JUST LIKE US - SO THEY SAY

My e-mail has been flooded with political stuff, campaign contribution requests from candidates all over the country notifications of Facebook posts, etc.  I delete my way through them a few times a day.  I should have deleted the e-mail my mother sent without looking at it, too.

So this is one of those emails she gets from her friends and thinks is so real, so non-partisan and so illuminating that she sends it to us - her children who are Democrats in hopes we will see the light. My smarter sister just deletes them without looking at them.  I am, apparently, the curious cat who can't help but look.

So this e-mail is all about the "real" Romney based on someone who bought one of their vacation homes, contents and all.  Apparently the fact hat the linens were basic department store brands and the bathroom fixtures weren't "gold" and especially that a glove left behind had been patched with duct tape are all indications that:

Romney is very different from the man that many of us have been led to believe. Clearly he is more like most Americans than not. We learned many things about Mitt Romney that contradicted what we have been told. He is not aloof or out of touch. He is a man of faith, family and American values.

The new owners were charmed that there were no maid's quarters or tennis courts and that  there was a picture of Jesus left behind in the master bedroom shows Mitt Romney clearly had a home of faith and family just like the rest of us.


They found some alcohol (forbidden the the Mormon faith) in the kitchen available to guests who do not share their personal restrictions. They took this as a sure sign that:
By not imposing his beliefs on others even within his own home, then clearly a President Romney would not take away rights and impose his beliefs on all Americans. Those making such accusations should stop. The facts do not support their claims.

So wake up all you women who think Romney/Ryan won't impose their views on abortion, birth control, health care, fair pay.  All you folks concerned about  Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, enriching the military industrial complex, reducing benefits to veterans,  and privatizing emergency services;  all you have to do is look at the window coverings in one of Mitt Romney's 7 homes to see that he is a great guy, just one of us.  He would never take over a company, dismantle it, steal the pension fund and fire everyone.  That stuff has to be made up by the big bad media. 

Please let me learn from this and NEVER open one of my mother's emails ever again...

ROMNEY DIDN'T SEEK OUT THE BINDERS OF WOMEN - MORE FACT CHECKING

That whole "binders full of women thing from the debate last night?  Yeah, no surprise, it wasn't exactly as Romney took credit for.  Here is the TRUTH:

The Massachusetts Government Appointments Project (MassGAP) is a non-partisan collaboration of women’s groups whose purpose is to increase the number of women appointed by the new governor to senior-level cabinet positions, agency heads and selected authorities, boards and commissions in the Commonwealth. The Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus (MWPC) is the Lead Sponsor of this collaboration.

Our History.

In 2002 women held approximately 30% of the top high-level appointed positions in the Commonwealth, even though they compose 52% of the population. To rectify this inequity, more than 25 women’s organizations banded together to form the bi-partisan MassGAP Project for the purpose of increasing the number of women in high-ranking appointed positions in Massachusetts and achieving fairer representation of women. MassGAP sought to eliminate the difficulty that state executives say they experienced whenever they tried to find qualified women for high-ranking positions. MassGAP did this through providing names and resumes of qualified women for top appointments.

Between January 2002 and July 2004, 42% of the new gubernatorial appointments made by Governor Mitt Romney were women. Massachusetts was widely recognized for that achievement and MassGAP was given credit for it.

I strongly suspect that if it had not been for this organization, already in place and ready to make resumes available, that 42% would not have happened.

LIARS AND THEIR SUPPORTERS

Maybe election cycles are not the time to do this, but I just unfriended someone on Facebook.  I new that she was a Romney supporter and a few weeks back she posted something I considered racist and insulting.

10/8/11 - Bill Bennett at the 2011 Values Voter Summit suggests a bumper sticker about Barack Obama:
"If you voted for him the last time to prove you are not a racist, you must vote against him this time to prove you are not an idiot."

It wasn't just the above quote, it was all done up in a poster.  I decided against commenting and let it go by even though I was incensed.

Then she posted that the Vice President was speaking jibberish in the debate last week. I did not comment on that.

Today I re-posted this:

This is a statement from an earlier post by The Truth of It:

"It doesn't so much bother me that the Romney/Ryan campaign isn't listening to the fact checkers, more so that their supporters are so morally lacking that they have a limitless tolerance for dishonesty. I guess when people can't be honest with themselves, they're not the best judge of honesty in others."

Rob Portman Falsely Claims Unemployment Is Higher Than When Obama Took Office

livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com

Appearing Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) inaccurately claimed that unemployment is higher now than when President Obama took office.  
She commented "What an ignorant generalization.  Shame on the author."   I commented back in the heat of my reaction and then unfriended her - not to avoid further comment but because I have lost tolerance for people who attack the media and attack the fact checkers and don't bother to try to get to the truth of things.  People who accept candidates based on their image and look no further for some substance.  Who don't bother to look for the reality behind the spin.  

For instance, why the doesn't the Democratic  party make more of the fact that Romney made the Olympics a success because the government bailed him out?   Yes, his great management of that event was based on getting 10 million or so from congress.

And Bain Capital, his calling card for being such a good businessman?  While not bailed out by taxpayers, per se, bailed out from bankruptcy by a deal with the FDIC.

As a businessman, Romney made avid use of public-private partnerships, something that many conservatives consider to be "corporate welfare."The Cato Institute said the story of the Romney-linked companies is "an example of the government stepping into the marketplace, picking winners and losers, providing profits to business owners and leaving taxpayers stuck with the bill."  An example?  After the pension plan at Bain-controlled GS Steel was underfunded (read raided)  and the company went bankrupt, the federal agency for pension insurance supplied a $44 million bail out. According to Retuers, “records show that the mill's Bain-backed management was confronted several times about the fund's shortfall, which, in the end, required an infusion of funds from the federal Pension Benefits Guarantee Corp.

 Romney personally saved $2.6 million in just one year on a tax loophole that allows wealthy executives at firms like Romney’s to pay a lower tax rate on their income than many middle class workers.  Private equity executives are taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings, a rate well below the 35 percent tax on ordinary income. Most of his income comes from distributions by Bain Capital, the private equity firm that he left in 1999 but he still takes the discounted rate.

So - I suppose some people can see a smart businessman who can lead the country - what I see is someone who has taken advantage of what the government has made available in order to get rich and richer. 

So - who is more of a taker?  Someone trying to get back on their feet after losing a job or getting sick or disabled or needing help to make ends meet on their minimum wage job?  Or a "leader" like Mitt Romney?