Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Bush Vs Clinton Clinton Wins - So Romney says NO to Bush Support!

"We have had two great economic experiments in America over the last 30 years. One succeeded. The other failed -- in fact, it was a man-made disaster" Clinton Success and Bushes Failures.



Earlier this week -- as he was barnstorming the country for Barack Obama -- former President Bill Clinton subbed in for the president as Obama flew back to Washington to oversee the country's response to a major hurricane.
That would seem an appropriate context to ask the question, why hasn't the most recent Republican President, George Bush, been barnstorming the country for Mitt Romney?
It says a lot that for most Americans this sounds like an absurd question.
Clinton was a major featured speaker at the Democratic Convention. Bush wasn't even invited to Tampa.
Bush is not campaigning for Romney because he and the policies he implemented are politically radioactive to most American voters.
George Bush is off in political Siberia because the Romney campaign is doing everything humanly possible to prevent voters from realizing that Romney intends to return precisely those same failed Bush policies to the White House if he is elected president next week.
Let's start with the matter that is uppermost in the country's attention -- the hurricane.
It's fair to say that his response to Hurricane Katrina was not Bush's finest hour. But Bush's failure to respond quickly and effectively to Katrina was not simply a reflection of his administration's incompetence. It was a reflection of the fact that his administration didn't believe in government.
Natural disasters make people remember why it is so important that we have a society where we have each other's back. They make us remember that government is the name we give to the things we choose to do together.
Natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy make us remember why the law of the jungle -- why a self-centered, irresponsible, unbridled focus on you and you alone -- isn't what we learned in Sunday School.
Even far right New Jersey Governor Chris Christie reprimanded New Jersey citizens who refused to evacuate low-lying areas because they would put the lives of first responders at risk -- because they had a responsibility to each other.
Bush -- and his response to Katrina -- exemplified the right wing's failure to understand that most Americans believe in a society where we are all in this together, not all in this alone.
And Mitt Romney completely shares Bush's view. Romney actually proposed eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) and hand over responsibility for response to disasters to the states. Romney ignores that when disaster strikes, we are Americans first. We have each other's back whether we are from Mississippi or New Jersey. We do that because it's right. We also do it because while disaster may strike our neighbors in New Jersey today, it could strike those of us who live in Illinois tomorrow.
But of course there are many other reasons why the Republicans have failed to ask George Bush to campaign for their presidential ticket. Two stand out.
We have had two great economic experiments in America over the last 30 years. One succeeded. The other failed -- in fact, it was a man-made disaster.
The first was led by President Bill Clinton. Clinton believed that you grow the economy from the middle out -- not the top down. He understood that businesses don't invest and hire unless there are customers out there with money in their pockets -- that they are the "job creators" -- not a bunch of hedge fund managers on Wall Street.
Clinton proposed a federal budget that would eliminate the deficit mainly by calling on the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes -- and by investing in infrastructure and education to grow the economy. And Clinton forcefully defended programs like Medicare when Newt Gingrich wanted to cut them to give tax cuts to the rich.
When his budget was debated in Congress, Republicans predicted it would lead to massive job losses and recession.
The Republicans were dead wrong. Clinton presided over the most prosperous period in human history -- literally. On his watch the economy experienced robust growth and created 22 million new American jobs. Clinton eliminated the Federal deficit and left his successor with budget surpluses as far as the eye could see.
Then came George Bush. He cut taxes for the rich -- arguing that this would turbo-charge job growth and that the deficit would take care of itself. In fact, Bush's Vice President Dick Cheney -- a man who has also been noticeably absent from the campaign trail this fall -- famously said that "deficits don't matter."
The result: Bush left office having presided over the worst record of job growth since the Great Depression -- zero net private sector jobs created; that's right, zero.
Worse, his failure to regulate Wall Street set the stage for the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, costing eight million Americans their jobs, wiping out 40 percent of many people's pensions, collapsing of the housing market, and causing the worst economic downturn in 60 years.
Bush's trickle-down tax policies not only failed to create economic growth -- they left the Federal Government saddled with more debt than all of the previous presidents had racked up since the beginning of the Republic. And remember, that debt load made it even harder for President Obama to clean up the economic mess once he came into office in 2009.
It's not surprising, then, that you don't see George Bush on the stump trying to convince Americans that Mitt Romney's economic policies will create a better life for the middle class. Of course he could step in for Mitt, he certainly knows the script -- in fact he wrote the script.
After all, Mitt Romney is promoting exactly the same economic policies that Bush used to create zero private sector jobs, crash the economy and run up the deficit just a few short years ago.
But there's more. You don't see George Bush campaigning for Romney because most Americans think his foreign policy was another man made catastrophe. Bush led us into two wars -- which by the way he paid for on the nation's credit card -- and alienated America from the rest of the world.
He intentionally lied about the rationale for the War in Iraq -- convincing the American people that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, when he had none. The War in Iraq cost thousands of American lives and left tens of thousands injured or disabled. Some economists think it may ultimately cost up to three trillion dollars to the American economy -- money that could instead have been spent building schools and roads and bridges and investing in jobs in the United States.
Bush's go-it-alone, bull in a china closet foreign policy alienated people around the world, stretched the American military and left America weaker. And the pictures of humiliation at Abu Ghraib -- his policies of torture and rendition and lack of respect for the rule of law -- created recruiting posters for our enemies.
Bush doesn't campaign for Romney because the Romney campaign has zero interest in focusing the attention of the voters on the fact Romney is surrounded by exactly the same gang of foreign policy advisers that presided over the War in Iraq. In addition they both share the same credentials: Both had zero foreign policy experience before they ran for president.
The fact is that if you liked the War in Iraq, you'll love the Romney foreign policy. So for the next six days, every time you hear about Bill Clinton campaigning for President Obama, let that be a reminder of the guy you won't see out their campaigning for Mitt Romney.
The choice is clear. If you liked the way things were going under George Bush, vote for Mitt Romney. But if you want long-term economic growth, if you believe in defending the middle class, if you don't want to go back to the policies of George Bush -- vote to reelect President Barack Obama.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, 

Romney ads are so offensive because it is a bald-faced lie. And he knows it's a lie.


Apart from the storm news, there has been some political news that I cannot let go of.
Mitt Romney must realize that he has lost the industrial Midwest because he's completely lost a grip on reality. He's decided to throw a Hail Mary pass that will cause his already-struggling campaign to implode in Ohio.
Last week, Romney falsely claimed, "Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China."
When Romney said that, Chrysler responded by calling the statement "a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats" to suggest that it would close U.S. facilities and move all operations to China. In fact, Chrysler is hiring over 2,000 more people in Toledo and Detroit.
But Romney decided to double down on the deception. The campaign is running the ad in the video below in select Ohio markets.

Chrysler had this response to the ad: "Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to china." Sergio Marchionne, the CEO of Chrysler, sent an email to employees today again expressly stating that Chrysler is absolutely not sending jobs to China.
The Washington Post's Fact Checker gave the ad four Pinocchios -- you can't get rated any more deceptive than that.
President Obama's campaign ran this response to the ad.
And then, Romney's campaign did it again! But this time it wasn't Chrysler - now they're paying for a radio ad saying the same thing about General Motors.
Which caused GM to issue this statement:
We've clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days, no amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.
The Romney ads are so offensive because it is a bald-faced lie. And he knows it's a lie. But because Romney is such a desperate, opportunistic, single-minded politician, he doesn't care that he's lying.
It's his scorched earth policy -- he'll do whatever it takes to win, no matter what the consequences to our politics, our country, or our people.
It's what Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers, yesterday called "winning without honor." I'm not sure that even goes far enough.
Ohioans aren't going to be fooled by this deception. Here's how the Cleveland Plain Dealer put it: "It won't work. Ohio voters know who stepped up when the auto industry was at the abyss -- and it wasn't Romney."
Let me say this to the people of Ohio -- I can understand why you'd be ticked off. Mitt Romney is lying to you because he thinks you're too oblivious to remember the truth,
Unfortunately, neither you nor I can respond with the choice words we might like to use. But fortunately we can send an even more powerful response to this garbage. You'll have the final word, in one week. On election day.


Michael Brown, Of 'Heckuva Job' Fame, Says Obama Reacted Too Fast To Hurricane Sandy


Michael Brown, the former FEMA director infamously praised by President George W. Bush for doing a "heckuva job" during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, told a local paper that President Barack Obama acted too quickly in mobilizing relief for Superstorm Sandy.
"Here's my concern," Brown told Denver's Westword on Monday, suggesting that the official response was actually making people complacent. "It's premature [when] the brunt of the storm won't happen until later this afternoon."
Obama declared states of emergency all along East Coast states in the path of Sandy on Sunday, well before the storm hit, allowing federal resources to start flowing where governors thought they would be needed. FEMA and local responders were able to pre-position a lot of the material being drawn upon now.
Obama also held a press conference warning people to pay careful attention to the storm.
"This is a serious and big storm," Obama said after meeting with FEMA officials and talking to governors Sunday. "And my first message is to all the people across the Eastern seaboard, Mid-Atlantic, going north, that you need to take this very seriously."
Brown suggested Obama was just trying to look good.
"He probably figured Sunday was a good day to do a press conference," Brown said in his interview.
He also thought Obama's response contrasted poorly to his response to the deadly attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which the U.S. ambassador and three others died. "One thing he's gonna be asked is, why did he jump on this so quickly and go back to D.C. so quickly when in ... Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas?" Brown said.

Monday, October 29, 2012

All You Can Read...Today


Top Stories

1 dead, captain missing after 14 saved as Bounty sinks

USA TODAY - ‎52 minutes ago‎
The HMS Bounty, a replica of the historic British ship, is shown moored at Annapolis, Md., in 2010. It reportedly sank at sea early Monday after the Coast Guard rescued 14 of 16 crewmembers off the coast of North Carolina in the path of Hurricane Sandy.

Sandy leaves NYC dark and deluged

CBS News - ‎26 minutes ago‎
NEW YORK Superstorm Sandy zeroed in on New York's waterfront with fierce rain and winds that shuttered most of the nation's largest city Monday, darkened the financial district and left a huge crane hanging off a luxury high-rise.

The World Series champion Giants return home

San Francisco Chronicle - ‎14 minutes ago‎
Pablo Sandoval (left) holds the World Series trophy over his head after he and Sergio Romo (right) arrive with the San Francisco Giants to AT&T Park after returning from Detroit where they won the World Series in a four game sweep on Monday, October 29, ...

Behind Decision to Close Markets

Wall Street Journal - ‎2 hours ago‎
Hurricane Sandy forced regulators and exchange operators to keep U.S. stock markets closed Tuesday, in the first weather-related shutdown to last more than one day since the Blizzard of 1888.
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Ceasefire in Syria ends in air raids and car bombings

Irish Times - ‎1 hour ago‎
MICHAEL JANSEN. SYRIA'S FOUR-DAY holiday ceasefire ended with a reported 60 air raids, shelling, car bombs in the Damascus area and an artillery exchange across the Turkish border.

Experts weigh in on rise of Ukrainian Svoboda party

Jerusalem Post - ‎43 minutes ago‎
BERLIN - The radical right-wing Svoboda (“Freedom”) party, which openly admires the World War II pro- Nazi Ukrainian Insurgent Army, has secured 41 seats in the Ukrainian parliament and is expected to legitimize public displays of anti-Semitism.

Citing hurricane, Scott Brown pulls out of final US Senate debate; Elizabeth ...

Boston.com - ‎4 hours ago‎
By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff. Senator Scott Brown, citing the danger posed by Hurricane Sandy, has pulled out of his fourth and final debate with Elizabeth Warren, which was scheduled to take place Tuesday evening in Boston and be broadcast live on ...

Worst of storm expected in Western Pennsylvania tonight

Pittsburgh Post Gazette - ‎1 hour ago‎
Bob Hillard, who owns a plumbing shop in Millvale, fills sandbags at Riverfront Park in preparation for possible flooding from Hurricane Sandy.

Crane Is Dangling Off Luxury High-Rise

New York Times - ‎1 hour ago‎
A crane at 157 West 57th Street swayed up and up and then snapped, leaving tons of metal dangling precariously over 1,000 feet above the ground, with no evident way to secure it with the storm bearing down.

Sandy power outages top 2 million

MarketWatch - ‎13 minutes ago‎
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Hurricane Sandy pummeled the Mid-Atlantic power grid Monday, knocking out electricity to at least 2 million homes and businesses from North Carolina to New England.

Storm throws campaigns for a loop

USA TODAY
1 hour ago
Written by
Aamer Madhani
Both campaigns appeared to be taking a moment-by-moment approach as they faced the pressures of winning votes while showing sensitivity to Americans likely to be affected by the storm.

Biden, Clinton pick up campaign mantle for storm-hit Obama

Reuters - ‎48 minutes ago‎
Sandy disrupts candidates' last dash. Hurricane Sandy's imminent arrival across the East throws off carefully crafted plans for the home stretch of the presidential campaign, as both President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney scrap events in Virginia ...

GOP Turns Fire on Obama Pillar, the Auto Bailout

New York Times - ‎54 minutes ago‎
TOLEDO, Ohio - The ad from Mitt Romney showed up on televisions here early Saturday morning without the usual public announcement that both campaigns typically use to herald their latest commercials: Chrysler, a bailout recipient, is going to begin ...

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