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Simpsons / Family Guy animator Lucas Gray created this animated short about the big choice in 2012's presidential election. Share this with your family and friends.
It was tempting to dismiss Mitt Romney's hard-right turn during the GOP primaries as calculated pandering. In the general election – as one of his top advisers famously suggested – Romney would simply shake the old Etch A Sketch and recast himself as the centrist who governed Massachusetts. But with the selection of vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, the shape-shifting Romney has locked into focus – cementing himself as the frontman for the far-right partisans responsible for Washington's gridlock.
There is no longer any ambiguity about the path that Romney would pursue as president, because it's the same trajectory charted by Ryan, the architect of the House GOP's reactionary agenda since the party's takeover in 2010. "Picking Ryan as vice president outlines the future of the next four or eight years of a Romney administration," GOP power broker Grover Norquist exulted in August. "Ryan has outlined a plan that has support in the Republican House and Senate. You have a real sense of where Romney's going." In fact, Norquist told party activists back in February, the true direction of the GOP is being mapped out by congressional hardliners. All the Republicans need to realize their vision, he said, is a president "with enough working digits to handle a pen."
The GOP legislation awaiting Romney's signature isn't simply a return to the era of George W. Bush. From abortion rights and gun laws to tax giveaways and energy policy, it's far worse. Measures that have already sailed through the Republican House would roll back clean-air protections, gut both Medicare and Medicaid, lavish trillions in tax cuts on billionaires while raising taxes on the poor, and slash everything from college aid to veteran benefits. In fact, the tenets of Ryan Republicanism are so extreme that they even offend the pioneers of trickle-down economics. "Ryan takes out the ax and goes after programs for the poor – which is the last thing you ought to cut," says David Stockman, who served as Ronald Reagan's budget director. "It's ideology run amok."
Is Mitt simply so blinded by his own well-born existence and personal ambition that he cannot or chooses not to see or know 47 percent of America?
As I’m sure you know by now, Romney
said (during a private fund-raiser which was secretly taped) that the
47 percent of Americans who pay no federal income taxes are people who are "dependent
upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the
government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they
are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it".
He also said: "My
job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that
they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
I have some questions for Mitt:
* Is a medically fragile 77 year old who relies on Medicare to pay for her doctor visits and hospital stays a “dependent victim” you shouldn't worry about? Should that patient be deprived of the guaranteed coverage of Medicare so that she can instead “take personal responsibility” by
seeking insurance in the private market courtesy of a voucher program?
Should an 81 year old with dementia be denied the Medicaid she needs to
pay for nursing home care, because she [wrongly?!] "believes government has a responsibility" to care for her?
*
Are our service members who return home from Iraq or Afghanistan with
physical, mental, and/or emotional injuries that necessitate the use of
the Veteran’s health benefits or disability compensation failing to “take personal responsibility”?
*
Is the parent who works two minimum wage jobs yet still needs food
stamps to make ends meet and Medicaid/CHIP, to ensure her child has
health care, failing to “take personal responsibility”?
*
Is the young enlisted soldier who doesn't make enough money to pay
federal income taxes and whose family needs food stamps to get by
failing to "take personal responsibility”?
* Is the young adult who uses federal student loans to be the first person in her family to attend college failing to “take personal responsibility”?
* Is the senior citizen who uses his Social Security benefits to help him be able to afford to stay in his own home failing to “take personal responsibility”?
*
Is the laid off factory worker who collects unemployment benefits to
make sure her family does not become homeless while she is looking for a
new job failing to “take personal responsibility”?
* Are
the two parents in a household who make less than 32K a year with two
children, and after deductions owe no federal income tax, failing to "take personal responsibility"?
These are just some of the people Romney was disparaging, who he believes do not "care for their lives", and therefore are not his "job to worry about". "They"
are your parents, your children, our soldiers and your neighbors; the Americans that Romney is not concerned about.
Over the past 30 weeks, Mitt Romney has told lie after lie after lie, 533 lies in all. This list, below, was compiled by Fred Clark, an evangelical blogger:
President Michael D. Higgins, of Ireland, is fed up with over-the-top Tea Party rhetoric, and he isn't afraid to show it. Listen to him call out radio host Michael Graham, from Newstalk 106-108fm, on everything from health care to foreign policy in this heated exchange from 2010. This one is too good to pass up.
Extreme positions are no longer contained in the party's fringe but have been elevated to the top of the Republican ticket with the selection of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate. As further proof, on Tuesday, August 21st, the Republican Platform Committee voted to include as part of their platform the support of an amendment that would ban abortion WITH NO EXCEPTIONS in cases of rape or incest, including when the life of the mother is at stake. That piece of anti-women legislation is referred to as "The Human Life Amendment".
What the Republican Party does not seem to understand is that in assigning "rights" to a fetus, one automatically strips a sentient, grown woman of her own. The next President of the United States may have the opportunity to appoint as many as three Supreme Court justices. Women cannot afford to allow three more radical right wing justices to sit on the highest court in our nation. For that reason alone, women, and the men in their lives who love and respect them, need to make sure they are registered and have the proper Voter I.D. needed to vote. For the sake of yourselves, your sisters, your daughters, vote to repeal, replace, Republicans this November. We have come too far to go back now.
Watch the Video below for more on this subject (after advertisement).
Long before he became one of the right’s most vocal critics of the idea that government spending could help boost the flagging economy, Mitt Romney's choice for his Republican Presidential running mate, Representative Paul Ryan offered a forceful, full-throated defense of stimulus spending — when then-President George W. Bush wanted it in 2002.
Ryan has denounced the 2009 Recovery Act signed by President Obama as “a wasteful spending spree” and “failed neo-Keynesian experiment,” and dismissed as “sugar-high economics” the idea that government spending, through measures like payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits, can help shore up a faltering economy.
But in 2002, when then-President Bush was seeking a roughly $120 billion package of tax cuts, tax incentives for business and unemployment benefits to jump-start the economy, Ryan offered a vigorous defense of the plan. As with many solutions proposed by President Obama (such as the Individual Health Insurance Mandate), most Republicans supported them- heck, they advocated for them- up until the day they no longer held the White House.
Watch Republican Hypocrisy, in particular that of Paul Ryan, in action as presented by Chris Hayes (after advertisement):
Mitt Romney ripped off the United States government for millions of
dollars in the 1990's. He sold the company just before the justice
department closed in.
One Term More! A time to celebrate democracy,
Repeal Republican hypocrisy.
This man who would unseat Barack's
A bleak choice at the ballot box. One Term More!
A G.O.P. perdition-bound,
All sense of right & wrong eroded. One Term More!
With laws that let 'em stand their ground,
Republicans are locked & loaded.
Contraception's now a sin,
Screwing G.M. in the clutch.
Incivility's a virtue,
Homophobic. Out of touch.
Filibusters. Budget scrums.
Ultrasounds & speculums.
To the Dark Side they've succumbed.
Soon Election Day will dawn,
We were meant to hold this seat!
At the ballot box of freedom,
Unemployment's in retreat!
Now the battle lines are drawn,
And Detroit's back on its feet!
Will you take your place with me!
The time is NOW the vote is NEAR! One Term More!
One more day to re-election,
And until the music stops,
We will fight to save the jobs of
Teachers, firemen & cops! One Term More!
One more day to resolution,
We'll defeat those fetid nuts,
We are fed up with pernicious
Talk of prostitutes & sluts!
Watch 'em throwing up,
Minting malcontent,
Drinkin' all that tea's
Made them incontinent!
Dissembling persists,
Divisiveness prevails,
Calling colleagues Communists
Is OFF the rails!
Listen to them spew,
"Femi-Nazi" rage,
Misogynistic rants
From the Jurassic Age!
To Obama's second inning,
He'll drive home another run!
Norma Rae let sisters sing,
Rosa Parks let freedom ring!
For Obama's just beginning,
Yes! The West Wing WILL be won!
AND we'll get the Dream Act DONE!
My place is here, I vote with you! One Term More!
Emboldened by Star-Spangled myth,
We want a JEDI…NOT a SITH!!!
Petty partisan obstruction's
Why we've gridlock on the Hill! One Term More!
Healthcare is a right,
Medicare's a must,
Don't let rogue Republicans
Betray that trust!
Speaking of betrayal,
Bullied by his peers,
Tackled to the ground,
Screams turned into tears.
Hunting down the queer,
Cutting off his hair,
SPIKED the ball, yet… "Can't
Recall" if he was there???
It's his character we question!
Mom, apple pie & Chevrolet,
Don't let 'em down Election Day!
That's when we will determine
What our God in Heaven has in store!
Independent tax experts reported that Mitt Romney's $5 trillion plan to cut taxes for the wealthy would mean a $2,000 tax hike for the average middle-class family.
So what does it all mean for you and your family? Check out this simpleOnline Tax Calculator—enter your income and see the difference for middle-class Americans. To make it more interesting, compare your results to someone making 1.5 million dollars a year.
Robert B. Reich isChancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock" and “The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, “Beyond Outrage.” I have posted several of his informative videos before.
