Ryan to join Romney on the road to rescue lack of interest in Romney

Oh dear. It's John McCain and Sarah Palin all over again.

The crazies want the "numbers guy" who can't get his numbers straight, but they're stuck with the guy who could buy his way into the prime position. This is what happens when you let your party get taken over by extremists. If your top person can't even fire up your own team, how can you win over the rest of the country?

For the first time in almost a month, Mitt Romney reunited on Tuesday with the man who many Republicans thought would charge up the presidential campaign: Representative Paul D. Ryan, the charismatic PowerPoint-wielder who can draw thousands to rallies that are really mostly giant question-and-answer sessions where they can ask “Paul,” in effect, how to save the party, and the country.

The question now is whether Mr. Ryan, Mr. Romney’s vice-presidential running mate, can save his own ticket.

Mr. Ryan often seems to get people more fired up about Mr. Romney’s message than Mr. Romney does at his own rallies. But the last few weeks have been one step forward, two steps backward for the Republican ticket, capped by the disclosure of a video showing Mr. Romney telling people at a high-dollar fund-raiser that 47 percent of Americans consider themselves “victims” and are dependent on the government.

Read the rest of this post...

Six in ten think Romney is running a bad campaign

Mitt Romney sure knows how to win over the public. Americans are liking him less by the day.

Public criticism of Mitt Romney's race for the White House has risen sharply, with six in 10 Americans expressing a negative opinion of how he's handling his campaign and a majority responding unfavorably to his comments on people who don't pay income taxes.

Sixty-one percent in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll hold an unfavorable view of how Romney's handling his presidential campaign, up by 12 percentage points since mid-July. Far fewer, 35 percent, rate Romney's performance positively, essentially unchanged.

Barack Obama's ratings for handling his campaign are substantially better, 54-43 percent, favorable-unfavorable. And while ratings of Romney's campaign have grown more negative, favorable ratings of Obama's campaign efforts have gained 8 points since July.

Read the rest of this post...

Mitt Romney's "blogger" talks about Obama being kneecapped, hates Romney

Romney publishes this on his campaign site.

It's the exact same blog post (half of it) as this at conservative site Townhall.com.

It's written by "professional blogger" John Hawkins.

Hawkins run RightWingNews, an outfit whose slogan is "Kneecapping Barack Obama at every opportunity." A bit violent for the Romney campaign to be endorsing about the President of the United States.  This is on their Web site right now:

Then there's this:

Seriously, Mitt, is this guy your campaign blogger?  Hawkins argues that the piece is simply excerpted on Romney's site, so he's not a blogger for Romney.  Okay.  So is Romney endorsing his violent language?  Now that Romney knows he's promoting the work of someone who talks of "kneecapping" the President of the United States, when that President has faced an unprecedented number of violent threats, is Romney you still going to leave the blogger's work up on his campaign site?  Mind you, publishing something on a campaign site is endorsement - it's not exactly a free speech zone, a campaign Web site, you publish what you agree with, you don't just publish anyone or anything.

Oh but it gets better.  Hawkins wrote what many consider the most scathing anti-Romney piece on a top conservative Web site.  It's still up on Townhall - not anymore!  Townhall pulled the story down and replaced it with a pro-Romney story!  Holy Stalin, Batman.  Seriously, the largest conservative Web site is now pulling down stories that have been up there forever criticizing Romney, in the hopes they simply disappear down the memory hole?  Geez.

Wait, it's back!  Though maybe this will disappear too.  This time I have a copy.

And here's two of the best grafs that I grabbed before they pulled it:

If you were trying to come up with the most atrocious candidate imaginable to go toe-to-toe with Barack Obama in 2012, you couldn't do much better than Mitt Romney. He was an unpopular moderate governor who lost 2 out of the 3 major elections he's run in and whose signature issue Romneycare is an enormous failure. Moreover, he's so uninspiring that he makes Bob Dole look like Ronald Reagan and that's before you consider his incessant flip-flopping that makes it impossible to really know where he stands on any issue.

If you don't want to spend the better part of the next year trying to drag this sad sack of Mitt across the finish line so he can disappoint us for the next four years, then stand up, speak out, and stop letting the mainstream media and a bunch of Beltway conservatives tell you that the race has to be over with just 1.8% of the delegates needed for a victory awarded. The Tea Party didn't rise up, fight Barack Obama, and help the GOP have its best year in half a century just to see the Republican Party ideologically slide all the way back to the pre-Reagan years as a reward. If the establishment manages to grease the wheels for Mitt to such a degree that it turns out he's unstoppable, then it's still better to go down brawling instead of supporting a candidate you know is a mediocrity because you think he's "probably going to win the nomination." Given the type of man he is, whether Mitt wins or loses, you're unlikely to look back at fighting like hell to get another nominee with anything other than pride.

It gets worse from there. Please do read the entire thing.

And, Hawkins even launched a Web campaign to stop Romney from getting the GOP nomination.

Read the rest of this post...

Romney's Staples closing 60 stores around the world

Romney is a jobs creator, you know. As a vulture capitalist, surely you can't expect him to be more concerned about jobs for working families over his own wallet. This brings us back to what I wrote about the other week. The skills that made Romney a successful CEO would make him a terrible president. Romney's core focus is not about, nor has it ever been, about creating jobs. Romney's focus has been on making money and lots of it.

Again, he is an awful candidate for president but it wasn't a fluke that he built a fortune of up to $378 million. If chopping jobs could make him a few more dollars, Romney would and has consistently taken the money. As the CEO of Bain Capital, his exclusive focus was money. Period. For a person like Romney that lacks empathy, it was the perfect job.

Anyone who thinks Romney can suddenly change and show compassion or care about jobs is kidding themselves. Running a country where you have to care about everyone and not just the select few is radically different from running a venture capital firm. Ten times out of ten, Romney would chop jobs the way Staples is doing now.

The chain expects the U.S. store closings will result in a charge of about $35 million in the fourth quarter. For fiscal 2012, it anticipates about 30 U.S. store closings. Staples also expects 30 stores will be scaled down and stores being relocated.

In Europe, the store closures are expected to occur before the end of fiscal 2012. The company has also tapped John Wilson to serve as president of Staples Europe. Wilson succeeds Rob Vale, who is retiring.

Read the rest of this post...

Romney admits Obama didn't raise taxes, after claiming he did

As we've said before, just hand Mitt Romney a microphone and step away. So Mitt Romney is now admitting that President Obama didn't raise taxes during his four years in office, even though up until now that's exactly what Romney has been telling people, that Obama did raise taxes.

This is the problem with lying about pretty much every position you claim to hold. No human being is capable of keeping that many lies consistent. You eventually get caught.

Read the rest of this post...

What is Romney's hang up with Jews?

I'm not Jewish. I'm Greek Orthodox. But I spent my younger years, a few decades ago, often being confused for someone Jewish, and more than a few times getting some pretty nasty comments as a result (someone actually called me the k-word once, but usually I'd get asked my last name, which I learned was code). That, and being gay, I like to think I'm somewhat more attuned to prejudice than the average straight white guy.

So I'm curious about the way Mitt Romney talks about Jews, and Israel.  It always seems to be about money and business for him. And he's a businessman, so that's partially excusable. But when you talk about a particular race of people being particularly good at business, and the people just happen to be Jewish, and you keep saying it, my jewdar goes off.

First there was this a few months ago, when Romney went to Israel:

Romney said some economic histories have theorized that "culture makes all the difference."

"And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things," Romney said, citing an innovative business climate, the Jewish history of thriving in difficult circumstances and the "hand of providence." He said similar disparity exists between neighboring countries, like Mexico and the United States.

Just struck me funny talking about Jews are 'culturally' good at business (and Mexicans aren't). I asked some Jewish friends, they agreed.

Then there's this, today. Romney's message to the Jewish people for their holiday season, taking place right now. Mitt yet again hit's that familiar them when talking about Israel and Jewish-Americans. The they're-good-at-business meme seems to permeate his thinking.

One more thing. Why is Romney's message to Jews hidden on his YouTube channel? If you go to the video, you'll see this this at the top of it:

Why is it unlisted?  Why is it only for those with the link?  I went through Romney's public YouTube page and couldn't find the video listed.  Any reason the Romney campaign isn't including a video about the Jewish people alongside the rest of their videos, since they're so proud of Jews' innate ability at business.

Like I said, just strikes me funny.



Read the rest of this post...

Romney paying staff twice as much as Obama

Romney is seriously overpaying his own staff.  That is the only conclusion that you can make after looking at the figures.

The Obama campaign is spending slightly more than the Romney campaign ($4.04 million compared to $4.37 million last month), but the Obama team is much larger. When you look at the results, the Obama team is also much more effective. For a business expert, Romney doesn't get much value out of his investment in his own team.

LA Times:

According to an analysis by the Times Data Desk, part of the Los Angeles Times, the Obama campaign had 901 people on its payroll last month, and paid them a median salary of $3,074 a month, or $36,886 a year.

The Romney campaign, in contrast, had 403 people on its payroll, and paid them a median salary of $6,437 in August, which would mean $77,250 a year.

A Romney campaign official said the median staff salary is actually $51,500 a year. The August payroll may have been inflated by back pay owed to new employees, the official said.

What makes this more eye raising is that the LA Times review does not include the surprisingly high $207,500 bonus money that was handed out to Romney staff last month. Read the rest of this post...

Mitt Romney upset that airplane windows don't open

Because apparently he's never watched a movie or TV show in his entire life.

I meant to write about this earlier today, but was busy dealing with more serious news.  Still, what is this guy thinking?  He's a walking gaffe-machine of late.

In his latest, Romney was talking about his wife's aircraft that had some serious trouble last Friday with an electrical malfunction and had to conduct an emergency landing.

From the LA Times:

“I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.”

As HuffPo points out, Romney has his facts slightly off:

The main reason airplane windows don't open is because there isn't enough oxygen at cruising altitude to keep passengers alive. (The fear of window or cabin failures, which would lead to potentially fatal hypoxia, is why many planes are equipped with emergency oxygen masks.)

"You can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open," Romney told the Times, suggesting that additional oxygen in the cabin during the electrical malfunction could've alleviated the problem. In fact, if there were an electrical fire on board, additional oxygen would have fed the flames.

Here's another reason the windows don't open at 40,000 feet: Because you're traveling at 550 miles per hour, which can slam a window awfully hard on your finger (in addition to ripping the window right off). Another reason, the air temperature is 70F below zero, which might give the passengers a slight chill when the guy in front of you refuses to close his window and the 500 mile per hour -70F wind is blowing in Mrs. Romney's face.  (Then there's the air pressure differential...)

How did Mitt Romney not know any of this?  I had to look at the exact temperature but I knew it was below -40F.  I also knew the cruising speed was around 500pm, and that the air pressure was pretty darn low up there in space where there isn't much oxygen to start with.

What was Romney thinking to even say something this dumb?  I'm increasingly thinking that the man is not the brightest bulb. Read the rest of this post...

Let's not forget that Mitt Romney saw the assassination of an ambassador as an "opportunity"

The Romney campaign is doing another of its now-infamous Hail Mary foreign policy throws today.

This time in an attempt to undercut the United States on the day before the President speaks at a huge meeting of world leaders at the United Nations in New York.

Rather than lob bombs from the west coast, where Mitt Romney today accused Californians of being socialists, the GOP candidate should fly to New York and let himself be heard in person.  Just imagine the efficacy of being able to insult nearly 80 heads of state and government ministers in one fell swoop.

And when Mitt Romney suggests that President Obama doesn't care about the death of a US ambassador, don't forget what Mitt Romney said about that death - the Romney campaign said it was an opportunity.  His staff was elated.  They saw the death of an American, a foreign policy crisis, as an "opportunity."  I wonder if our dead ambassador's family agrees with Mitt Romney that the murder of their family member was an opportunity?

Keep in mind that Mitt Romney also called the Iran hostage crisis in 1980 an "opportunity."  And that he was keeping his eyes out for another "opportunity" for Americans' lives to be threatened.

Republicans can't win on the facts, as facts have a liberal bias.  So they have to lie and fight dirty.  The only problem for them is that their candidate stinks.  Heck, he's not even a Republican.  And all the lies, and flip-flops, are finally coming home to roost.  So as Mitt Romney's popularity drops like a stone all they have left is what they started the campaign with, lies.

Fortunately for us, Mitt Romney doesn't know when to shut up.

Read the rest of this post...

Did Romney close his Swiss account to evade prosecution?

As I mentioned the other day, there are so many unanswered questions about Mitt Romney's taxes.

One issue that is increasingly being asked is whether Mitt Romney closed his Swiss bank account at UBS to avoid serious prosecution for avoiding taxes.

UBS reached a settlement with the IRS for nearly $800 million for their role in helping rich Americans avoid paying US taxes. Following the settlement, the IRS announced an amnesty period for Americans who may have been hiding money at UBS, and thousands came forward.

It's still not clear whether Mitt Romney participated in that amnesty period, but what we do now know is that he no longer has a Swiss bank account with UBS as of 2010. The timing is certainly interesting. 

Because Romney won't release full details of his taxes, and instead only released a pile of documents signed by PWC and lawyers, we can't say for sure whether he hid millions in Switzerland or not.

Paul Abrams at the Huffington Post has been following this closely for a while now and has made a list of the circumstantial evidence that points towards Romney participating in the amnesty program. Romney is only answering questions via email about his taxes and of course, he's not answering any questions about amnesty.

Huffington Post:

To review, here is the circumstantial evidence:
i) Romney closed ONLY his Swiss UBS Account, not Caymans or Bermuda or Luxembourg. Hence, he cannot claim "bad optics for a campaign" as the alternative explanation;
ii) Romney closed the UBS account during the time required to receive amnesty;
iii) Romney omitted from his public disclosure of his 2010 returns the specific information about the UBS account;
iv) Romney took six extra months to prepare his 2011 returns, disclosing them in the countdown to the election, whereas he could have disclosed 2009 immediately with 2010, getting all that bad news out at once, during the primary, so that it would be ancient history by now. That is strong evidence that 2009, that would have shown the amnesty with flashing lights, was too toxic.

Someone in the traditional media needs to ask Mitt Romney directly whether he did or did not close his Swiss bank account during the amnesty program. But they also need to demand that he release the full details of his taxes like every other candidate for president in modern times. Read the rest of this post...

Romney slams California as socialist, while campaigning in California

At this point, the Obama campaign doesn't even need to run negative ads.  They only need to hand Mitt Romney a microphone and start recording.

Besides not caring about 47% of the US population, Mitt Romney also doesn't think much of the most populous state in the US. Mitt Romney really has a problem with many Americans which is maybe why he listed the US as a foreign country on his US tax returns.

And now Mitt thinks California is a bit too "Europeans" - which in GOP-land means "socialist" (which really means "communist").  The RNC chair was taken down by Chris Matthews a month or so ago for pushing the "Obama is foreign/European," aka socialist (in addition to it being a racial insult that blacks aren't real "anglo-saxons" like the rest of us (who mostly aren't anglo-saxons either)).

And while it's one thing for Romney to think California is socialist, it's another for him to admit it, and put at risk California's 55 electoral votes, and it's absolutely insanity to admit it while he's campaigning in California.

Who will Mitt Romney offend next?

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney came to the Golden State for a two-day series of high-profile fundraisers and reportedly took a shot at California in front of a $25,000 a ticket crowd in Del Mar.

Romney “took a pretty big shot at California,” according to a pool reporter.

“He said that under President Obama we’re becoming a lot more European and that the state of California was something he didn’t want to see the rest of the U.S. look like in a few years,” a pool reporter related.

Read the rest of this post...

Video: Leave Mitt Alone

It was only a matter of time before one of these came out in response to Mrs. Romney's call for people to stop criticizing her husband because political campaigns are "hard."  This video does a surprisingly good job at overall satirizing Mitt Romney's campaign.  It's less about his wife, and more about him.

Read the rest of this post...

Study: Fact-checkers find Romney/GOP lie twice as much as Democrats

Facts have a liberal bias.  And lies have a conservative one.

This study is from George Mason University, a lesser college in the Washington, DC area that is known as a hotbed of conservative activism.  So take anything you ever hear from "GMU" with a huge grain of salt.  Often there's a conservative bias, and funding stream, underlying folks from that university.

This study, by the self-proclaimed non-partisan "Center for Media and Public Affairs" - which has been accused of conservative ties in the past - finds that media fact-checkers found Mitt Romney and the GOP lied twice as much as Democrats.  It's some coincidence that the study came out just a few weeks after the Republican party collectively decided that it's time to start tearing down fact-checkers.

In any case, the study found that the fact-checkers rated Romney and the GOP liars twice as much as they rated Dems as liars. While conservatives will surely say this is a sign of the fact-checkers' inherent bias, it's just as likely that fact-checkers are finding twice as often that the GOP lies because the GOP lies twice as often as Democrats do.

From the study:

The study examined 98 election-related statements by the presidential candidates, their surrogates, and campaign ads fact-checked by PolitiFact.com from June 1 to September 11. Major findings:

PolitiFact checked the assertions of Democrats slightly more often than those of Republicans (54% vs. 46% of all statements).

However, PolitiFact rated Democratic statements as “mostly true” or “entirely true” about twice as often as Republican statements -- 42% true ratings for Democrats vs. 20% for Republicans.

Conversely, statements by Republicans were rated as entirely false about twice as often as Democratic statements – 29% false ratings for GOP statements vs. 15% false ratings for Democrats. (This includes categories labeled “false” and “pants on fire.”)

The same pattern holds for statements made directly by the presidential candidates and their campaigns. A majority of the Obama campaign’s statements (55%) were rated as true or mostly true, compared to one out of four statements (26%) by the Romney campaign.

The difference is even greater at the other end of the spectrum, where 26% of the Romney campaign’s statements were rated as either false or “pants on fire,” compared to only 5% of the Obama campaign’s statements.

Get ready for Republicans to, coincidentally all in unison, denounce the fact-checkers, in a massive playing of the refs designed to push fact-checkers further to the right.  But the larger point remains: What are fact-checkers to do if "hypothetically" one party is taken over by extremists who have decided that the only way they can win is to lie?

I think back to 2004 when pundit/journalist Mark Halperin, who was then with ABC, wrote a famous memo in which he warned ABC staff not to simply assume that both sides in the 2004 presidential race were being equally dishonest.

In October 2004 the Drudge Report published a memo Halperin sent to ABC News staff about coverage of the U.S. presidential election directing them not to "reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable" and that both John Kerry and George W. Bush used "distortion" in their campaign, but that Kerry’s distortions were not "central to his efforts to win."[8] Halperin was criticized by conservatives who used the memo to reinforce long-standing complaints of media bias.

Conservatives had a conniption fit. But what if Halperin was right. Or more to the point, why should we assume necessarily that Halperin was wrong? Why is it impossible that one political party, one presidential candidate, could lie more than the other?

If we're willing to believe, and we do, that some candidates pulled their punches and were "too nice" during their campaigns, then why wouldn't the opposite also be true, that some candidates are too negative, and too willing to lie?

Mitt Romney's first ad of his presidential campaign was a lie about President Obama (that was the infamous ad in which Romney took Obama quoting McCain and made it look like Obama had come up with the quote himself). Obama didn't do the same for his first ad.

Mitt Romney chose to devote his entire convention to a lie, "you didn't build it." Barack Obama's convention theme was "bringing Americans together."

Mitt Romney is now, yet again, suggesting that the foreign-seeming Barack Obama is a socialist (he's using the code-phrase "redistribution of wealth"). When has President Obama suggested anything equally offensive about Mitt Romney?

Some people are more dishonest than others. And some of them run for President. Read the rest of this post...

Romney endorses "socialism" on 60 Minutes in yet another flip-flop

You can only flip flop so much before you start tripping up badly.

Mitt Romney's latest? He just endorsed "socialism" last night. Which probably won't go over too well with the GOP base two days after Romney declared in his federal tax forms that to him America was a "foreign country."

You see, five years ago Mitt Romney told Glenn Beck that letting the uninsured get free health care via emergency rooms (which is what our country does) is "socialism.

"And in a 2007 interview with Glenn Beck, Romney called the fact that people without insurance were able to get "free care" in emergency rooms "a form of socialism."

"When they show up at the hospital, they get care. They get free care paid for by you and me. If that's not a form of socialism, I don't know what is," he said at the time.

As HuffPost notes, Romney was singing a completely different tune last night on 60 Minutes:

Downplaying the need for the government to ensure that every person has health insurance, Mitt Romney on Sunday suggested that emergency room care suffices as a substitute for the uninsured.

"Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance," he said in an interview with Scott Pelley of CBS's "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday night. "If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care."

So the new "conservative" Mitt Romney is now in favor of "socialism."

I seem to remember, during the health care reform debate, hearing that we pay four times as much for people to go to emergency rooms than what we'd pay if we simply helped them get insurance, government or otherwise.

So, Romney isn't entirely wrong. It is a form of socialized medicine having the government insure health care for everyone who's uninsured. They do it in Israel, and Romney praised that only a few months ago.

But in America, all you have to do is use a dirty word to describe thing - preferably the word socialist or communist - and everyone screams in horror, even though they don't usually understand what socialism even is, or what the thing is that's being compared to socialism (ask the average American to name three things that the dreaded Obamacare actually does - good luck getting two).

But back to emergency rooms, they're expensive as hell in this country, and hardly a suitable alternative to health insurance. In France, you pay around 27 euros or so for an emergency room visit - that's about 35 US dollars. And if you have a medical procedure, they charge you more. But unlike the US, they don't nickel and dime you to death by charging you for every doctor, and every aspirin, separately. It's one flat rate, and the procedure is another flat rate.

In the US, you pay for everything, and you pay a LOT. I believe I read the average American emergency room visit costs around $1000. (That's 770 euros, for you foreigners.) And that's just walking in the door. The price goes up quickly from there.

Were emergency room visits to cost only $35 a person, then I might be more inclined to the Romney point of view (though how do you manage diabetes with regular emergency room visits - and at that point, it's no longer an "emergency" room if we're expecting people to go there regularly for non-emergencies - we might as well skip the facade and admit we have nationalized health care and pay 1/4 of the price we pay today).

I was recently in a US emergency room for more eye troubles on a recent weekend (I was concerned I might have another retinal tear, or worse), and I shudder at the bills I'm going to receive.  I also still shudder at the care I did receive from the 1st year resident who didn't appear to have a lot of hands-on experience dealing with actual living human eyeballs (my eye hurt for a week after).  (My eye is fine.  It did have a small tear, that the resident didn't see - my doc, who was willing to see me on a Sunday morning, did see it, and fixed it.)

We're #1. Read the rest of this post...

Is Romney preparing for a new war in the Middle East?

Or, is he just trying to show the Republicans that he can be a tough guy like Bush? Either way, the end result is not very good. If he thinks people want yet another costly war that will never end in the Middle East, he's sadly mistaken. Americans that actually watch their own budget are fed up with spending billions upon billions for unnecessary wars that the political class imagines are needed.

If Romney is trying to have a "I have a big penis" moment in order to win over the many Republicans who don't like him or trust him (like the NASCAR voters who now prefer Obama), he's failing to see how dangerous the war talk really is. By promoting another expensive war it only shows how ill prepared he is to lead. Romney's pro-war talk is not productive for any reason.

President Barack Obama hit back hard in a "60 Minutes" interview broadcast Sunday at Mitt Romney's criticisms of his handling of Syria and Iran, saying that if the Republican standard-bearer "is suggesting that we should start another war, he should say so."

Obama also brushed aside talk that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pressuring him to take a harder line on Iran's suspicious nuclear program — source of some of Romney's sharpest campaign-trail criticisms.

"When it comes to our national security decisions-- any pressure that I feel is simply to do what's right for the American people. And I am going to block out any noise that's out there," the president said.

Read the rest of this post...

Romney says it's "fair" that he only pays 14 percent taxes and you pay more

Romney on 60 Minutes tonight:

(PELLEY) Now you made, on your investments, personally, about $20 million last year. And you paid 14% in federal taxes. That's the capital gains rate. Is that fair to the guy who makes $50,000 and paid a higher rate than you did?

(ROMNEY) It is a low rate. And one of the reasons why the capital gains tax rate is lower is because capital has already been taxed once at the corporate level, as high as 35%.

( PELLEY) So you think it is fair.

(ROMNEY) Yeah, I-- I think it's the right way to encourage economic growth-- to get people to invest, to start businesses, to put people to work.

Read the rest of this post...

Video: Romney was destroyed on the Sunday shows for the 47 percent remark

Read the rest of this post...

Romney: "I used to think that becoming rich and becoming famous would make me happy. Boy was I right."

Mitt Romney, on film:

"I used to think that becoming rich and becoming famous would make me happy. Boy was I right."

Keep in mind that Romney has based his entire campaign on attacking President Obama for out of context comments, so I'm not even going to give you the context. It doesn't matter when discussing the man whose first campaign ad was a lie (taking video of President Obama quoting John McCcain, but leaving out the McCain reference so it looks like Obama is saying the words on behalf of himself), and whose entire convention was devoted to another out of context quote ("you didn't built it," which was referring to roads and infrastructure, not your business).

In a related matter, don't forget that Mitt Romney thinks America is a foreign country. Read the rest of this post...

Is there $9 million missing from Romney's taxes?

Another day and another list of questions related to Mitt Romney's partial tax document dump on Friday.

Either his team of tax attorneys are complete idiots - doubtful, to say the least - or they're playing games. Romney's initial 2011 earnings estimates in January were $22.7 million, up from $21.58 million in 2010. In September, the updated tax filing showed $13.7 million for his 2011 earnings.

Just as there were a number of questions yesterday, there are more again today. Click through to read the full article at Lawsonry.com. It's disturbing, but will the traditional media ask questions?

- Is it credible to believe that his team was off by $9 million?
- Did this radical change help him lower his tax rate?

There are too many issues with the information that he provided and they all reflect poorly on his ability to ever come clean and be honest with the American public. When Romney is not making gaffes, he is providing spin that only the super rich can spin. All of his answers feel slippery, as though he's convinced himself that he just tricked everyone.

People of the Romney class have means beyond the reach of everyone else and they use every resource available to exploit the system. What's worse is that they then go out and try pointing the finger at the most vulnerable people who rely on assistance to keep living. The Romney class relies on loopholes and tax attorneys to fund the construction of an elevator in their house or for tax write offs to fund their Olympic show horse. Read the rest of this post...

Romney family trust invested in China, bet against America

Much like his strange decision to pay more taxes than he had to pay in 2011, the supposedly blind trust sold off it's investments in China as the Romney campaign gained momentum. Wow, what are the odds of that happening in a blind trust?

And how about old Mitt taking bets against America? Who runs for president of the United States and makes financial bets against his own country?

NY Yimes:

The 2011 tax returns his campaign released on Friday show that Mr. Romney’s family trusts had invested in shares of a Chinese-owned state oil company but got rid of those investments this summer as Mr. Romney’s anti-Chinese rhetoric heated up on the campaign trail.

In 2009 and 2010, the W. Mitt Romney blind trust invested $77,262 in shares of Cnooc Limited, the state-owned Chinese oil company, and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. On Aug. 10, 2011, as Mr. Romney was emerging as a harsh critic of China, the shares were sold, producing a profit of $8,138, as the trust made money on the oil company but lost money on the bank.

The trust also invested in derivative securities linked to the Japanese stock market and to an index that includes stocks in every major country except the United States. It invested in a derivative that would profit if the dollar fell against a group of foreign currencies.

Is Mitt Romney arrogant enough to think that people are stupid and not paying attention or is he just arrogant? Read the rest of this post...