NYT: Talking about a candidates religion is racist but only if that candidate is Obama

Just last week the media and Democratic operatives went crazy at the idea that a GOP Super PAC was going to run ads highlighting President Obama's 20 year association with Rev. Wright.

It would put "race front and center" claimed NBC, the NYT termed it "racial politics, 2012 style." Even Obama's own campaign claimed that to talk about Obama sitting in Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years as he said things like "God Damn America" was racist and therefore off limits.
Surely Mitt Romney's religious background should be off limits, right? Wrong.

It goes on for 4 pages and then the "reporter" went on MSNBC to talk about how much of a hypocrite Romney is for engaging in political attacks.

"The way I reported the story is I really talked to members of the LDS church who are close to Romney, who have worshiped with him over the years, who really know him. And they see one conflict in particular, which is between the kind of ideals that Romney professed in church. He put a lot of emphasis on treating other people well, on being sensitive and respectful, on being generous and giving, talked a lot about Jesus' lessons in those manner. And yet these Mormons see the way Romney is carrying out political attacks, some of which are very harsh and they see a conflict between what he taught in church and what he does on the campaign trail," Kantor said.

My question is why exactly is Romney's religious history fair game but Obama's is verboten? Enough with the double standard bull. Either Obama's 20 year friendship and church membership in a church that preached black liberation theology is fair game for political attacks or Romney's Mormon roots are not.

Obama thinks Romney is a traitor.

Not really, but since the left went crazy over Romney not immediately castigating some lady who said Obama should be tried for treason it stands to reason that Obama should be castigated for yelling out that Mitt Romney is a traitor, right?

The shout from the crowd was clear. As President Barack Obama gave the first official campaign speech of his re-election bid at a sports arena in Ohio last weekend the first mention of his Republican opponent Mitt Romney prompted a male voice in the throng to yell: “Traitor!”

Do I think that Obama believes that Romney is a traitor or that every thing his supporters say should reflect back to him? Of course not, that would be absurd and idiotic. Then again, the Obama campaign claimed that everything Romney supporters say reflects back on him so fair is fair right?

By then, Obama's spin machine was in high gear, accusing Romney of a lack of leadership for not disagreeing with the questioner's accusation of treason.

"Time after time in this campaign, Mitt Romney has had the opportunity to show that he has the fortitude to stand up to hateful and over-the-line rhetoric and time after time, he has failed to do so," Obama campaign spokesman Lis Smith said in a statement.

What's good for the goose.

Obama Should Apologize

Fresh off the heels of the beginning of a new national nightmare, that is Mitt Romney engaging in the type of high school pranks and hazing that every normal high school guy has engaged in, comes new information that Obama pushed a little girl once. As chronicled in "his" autobiography Dreams From My Father

There was one other child in my class, though, who reminded me of a different sort of pain. Hre name was Coretta, and before my arrival she had been the only black person in our grade. She was plump and dark and didn't seem to have many friends. From the first day, we avoided each other but watched from a distance, as if direct contact would only remind us more keenly of our isolation.

Finally, during recess one hot, cloudless day, we found ourselves occupying the same corner of the playground. I don't remember what we said to each other, but I remember that suddenly she was chasing me around the jungle gyms and swings. She was laughing brightly, and I teased hre and dodged this way and that, until she finally caught me and we fell to the ground breathless. When I looked up, I saw a group of children, faceless before the glare of the sun, pointing down at us.

"Coretta has a boyfriend! Coretta has a boyfriend!"

The chants grew louder and more kids circled us.

"She's not my g-girlfriend," I stammered. I looked to Coretta for some assistance, but she just stood there looking down at the ground. "Coretta's got a boyfriend! Why don't you kiss her, mister boyfriend?"

"I'm not her boyfriend!" I shouted. I ran up to Coretta and gave her a slight shove; she staggerd back and looked up at me, but still said nothing. "Leave me alone!" I shouted again. And suddenly Coretta was running, faster and faster until she disappeared from sight. Appreciative laughs rose around me. Then the bell rang, and the teachers appeared to round us back into class.

To this day he has never apologized publicly to little miss Coretta. Since it is now big news what our candidates for President did before they were adults shouldn't we be discussing this incident? And if not, why?

Latest DCCC Fundraising Pitch

The DCCC sent this out last night after Mitt Romney's killer speech.

Did tonight’s Mitt Romney speech make you want to throw your remote at the TV?

He must think he can distract voters from his extreme agenda by lying about President Obama. And he could be right.

If Romney and the Republicans can erase their radical record and attack President Obama with enough secret SuperPAC-funded smears, then they will win in 2012.

Mitt made his case. Now, it’s time for us to make ours.

Contribute $3 right now to make sure no one forgets what radical Republicans have in store for America >>

Mitt called his speech, “A Better America Begins Tonight.”

He should’ve named it, “Forget All That Stuff I Said Yesterday.”

Now that the Republican primary race is over, Romney is trying to etch-a-sketch away his “severely conservative” policy positions. Republicans nationwide won’t be far behind. Don’t let them get away with it.

http://dccc.org/Stand-with-Obama

Thanks,

Kelly

Kelly Ward DCCC Political Director

My favorite part is the letter claiming that Romney is simply lying about Barack Obama's record. Of course, they can't actually point to where Romney was lying they simply say he was. Nothing Romney said in his speech was a lie about Obama's record

Is it easier to make ends meet? Is it easier to sell your home or buy a new one? Have you saved what you needed for retirement? Are you making more in your job? Do you have a better chance to get a better job? Do you pay less at the pump?.....

We know that this election is about the kind of America we will live in and the kind of America we will leave to future generations. When it comes to the character of America, President Obama and I have very different visions.

Government is at the center of his vision. It dispenses the benefits, borrows what it cannot take, and consumes a greater and greater share of the economy. With Obamacare fully installed, government will come to control half the economy, and we will have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise society.

This President is putting us on a path where our lives will be ruled by bureaucrats and boards, commissions and czars. He’s asking us to accept that Washington knows best – and can provide all.

Median Income is down significantly from 2009 to 2012 - Falling 6.7% In fact, Obama's policies have led to incomes falling more during the 2 year "recovery" period than they did during the actual recession under Bush.

New Homes sold are down from 374,000 a year in 2009 to 328,000 last month. With new homes for sale is down 34% since 2009.

The unemployment rate was at 7.7% when Obama took office and today is at 8.2%, and if the labor participation force was the same as when he took office the actual unemployment rate would be above 10.5%.

What about gas prices? From $1.87 the day Obama was inaugurated to $3.88 on April 23, 2012.

Clearly everything that Mitt Romney said last night about Obama's policies was true. America is not better off today than we were 4 years ago. Unemployment is up, labor participation is down, gas prices are up, incomes are down. The Obama campaign will continue to claim Romney is lying about Obama's record - just remember if Romney really was lying the Obama campaign would actually refute him with hard facts.

Stay informed and let's kick Obama out of the White House this November.

Romney/Rubio 2012?

For someone who has said multiple times that he isn't going to be the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Marco Rubio sure has spent a lot of time campaigning with Romney in the swing state of Pennsylvania.

Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney dodged mounting speculation Monday about a potential running mate, even with Senator Marco Rubio, the man now in the VP spotlight, standing right beside him...

It had the looks of a running mate audition, with the two men striding together through the Mustang Expediting delivery company's warehouse, and Romney occasionally stepping back to let Rubio handle some questions

And now Rubio has scheduled a major foreign policy speech. We still have at least 3 months of speculation on who the VP pick will be but I hope it is Marco Rubio just so I can see a bunch of birthers heads explode.

Mitt Romney Versus Reality

That is the title of Obama's newest web ad. It should be called "Barack Obama Versus Truth"

If you don't want to watch the ad, and I don't blame you if you don't, I'll break it down for you. First it starts off with a statement by Romney and then it cuts to something Obama has said that "contradicts" Romney. For instance:

Romney: He went around the world and apologized for America
ObamaWe will not apologize for our way of life.

So who is correct in this instance? Why Romney of course. Here is a short list of the times Obama has apologized for America... all within months of his taking office.

1. Apology to Europe: Speech in Strasbourg, France, April 3. “In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe‘s leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”

7. Apology for America before the Turkish Parliament: Speech to the Turkish Parliament, Ankara, Turkey, April 6. “The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history. Facing the Washington Monument that I spoke of is a memorial of Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed those who were enslaved even after Washington led our Revolution. Our country still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans.”

8. Apology for U.S. Policy toward the Americas: Editorial “Choosing a Better Future in the Americas,” April 16. “Too often, the United States has not pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors. We have been too easily distracted by other priorities, and have failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas.”

Another part of the video has Romney correctly claiming that we have high energy prices because Obama stopped drilling in the gulf. Obama hits back "under my administration we have a near record number of oil rigs operating" In truth, in 2011 oil production in America was down almost 275,000 barrels a day and much of the expansion in 2009 and 2010 came from leases made under both the Clinton and Bush administrations that were just coming online.

There is a reason that ad doesn't use anything but statements from Obama - because flowery rhetoric is all they have. If they had hard facts rebutting Romney they would've used them similar to the hard hitting ad from Romney attacking Obama's failed administration.

The Obama campaign will continue using nothing but flowery rhetoric because it works to convince the segment of the population that isn't engaged in politics. Obama has been a Stuttering Clusterf*** of a Miserable Failure and we need to make sure the facts are out there so that Obama can't lie his way to another four years.

Good News: Chinese $5 trillion richer thanks to Obama policies

Debt Has Increased Under Obama by $5,027,761,476,484.56. And he hasn't even been in office for a full 4 years yet. Since he has taken office, Obama has increased the debt by $1.54 trillion dollars a year and one hundred and twenty five billion dollars a month. If that keeps up Obama is due to add another trillion to the debt by the end of the year.

The man needs to go.

CBS/NYT Poll: Romney 46% Obama 46%

The good news continues to roll in for Republicans and Mitt Romney. This time in the form of the CBS/NYT poll that shows a dead heat between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

The best news for Romney is found later on in the poll. It shows that a small number of Republicans have yet to rally That is to be expected among those most dedicated to a particular candidate but as soon as Gingrich drops out I'd wager that those supporting him will come around on Mitt. While those who support Paul Mitt can expect 50-75% of them to swallow their pride and cast a ballot for him.

Following the end of Santorum's bid for the presidency, Republican primary voters have rallied behind Romney, with 54 percent saying they want him to lead Republicans into the fall campaign season. That's a significant difference from March, when only 30 percent wanted him to be the nominee.

Gingrich was preferred among 20 percent of Republican primary voters; Paul received support from 12 percent. Nine percent picked "someone else." When asked if Santorum should have suspended his campaign, 63 percent of those polled said yes; 30 percent said no

I won't turn this into a 24/7 poll blog but these first ones coming out after Mitt has effectively sewn up the nomination is showing that Obama is in a much weaker position than a lot of people were thinking.

Gallup: Romney 47% Obama 45%

Third national poll since Romney locked up the GOP nomination and it's the third one that shows him with a lead over Obama.

It's only April so take these polls with a grain of salt but it sure is nice to see Obama losing in so many polls recently.

Obama takes swipe at Romney's Taxes

The class warfare continues....

"Mitt Romney opposes the Buffett Rule because he wants to protect tax loopholes and give millionaires like himself trillions of dollars in tax breaks paid for by either increasing the deficit or by cutting programs critical to the middle class and economic growth," the site charges.

Of course Obama blatantly lies about Romney's tax plan which will eliminate a lot of the deductions and credits that overwhelmingly benefit higher income Americans.

I'm going to probably eliminate for high income people the second home mortgage deduction," Romney said, adding that he would also likely eliminate deductions for state income and property taxes as well. "By virtue of doing that, we'll get the same tax revenue, but we'll have lower rates," Romney explained. "The nice thing about lower rates is that small businesses not get to keep a larger share of what they're earning and plow it back in to hire more people and expand their business."

But hey, since when has Obama let the truth stop him from doing anything?

Yet another wealthy democratic woman says Ann Romney can't speak for women because she's wealthy

With the way the media keeps digging at this Ann Romney story they are gonna hit china soon.

And work as she may, that’s one place Ann Romney has never been. She has spent her life in the private precincts of the marital workplace, where emotional ties replace the financial norms of the factory or office.

Now, she has emerged to campaign for her husband and to explain to him what women want. “I’ve had the fun of being out with my wife the last several days on the campaign trail,” Mitt Romney told Fox Newsthis month. “And she points out that as she talks to women, they tell her that their number one concern is the economy.”

At a recent campaign event, Romney said he wished his wife were there to help answer a question about female voters. “She says that she’s going across the country and talking with women, and what they’re talking about is the debt that we’re leaving the next generation and the failure of this economy to put people back to work.”

When Ann Romney’s husband, who faces a gender gap in some polls, uses her experience and insight as a megaphone for women’s concern over fewer paid jobs, he mistakenly assumes that all women are fungible. Which was, I take it, Rosen’s original point.

That last part is rich coming from a woman who belongs to a party that believes not wanting to force religious institutions to violate their tenets is a "war on women" and other faux outrage over anything the GOP says about women that strays from liberal orthodoxy.

I guess these media shills will do anything to keep themselves from having to cover Obama's failures but this is doomed to backfire.

Obama Campaign Manager Endorses Mitt Romney

Looks like the Mitt Romney campaign is having a little fun with something David Axelrod said this morning on Fox News Sunday

The choice in this election is between an economy that produces a growing middle class and gives people the chance to get ahead.... and an economy that continues down the road we're on

Clearly, Axelrod just screwed up his talking points but gaffe aside he is absolutely right. There is a stark choice this election, on the one side you have President Obama who has presided over yearly trillion dollar deficits, ignored actual solutions to rising energy costs while giving billions of tax dollars to failed green energy companies, destroyed the used car market for lower income Americans by instituting the Cash for Clunkers program that required vehicles traded in to be destroyed, and who has no real economic plan other than to soak the rich with more taxes, even though the top 1% already pay close to 30% of all federal taxes in this country.

On the other side of the aisle stands Mitt Romney. A man who understands the economy because he's actually worked as an executive. A man who has created jobs. A man who has had to build, and maintain, a balanced budget.

Axelrod is absolutely correct we can't afford to continue down President Obama's path of high unemployment, outrageous deficits, and budget busting energy prices but the only way we can get off that path is to send Obama packing. I know a lot of conservatives aren't enthused about Romney but we have to get Obama out of Washington.

No accomplishments? No worries, just attack the other guy.

Great editorial over at the Washington Examiner this morning. Obama goes negative to sidestep his sorry record It's a short article, so I won't quote it here, but head on over there and read it.

In 2008 Obama didn't have to run a negative campaign because he was a blank slate upon which voters could think of him as being whatever they wanted him to be. Post partisan uniter, a real force for change, liberal agitator, someone who finally would make the dream of equality a reality. And it worked for him but now after four years with hundreds of thousands of Americans without jobs, the lowest labor participation rate in decades, massive deficits with no end in sight, gas prices already above $4.00 and climbing it won't work again.

Obama is still personally popular because despite his policy failings the general populace wants to see him succeed. They remember him as this great speech giver who inspired hope after 8 years of Bush but slowly that veneer is being stripped away. Will voters react to the horrible economy and bungled economic policy of Obama by voting him out in November? A couple new polls this week show that Mitt Romney leads Obama nationally but it is only April so while I will continue holding on to the dream that Obama will be a one termer only time will tell.

Why Hasn't Obama Called Ann Romney?

Inquisitive minds want to know.

Cigarette Taxes, Education Policy, and Government Creep.

Over the past few years we've seen a strong push by liberals, and those who believe they can live your our lives better than we can, to turn us all into wards of the state. Whereas the attempts to do so decades ago were much more transparent today their attempts are more subtle and thus much more insidious.

Fatty food bans, salt bans, government entities working with Hollywood to get cigarette smoking mentioned in movie ratings, and a whole host of other government prohibitions all designed to make the "correct" choice for us. I don't know about you but I don't the government living my life for me. If I want to make the wrong choices, guess what, that is my decision and no one in government has the right, constitutionally nor morally, to make them for me. Yet, time and again, we let those who think they are better than us get away with their actions because we express outrage for a week tops and then we forget about it. By the time elections roll around the issue is completely forgotten so we send the do-gooders we were once outraged at to continue their slow creep into our lives.

So why do governments want to make the "correct" choices for me? The answer always comes back to money. They push cigarette taxes ever higher under the guise of public health but if that was true they would just make the cigarette excise tax prohibitively expensive. Of course they would never do that because the do-gooders in government come to rely on that, and other sin tax, revenue to exert control over every single one of our lives. And when the tax increases do come they know the majority of voters won't care because, hey, that small tax increase doesn't affect me - I don't smoke (or drink or view porn, etc...) - but in reality every single action by the government affects every single one of us. Anytime we let government power grow we give them the implicit permission to creep further and further into our lives.

That's why I hate it when pro-life advocates talk about taxing abortions as a way to cut down on them. It's an absurd position that would make it nearly impossible for us to achieve our dream of eliminating abortions once and for all because the moment government has a financial stake in keeping abortions legal is the moment the pro-life movement dies.

But we don't just see attempts to run our lives when it comes to taxes. Perhaps the biggest example is the political push for every single person to go to college. They do so without regard to a persons actual intelligence, want to attend college, or financial ability to afford college. To those who think of themselves as our betters if you don't attend college you are a failure and your life will be one of hardship. Of course they do this not only because it is politically popular to push college for all but because to do so makes our government a ton of money.

The vast majority of students who attend college do so without any means to pay for it yet they are unable to receive any aid other than education loans - loans which net state and federal governments tens of thousands of dollars in interest payments. And what do those students, who have no interest in college and no way to pay for it, do once they get to college? They either drop out after wasting both their time and money or they get degrees in unemployable fields that will do nothing for their careers once they actually do graduate. Of course there is an easy fix for all of this - stop denigrating trade and vocational schools. But learning a trade is beneath the political aristocracy and allowing young adults to learn an employable trade that leads to a well paying career instead of being a ward of the state because you can't find a job is bad for those politicians who want to live our lives. Joe Biden recently summed this feeling up with a recent speech about "economic fairness." He said that we need to stop allowing our students to settle for trade schools. It's a joke and this policy of college or bust has screwed up an entire generation of Americans, just look at the Occupy Wall Street crowd. They were pushed into college by being promised jobs and a good life, where they didn't learn any actual skills, and now are angry not at the liberals who promised them a life of ease but at those who, if asked, probably would've told them that college isn't for everybody so make your own decisions.

We don't have to live with as wards of the state. We fought a revolutionary war and created a government with limited powers so that we would be free to live as choose. Since our foundation the cause of liberty has been dampened and tread on by those who think themselves our betters but that doesn't mean the cause of liberty is dead. In my next post I will detail some ways we can fight back against this government creep and restore the freedoms that have been incrementally stripped from us.

Hilary Rosen Beclowns Herself

If you've seen any cable news program in the past 15 or so hours then you've probably heard about Hilary Rosen beclowning herself while on AC360 last night and with an op-ed at CNN this morning. For those who haven't let me give you a quick recap of what happened. Link, relevant part from about 55 seconds to 1 minute but the whole thing is good, and if you don't want to watch the clip Rosen says "guess what [Ann Romney] has never worked a day in her life."

Rosen was saying this in the context that Ann Romney couldn't provide accurate information on the struggle of working mothers because she herself has never struggled to get by as a working mother so I honestly don't think she should get much flack for that comment, as stupid as it was. Where she really beclowns herself is with her op-ed at cnn.  The entire thing is pretty much just a giant rant from Rosen but let's break down the best parts of it.

Spare me the faux anger from the right who view the issue of women's rights and advancement as a way to score political points. When it comes to supporting policies that would actually help women, their silence has been deafening. I don't need lectures from the RNC on supporting women and fighting to increase opportunities for women; I've been doing it my whole career.

This is priceless coming from a strategist for the party that started the claim that the GOP has a "war on women" because we don't agree with forcing a Catholic Church to pay for abortifacients and contraceptive. And had the chairman of the Democratic Party make the news circuit to claim the GOP hates women because he said that the GOP "war on women" is as accurate as a GOP "war on caterpillars."

As Ruth Marcus noted in her column yesterday in the Washington Post, Romney, when asked last week about the gender gap, twice said he wished his wife could take the question.
"My wife has the occasion, as you know, to campaign on her own and also with me," Romney told newspaper editors, "and she reports to me regularly that the issue women care about most is the economy."
So it begs the question, is Ann Romney Mitt's touchstone for women who are struggling economically or not? Nothing in Ann Romney's history as we have heard it -- hardworking mom she may have been -- leads me to believe that Mitt has chosen the right expert to get feedback on this problem he professes to be so concerned about.

So Rosen somehow thinks that to be able to accurately relay information about the struggles of working mothers you yourself have to have been a struggling working mother at some point. Let's play her game for a moment, I wonder how many people know that Hilary Rosen was the President, then Chairman, and then Chief Executive of the RIAA for a period of 10 years. So Hilary Rosen's opinion on the plight of working mothers has no merit either - something i'm sure she doesn't believe.

I personally believe that women hate the way our health issues were made a political football by the Republicans in the last several months. But I am pragmatic enough to believe that the economic issues do matter greatly to women and men alike. But the only way that Mitt Romney will succeed in closing the wide gender gap between him and President Obama is if he stops pretending that it doesn't exist.

And she ends it by claiming the GOP has made women's health issues a political football. In reality it was President Obama and Congressional Democrats who decided to force religious institutions to ignore their tenets and pay for abortifacients and contraceptives for employees.  And, rightly so, Republicans came out in force against such a blatant violation of the Separation of Church and State.

It seems election 2012 is in full swing.

Hello Everyone

Well, I've tried this once before and due to my laziness and lack of follow through it failed rather quickly. However, this time I am aiming to make it different and actually posting my thoughts regularly on the 2012 election, politics in general, random pop culture, sports (most notably LSU and Saints football), and whatever else crosses my mind.  I'll aim to do at least one post a day but often times it will probably be more so be sure to check back often. With that said I will leave you with a picture of the most amazing dog in the world.