I have changed my mind

I may not vote for Mitt Romney, though I think he would do a passable job and sure as heck is better than the alternative.  I may well write in Representative Mike Kelly's name.

I figured out why Romney is unlikable

 Subject: Why Mitt Romney is Unlikable!

 A lot is being said in the media about Mitt Romney not being "likable" or that he doesn't "relate well" to people.  Frankly, we struggled to understand why.  So after much research, we have come up with a Top Ten List to explain this "unlikablility."

     

Top Ten Reasons To Dislike Mitt Romney:

1. Drop-dead, collar-ad handsome with gracious, statesmanlike aura. Looks like every central casting's #1 choice for Commander-in-Chief.
2. Been married to ONE woman his entire life, and has been faithful to her, including through her bouts with breast cancer and MS.

3. No scandals or skeletons in his closet. (How boring is that?)
4. Can't speak in a fake, southern, "black preacher voice" when necessary.
5. Highly intelligent. Graduated cum laud from both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School ...and by the way, his academic records are NOT sealed.
6. Doesn't smoke or drink alcohol, and has never done drugs, not even in the counter-culture age when he went to college. Too square for today's America ?
 7. Represents an America of "yesterday", where people believed in God, went to Church, didn't screw around, worked hard, and became a SUCCESS!
8. Has a family of five great sons....and none of them have police records or are in drug rehab. But of course, they were raised by a stay-at-home mom, and that "choice" deserves America 's scorn.
9. Oh yes.....he's a MORMON. We need to be very afraid of that very strange religion that teaches its members to be clean-living, patriotic, fiscally conservative, charitable, self-reliant, and honest.
10. And one more point.....pundits say because of his wealth, he can't relate to ordinary Americans. I guess that's because he made that money HIMSELF.....as opposed to marrying it or inheriting it from Dad. Apparently, he didn't understand that actually working at a job and earning your own money made you unrelatable to Americans.

My goodness, it's a strange world, isn't it?

Personal Information:

His full Name is: Willard Mitt Romney
He was Born: March 12, 1947 and is 65 years old.
His Father: George W. Romney, former Governor of the State of Michigan
He was raised in Bloomfield Hills , Michigan
He is Married to Ann Romney since 1969; they five children.

Education: B.A. from Brigham Young University, J.D. and M.B.A. from Harvard University

Religion: Mormon - The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints

Working Background: After high school, he spent 30 months in France as a Mormon missionary. After going to both Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School simultaneously, he passed the Michigan bar exam, but never worked as an attorney. In 1984, he co-founded Bain Capital a private equity investment firm, one of the largest such firms in the United States. In 1994, he ran for Senator of Massachusetts and lost to Ted Kennedy. He was President and CEO of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. In 2002, he was elected Governor of the State of Massachusetts where he eliminated a 1.5 billion deficit.

Some Interesting Facts about Romney:
Bain Capital, starting with one small office supply store in Massachusetts , turned it into Staples; now over 2,000 stores
employing 90,000 people. Bain Capital also worked to perform the same kinds of business miracles again and again, with companies like Domino's, Sealy, Brookstone, Weather Channel, Burger King, Warner Music Group, Dollarama, Home Depot Supply and many others.

He was an unpaid volunteer campaign worker for his dad's gubernatorial campaign 1 year.
He was an unpaid intern in his dad's governor's office for eight years.
He was an unpaid bishop and state president of his church for ten years.
He was an unpaid President of the Salt Lake Olympic Committee for three years.
He took no salary and was the unpaid Governor of Massachusetts for four years.
He gave his entire inheritance from his father to charity.

Mitt Romney is one of the wealthiest self-made men in our country but has given more back to its citizens in terms of money, service and time than most men.

And in 2011 Mitt Romney gave over $4 million to charity, almost 19% of his income.... Just for comparison purposes,
Obama gave 1% and Joe Biden gave $300 or .0013%.

Mitt Romney is Trustworthy:
He will show us his birth certificate
He will show us his high school and college transcripts.
He will show us his social security card.
He will show us his law degree.
He will show us his draft notice.
He will show us his medical records.
He will show us his income tax records.
He will show us he has nothing to hide.
Mitt Romney's background, experience and trustworthiness show him to be a great leader and an excellent citizen for President of the United States.

You may think that Romney may not be the best representative the Republicans could have selected. At least I know what religion he is, and that he won't desecrate the flag, bow down to foreign powers, or practice fiscal irresponsibility.

I know he has the ability to turn this financial debacle that the current regime has gotten us into. We won't like all the things necessary to recover from this debt, but someone with Romney's background can do it.

But, on the minus side, he never was a "Community Organizer", never took drugs or smoked pot, never got drunk, did not associate with communists or terrorists, nor did he attend a church whose pastor called for God to damn the US .

At least there is some good news today

A bi-partisan House majority just voted Holder in contempt for refusing to turn over his Fast and Furious records.

The vast right wing conspiracy strikes again

First they made up a bunch of absolute lies about Bill Clinton fooling around with Monica Lewinski.  No truth there.  Nope.  Just a ploy by said conspiracy to smear Hillary's husband.  Well the VRW Conspiracy rides again.  As Breitbart points out, they have obviously for years been sneaking into Elizabeth Warren's bedroom and whispering "you are a Cherokee, you are a Cherokee."  Over and over again until the sub-somnolent suggestions took hold and made her claim minority status as (and all of the benefits of) a woman of color in higher academia.  Yup those VRW guys are pretty devious when they start conspiring.  Below is a statement bizarrely issued by the Warren for Senate campaign to address the issue dogging her every day:

The people of Massachusetts are concerned about their jobs, the future for their kids, and the security of their retirement. Scott Brown would rather talk about anything else. The out-of-state group in question is being promoted and supported by a right wing extremist who is on the record supporting and contributing money to Scott Brown. It is past time we moved on to the important issues facing middle class families in Massachusetts – even if Scott Brown won’t.

Dog bites man

And Obama used to actually belong to a Socialist Party (as opposed to being a socialist while afilliating with the Democratic party).

Um, did Bill Clinton just endorse Mitt Romney?

"There's no question that in terms of getting up and going to the office, and you know, basically performing the essential functions of the office, a man who has been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold."

Yet another reason I am predicting a Romney victory

Money.  Per this article on Politico:

Republican super PACs and other outside groups shaped by a loose network of prominent conservatives – including Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and Tom Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – plan to spend roughly $1 billion on November’s elections for the White House and control of Congress, according to officials familiar with the groups’ internal operations.

That total includes previously undisclosed plans for newly aggressive spending by the Koch brothers, who are steering funding to build sophisticated, county-by-county operations in key states. POLITICO has learned that Koch-related organizations plan to spend about $400 million ahead of the 2012 elections - twice what they had been expected to commitJust the spending linked to the Koch network is more than the $370 million that John McCain raised for his entire presidential campaign four years ago. And the $1 billion total surpasses the $750 million that Barack Obama, one of the most prolific fundraisers ever, collected for his 2008 campaign.

Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, proved its potency by spending nearly $50 million in the primaries. Now able to entice big donors with a neck-and-neck general election, the group is likely to meet its new goal of spending $100 million more.

The (a) difference between Romney and Obama

Romney, while at Bain, was a private equity investor who often invested his own money.  Obama, while President is a public equity investor who always invests your money.  Oh, and Romney made money on his investments.

Now I am getting worried because the Obama campaign seems to finally be getting a little smarter

They told Biden to sit down and shut up for a week!  No, really!!!  If they can keep everyone else in the Whitehouse  from opening their mouths, we may be in trouble.

The liberal cocoon

Michael Barone has written a wonderful opinion piece about how liberals insulate themselves from opposing views and thereby are ill-prepared to argue their positions.  It reminded me of a political argument I got in a long time ago with my (very liberal) brother.  The sands of time have washed away my memories of the specifics of the argument, or even what the general subject was.  However, one thing stuck in my mind all theses years.  Every source he cited in support of his position, I had read.  Every source I cited in support of mine, he had not read.  I welcome opposing views and I love a well reasoned argument.  The same cannot be said for most liberals I meet, however.  They would never be caught dead listening to Rush Limbaugh instead of NPR (which I will from time to time tune in).  They would never think of watching FoxNews instead of MSNBC (which I watch), and Heaven forbid they read the Wall Street Journal instead of the Boston Globe (I just got done with it).  I suppose I should not push them to broaden their horizons, though.  It is too much fun watching their shocked and stupefied expressions when their liberal champions go down in flames at the polls.  After all, everything they read, everything they watched and everyone they spoke with supported their causes.

Yet another example of Fox News biased and inaccurate coverage of the Obama White House

Fox News has as the lead article on its website one entitled "Horning in on History?"  In it they lambaste Obama for editing the bios on the official White House web page of Presidents going back 100 years so as include something about Obama.  For example, the Reagan bio has the following sentence added to it:

"In a June 28, 1985, speech, Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multimillionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule." 

That is just patently unfair and an example of yellow journalism at its worst.  The truth is that there is no reference to Obama in the Gerald Ford bio.  And they could have very easily slid one in about how much they both played golf, too.

Lest we forget, Presidents are not popularly elected

Each State, through rules it basically sets on its own, selects "electors" who in turn sit in the electoral college.  Those electors then decide who will be the next President.  So certain States take on a magnified importance.  For example, who cares how many votes either party gets in California because they are all going to Obama.  Conversely, little New Hampshire and its lonely four delegates may get quite a bit of attention because those votes are in play.  Last election, based upon the strength of support within the African American community, North Carolina, a normally reliable Republican State, voted for Obama.  It was won of his real keys to victory. Well, the latest Rasmussen tracking poll of likely voters in North Carolina has Mitt up 51% to 43%.  How important do the Democrats believe North Carolina is to Obama's reelection chances?  They picked Charlotte for their convention.

What is your favorite Beach Boys song?

Mine?  Pretty much all of them.  Heh.

I have gotten to the point where I laugh, rather then cry, at the main stream media

Take for example the Op Ed piece in yesterday's LA Times.  It is entitled "Is Barack Obama Too Brainy to be President?"  Oh, I see.  Poor ol' stupid peoples like me just ain't smart enough.  Cuz if'n we was, we'd vote for Barry.  Yeah, OK.  I can see the ivory tower apologists after he gets slammed in the next election.  The only reason he lost was he was SOOOOO much smarter than the average person in the electorate.  We just didn't have the brain cells to understand how smart he was.

Poll update

Rasmussen daily tracker now has Romney up by 7% over Obama.  Maybe more significantly, Romney comes in at 50% and Obama at 43%.  This is the first time Romney has hit the 50% plateau.

I'm thinking that Ivy League Journalism schools are not mouth pieces for conservatives

However, even they have noted the obvious journalistic bias in covering the Democratic candidate versus the Republican candidate.  It is real news to me when the Columbia Journalism Review publishes an article noting that the press says Obama "evolves" and Mitt "flip flops."  Good point by them.

To be fair and balanced, I am compelled to report that Obama is up by a healthy margin

In the West Virginia Democratic primary, that is.  With 93 percent of the polls reporting, he has over 59% percent of the vote as compared to only 40% for his challenger.  His challenger is Keith Judd.  Such a strong showing is a little surprising against a sitting President.  It is also surprising since Mr. Judd is currently residing in Texas and not West Virginia.  The Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana, Texas to be exact.  He goes by Inmate No. 11593-051 as well as his given name.

Irony is a bitch, Ms. Warren

Even the voice of People's Republic of Massachusetts, the Boston Globe, has been having a bit of fun at Elizabeth Warren's expense.  For those of you who have not been following closely, Ms. Warren, Harvard Law professor and member of the Obama administration, is the chosen one to unseat that up-start Scott Brown who dared to take 'Ted Kennedy's seat' back for the people of Massachusetts.  She listed herself for years in law school directories and elsewhere as a "minority" claiming a Native American ancestry.  Harvard in turn listed her as evidence of how forward and correct thinking they were in showing the great diversity of their faculty.  The blond and blue eyed Warren claimed the evidence of her ancestry was family lore and the fact that her grandfather had high cheek bones like Indians do.  (You can't make this stuff up.)  She stepped in it a little deeper when she said that it was not for the advancement of her career that she claimed minority status, but rather to go out to lunch with other similarly situated Native Americans.  Of course, it turns out that she never actually went out to lunch with them or even once attended Harvard's own "pow wow" for Native American members of its academic community.  Needless to say, not only did her political opponents take exception to her false claims, but so did real members of that minority community who were bothered by the fact that she took away opportunities for REAL American Indians.  In a mad attempt to back fill, her camp came up with O.C. Sarah Crawford, Warren's great great great grandmother who according to a supposed application for marriage, but not the official marriage license nor the United States Census, was part Cherokee Indian.  That claim has since been debunked.  Worse still, when she threw the Crawford lineage against the wall, people started to look at it.  Turns out that Ms. Crawford's husband, Warren's great great great grandfather was member of the Tennessee Militia in Ross's Landing, now Chattanooga, Tennessee.  The Tennessee Militia, following the Indian Removal Act of 1830, rounded up the Cherokee (and other) Indians from their homes, interred them and then force marched them to western frontier, leaving the dead and dying along the way.  The infamous Trail of Tears was perhaps the worst government sanctioned atrocity in our history as a nation.  And Jonathan Crawford, Elizabeth Warren's great great great grandfather, was a member of the militia that rode from settlement to settlement and took people whose only sin was to ACTUALLY HAVE Cherokee blood in their veins and incarcerate them for horrific death march so white settlers could take their lands without opposition.  Yes Ms. Warren, you can certainly claim a direct and historic link to the Cherokee people.

You know the Whitehouse is in trouble when . . .

The toadies in the Main Stream Media are laughing out loud at the Press Secretary's answers.  I am at heart a libertarian in that I do not want you to tell me what to do and I will not tell you what to do.  However, when it comes to gay marriage, please spare me with the equating it to civil rights.  If you and a consenting person are having fun, then great.  Just don't try to tell me that you need the same constitutional protection as someone whose race is readily apparent by their skin color.  It may be a behavioral choice you want to make, but I am not going to march into Selma demanding that the rest of the world has to recognize that choice.  Having said that, I could not really give a hoot if some States want to sanction certain unions or not.  I do think it is funny that Perpetual Foot In Mouth Biden stirred up a hornets nests with his comments about how he could learn to live with gay marriage.  Which of course made everyone look back at Obama's position on the issue.  He isn't for it.  Nor is he against it.  In fact, his position is "evolving" as we speak.  And as the Washington Post points out, the more his Spokesman tried to explain that one, the more the press had fun with him:

Carney tried to parry the same-sex-marriage questions, gamely at first and then testily as reporters began to laugh at his answers. He grew uncharacteristically flustered. When an unrelated question came about whether Obama would support the reelection of scandal-plagued Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), Carney answered: “I mean — well, yes, sure. I just don’t — I haven’t — I haven’t been asked it before so I. . . . The president — I’ll have to — I’ll have to get back to you.”

Can you say Jimmy Carter?

Don't look now, but the Rasmussen daily tracking poll has Romney up by 5 points over the Great One.  As a reminder, this is a daily tracking poll that averages three nights worth of data.  And since the same poll yesterday showed a one point Romney advantage, that must mean that trend has been far more than five points in Romney's favor.  One more thing to keep in mind, unlike almost all of the individual State polls, the national ones are of likely voters and not just registered voters.

Update: The only other daily tracking to come out today is Gallup which now has Romney up by 3 points over Obama.