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?

IS THE TRUTH OPTIONAL?

I know I just posted about lying.  This just  seems to be a themed week.

I was explaining to Tom about a small claims court case I had prepared for my boss to argue. It was clear and factual and supported by a ream of documents that they had the work done, they knew they owed the money, that they had been notified for nearly 2 years of the bill and mounting finance charges.  One of the plaintiffs arrived in court with her toddler in tow, lied to the mediator and then to the judge and the judge ignored the documents and shafted our business out of about $2000.00.

Tom said 2 things 1. Going to court is always a crap shoot. 2. Everyone lies.

He said he thinks it has to do with politicians.  The bold face lie has proven to be a winning strategy.  I would add all those uber wealthy bankers and investment brokers - not much truth telling going on there.  Pharmaceutical companies care about sick people. That's a good one.  Oh, how about "Your call is important to us" which is why we don't hire more than a couple of people for our Customer Service 800 line.

What is your favorite lie?

LYING POLITICIANS - OXYMORON?

A lot of people hate politics and politicians because they are not honest. People love to complain about politicians and lawyers - calling them crooks and out for themselves and worse. Being married to a civil rights attorney who sees his work as service, who picks and chooses his cases based on the merits and the  law, who doesn't take on cases in order to "blackmail" people into paying money unjustly; I have a soft spot for those who are lumped in with the bad guys.

Are there lawyers and politicians who behave badly?  Yes.  Are there doctors and bankers who behave greedily.  Yes.  Are there accountants and plumbers who behave shoddily?  Yes.

When it comes to lies, though, politicians seem to be making it an artform.  If I learned anything at all during the Bush administration it was that a lie told repeatedly takes on the veneer of truth for a whole lot of people.

He came by it honestly, as they say.  In 1984, his dad,  George H.W. Bush made up a quote about Walter Mondale's campaign that was both damaging and untrue. Bush's press secretary said: “You can say anything you want during a debate, and 80 million people hear it”; when newspapers point out the lies, “So what?” he said. “Maybe 200 people read it, or 2,000, or 20,000.”

Seems that this cynical disregard for the truth has become part and parcel of the GOP's campaign strategy. In the words of W.C. Fields, “If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull---t.”  This election is a further test of how far politicians can bend the truth and have people repeating it to the point of believing it. Musch has been written about the factual inaccuracies of the Ryan and the Romney budget plans - are people paying attention?  I guess we will see.

To be fair, "a Politifact analysis of the two campaigns so far has rated 28 percent of Democratic campaign material as untrue to at least a degree, as against 46 percent for the GOP."  The thing is, statistically,  the Democrats seem to exaggerate,and misstate things, while the GOP runs major falsehoods up the flagpole.

This year I will proudly vote for President Obama, not because Democrats are perfectly honest, but because they have shown far more respect for the truth and for the public's  ability to discern lies from honesty than has the GOP and Romney.

WHICH IS WORSE?

The insane personal beliefs which he would impose on all women:

“I’m very proud of my pro-life record. I’ve always adopted the idea that the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life,” he said during an interview with television station WJHL. In that statement, Ryan basically admits that he believes 1) rape is a form of conception and 2) it’s equal to conception by consensual sex because both produce life. This reasoning is apparently why Ryan opposes the rape exception for abortion.


Or the bold faced lies:

1. “A downgraded America.” Ryan blamed the president for the nation’s credit downgrade in August 2011 after Republicans threatened to allow the government to default on its debt for the first time in history. But the ratings agency explicitly blamed “Republicans saying that they refuse to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal.”


2. “More debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined.” Romney has made the almost identical claim, that Obama has amassed more debt “as almost all of the other presidents combined.” But their math doesn’t add up: when Obama took office, the national debt was $10.626 trillion. It has increased to slightly above $15 trillion.

3. Shuttered General Motors plant is “one more broken promise.” Ryan described a GM plant that closed down in his hometown, Janesville, Wisconsin, and blamed Obama for breaking his promise to keep the plant open when he visited during his campaign. But Obama never made that promise, and the plant shut down in December 2008, before Obama even took office.

4. Obama “did exactly nothing” on Bowles-Simpson. Ryan said, “He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.” In fact, Ryan was instrumental in sabotaging the commission, leading the other House Republicans in voting against the plan.

5. “$716 billion, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.” Ryan’s favorite lie is a deliberate distortion of Obamacare’s savings from eliminating inefficiencies. Furthermore, Ryan’s own plan for Medicare includes these savings. Romney has vowed to restore these cuts, which would render the trust fund insolvent 8 years ahead of schedule.

6. “The greatest of all responsibilities is that of the strong to protect the weak.” Ryan closed the speech with an invocation of social responsibility, saying, “The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.” However, numerous clergy members have condemned Ryan’s budget plan as “cruel,” and “an immoral disaster” because of its devastating cuts in social programs the poor and sick rely on. Meanwhile, Ryan would give ultra-rich individuals and corporations $3 trillion in tax breaks.

 

MORE FEAR AND LOATHING

Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center, which has an anti-Islamic philosophy, told the Associated Press he would go ahead with plans to burn the Koran this weekend to protest the 9/11 terrorist attacks even though General David Petraeus, the top US general in Afghanistan, has said the Koran burnings could endanger American troops.
“Images of the burning of a Koran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan – and around the world – to inflame public opinion and incite violence.”

What is even sadder is that a press conference was called by interfaith leaders to discuss their united from against these protests against Islam and argued against what organizers called “an atmosphere of fear and intolerance” toward Islam.  And guess who did not bother to cover this press conference?  Right -  Fair and Balanced Fox "News."  Instead, they had  commentator Lou Dobbs holding forth on President Obama and the “sad isolated state this president has put himself in.”

At the interfaith press conference, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former Archibishop of Washington, said the growth of anti-Islamic sentiment was a “powerful moment that calls for a powerful response.” Cardinal McCarrick added, “our message is a message of working together.”And shame on you to Fox "News" and all those people who think they get they actually get the whole story from that source.


The Rev. Richard Cizik, representing the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, said “shame on you” to those who would burn another religion’s sacred texts.

NO MORE EQUALITY

I am so sad and disappointed by the voters in California. A majority of votes have been cast for Proposition 8 which removed the right to marry for same sex couples.

The Christians did an excellent job of spreading lies, hate and fear through the state. Their relentless attack fueled by the Mormon church, abetted by the Catholic church and others. They have removed civil rights from residents of California.

Who will they go after next?