BOBBIE LUCIER: I just - I don’t like him. Can’t stand to look at him. I don’t like his wife. She’s far from the first lady. It’s about time we get a first lady in there that acts like a first lady and looks like a first lady.

Romney Courts Vets At American Legion Convention : NPR (via sarahlee310)

Ok. I listened to this and I was APPALLED!!!! We keep pointing it out, but each damned example just makes me that much more sick.

How can you say that this lady  isn’t a First Lady?!  She is not only a First Lady, she is the best one we have EVER HAD!  She is the epitome of grace, strength and decorum.  She has stood by her husband and endured some of the most evil and hateful comments ever made, not only about him, but about her AND HER CHILDREN. Through it all, she has yet to cuss anyone out.  

God help me, if it was me, I know I wouldn’t have had the restraint.  

(via sarahlee310)

Another Romney Abortion Flip-Flop: No Exceptions for Health of the Mother

abaldwin360:

In an interview with CBS News on Monday, Mitt Romney said he disagreed with his own party’s support for criminalizing abortion without exceptions: “My position has been clear throughout this campaign; I’m in favor of abortion being legal in the case of rape and incest, and the health and life of the mother.”

Of course, Romney’s position on the legality of abortion has been anything but clear. Now his campaign denies that he supports allowing abortion when a woman’s health is in jeopardy, as he told reporter Scott Pelley. Instead, they say he only supports allowing abortion when a woman would die without one.

Marjorie Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony List, a major anti-choice group, in an interview with Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association insisted that the Romney campaign told her that Romney does not in fact believe in exceptions for the health of the mother, contradicting what he said in the Monday interview. If he did, Dannenfelser said, he would not have received the endorsement of her anti-choice organization.

watch the video at the source

Hmmm.

Who else thinks they are purposely telling the public one thing while telling these people something else?

This matters people. I cannot stress this enough.

(via sarahlee310)

Source: abaldwin360

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) has launched an online fundraising drive pegged to his pledge not to leave the Missouri Senate race, despite mounting pressure from broad swathes of the Republican and conservative establishment urging him to step down.

Todd Akin Launches ‘I’m Not Quitting’ Ad Campaign | TPM2012 (via sarahlee310)

The only person who seems to want him to stay in seems to be his opponent, Claire McCaskill, which I find to be bad form personally.  She really ought to stay out of this lest she set herself aflame. 

(via sarahlee310)

Mitt Romney’s Medicare Defense: Don’t Tell Seniors The Truth | Surrogates Admit Romney Will Cut Medicare Benefits For Current Seniors

On Fox News Sunday, Romney adviser Ed Gillespie tried to address the conundrum. “There are other reforms as well. As you know Governor Romney supports increasing over time bringing the Medicare eligibility age in line with the Social Security retirement age.”

But raising the Medicare eligibility age is a benefit cut, and implementing the increase before 2016 would violate Romney’s pledge to leave the program unchanged for people between ages 55 and 65.

Avik Roy, an outside health care adviser to the Romney campaign, admits that committing to billions of dollars in higher Medicare spending in the near-term will make it difficult for Romney to achieve its separate goal of reducing overall federal spending to modern lows. But he notes that Romney could make up the difference elsewhere in the budget or, by “mak[ing] other changes to the Medicare program, such as increased means-testing, that don’t alter the program’s basic structure.”

Further means-testing of Medicare would amount to a benefit cut to current seniors.

These admissions rest on top of the fact that by repealing the Affordable Care Act, Romney would wipe out new Medicare benefits included in the law. Repeal would result in higher payments to doctors and hospitals, and the restoration of overpayments to insurers participating in Medicare advantage. But for beneficiaries, it would re-open the Medicare prescription drug donut hole and eliminate coverage for preventive services and annual checkups that the ACA created.

(via abaldwin360)

Source: sarahlee310

Ohio suspends election board members who pushed for extra voting hours | The Raw Story

On her show Monday night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow talked with two Democratic election board members in Ohio who were suspended after they pushed to get extra voting hours on the weekends. Dennis Lieberman and Tom Ritchie faced an administrative hearing Monday for refusing to comply with an order from Secretary of State Jon Husted. They told Maddow that having voting hours on the weekends was crucial in their county, noting approximately one-third of those who voted early in the last election voted on a weekend.

David Simon Explains Why So Many Jaws Dropped When Mitt Romney Said He Had Never Paid Less Than A 13% Tax Rate - Business Insider

Yesterday, in response to months of requests for him to release many more years of tax returns, Mitt Romney dismissed this topic as “small-minded” and said he had never paid less than a 13% tax rate.

If this information was designed to make those who want to see Romney’s tax returns feel like fools for asking, it didn’t.

Rather, it caused lots of jaws to drop.

Why?

Well, first because Romney confirmed what most people have long assumed, which is that he pays an extraordinarily low tax rate for someone who makes so much money.

Second, because the tax rate that Romney seemed proud to have paid was a lower tax rate than half of Americans pay.

[…]

Unlike those who argue that Romney’s money is Romney’s money and that every dime that he is forced to pay in taxes is a dime that is effectively stolen or “confiscated” from him, Simon recognizes that his financial success is in part due to the economic environment in which he lives and works:

Mitt Romney paid taxes at a rate of at least 13 percent. And he’s proud to say so.

Can we stand back and pause a short minute to take in the spectacle of a man who wants to be President of The United States, who wants us to seriously regard him as a paragon of the American civic ideal, declaiming proudly and in public that he has paid his taxes at a third of the rate normally associated with gentlemen of his economic benefit?…

Thirteen percent.  The last time I paid taxes at that rate, I believe I might still have been in college.  If not, it was my first couple years as a newspaper reporter.  Since then, the paychecks have been just fine, thanks, and I don’t see any reason not to pay at the rate appropriate to my earnings, given that I’m writing the check to the same government that provided the economic environment that allowed for such incomes.

So first there are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of them but also various subsidy programs — the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Mitt Romney says he would cut federal funding for PBS to trim budget.

At Summer TV Press Tour 2012, PBS chief Paula Kerger was asked about the debate in regards to cutting public TV’s federal funding’ she noted that it was ironic, since PBS had just recently snagged 58 Emmy nominations. Kerger also said that only 15 percent of public TV dollars come from the federally-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The War on Big Bird has begun. (via kileyrae)

Look up on them America!  These are the faces that are destroying the American economy

Yeah.  I don’t believe it either.  

I think it’s these guys

(via sarahlee310)

Source: Washington Post

Ryan Sponsored Abortion Bill That Would Make Romney's Kids Criminals | Mother Jones

What isn’t so well known about Ryan’s record, though, is that one piece of legislation he supported is so extreme that it would have turned Romney’s children into criminals.

The Sanctity of Human Life Act, which Ryan co-sponsored, would have enshrined the notion that life begins at fertilization in federal law, thus criminalizing in vitro fertilization—the process of creating an embryo outside of a woman’s womb. In IVF, doctors typically create multiple embryos and then only implant the healthiest ones in the woman. Some of them stick and become babies, and some don’t. The embryos that don’t make it to the womb are either frozen for later use or destroyed. The Sanctity of Human Life Act, if passed, would make all those embryos “people” in the legal sense, so if they aren’t used or don’t become babies after being implanted, they would essentially become murder victims under the law.

[…]

In May, Romney’s son Tagg became father of twin boys thanks to help from IVF and a surrogate mother. Tagg’s son Jonathan was also produced this way. Two of Tagg’s brothers reportedly have struggled with infertility issues and resorted to IVF as well. It’s hard to imagine that Romney will score any points with voters by tapping a running mate whose anti-abortion views are so extreme that Romney’s own kids can’t live with them.

Ryan’s position on IVF might give President Obama an opening for attack: While Romney’s running mate has advocated criminalizing a procedure that has brought untold joy to about 3 million families over the past three decades, Democrats might be able to claim credit for making advanced infertility treatments available to the vast majority of Americans who can’t afford them. Currently, most health insurance plans don’t cover infertility treatment, so IVF and other advanced baby-making technology is mostly available to rich people—like the Romney boys.