The Many Faces of US Politics...

[screenexile]

Here's a question . . . is the fact that Aaron Sorkin has produced 2 worldwide and successful pro-democrat TV Series is that brainwashing people across the world to hate the Republicans?

I'm a huge fan of both West Wing and the Newsroom but I would say that they bash Republicans every chance they get. Especially the Newsroom and the tea party (although I think that's no bad thing). What I'm getting at is that maybe the Republicans are getting a raw deal.

My own opinion on it is that Romney is a knob and doesn't have the charisma to beat Obama in the election. In terms of people giving out about the economy well show me a country that hasn't suffered in the past 4 years? Is Obama supposed to be some kind of miracle worker, especially given the fact he's working against a Republican Congress. If Obama took back the house (can't see it) I think we would see some real action!!!

I think Romney could easily win. Or maybe I fear that! It's going to come down to two or three states, as most of them are totally predictable in terms of who'll win them. The US electorate is evenly split. It all comes down to enthusiasm. The Republicans had it two years ago when they rode the tea party wave. The key this time is whether Obama can get his base out and whether many people will fall for Romney's attempted reinvention as a moderate Republican over the past two weeks.

As for Aaron Sorkin, well the right wing has a monopoly on talk radio in the US. It's all available online for anyone who wants their point of view, assuming you don't get Fox News.

Haven't watched either show, as preaching to the choir type of shows don't interest me, which is why I don't get the attraction of talk radio/Fox News and its angry white christian echo chamber.

The Newsroom is incredibly preachy but West Wing for me is still the best TV Series ever made, it's not nearly as partisan as the Newsroom although it has its moments. I'm talking better than the Soprano's/Mad Men, all the great TV Shows. Martin Sheen as President is everything you would ever want from the leader of a Country!

[haveaharp]

http://news.sky.com/story/999142/new-york-bomb-plot-man-appears-in-court

Any political timely mileage to be made out of this one ?

Sky news were using the phrase "weapon of mass destruction" on tv earlier, for a 1000lb bomb ?

[Eamonnca1]

http://news.sky.com/story/999142/new-york-bomb-plot-man-appears-in-court

Any political timely mileage to be made out of this one ?

Sky news were using the phrase "weapon of mass destruction" on tv earlier, for a 1000lb bomb ?

Sounds like an extremist Ron Paul follower.

[GalwayBayBoy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxch-yi14BE

[stew]

Romney's Seven Biggest Debate Lies
by George Zornick
Perhaps the most famous moment to come out of Tuesday night's presidential town-hall style debate in Hempstead, New York, was when moderator Candy Crowley fact-checked Mitt Romney on the spot on Libya.

Eh she is not smart enough to get even that right, BO did mention terrorist attacks the next morning but he never once said that the four deaths in Libia were terrorist attacks............... it took him a full two weeks to do that.

But that isn't the only time the Republican candidate said something completely false—it was perhaps just the most obvious. Here are the seven biggest lies Romney told:

ROMNEY: "We have fewer people working today than we had when the president took office."

This is flatly false. The Bureau of Labor statistics just revised estimates from March 2011 to March 2012 upwards by 386,000 jobs—meaning that Obama crossed the magic imaginary barrier of net job creation for his term, and has actually created a net positive 125,000 jobs. This is a simple fact. And there have been 868,000 jobs created in the private sector during this time, which have been offset by public sector job losses—something Mitt Romney would like to see continue.

Again not true, Obama promised to add millions of jobs to the economy, he was elected on hope, when he took office unemployment was running at 7.8%, it is currently 7.8%, he said he would add 5.5 million jobs and he lied!

Moreover, this is an awful tough metric to judge Obama on in the first place. As he's fond of mentioning, the economy was hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs a month when he took office—so holding him to a net job creation standard means he has to make up for those massive losses that were out of his control entirely. But he's still done it.

He got elected in part because he had a plan to cure America, he had the plan to add jobs, he stated he would fix the economy and the job situation, he was wrong and or he flat out lied!

ROMNEY: "I don't believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care or not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives."

Recall back in March, when Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri introduced a bill that would allow employers to deny contraceptive coverage to employees.

He flipped flopped on this, I expect this sort of thing from these guys, they are politicians!

Mitt Romney said: "Of course I support the Blunt amendment.... Of course Roy Blunt, who is my liaison to the Senate, is someone I support and of course I support that amendment. I clearly want to have religious exemption from Obamacare.... I really think all Americans should be allowed to get around this religious exemption."

This one is pretty simple.

ROMNEY: "I am not going to have people at the high end pay less than they're paying now. The top 5 percent of taxpayers will continue to pay 60 percent of the income tax the nation collects. So that'll stay the same. Middle-income people are going to get a tax break."

BO however promised middle class people that he would cut the amount they pay for insurance by 50%...... he was right about the 50%, it went UP by 50% under his leadership.

I disagree with Romney on this, the rich should pay more and the middle income families should pay less, on this Obama is right, that said he told the middle class they would be better off four years ago, they are most assuredly not, the average family is $5,000 worse off given the insurance rates and the taxation issues.

42% of every dollar goes towards keeping the Government afloat with Public employees etc, that is criminal, BO has made this Government the biggest in the country's history, he campaigned on smaller Government, he lied!

A Center for American Progress examination of Romney's tax plan concluded that the top 10 percent of income earners would reap half of the plan's benefits, and the top 1 percent would reap one-third of the benefits.

The stats are horrible on this and there is no defending it unless you are a tea partier...............I loathe those feckers


Romney tries to dodge this unassailable fact by saying he'll cut deductions for the wealthy—but he refuses to say which ones. He's also ruled out raising the tax breaks the wealthy get on capital gains and dividends. This lead the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center to conclude that Romney would have to end up cutting deductions used by the middle class to make his math work—thus raising their taxes.

ROMNEY: "As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land."

Obama immediately challenged this point, leading to the first of many back-and-forths between the president and Romney. But Obama was right. It's true that drilling on public lands dropped 14 percent in 2011, but it went up 15 percent the year before. Overall oil production on federal lands is up under Obama—and Romney is being extremely dishonest in singling out the one year that it dropped.

You are very fecking naive if you think these boys dont use the stats to their advantage, do you really believe Obama is always right and Romney always wrong on facts and figures?

Obama took permits away from companies that had a right to drill because he claimed they had not started quickly enough for his liking, he stopped the pipeline from being built that would have run all the way down from Canada. He killed the right to drill in Alaska and he did the same in thr Carolina's for off shore drilling because he claimed to be afraid of another BP situation.

We must pause here to note that—since the oil drilled on federal land in the United States has zero impact on global gas prices, since it's such a trivial amount—it's not such a hot idea, and not one Obama should be particularly proud of increasing. But he did increase it.

Also, it should be noted that Romney plainly said later in the debate that "coal jobs are not up." In fact, 1,500 jobs in the coal industry have been created since Obama took office.

ROMNEY: "And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks,' and they brought us whole binders full of women. I was proud of the fact that...[Massachusetts] had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America."

First of all, that effort was spearheaded by a nonpartisan coalition of women's groups, not Romney. Second, the number of women in high-level appointed positions declined 27.6 during his tenure as governor.


More importantly Romney has opposed pay equity for women in much more substantive policy ways beyond these anecdotes—opposing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.

So did many dems, two wrongs do not make a right and here is something else to chew on, according to some stats thrown out there Romney was better than average in having women involved at high levels of Government, in fact when he ran for Govenor his top aide was a woman.

Also, there were no binders full of women at Bain Capital—there were no female partners at that firm during the 1980s and 1990s, according to The Boston Globe. Today, only four of forty-nine of the firm's managing directors are women.


ROMNEY: "I want to make sure we keep our Pell Grant program growing."

This is simply not true. Romney and his running mate would cut Pell Grants—Romney has been vague on the issue, using ominous budgetspeak that he wants to "refocus" Pell Grant dollars to "place the program on a responsible long-term path," but Paul Ryan has been far more specific—his budget would cut Pell Grants for up to 1 million students.

Cant argue here, I have two kids in school and they have both taken advantage of the reciprocity agreements with other states, this will really hurt students and ultimately their parents, that said, unlike most on here, I don't think that you are going to agree with the candidate of your choice on everything, there are too many on here who simply see Democrats as Good and Republicans as EVIL!

ROMNEY: "We're going to bring that pipeline in from Canada. How in the world the president said no to that pipeline? I will never know. This is about bringing good jobs back for the middle class of America, and that's what I'm going to do."

Romney is joining many other members of the Republican party in saying the Keystone Pipeline is a job-creation engine. It's not. The Cornell Global Labor Institute says it would create only 2,500 to 4,650 short-term construction jobs while it was being built—and the State Department found similar numbers  in its environmental review of the project. That's not enough to impact the unemployment rate, and is notably far, far less than the millions of jobs independent analysts say would be created by Obama's American Jobs Act, which focuses on many infrastructure projects and increased hiring of teachers and public safety workers.

What a load of bollocks that is, are these 4,650 workers going to build this pipeline in 6 months? once built do all the jobs go away? do they build it and forget to use it or are robots going to run the pipeline?

According to conservative sources there will be up to 30,000 jobs created with many thousands staying on to run the pipeline. I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Here's the rub, Obama has hardly kept one single promise he made four years ago, the American people have a choice, they can choose to let BO destroy future generations by adding trillions to the deficit OR they can kick BO to the curb and let someone else try and clean up his mess!

[stew]

Here's a question . . . is the fact that Aaron Sorkin has produced 2 worldwide and successful pro-democrat TV Series is that brainwashing people across the world to hate the Republicans?

I'm a huge fan of both West Wing and the Newsroom but I would say that they bash Republicans every chance they get. Especially the Newsroom and the tea party (although I think that's no bad thing). What I'm getting at is that maybe the Republicans are getting a raw deal.

My own opinion on it is that Romney is a knob and doesn't have the charisma to beat Obama in the election. In terms of people giving out about the economy well show me a country that hasn't suffered in the past 4 years? Is Obama supposed to be some kind of miracle worker, especially given the fact he's working against a Republican Congress. If Obama took back the house (can't see it) I think we would see some real action!!!

I think Romney could easily win. Or maybe I fear that! It's going to come down to two or three states, as most of them are totally predictable in terms of who'll win them. The US electorate is evenly split. It all comes down to enthusiasm. The Republicans had it two years ago when they rode the tea party wave. The key this time is whether Obama can get his base out and whether many people will fall for Romney's attempted reinvention as a moderate Republican over the past two weeks.

As for Aaron Sorkin, well the right wing has a monopoly on talk radio in the US. It's all available online for anyone who wants their point of view, assuming you don't get Fox News.

The Liberals own TV with the obvious exception of Fox, check out CNBC it is the left wings version of Fox!

Haven't watched either show, as preaching to the choir type of shows don't interest me, which is why I don't get the attraction of talk radio/Fox News and its angry white christian echo chamber.

The Newsroom is incredibly preachy but West Wing for me is still the best TV Series ever made, it's not nearly as partisan as the Newsroom although it has its moments. I'm talking better than the Soprano's/Mad Men, all the great TV Shows. Martin Sheen as President is everything you would ever want from the leader of a Country!

and of course he was portraying a democratic President.

[Declan]

What a load of bollocks that is

What about the other 6 ones Stew?

[J70]

Here's a question . . . is the fact that Aaron Sorkin has produced 2 worldwide and successful pro-democrat TV Series is that brainwashing people across the world to hate the Republicans?

I'm a huge fan of both West Wing and the Newsroom but I would say that they bash Republicans every chance they get. Especially the Newsroom and the tea party (although I think that's no bad thing). What I'm getting at is that maybe the Republicans are getting a raw deal.

My own opinion on it is that Romney is a knob and doesn't have the charisma to beat Obama in the election. In terms of people giving out about the economy well show me a country that hasn't suffered in the past 4 years? Is Obama supposed to be some kind of miracle worker, especially given the fact he's working against a Republican Congress. If Obama took back the house (can't see it) I think we would see some real action!!!

I think Romney could easily win. Or maybe I fear that! It's going to come down to two or three states, as most of them are totally predictable in terms of who'll win them. The US electorate is evenly split. It all comes down to enthusiasm. The Republicans had it two years ago when they rode the tea party wave. The key this time is whether Obama can get his base out and whether many people will fall for Romney's attempted reinvention as a moderate Republican over the past two weeks.

As for Aaron Sorkin, well the right wing has a monopoly on talk radio in the US. It's all available online for anyone who wants their point of view, assuming you don't get Fox News.

The Liberals own TV with the obvious exception of Fox, check out CNBC it is the left wings version of Fox!

Maybe you should check it out Stew. For the second time, CNBC is a business Wall Street channel, and in no shape or form could it be considered liberal.

MSNBC, yes, that is a liberal counterpoint to Fox. And in no way even remotely as popular, which Fox never stops boasting about.

On the one hand, Fox are the tiny persecuted minority, on the other, they continually win the cable news ratings. Same with right wing talk radio.

As to the reasons for the popularity of right wing, blame the government/gays/women/minorities/atheists/scientists/environmentalists/muslims/immigrants media forms, I can only speak for myself, but I reiterate my previous point that I'm just not interested in having my prejudices and anger stoked daily. I'm smart enough and educated enough to make up my own mind. I work with a lot of right wing guys, and you can pretty much predict what most of them are going to say on current political issues based on what the talk radio/Fox News/RNC latest talking points are.

Haven't watched either show, as preaching to the choir type of shows don't interest me, which is why I don't get the attraction of talk radio/Fox News and its angry white christian echo chamber.

The Newsroom is incredibly preachy but West Wing for me is still the best TV Series ever made, it's not nearly as partisan as the Newsroom although it has its moments. I'm talking better than the Soprano's/Mad Men, all the great TV Shows. Martin Sheen as President is everything you would ever want from the leader of a Country!

and of course he was portraying a democratic President.

And?

How would your ideal President be portrayed on tv?

[Declan]

Just reading about the debates there and the arrest of the Green party candidates. The debates are very closely controlled by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a private corporation that was created by the Republican and Democratic parties which excludes third-party candidates, among other things.

I didn't know that the GP are on the ballot for 85 percent of voters. Ninety million voters are predicted to stay home and vote with their feet that neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney represent them. That's twice as many voters than expected for either of them.

[J70]

Romney's Seven Biggest Debate Lies
by George Zornick
Perhaps the most famous moment to come out of Tuesday night's presidential town-hall style debate in Hempstead, New York, was when moderator Candy Crowley fact-checked Mitt Romney on the spot on Libya.

Eh she is not smart enough to get even that right, BO did mention terrorist attacks the next morning but he never once said that the four deaths in Libia were terrorist attacks............... it took him a full two weeks to do that.

But that isn't the only time the Republican candidate said something completely false—it was perhaps just the most obvious. Here are the seven biggest lies Romney told:

ROMNEY: "We have fewer people working today than we had when the president took office."

This is flatly false. The Bureau of Labor statistics just revised estimates from March 2011 to March 2012 upwards by 386,000 jobs—meaning that Obama crossed the magic imaginary barrier of net job creation for his term, and has actually created a net positive 125,000 jobs. This is a simple fact. And there have been 868,000 jobs created in the private sector during this time, which have been offset by public sector job losses—something Mitt Romney would like to see continue.

Again not true, Obama promised to add millions of jobs to the economy, he was elected on hope, when he took office unemployment was running at 7.8%, it is currently 7.8%, he said he would add 5.5 million jobs and he lied!

Moreover, this is an awful tough metric to judge Obama on in the first place. As he's fond of mentioning, the economy was hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs a month when he took office—so holding him to a net job creation standard means he has to make up for those massive losses that were out of his control entirely. But he's still done it.

He got elected in part because he had a plan to cure America, he had the plan to add jobs, he stated he would fix the economy and the job situation, he was wrong and or he flat out lied!

ROMNEY: "I don't believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care or not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives."

Recall back in March, when Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri introduced a bill that would allow employers to deny contraceptive coverage to employees.

He flipped flopped on this, I expect this sort of thing from these guys, they are politicians!

Mitt Romney said: "Of course I support the Blunt amendment.... Of course Roy Blunt, who is my liaison to the Senate, is someone I support and of course I support that amendment. I clearly want to have religious exemption from Obamacare.... I really think all Americans should be allowed to get around this religious exemption."

This one is pretty simple.

ROMNEY: "I am not going to have people at the high end pay less than they're paying now. The top 5 percent of taxpayers will continue to pay 60 percent of the income tax the nation collects. So that'll stay the same. Middle-income people are going to get a tax break."

BO however promised middle class people that he would cut the amount they pay for insurance by 50%...... he was right about the 50%, it went UP by 50% under his leadership.

I disagree with Romney on this, the rich should pay more and the middle income families should pay less, on this Obama is right, that said he told the middle class they would be better off four years ago, they are most assuredly not, the average family is $5,000 worse off given the insurance rates and the taxation issues.

42% of every dollar goes towards keeping the Government afloat with Public employees etc, that is criminal, BO has made this Government the biggest in the country's history, he campaigned on smaller Government, he lied!

A Center for American Progress examination of Romney's tax plan concluded that the top 10 percent of income earners would reap half of the plan's benefits, and the top 1 percent would reap one-third of the benefits.

The stats are horrible on this and there is no defending it unless you are a tea partier...............I loathe those feckers


Romney tries to dodge this unassailable fact by saying he'll cut deductions for the wealthy—but he refuses to say which ones. He's also ruled out raising the tax breaks the wealthy get on capital gains and dividends. This lead the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center to conclude that Romney would have to end up cutting deductions used by the middle class to make his math work—thus raising their taxes.

ROMNEY: "As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land."

Obama immediately challenged this point, leading to the first of many back-and-forths between the president and Romney. But Obama was right. It's true that drilling on public lands dropped 14 percent in 2011, but it went up 15 percent the year before. Overall oil production on federal lands is up under Obama—and Romney is being extremely dishonest in singling out the one year that it dropped.

You are very fecking naive if you think these boys dont use the stats to their advantage, do you really believe Obama is always right and Romney always wrong on facts and figures?

Obama took permits away from companies that had a right to drill because he claimed they had not started quickly enough for his liking, he stopped the pipeline from being built that would have run all the way down from Canada. He killed the right to drill in Alaska and he did the same in thr Carolina's for off shore drilling because he claimed to be afraid of another BP situation.

We must pause here to note that—since the oil drilled on federal land in the United States has zero impact on global gas prices, since it's such a trivial amount—it's not such a hot idea, and not one Obama should be particularly proud of increasing. But he did increase it.

Also, it should be noted that Romney plainly said later in the debate that "coal jobs are not up." In fact, 1,500 jobs in the coal industry have been created since Obama took office.

ROMNEY: "And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks,' and they brought us whole binders full of women. I was proud of the fact that...[Massachusetts] had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America."

First of all, that effort was spearheaded by a nonpartisan coalition of women's groups, not Romney. Second, the number of women in high-level appointed positions declined 27.6 during his tenure as governor.


More importantly Romney has opposed pay equity for women in much more substantive policy ways beyond these anecdotes—opposing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.

So did many dems, two wrongs do not make a right and here is something else to chew on, according to some stats thrown out there Romney was better than average in having women involved at high levels of Government, in fact when he ran for Govenor his top aide was a woman.

Also, there were no binders full of women at Bain Capital—there were no female partners at that firm during the 1980s and 1990s, according to The Boston Globe. Today, only four of forty-nine of the firm's managing directors are women.


ROMNEY: "I want to make sure we keep our Pell Grant program growing."

This is simply not true. Romney and his running mate would cut Pell Grants—Romney has been vague on the issue, using ominous budgetspeak that he wants to "refocus" Pell Grant dollars to "place the program on a responsible long-term path," but Paul Ryan has been far more specific—his budget would cut Pell Grants for up to 1 million students.

Cant argue here, I have two kids in school and they have both taken advantage of the reciprocity agreements with other states, this will really hurt students and ultimately their parents, that said, unlike most on here, I don't think that you are going to agree with the candidate of your choice on everything, there are too many on here who simply see Democrats as Good and Republicans as EVIL!

ROMNEY: "We're going to bring that pipeline in from Canada. How in the world the president said no to that pipeline? I will never know. This is about bringing good jobs back for the middle class of America, and that's what I'm going to do."

Romney is joining many other members of the Republican party in saying the Keystone Pipeline is a job-creation engine. It's not. The Cornell Global Labor Institute says it would create only 2,500 to 4,650 short-term construction jobs while it was being built—and the State Department found similar numbers  in its environmental review of the project. That's not enough to impact the unemployment rate, and is notably far, far less than the millions of jobs independent analysts say would be created by Obama's American Jobs Act, which focuses on many infrastructure projects and increased hiring of teachers and public safety workers.

What a load of bollocks that is, are these 4,650 workers going to build this pipeline in 6 months? once built do all the jobs go away? do they build it and forget to use it or are robots going to run the pipeline?

According to conservative sources there will be up to 30,000 jobs created with many thousands staying on to run the pipeline. I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Here's the rub, Obama has hardly kept one single promise he made four years ago, the American people have a choice, they can choose to let BO destroy future generations by adding trillions to the deficit OR they can kick BO to the curb and let someone else try and clean up his mess!

Tell us Stew: Where would we be now had McCain won?

How would McCain have dealt with the budget deficit? President Bush left a baseline 1.2 trillion deficit for the 2009 fiscal year (yes, Obama increased it). The economy was in free fall, with more than 3/4 million people losing jobs monthly. Would McCain have gone the austerity route? If so, how well has that worked in Europe? If not, how was he going to make up the gap? Should all those jobless people have just been cut loose and left to fend for themselves? Were you screaming about the Republicans when Bush was working with .5 trillion deficit in the relatively good times? Are you saying that McCain (or Bush, had it been two years earlier) would NOT have gone with a stimulus plan?

As for broken promises, Obama is not the king. The Republicans were so opposed to giving him any scent of victory that they almost to a man refused to even countenance his backing of what used to be THEIR health care reforms, as well as sensible programs like putting people back to work to rebuild public infrastructure, something that will pay for itself multiple times over and for which borrowing conditions will never be better. Where he can use executive orders for stuff like NOT deporting children of immigrants raised in the US, the right wing has gone nuts. Not much he could do either about the likes of Guantanamo. Public support just wasn't there when he tried.

[J70]

Just reading about the debates there and the arrest of the Green party candidates. The debates are very closely controlled by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a private corporation that was created by the Republican and Democratic parties which excludes third-party candidates, among other things.

I didn't know that the GP are on the ballot for 85 percent of voters. Ninety million voters are predicted to stay home and vote with their feet that neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney represent them. That's twice as many voters than expected for either of them.

Are those participation figures much different to parliamentary system countries where you can find small parties much more tailored to your own specific views?

[dec]

Tell us Stew: Where would we be now had McCain won?

How would McCain have dealt with the budget deficit? President Bush left a baseline 1.2 trillion deficit for the 2009 fiscal year (yes, Obama increased it).

Actually the budget deficit has not increased under Obama.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart.html

The largest deficit was in FY2009 the last Bush budget and has been lower each year since.

[J70]

Tell us Stew: Where would we be now had McCain won?

How would McCain have dealt with the budget deficit? President Bush left a baseline 1.2 trillion deficit for the 2009 fiscal year (yes, Obama increased it).

Actually the budget deficit has not increased under Obama.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart.html

The largest deficit was in FY2009 the last Bush budget and has been lower each year since.

Obama increased it by about 200 billion for 2009, including the stimulus.

And to correct an earlier post, it was Bush's penultimate budget that was about .5 trillion. His earlier ones were lower.

Of course, however, Bush didn't include the wars in his budgets.

[give her dixie]

This is an excellent article showing how Romney and his buddies took over a bankrupt automotive company, made billions on the GM bailout, closed the factories and sacked 25,000 workers, moved  production to China, and floated the company for billions.....

http://www.thenation.com/article/170644/mitt-romneys-bailout-bonanza#

[stew]

Romney's Seven Biggest Debate Lies
by George Zornick
Perhaps the most famous moment to come out of Tuesday night's presidential town-hall style debate in Hempstead, New York, was when moderator Candy Crowley fact-checked Mitt Romney on the spot on Libya.

Eh she is not smart enough to get even that right, BO did mention terrorist attacks the next morning but he never once said that the four deaths in Libia were terrorist attacks............... it took him a full two weeks to do that.

But that isn't the only time the Republican candidate said something completely false—it was perhaps just the most obvious. Here are the seven biggest lies Romney told:

ROMNEY: "We have fewer people working today than we had when the president took office."

This is flatly false. The Bureau of Labor statistics just revised estimates from March 2011 to March 2012 upwards by 386,000 jobs—meaning that Obama crossed the magic imaginary barrier of net job creation for his term, and has actually created a net positive 125,000 jobs. This is a simple fact. And there have been 868,000 jobs created in the private sector during this time, which have been offset by public sector job losses—something Mitt Romney would like to see continue.

Again not true, Obama promised to add millions of jobs to the economy, he was elected on hope, when he took office unemployment was running at 7.8%, it is currently 7.8%, he said he would add 5.5 million jobs and he lied!

Moreover, this is an awful tough metric to judge Obama on in the first place. As he's fond of mentioning, the economy was hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs a month when he took office—so holding him to a net job creation standard means he has to make up for those massive losses that were out of his control entirely. But he's still done it.

He got elected in part because he had a plan to cure America, he had the plan to add jobs, he stated he would fix the economy and the job situation, he was wrong and or he flat out lied!

ROMNEY: "I don't believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care or not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives."

Recall back in March, when Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri introduced a bill that would allow employers to deny contraceptive coverage to employees.

He flipped flopped on this, I expect this sort of thing from these guys, they are politicians!

Mitt Romney said: "Of course I support the Blunt amendment.... Of course Roy Blunt, who is my liaison to the Senate, is someone I support and of course I support that amendment. I clearly want to have religious exemption from Obamacare.... I really think all Americans should be allowed to get around this religious exemption."

This one is pretty simple.

ROMNEY: "I am not going to have people at the high end pay less than they're paying now. The top 5 percent of taxpayers will continue to pay 60 percent of the income tax the nation collects. So that'll stay the same. Middle-income people are going to get a tax break."

BO however promised middle class people that he would cut the amount they pay for insurance by 50%...... he was right about the 50%, it went UP by 50% under his leadership.

I disagree with Romney on this, the rich should pay more and the middle income families should pay less, on this Obama is right, that said he told the middle class they would be better off four years ago, they are most assuredly not, the average family is $5,000 worse off given the insurance rates and the taxation issues.

42% of every dollar goes towards keeping the Government afloat with Public employees etc, that is criminal, BO has made this Government the biggest in the country's history, he campaigned on smaller Government, he lied!

A Center for American Progress examination of Romney's tax plan concluded that the top 10 percent of income earners would reap half of the plan's benefits, and the top 1 percent would reap one-third of the benefits.

The stats are horrible on this and there is no defending it unless you are a tea partier...............I loathe those feckers


Romney tries to dodge this unassailable fact by saying he'll cut deductions for the wealthy—but he refuses to say which ones. He's also ruled out raising the tax breaks the wealthy get on capital gains and dividends. This lead the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center to conclude that Romney would have to end up cutting deductions used by the middle class to make his math work—thus raising their taxes.

ROMNEY: "As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land."

Obama immediately challenged this point, leading to the first of many back-and-forths between the president and Romney. But Obama was right. It's true that drilling on public lands dropped 14 percent in 2011, but it went up 15 percent the year before. Overall oil production on federal lands is up under Obama—and Romney is being extremely dishonest in singling out the one year that it dropped.

You are very fecking naive if you think these boys dont use the stats to their advantage, do you really believe Obama is always right and Romney always wrong on facts and figures?

Obama took permits away from companies that had a right to drill because he claimed they had not started quickly enough for his liking, he stopped the pipeline from being built that would have run all the way down from Canada. He killed the right to drill in Alaska and he did the same in thr Carolina's for off shore drilling because he claimed to be afraid of another BP situation.

We must pause here to note that—since the oil drilled on federal land in the United States has zero impact on global gas prices, since it's such a trivial amount—it's not such a hot idea, and not one Obama should be particularly proud of increasing. But he did increase it.

Also, it should be noted that Romney plainly said later in the debate that "coal jobs are not up." In fact, 1,500 jobs in the coal industry have been created since Obama took office.

ROMNEY: "And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks,' and they brought us whole binders full of women. I was proud of the fact that...[Massachusetts] had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America."

First of all, that effort was spearheaded by a nonpartisan coalition of women's groups, not Romney. Second, the number of women in high-level appointed positions declined 27.6 during his tenure as governor.


More importantly Romney has opposed pay equity for women in much more substantive policy ways beyond these anecdotes—opposing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.

So did many dems, two wrongs do not make a right and here is something else to chew on, according to some stats thrown out there Romney was better than average in having women involved at high levels of Government, in fact when he ran for Govenor his top aide was a woman.

Also, there were no binders full of women at Bain Capital—there were no female partners at that firm during the 1980s and 1990s, according to The Boston Globe. Today, only four of forty-nine of the firm's managing directors are women.


ROMNEY: "I want to make sure we keep our Pell Grant program growing."

This is simply not true. Romney and his running mate would cut Pell Grants—Romney has been vague on the issue, using ominous budgetspeak that he wants to "refocus" Pell Grant dollars to "place the program on a responsible long-term path," but Paul Ryan has been far more specific—his budget would cut Pell Grants for up to 1 million students.

Cant argue here, I have two kids in school and they have both taken advantage of the reciprocity agreements with other states, this will really hurt students and ultimately their parents, that said, unlike most on here, I don't think that you are going to agree with the candidate of your choice on everything, there are too many on here who simply see Democrats as Good and Republicans as EVIL!

ROMNEY: "We're going to bring that pipeline in from Canada. How in the world the president said no to that pipeline? I will never know. This is about bringing good jobs back for the middle class of America, and that's what I'm going to do."

Romney is joining many other members of the Republican party in saying the Keystone Pipeline is a job-creation engine. It's not. The Cornell Global Labor Institute says it would create only 2,500 to 4,650 short-term construction jobs while it was being built—and the State Department found similar numbers  in its environmental review of the project. That's not enough to impact the unemployment rate, and is notably far, far less than the millions of jobs independent analysts say would be created by Obama's American Jobs Act, which focuses on many infrastructure projects and increased hiring of teachers and public safety workers.

What a load of bollocks that is, are these 4,650 workers going to build this pipeline in 6 months? once built do all the jobs go away? do they build it and forget to use it or are robots going to run the pipeline?

According to conservative sources there will be up to 30,000 jobs created with many thousands staying on to run the pipeline. I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Here's the rub, Obama has hardly kept one single promise he made four years ago, the American people have a choice, they can choose to let BO destroy future generations by adding trillions to the deficit OR they can kick BO to the curb and let someone else try and clean up his mess!

Tell us Stew: Where would we be now had McCain won?

How the fcuk could I know this? I am not capable of seeing into the future ffs! I would like to think that the younger generations would be better off because the debt they carry would be at least 33% less but you never know!

How would McCain have dealt with the budget deficit? President Bush left a baseline 1.2 trillion deficit for the 2009 fiscal year (yes, Obama increased it). The economy was in free fall, with more than 3/4 million people losing jobs monthly. Would McCain have gone the austerity route? If so, how well has that worked in Europe? If not, how was he going to make up the gap? Should all those jobless people have just been cut loose and left to fend for themselves? Were you screaming about the Republicans when Bush was working with .5 trillion deficit in the relatively good times? Are you saying that McCain (or Bush, had it been two years earlier) would NOT have gone with a stimulus plan?

As for broken promises, Obama is not the king. The Republicans were so opposed to giving him any scent of victory that they almost to a man refused to even countenance his backing of what used to be THEIR health care reforms, as well as sensible programs like putting people back to work to rebuild public infrastructure, something that will pay for itself multiple times over and for which borrowing conditions will never be better. Where he can use executive orders for stuff like NOT deporting children of immigrants raised in the US, the right wing has gone nuts. Not much he could do either about the likes of Guantanamo. Public support just wasn't there when he tried.