A Republican Called For A Stimulus Plan

An astute reader emailed this link in a day or so ago.  Written in late 2008, it's from the website of some left-leaning periodical called The National Review and it was written by some former Republican Governor of Massachusetts named Romney.

Here's the opening:

What is Washington waiting for? The inauguration is less than five weeks away: At the rate we’ve been going, another 500,000 jobs will be lost by then. The downward spiral is deepening and accelerating: Congress and the president must act now.

American families have lost about $11 trillion in net worth as securities and home values have plummeted. This translates into about $400 billion less annual consumer spending, net of government safety-net funding. Exports won’t grow to make this up, as the dollar has strengthened with investors worldwide clamoring for its relative security. Investments won’t make up the gap either, as bank loans and secondary-market financing have shrunk and as fresh equity is virtually non-existent.

So this is surely the time for economic stimulus.

This is the same Mitt Romney who said this recently:

At a campaign event in New Hampshire on Friday, Mitt Romney once again sharply condemned the stimulus package passed during the president's first month in office, calling it "the largest one-time careless expenditure of government money in American history."

I know what you're saying (I do, really - I'm clairvoyant that way). You're saying that maybe the stimulus package Romney begged for in 2008 is fundamentally different from the one passed in 2009.

Let's see what he called for.  Mitt wrote:

The first is that tax cuts are part of the solution.

Hey, did you know that there were almost $300 billion in tax incentives attached to the ARRA?

Mitt also wrote:

On the spending front, infrastructure projects should be a high priority.

There was $29 billion in infrastructure funding.

We could do this all day, I guess.  Mitt called for an economic stimulus package, one was passed, and now that it's politically expedient, he's against it.

New Romney - Ryan Campaign Poster

 

Where they want to take us...

September 7

Whilst y'inz are recuperating from the conventions, here's something different.

Today is September 7.  Born on this day are not one but TWO Rock and Roll Icons.

Buddy Holly (born 1936):


Chrissie Hynde (born 1951):

Happy Friday, everyone!

Wow - Look At How The Trib Rephrased This!

From today's Trib, in an op-ed on this legislation streamlining the Senate's confirmation process, we read this:

Some streamlining: From the administration of President Kennedy to that of President Clinton, the number of appointees requiring confirmation grew from 286 to 914, The Washington Post reports. Under the Obama administration, 1,215 executive branch jobs required Senate approval.

I wanted to point out that those numbers come from this AP story.  But take a close look at how the Trib frames the story - especially the last sentence.  There are three numbers in there; 286, 914 and then the OBAMA! BLOAT! number of 1,215.

Guess what?  Here's how the AP described it:

At the start of the Obama administration, there were 1,215 executive branch positions that required Senate confirmation. President John F. Kennedy, elected in 1960, had only 286 positions to fill but the number had jumped to 914 by the end of the Clinton administration in January 2001. [emphasis added]

Doesn't "[a]t the start of the Obama administration" also mean "at the end of the Bush administration"?

Funny how the Trib frame the bloat, huh?

The difference

The difference between shouting, "I love women" and showing you love women (and children, and men, and gays, and the poor, and the middle class, and vets, and the elderly, and all races...and everyone) is the difference between the two parties.

If farmers and blacksmiths could win independence from an empire…if immigrants could leave behind everything they knew for a better life on our shores…if women could be dragged to jail for seeking the vote…if a generation could defeat a depression, and define greatness for all time…if a young preacher could lift us to the mountaintop with his righteous dream…and if proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love…then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.  

Because in the end, more than anything else, that is the story of this country – the story of unwavering hope grounded in unyielding struggle.

Women's Walk for Peace with Free Concert by Arrested Development

Women's Walk for a Peaceful Community
When: Saturday, September 8, 2012, 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM
Where: 2801 North Charles Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15214 (map) to West Park near the National Aviary (map)
Register: Here (You must register before the event)
Website: http://www.womenswalk.org
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/events/444216558946333/

Forgive Us, O Lord, For This Dreadful Toadying

Our good friend Brad Bumstead over at the Trib included this in his reporting yesterday:

WHAT ABOUT GOD?: Critics took issue with Democrats’ decision to remove the only use of the word “God” from the 2008 version of their platform, comparing it to the GOP platform approved last week, which made 10 mentions of the word. GOP Chairman Reince Priebus linked to a blog mentioning the omission with the simple commentary, “WOW. Disgraceful.”

The blog linked to by Priebus is this one from David Brody at CBN.

The implication from Bumstead, of course, is that the Democratic Party is simply godless while the GOP is more fully washed in the blood of the lamb.

Brody, however, is a bit fairer (if only a bit) in that he includes the text from the Democratic Platform that mentions faith.  Here it is:

Faith has always been a central part of the American story, and it has been a driving force of progress and justice throughout our history. We know that our nation, our communities, and our lives are made vastly stronger and richer by faith and the countless acts of justice and mercy it inspires. Faith- based organizations will always be critical allies in meeting the challenges that face our nation and our world – from domestic and global poverty, to climate change and human trafficking. People of faith and religious organizations do amazing work in communities across this country and the world, and we believe in lifting up and valuing that good work, and finding ways to support it where possible. We believe in constitutionally sound, evidence-based partnerships with faith-based and other non-profit organizations to serve those in need and advance our shared interests. There is no conflict between supporting faith-based institutions and respecting our Constitution, and a full commitment to both principles is essential for the continued flourishing of both faith and country.

Those damned faithless apostates!  Hey, but what about those numbers?  Is there any context that can be used to better understand what they mean?

Of course there is.

Our good friends at Media Matters have an interesting take on this "story."  Take a look:

Fox News has fixated on the fact that the Democratic platform for 2012 does not mention the word "God," and used a misleading graphic that points out that the Republican platform for 2012 references "God" more often than the Democratic platform has in any of the last four election years. The graphic ignores that in 2000 and 2004, the Democratic platform contained the word "God" more times than the Republican platform in those years; moreover, the 2012 Democratic platform has a section on faith. [emphasis added]

You knew that was coming, right?  That must mean that Gore's Democrat Party in 2000 (or Kerry's in 2004) loved Gawd more than Bush's GOP, right?  Doesn't it?

Thanks, Brad.  Gave us a chuckle this morning.

More On Salena Zito

From June of this year:

When Obama spoke of an America that wasn't blue or red in 2008, he touched upon a strand of American exceptionalism that extols nonpartisanship, pragmatic problem-solving and a presidency that serves all Americans.

However, through his bowing to foreign despots, his partisanship, his early overseas "apology tour" on which he refused to defend America's past, Obama undermined himself as a champion of the idea that America is special.

Too bad that "apology tour" just didn't happen.

But this isn't just my opinion.  Politifact gives it a "pants on fire" rating and Factcheck.org agrees:

Our fact-checking colleagues at PolitiFact and the Washington Post Fact Checker both pored over those speeches, and others, and wrote detailed analyses of the content of Obama’s words. Their conclusion: Obama never apologized.

We’ve read through the speeches as well. We’ve come to the same conclusion: Nowhere did we see that the president “apologized” for America. In some speeches, Obama was drawing a distinction between his policies and those of his predecessor, George W. Bush. In other instances, Obama appeared to be employing a bit of diplomacy, criticizing past actions of both the U.S. and the host nation, and calling for the two sides to move forward. [emphasis added.]

This is who the Tribune-Review has sent to cover the Democratic National Convention - someone in her opinion pages who dutifully spreads the republican talking points.

Yay - let's hear it for balanced, objective reporting.

GOP Senate Candidate Tom Smith: Girls Love Shoes!

When we last left GOP Senate Candidate Tom Smith who's running against Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), he was opining that there is no real difference between a pregnancy that occurs outside of marriage and one that is a result of rape. Now this expert on women offers some further insight: Girls love shoes!

Via Think Progress:  

SMITH: What are we talking about here, two girls together talking?  

WOMAN: We’re talking about the power of petite women.  

SMITH: My guess would’ve been you were talking about shoes.

Additionally, he recently offered this nugget of wisdom:

"Perhaps where we're making our mistake is that we are asking President Obama and Senator Bob Casey to do something they have no knowledge of. They've never been in business, they've never ran [sic] businesses, they don't have that knowledge," Smith said. "It would be like, your wife wrecks your car. You're gonna take it to the beauty salon to get fixed? No."

Ahem...

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, this weekend:

The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history.

This is how he started his explanation for his refusal to appear on a discussion panel with former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair.  He says that the lies of Bush and Blair have brought about some of the world's more dangerous instabilities; specifically in Syria and Iran.

The point was not about how evil Saddam Hussein was but the lies used to justify the invasion - two separate things.  Tutu goes on:

The cost of the decision to rid Iraq of its by-all-accounts despotic and murderous leader has been staggering, beginning in Iraq itself. Last year, an average of 6.5 people died there each day in suicide attacks and vehicle bombs, according to the Iraqi Body Count project. More than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict since 2003 and millions have been displaced. By the end of last year, nearly 4,500 American soldiers had been killed and more than 32,000 wounded.

On these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.

See? No fan of Saddam.  Then a rhetorical question:

If it is acceptable for leaders to take drastic action on the basis of a lie, without an acknowledgement or an apology when they are found out, what should we teach our children?

In response Blair attempts to shift the focus:

Blair replied, in an interview in Johannesburg this week, removing Saddam Hussein from power was justified because of his atrocities, including killing thousands of Kurds in Halabja with poison gas, using chemical weapons against Iran, persecuting the Marsh Arabs and denying most Muslims (the Shia) the right to worship the way they want to.

He acknowledged that in 2003 he and US President George Bush had not used that argument to justify the invasion of Iran, but had done so on the grounds of Saddam’s suspected possession of nuclear weapons - which were never found.

But since Tutu was raising a moral argument, he was replying with one, he said.

He tries and "ends justify the means" argument here, too:

Turning more introspective (and personal) Blair reflected on his own experience as a government head and said that he had learned – perhaps the hard way – that the essence of democratic government is the making of hard choices. Put in terms of today’s issues, for example, what should be done about Syria’s civil conflict or the conundrum of Iran? He added that with respect to Iraq back in 2003, while the proximate cause of the invasion was those elusive WMD (“oh well”, you could almost hear him sigh), the irreducible fact remained Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who had poison gassed the Kurds and violently repressed the rest of the country until he was overthrown. What, ultimately, is wrong with that result?

But Blair didn't think they were lying.  From the AP:

“To repeat the old canard that we lied about the intelligence is completely wrong as every single independent analysis of the evidence has shown,” Blair said. “And to say that the fact that Saddam (deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein) massacred hundreds of thousands of his citizens is irrelevant to the morality of removing him is bizarre.”

Which, again isn't what Tutu is charging.  It's not about Saddam's well documented atrocities, it's about the immorality of two democratically elected leader who lied to justify an invasion.

And lying they did.  From the Senate Intelligence Committee:

The Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV, and a bipartisan majority of the Committee (10-5), today unveiled the final two sections of its Phase II report on prewar intelligence. The first report details Administration prewar statements that, on numerous occasions, misrepresented the intelligence and the threat from Iraq. The second report details inappropriate, sensitive intelligence activities conducted by the DoD’s Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, without the knowledge of the Intelligence Community or the State Department.

“Before taking the country to war, this Administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence,” Rockefeller said. “In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”

Now it's less of a mystery to me why Bush didn't speak in Tampa.

Song of the Day (Night)

Dems Unveil Their Special Convention Celebrity Guests

Pee-Wee and Chairy! Because Democrats respect their chairs enough to let them speak for themselves!

More On Paul Ryan's Disconnect With The Truth

We blogged on this a little yesterday.

Today I am curious to see how the media fact-checked his speech.

From the Washington Post there's a "basic rundown" of three of Ryan's claims:

1. Ryan appeared to suggest that Obama was to blame for the closing of the GM plant in Janesville, Wis., saying: “Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.’ That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.” But the closure of the plan was announced in mid-2008, when President George W. Bush was still in office and before Obama assumed the presidency, and the plant was mostly shuttered by the end 2008.

2. Ryan took aim at Obama’s Medicare proposal: “They needed hundreds of billions more [for Obamacare]. So, they just took it all away from Medicare, $716 billion dollars funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.” Left unsaid: Ryan’s own budget made basically the same cuts to Medicare. Since being chosen as Mitt Romney’s running mate, Ryan has embraced the GOP presidential nominee’s plan to restore those cuts. But he still favored them at one point – enough to put them in his own budget.

3. Ryan criticized Obama for assembling the Simpson-Bowles debt commission and then declining to act on the panel’s final report: “He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.” Left unsaid here: Ryan himself served on the debt commission and voted against its suggestions. And by doing so, the House Budget Committee chairman helped kill the proposal, given the clout he has with his party on such matters.

And the conclusion:

Fact-checkers are basically unanimous that all three of these claims either stretch the truth or are flat-out false.

Then there's how the Business Insider characterizes Ryan's tale of the downgrading of the nations credit rating.  Ryan said in his speech:

It began with a perfect Triple-A credit rating for the United States; it ends with a downgraded America.

The Business Insider quotes Standard And Poors:

Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act. Key macroeconomic assumptions in the base case scenario include trend real GDP growth of 3% and consumer price inflation near 2% annually over the decade. [emphasis in original]

And concludes:

S&P downgraded the U.S., in part, because of a revised expectation that the Bush tax cuts would remain in place. They assumed this because of Republicans' unwillingness to enact any measures raising revenue, and they completely slammed House Republicans — including Paul Ryan — for doing so.

Pretty damning stuff.

Keep it in mind next time you hear a news person discuss Ryan's speech.  If they do a "he said/he said" thing,  you know they're avoiding the truth.

More On Paul Ryan's Speech Last Night

There's only one thing to say about the GOP's Vice-Presidential nominee.

You can read a transcript here.

I want to focus on this part:

He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.

What debt commission was that?

That would be the so called "Bowles-Simpson" commission or more officially, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform - but more on that in a little bit.

Implied in Ryan's criticism of Obama, is the notion that the president should have acted on the recommendations of the report, right?

Looking at the details shows Ryan's dishonesty.  For example, guess who was one of the commissioners?

Representative Paul Ryan.

And guess how he voted on the final report?  From CNN:

Ryan was one of eight Republicans on the 18-member National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which Obama established in 2010. The commission was led by Erskine Bowles, who served as White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration, and former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson.

Bowles and Simpson proposed a sweeping program of spending cuts and a radical overhaul of the U.S. tax code, aimed at cutting projected budget deficits by a total of $4 trillion by 2020. The plan included changes to Social Security and substantial cuts in defense and discretionary spending.

But for their proposal to be adopted as official recommendations to Congress, the Bowles-Simpson commission needed 14 of the 18 votes. It failed on an 11-7 vote, with four Democrats and three Republicans, including Ryan, voting no. [emhasis added]

Huh.  He kinda left something important out, didn't he?

I would comment on Ann Romney's convention speech

. . . But I could not hear most of it as she was apparently speaking at a pitch only audible to Moms.

Meet Tom Smith: GOP Senate Candidate & Father of the Year!

Via Think Progress:

MARK SCOLFORO, ASSOCIATED PRESS: How would you tell a daughter or a granddaughter who, God forbid, would be the victim of a rape, to keep the child against her own will? Do you have a way to explain that?

SMITH: I lived something similar to that with my own family. She chose life, and I commend her for that. She knew my views. But, fortunately for me, I didn’t have to.. she chose they way I thought. No don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t rape.

SCOLFORO: Similar how?

SMITH: Uh, having a baby out of wedlock.

SCOLFORO: That’s similar to rape?

SMITH: No, no, no, but… put yourself in a father’s situation, yes. It is similar. But, back to the original, I’m pro-life, period.

 

Where to start?

Having your daughter have a child "out of wedlock" is only similar to having your daughter have a child from being raped if you are a father who believes that your daughter is a mere extension of yourself. A father who would compare the two is a father whose only concern is the fact that his unwed daughter is visibly not a virgin and that that somehow reflects poorly on him. It springs from the same attitude as those who believe in honor killings. It springs from the same Christian Bible as the one that commands that a rapist must marry his victim...and pay the father fifty pieces of silver. It springs from a total lack of concern and any empathy for a woman's own experience, feelings and well being. It spews from an inability to see a woman as a person in her own right.

Smith is not the only PA pol to go into detail about a daughter's own private business to make a point on abortion. PA State Rep. Harry A. Readshaw (D, PA-36) was only too happy to let a constituent know that abortion wasn't fair because his own daughter couldn't give him a grandbaby. If these men had a uterus, they could stop using their daughters in their arguments and speak from their own experience. But they have no experience of their own -- just the power to use their own prejudices and religion to make laws that all women will have to follow.

It makes me sick.

By the way, this being Pennsylvania, his Democratic opponent, Sen. Bob Casey, is also anti abortion (he was one of only three Democratic US Senators to vote against killing the Blunt Amendment). But Bobby, at least believes that abortion should be allowed if a woman is raped or dying. That's a progressive Catholic in these parts.

All hail the American Taliban!

Jim Roddey, Comedian

Yes, I realize it's just a joke, but...

A short time ago, Allegheny County GOP chair made a stupid joke (he's since apologized for it) about an Obama supporter being "mentally retarded."  The Republican crowd he told the joke to, for the record, howled with laughter.

Well, he's at it again.  This time on the pages of the Tribune-Review.  The Scaife-owned Trib is publishing a series of commentaries from GOP chair Roddey about his experiences at the Republican National Convention down in Tampa.

And Roddey puts on his comedian hat again today:

The buzz at the DoubleTree Hotel, the temporary home of the Pennsylvania delegation, is mostly about the weather.

At breakfast I overheard several delegates complaining that the party aboard a boat in the Tampa harbor had been canceled.

Curiously, no one seemed to care that the start of the convention had been delayed. There are several theories about the origin of the storm, the most interesting of which was that Barack Obama was born in Haiti, learned voodoo and had put a hex on the GOP festivities in Florida.

Yes, I realize it's just a joke.  And yes I realize Roddey doesn't actually believe President Obama was born in Haiti and is a practitioner in voodoo and can "put a hex" on the weather.

But look at the words he chose: Haiti and voodoo.

Now, you gotta ask yourself, would that joke with those words make any more or less sense if the president were not an African-American?

I am sure the Republicans reading the Trib are howling with laughter right now.

Must Read: Jeanne Clark's Open Letter to Mayor Ravenstahl on George Trosky's Promotion

The promotion by Pittsburgh Bureau of Police of Zone 2 Commander George Trosky to assistant chief of investigations has not been without controversy due to a history of violent episodes in his past.

Women's advocate Jeanne Clark pens an open letter to the the mayor of Pittsburgh about the promotion that starts with this:

Your public attack on me in the reception line at the Cookie Cruise – berating me for criticizing your promotion of George Trosky to assistant police chief, screaming that I was a "hypocrite," and threatening to "go public" with what you perceive to be my failure to support all domestic violence survivors – was bizarre, to say the least. Coming on the heels of the same threat made to me on your behalf by City Councilmember Theresa Kail-Smith the day before, it was clear you intended to silence me.

That's not going to happen. Three women are murdered by spouses or ex-spouses in this country every day, and it must be stopped. I believe that promoting Trosky will make the problem worse here. Not just for women, but also for other police officers, and for the city as a whole. But you insist on taking actions like this promotion – actions that harm our city – just because they serve your personal needs and desires.

I'm sure you'll want to read her entire letter here.

Mitt Romney GOP Convention Watch Party

Meet Mitt Romney: Candidate for the 1%

Via One Pittsburgh:

One Pittsburgh hosts a public watch party of this year’s Republican National Convention speech by Mitt Romney, who will accept his nomination for President on Aug. 30 in Tampa Bay. The event will be in Schenley Plaza. There will be two 15 foot screens, one of the speech and one for commentary on the speech in real time.  

This November, Americans will vote in an election that will affect us for generations to come. Will we end historic programs like Medicare and Social Security, and out vouchers in their place? Will we reinstate the Bush tax cuts or allow them to expire? Mitt Romney’s “Come Back Team” claims that Romney’s business background gives him the experience to put our economy back on track and deliver prosperity to all Americans. One Pittsburgh will offer educational games and live speech decoding to reveal the real Romney economics—tax breaks that never trickle down to the rest of us, cuts to education, health care and low –wage, no-benefit jobs  

Pittsburgh – Thursday at 8pm, Pittsburghers will gather in Schenley Plaza – in Oakland – to meet Mitt Romney, candidate of the One Percent. Family friendly games like InSource/OutSource, Tug of War, Unlevel Playing Field, and Pin the Deficit on the Folks Who Made It provide a fun way to get the facts before listening to Romney’s acceptance speech. Pittsburgh workers from Dunkin’ Donuts and Burlington Coat Factory – both Bain companies that continue to build the Romney family fortune – are in Tampa right now to ask Mitt Romney to use his experience to help them get ahead. They’ll return for Thursday’s watch party to report what they learned and to predict the future of a Romney Economy from the point of view of those living in it now. When Romney takes the stage in Tampa, One Pittsburgh will be here in Pittsburgh to help de-code his speech and to offer a chance at a real dialogue with real people in real-time, on a split screen.  

Who: One Pittsburgh, community members, coalition partners, low wage workers attending RNC in Tampa Bay  

What: Presidential nomination acceptance speech, games family, music  

When: 8pm, Thursday, August 30  

Where: Schenley Plaza, Oakland

Facebook page here

Song of the day

The delay of the Republican National Convention by Tropical Storm Issac is due to God's punishment of Republicans for their "legitimate rape"/"forcible rape" ideas, their policy against same-sex marriage, and a pact they signed with the devil said no liberal pastor ever.