile battle with the wholesale baker Hostess Brands, maker of iconic American foodstuffs Wonder Bread and Twinkies. Hostess, going through bankruptcy proceedings for the second time in a decade, has said that if the Teamsters make good on their strike threat it could bury the company.
Hostess' latest offer to Teamster workers is believed to include significant concessions. A recent letter from the company's CEO estimated wage cuts of 8 percent, health care givebacks and the loss of large pension contributions.
Hostess management loathes the pension plans currently enjoyed by its union workers, arguing that they're overly generous and antiquated. Hoffa, however, said it was the duty of his union to maintain those pensions as best they could, especially in an age when pensions are being attacked and phased out.
"Our job is to keep pensions," Hoffa said. "That’s the job of all of labor, because that’s what makes us different. The problem is the right wing hates unions, hates pensions -- they don’t want to be obligated to anybody ... and we stand for the opposite."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/08/james-hoffa-teamsters-romney_n_1866359.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications 

THE GREAT ENEMY OF FREEDOM IS.....

HERE are some words of wisdom that can be applied to the 2012 election, the citizens united decision, and the republican / tea-bagger ticket of mitt robme and lyin' paul ryan.....

"The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.”
- Wendell Berry
from The Art of the Commonplace

 

Exclusive: Paul Ryan Quietly Requested Obamacare Cash & Paul Ryan Acknowledges Requesting Federal Money From Program Funded By Obamacare 5&7SEP12

CAUGHT red handed and still the lyin' paul ryan campaign team tries to lie, deceive and manipulate their way out of another example of their blatant hypocrisy. He says it's OK to use federal funds for health care when provided by the bush administration but not when provided by the Obama administration, yet that is exactly what he did. The report from The Nation, including the letter from lyin' ryan's congressional office requesting the funding follows this from ThinkProgress .....

By Tara Culp-Ressler

Earlier this week, the Nation uncovered the fact that Paul Ryan — who has voted with his party to repeal President Obama’s health care law over 30 times — requested Obamacare funds for his Wisconsin district in 2010. However, after the news broke that Ryan sought to fund a new community health center with federal money provided through health care reform, his campaign was quick to retort that grant program has nothing to do with supporting Obamacare because it was created under former President George W. Bush.
Bush did create federal grant programs for community health centers during his presidency. But now that Obama is in office, that initiative is funded through Obamacare, which provides $11 billion to expand community health centers. When Ryan requested the funds in 2010, they represented money that Obama approved — under a law that Ryan has referred to as “Washington’s reckless spending spree.”
As the Huffington Post points out, it’s difficult to understand the distinction between Ryan’s support for Bush’s health care spending and his opposition to the exact same health care spending under Obamacare:

But the response from Ryan’s spokesman also raises a question about the candidate’s philosophy on federal spending on health care: Why would he consider dollars approved by Bush to be a good use of money, but funds approved by Obama to be bad?
“Don’t dumb things down,” [Ryan's spokesperson] suggested to HuffPost. “You think he’s opposed to all federal spending on health care? Health care spending makes up a significant portion of his budget.”
On the specific program in question, related to community health centers, Buck said Ryan was merely supporting a constituent. “It’s casework,” he said. “As a general principle he’s not going to turn away his constituents who come to him for help based on his own views of a program.”

Ryan is not alone in his hypocrisy. A laundry list of Republican lawmakers have suggested scrapping Obamacare only to replace it with the exact same health reform measures. When health care reform is acceptable under Republicans but unconstitutional under Obama, GOPers expose themselves as putting partisanship over policy.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/09/07/811241/paul-ryan-bush-obamacare/?mobile=nc

Exclusive: Paul Ryan Quietly Requested Obamacare Cash

Lee Fang 

Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan is barnstorming the country, promising to repeal every provision of the Affordable Care Act if the Romney-Ryan ticket is elected. But a letter he wrote to the Obama administration may undermine this message.
On December 10, 2010, Ryan penned a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services to recommend a grant application for the Kenosha Community Health Center, Inc to develop a new facility in Racine, Wisconsin, an area within Ryan’s district. “The proposed new facility, the Belle City Neighborhood Health Center, will serve both the preventative and comprehensive primary healthcare needs of thousands of new patients of all ages who are currently without healthcare,” Ryan wrote.

The grant Ryan requested was funded directly by the Affordable Care Act, better known simply as healthcare reform or Obamacare.
The letter, among several obtained by The Nation and The Investigative Fund through a Freedom of Information Act request, is a stark reminder that even the most ardent opponents of Obamacare privately acknowledge many of the law’s benefits.
Federally funded health clinics have long provided a broad range of vital medical, dental and mental health services to underprivileged communities across the country, regardless of a persons’ ability to pay. To meet the goal of expanding coverage, the Affordable Care Act provides for a sweeping expansion of such clinics, including $9.5 billion for operating costs to existing community health centers and $1.5 billion for new construction.
In public, Ryan has cultivated a profile as one of health reform’s most outspoken critics. He savages the Affordable Care Act as an example of “Washington’s reckless spending spree,” as “irresponsible,” and has warned repeatedly that it would place the “federal government squarely in the middle of health-care decisions.”
Explaining his “philosophical difference” with Democrats, Ryan told ABC News this summer that he would seek to repeal the “entire law” because healthcare rights come from “nature and God,” not the government. He expressed dismay that the Supreme Court upheld the law during the interview.
Despite Ryan’s quiet support for an Affordable Care Act clinic grant in his district, the Wisconsin congressman’s promise to repeal Obamacare would undermine the law’s five-year plan to rapidly grow the health clinic system in America by withdrawing the necessary funds. The so-called Ryan Budget plan would also decimate other federal support for health clinics, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Before Republicans broadly agreed upon a strategy of opposing any health reform proposal embraced by President Obama, the party once supported access to healthcare using clinics. The Bush administration requested and received modest increases in federal health clinic funding over the years. Now, however, the GOP has made opposing the entire Affordable Care Act a central plank in its platform, and virtually no lawmakers have been willing to praise it while speaking to the media.
Ryan isn’t alone in shaking his fist at health reform with one hand while extending an open palm behind closed doors.
As I reported over a year ago, even Congressman Hal Rogers, a conservative Representative from Kentucky, and former Senator John Ensign, a rising star in the Republican Party before he resigned in disgrace, wrote letters asking for health reform grants while calling for absolute repeal. Rogers called health reform “socialistic” and a “monstrosity.” Nevertheless, he requested Obamacare funds for a nursing clinic in rural Clay County. The money, Rogers said in a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, would “provide critical care in an area in extreme need of access to adequate healthcare.” Ensign recommended an application for a physician training grant made possible through the Affordable Care Act.
Rogers and Ryan have voted to repeal all of the Affordable Care Act on multiple occasions in the last two years.
“I don’t know what’s the bigger sin,” says Tom Perriello, a former Democratic congressman who championed health clinics as a supporter of the Affordable Care Act. “The hypocrisy of asking for funding from a program while seeking to repeal it, or that the Republicans have been so much more committed to hurting the president than to helping people that something as uncontroversial as funding for community health centers must be requested in secret.”
Perriello is now counselor for policy at the Center for American Progress, where I previously worked as a political blogger.
An outline of the health reform “replacement” legislation advanced by Mitt Romney and Ryan, mostly centered on proposals to gut state and federal health insurance regulations by allowing insurance providers to sell coverage across state lines, makes no mention of health clinics.
In addition to undercutting his political message about health reform, the letter may also add to an emerging narrative that Ryan has a double standard when it comes to critiquing major Obama policy achievements. Shortly after Romney announced that Ryan would be joining him on the Republican ticket this year, the Boston Globe revisited a story showing how Ryan quietly lobbied the Obama administration for stimulus grants. Ryan voted against the proposal and denounced it to the press without disclosing his requests for stimulus cash.
Ryan first denied responsibility for the stimulus grant requests, but later confessed that his office had sent the letters.
Republicans have praised Ryan for his willingness to embrace unpopular cuts to government programs and for being a “consistent conservative.” The fact that Ryan has privately pleaded with the Obama administration for government grants from the president’s signature policy accomplishments, however, could unravel that conceit.
UPDATE: Brendan Buck, a spokesperson for the Mitt Romney campaign, responded to this story by claiming that this "grant program was created by President Bush, not Obamacare. This... type of misinformation is what you get from gotcha reporting on liberal blogs." Ryan's letter directly requests money from the HRSA-11-017 New Access Points program announced in August of 2010. This New Access Points grant program that Ryan requested money from is funded fully by the Affordable Care Act, a fact made clear on multiple government websites. The claim that Bush "created" this program is also unfounded. Federally-funded health centers were created through the Public Health Services Act, legislation signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1944.  New Access Point grants have existed well before the Bush administration came to office.
For more on fact-checking Paul Ryan, read Eric Alterman’s column this week.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/169757/exclusive-paul-ryan-quietly-requested-obamacare-cash 

Republicans Cry About Lack of "Civility" at Dem Convention 8SEP12

THIS is so typical of the repiglicans and tea-baggers, always the victims, always being attacked, always getting the short end of the stick, always being unfairly picked on, persecuted, prosecuted, and maligned. Quick, somebody call them a waaambulance!!! Poor things! I gladly pass this on from HuffPost, joining in the "abuse" of mitt robme, lyin' paul ryan and their cabal.....
Predictably, the Romney campaign and its apparatchiks at Fox News accused the Democrats of lacking "civility" during the first day of their convention. RNC chairman Reince Priebus called the Democrats "classless" for showing a 1994 video of Ted Kennedy debating (and embarrassing) a decidedly more liberal Mitt Romney.
Boo-hoo.
You know who shouldn't be lecturing the Democrats about civility? The people who gave us swift-boating, the Southern Strategy, the outing of Valerie Plame, Birthers, Reverend Wright videos around the clock, "Obama pals around with domestic terrorists," the exploitation of 9/11, comparing a triple amputee Vietnam veteran to Saddam Hussein, the booing of a gay soldier, and the party that sported Purple Heart band-aids at the 2004 convention to mock another decorated Vietnam veteran, John Kerry, who was wounded in combat. And no one on the floor of the Democratic convention hurled peanuts at an African American camerawomen, shouting, "This is how we feed the animals."
Yes, the Democratic speakers unapologetically jabbed Romney for having a Swiss bank account and for being a shameless prevaricator. They criticized his policy proposals for being the usual Reaganomics claptrap we've heard during every election and, accurately enough, how the same policies caused the recession. There's a difference between taking fair shots at an opponent and the reprehensible tactics routinely exercised by the Republicans.
I totally get it: since the dawn of history, politics has always been about rigorous debate, passionate arguments, salient framing and rhetorical aggression. That's not incivility. That's politics. But the Republicans always appear shocked whenever the Democrats bring their A-game to political contest, and then they hilariously lean on this well-worn "civility" crutch with full knowledge that the party's PR wing, AM talk radio and Fox News Channel, has made a fortune in cash and ratings by calling the president a communist, a traitor and a "little black man child."
The Democratic Party finally and thankfully stood up for its values and, most noticeably, its position on social issues. The party was unafraid to feature leaders from NARAL and Planned Parenthood on the stage. Various speakers talked repeatedly about reproductive rights, civil rights, LGBT rights and the role of government and how "we the people" ought to lend a hand to those who have nowhere else to turn. Core liberal values. Likewise, the party made it clear that Mitt Romney and the Republicans are the enemy of these values. And they are. They've pledged to repeal all of the advances in these areas upon arriving at the White House. Last night, an actual undocumented worker named Benita Veliz -- an illegal immigrant, the latest brand of "evildoer" -- spoke at the convention. On top of that, right-wing lightning rod Sandra Fluke spoke during prime time and thanked the Democrats for "amplifying" her voice in spite of brutal attacks from Rush Limbaugh and others who not only lied about her testimony to Congress but publicly and relentlessly slandered her reputation for weeks, calling her a "slut."
Tell me again about civility, Republicans.
Frankly, I think this notion of taking a firm stand on core values hit really close to home for the Republicans who've nominated a candidate whose positions change by the day, interspersed with universally debunked lies. Simply put: Romney and Ryan don't seem to stand for anything -- you know, other than doing the exact opposite of President Obama.
On the same day when American voters were talking about powerful speeches from the First Lady and Julian Castro, The Nation reported that the increasingly shaky and awkward Paul Ryan actively lobbied the Obama administration for money from Obamacare, specifically for a community healthcare center in Racine. The Affordable Care Act provides $9.5 billion for health centers and $1.5 billion for a series of brand new centers, and Paul Ryan wanted a piece of the action while demonizing Obamacare's "reckless spending" and how it's a "government takeover." We've heard this before. Ryan also requested money from the dreaded stimulus while voting against it and while using it as a cudgel to utterly skull-bash the president's agenda.
But I suppose I'm not being civil by pointing out Ryan's obvious lack of integrity, say nothing of the top of the ticket whose home planet eradicated integrity centuries ago while purging itself of emotions and authenticity during the final epoch of the Alpha Centauri Interstellar Conundrum.
So the contrast between a strong Democratic Party and a flaky, unstable, flip-floppy Republican Party has prompted the GOP to spend the week whining and pooping its big boy pants about how the Democrats are being so mean. For a Republican Party dependent upon lies and intellectual dishonesty, the truth really hurts.
Cross-posted at The Daily Banter.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/republicans-cry-about-lac_b_1862013.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications 

Jon Stewart Would Settle For Any Truths In Paul Ryan’s Speech 31AUG12

NOBODY debunks lyin' paul ryan like Jon Stewart!!!
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-30-2012/rnc-2012---the-road-to-jeb-bush-2016---paul-ryan-s-convenient-truths 

Jon Stewart

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David Taintor August 31, 2012, 8:46 AM 26611

Jon Stewart had a few quibbles with Paul Ryan’s Republican National Convention speech, an address that even traditional media call factually unsound at best.
“Let me get this straight, so if your dry cleaning succeeds with a Democrat in office, you built that,” Stewart said Thursday. “But if your dry cleaning business fails with a Democrat in office, the government fucked you.”
“So still no hard truths,” Stewart added. “It sounds like its just convenient truths. At this point in the speech I’d settle for any truths.”
Watch the video:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
RNC 2012 - The Road to Jeb Bush 2016 - Paul Ryan’s Convenient Truths
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ALLEN AND RYAN SHARE A STAGE IN RICHMOND AND THE WRONG VISION FOR VIRGINIA 31AUG12

lyin' paul ryan and george allen combined their campaign of lies and deception in Richmond, VA yesterday in an attempt to fool the voters of the Commonwealth into supporting them and the rich corporate masters who own and control them. The fact is the only ones who will benefit from their election will be the 1%, they have nothing good to offer the 99% of us. Tim Kaine and Pres Obama are the right choice for Virginia and the nation. 

Richmond, VA - As George Allen and Paul Ryan shared the stage today in Richmond, it is important for Virginia voters to understand the consequences of the Ryan/Allen agenda. When it comes to fiscal responsibility, women’s rights, economic growth, and commitments to important programs like Social Security, Medicare, and student aid, Virginians can’t afford George Allen and Paul Ryan’s radical approach.

“When you look at George Allen’s record in the Senate and Paul Ryan’s record in the House of Representatives, the similarities are striking,” said Kaine for Virginia press secretary Lily Adams. “Like Congressman Ryan, George Allen spent his years in Washington turning an enormous surplus into a massive deficit with trillions in new spending, including four votes to raise his own pay, expensive tax cuts, and two unfunded wars. They both pursued risky Social Security privatization schemes, voted for billions in cuts to Medicare, supported massive cuts to student aid programs like Pell grants, and continue to refuse support for equal pay legislation.  What’s more troubling is that George Allen is advocating more of the same if he’s sent back to Washington.  Under the Ryan plan George Allen has called 'worthwhile,' seniors would pay more for their health care, students would have less assistance for college, and local schools and community projects would be left out to dry.

"In addition, George Allen has promised to extend the Bush tax cuts permanently for the wealthiest Americans, blowing the deficit wide open, and he'd pursue an all cuts approach that would devastate resources for education, workforce development, and other key priorities. What's more, both he and Paul Ryan want to bring ‘personhood’ legislation to the federal level, potentially outlawing some forms of FDA-approved birth control, and defund providers like Planned Parenthood that keep our communities healthy. As George Allen stands alongside Paul Ryan today, Virginians are presented with a very clear choice of moving forward or going back to the failed Allen/Ryan approach.”
http://www.kaineforva.com/news/allen_and_ryan_share_a_stage_in_richmond_and_the_wrong_vision_for_virginia#When:19:50:51Z