The LGBT COMMUNITY PLEASE TAKE NOTE: Robert Stevens, a member of the gay Tea Party group GOProud, at an invitation-only party for gay conservatives and supporters:
“I understand I won’t have equal rights. But I also want to be filthy rich, and I think the Republican ticket can get me there.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvls4tnZs_A&feature=related

Of everything we have put up on line, this clip still gets the MOST HITS OF ALL
TIME: Are we the only ones really worried about Romney and his sidekick Eric
Fehrnstorm and how they behave themselves in this clip? Romney acts like
Christopher Walken’s character Frank White in the 1990 movie “A King in New
York”. Romney says to AP reporter Glen Johnson in what seems like a very
threaten manner to us to Johnson “Listen to my words” and then Romney says to
Johnson “Lets you and I talk”. Come on GOP we can’t have these two acting like
this in the White House. Time to wake up GOP and Dump Romney Today.

You Tube footage showing “Bain the Bully” Romney and his campaign staff bullying
Associate Press reporter Glen Johnson. Watch the whole Press Conference as it is
at the end of it when you see the real “Bain the Bully” Romney at work (the real
Romney we have heard about) as he thinks the cameras are no longer rolling. Do
we really want this bully in the White House?

The campaign staff bullying AP reporter Glen Johnson after “Stick a Dog Up on a Car Roof” Romney is none
other then “Flip-Flop Affordable Care Act is a tax is not a tax” Romney Advisor
himself Eric Fehrnstrom (scroll down this blog to see a story on this bully).

IMPORTANT NOTE: That is NOT our caption on this You Tube clip.

 

Editorial (The New Times)

How the Republicans Built It

August 28, 2012

It was a day late, but the Republicans’ parade of truth-twisting, distortions and plain falsehoods arrived on the podium of their national convention on Tuesday. Following in the footsteps of Mitt Romney’s campaign, rarely have so many convention speeches been based on such shaky foundations.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, in the keynote speech, angrily demanded that the American people learn the hard truths about the two parties, but like most of those at the microphone, he failed to supply any. He said his state needed his austere discipline of slashed budgets, canceled public projects and broken public unions, but did not mention that New Jersey now has a higher unemployment rate than when he took over, and never had the revenue boom he promised from tax cuts.

“We believe in telling our seniors the truth about our overburdened entitlements,” he said, but his party has consistently refused to come clean about its real plans to undo Medicare and Medicaid. “Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths we need to hear to put us back on a path to growth,” he said, but Mr. Romney has consistently refused to tell the truth about his tax plan, his budget plan, and his health care plan.

It was appropriate that “We built it,” the needling slogan of the evening, was painted on the side of the convention hall. Speaker after speaker alluded to the phrase in an entire day based on the thinnest of reeds — a poorly phrased remark by the president, deliberately taken out of context. President Obama was making the obvious point that all businesses rely to some extent on the work and services of government. But Mr. Romney has twisted it to suggest that Mr. Obama believes all businesses are creatures of the government, and so the convention had to parrot the line.

“We need a president who will say to a small businesswoman: Congratulations, we applaud your success, you did make that happen, you did build that,” said Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia. “Big government didn’t build America; you built America!”

That was far from the only piece of nonsense on the menu, only the most frequently repeated one. Conventions are always full of cheap applause lines and over-the-top attacks, but it was startling to hear how many speakers in Tampa considered it acceptable to make points that had no basis in reality.

Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, for example, boasted of the booming economy in his state, never mentioning that he and Mr. Romney opposed the auto bailout that has played an outsized role in the state’s recovery. (Apparently Mr. Obama’s destructive economic policies do not apply everywhere.)

Andy Barr, a Congressional candidate in Kentucky, made the particularly egregious charge that the president was conducting “a war on coal,” ruthlessly attacking an industry and thousands of struggling miners.

He was apparently referring to the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions and prevent power-plant pollution from drifting through the East Coast states. The country desperately needs to reduce its reliance on coal, which is far more polluting than natural gas, but that goal gets harder to achieve every time someone like Mr. Barr makes it out to be an attack on a way of life.

Considering how Mr. Romney has conducted his campaign so far, most recently his blatantly false advertising accusing Mr. Obama of gutting the work requirement on welfare, it is probably not surprising that the convention he leads would follow a similar path.

Voters looking for a few nuggets of truth would not have found them in Tampa on Tuesday.

On Thursday (August 23rd) “Bain Means Pain” Romney said in Minnesota that “big business is doing fine in many places”, partly because they benefited from offshore tax havens and of all people he should know!

 

Why it’s so rare for presidents to be breakthrough leaders

By Vincent P. Bzdek (The Washington Post)

Presidential scholar Thomas Cronin, a former White House Fellow and president emeritus of Whitman College, is the author or co-author of a dozen books on politics, government and the presidency. His latest book, Leadership Matters , was written with Michael A. Genovese, director of the Institute for Leadership Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. The book, praised by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin as “an absolute tour-de-force,” focuses on how effective leaders navigate the inherent contradictions and paradoxes of leadership. Cronin spoke with Vincent Bzdek, the Washington Post’s deputy national political editor, about leadership in the context of the presidential election.

We wrote Leadership Matters because societal leadership and governance are the ultimate challenge for social scientists. My co-author, Michael Genovese, and I are longtime students of the American presidency, and to study presidential leadership is to learn that leadership breakthroughs are rare and, when they do occur, are the product of far more than one person, one speech, one institution or even one era.

The exercise of leadership is, moreover, full of contradictions, paradoxes and “black swan” unexpected events. We wrote to unpack many of the paradoxes of leadership.

Recent polls show that Americans have very little faith in their political leaders, and political leadership in general. What kind of concrete steps need to be taken to restore faith in our political leaders?

Well, people have always been skeptical if not cynical about political leaders. Trust may have declined in recent years because new technologies and investigative reporting techniques make it harder and harder for officials to hide when they dissemble. Modern technologies also amplify the demonizing of one’s rival in contemporary electioneering.

We can’t legislate trust any more than we can regulate or instill authenticity in candidates.

Greek playwrights delighted their audiences by satirizing their politicians—just as Jon Stewart, Maureen Dowd, Jay Leno and Rush Limbaugh do today.

We can’t love representative democracy and hate politicians. For to completely scorn politics and politicians comes very close to scorning constitutional democracy and, possibly, ourselves.

A quote from your book: “Leadership requires successive displays of contrasting characteristics.” What is the difference between that and “flip flopping,” the leadership criticism often leveled against Mitt Romney?

I think we are probably too put off by charges of flip-flopping. This year’s candidates have done their fair share of this, and the media love these ‘gotcha’ stories. But, looking back in time, we liked that Lincoln changed his mind about how to deal with slavery and deploying blacks to fight for the Union. We liked it when FDR went back on his promise to balance the budget and when Nixon changed his mind about the best way to deal with China.

LBJ became a more ardent champion of civil and voting rights when he became a national Democrat not just a Texas Democrat. So also when Obama changed to the national stage and was no longer primarily a Chicago Democrat. Not surprisingly, Romney has changed from thinking like a Boston-area Republican as he assumes the mantle of a far more conservative national Republican Party.

Let’s get real. Flip-flopping is sometimes desirable and sometimes a trade necessity. Times change. Constituencies change. People learn new things. Of course, pragmatism plays a role. We like being tough on cautious politicians who don’t speak assertively and consistently as to what should be done. But this is what Lincoln did in 1860 and FDR in 1932. They kept their options open.

President Obama has been characterized as a leader who “leads from behind.” Do you think that’s an accurate assessment of his leadership style? Can you be a successful leader leading from behind?

Yes, President Obama often “leads from behind.” This was especially said about the Libyan engagement. But leading from behind or leading from the middle is a fair characterization of his and most presidencies. Our system was designed so presidents are not allowed to get too far in advance of the people and their mutual aspirations.

That’s why presidents are invariably transactional rather than transformational leaders. We elect pragmatists like Lincoln rather than passionate, principled people like the head of the Abolitionists. We say we want visionaries but vote against people like Barry Goldwater, George McGovern, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan.

Poets, prophets and conviction philosophers try to lead from out front. Constitutional democracies are designed for something else.

Here’s a question that probably goes beyond your book—but do you have any insights, based on your research on leadership, about Campaign 2012?

A paradox is that we ask our leaders simultaneously to listen and learn from us yet teach us and lead us.

Democracies are not very good or experienced at downsizing. This is a time when we need leaders who are adept at saying no to their friends, and saying no to entrenched, well-funded interests.

John McCain won praise a few weeks ago by calling out wingnuts in his own party for mindlessly demeaning a senior State Department staffer. It would be refreshing for Romney and Ryan, in similar fashion, to specify a few weapons systems they believe are no longer needed, or to call out some big banks for practices that abuse the public trust. Meanwhile Obama and Biden might tell us more clearly how they will downsize the national debt and become even more rigorous in eliminating waste, fraud and inefficiencies across the whole scope of the governmental Leviathan.

You argue that there are no how-to prescriptions for leadership. But you also argue that leadership can be learned. How do you teach leadership if there are no rules?

Much of what is involved in leadership can be learned—skills such as strategic planning, negotiating, coalition-building and speaking. Leadership is a performing art and would-be leaders learn just as understudies or development league players do in theatre and sports.

The soul of a leader—judgment, integrity, character, courage, fearlessness, empathy and public virtue—are harder to learn, harder to get right. “Can leadership be taught?” is a less appropriate question than “Can leadership be learned?”

“Management by committee” is often viewed negatively. Yet much of your emphasis in the new book is on the leadership of teams and groups, rather than the leadership of individuals. Can “management by committee” be a good thing?

 

 

Bain documents reveal tax and offshore details

By Tom Hamburger and Brady Dennis (The Washington Post)

A cache of internal Bain Capital documents released Thursday provides new information about the operations and holdings of the financial company founded by Mitt Romney, including details of investments in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens.

More than 900 pages of financial statements, investor reports and other documents released by Gawker.com also contain new details of investments Romney holds in a variety of Bain funds.

Although some Bain investments are known publicly, many specifics have remained secret. Citing his firm’s non-disclosure policy, Romney has declined to list the underlying assets of the Bain funds he holds in financial disclosure reports required of all federal candidates.

Some of the information contained in the newly released documents prompted University of Colorado law professor Victor Fleischer to cry foul late Thursday, saying some Bain executives avoided taxes in at least one of the funds in which Romney holds an investment, Bain Capital Fund VII.

In his blog, Fleischer highlighted a technique Bain and other private equity executives have used to convert management fees into capital gains, which would be taxed at 15 percent. That rate is less than half the tax rate that would be applied to the fees if they were treated as ordinary income.

Romney’s financial disclosure shows he had “over $1 million” invested in Bain Capital Fund VII.

Romney campaign officials said the Republican presidential candidate has had no role in Bain investment or tax decisions since he left the firm to manage the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games. Campaign officials said he has been a “blind investor” in Bain and other funds since 2002.

Tax experts said the technique of converting management fees to capital gains is commonly used by private equity firms.

Bain issued a statement lamenting Gawker’s release of the documents.

“The unauthorized disclosure of a number of confidential fund financial statements is unfortunate. Our fund financials are routinely prepared by auditors and demonstrate a commitment to transparency with our investors and regulators, and compliance with all laws,” the statement said. The auditing firm that prepared most of the documents declined to comment Thursday, citing client confidentiality.

The documents paint a fuller picture of the scope and complexity of Bain’s myriad investments, as well as the intricate structure of its private equity partnerships.

The financial statement of one limited partnership alone listed assets of nearly $1.5 billion in 2009. It detailed a variety of investments, including stakes in such companies as Outback Steakhouse, Fitness First health clubs and a European publishing firm.

The partnership also made a series of investments in complicated financial transactions such as foreign currency contracts and credit-default swaps — private agreements that serve as a form of insurance in case of a default.

The documents also show that Bain used a few “blocker” companies based in the Cayman Islands. These companies are often set up to protect nonprofit clients, such as pension funds and university endowments, and foreign investors from U.S. taxes.

Without the blockers, nonprofits could be subject to an Unrelated Business Income Tax, which is applied to income from certain activities, including debt-financed investments.

The blockers can also be used to protect IRA accounts. Romney has IRA investments in Bain entities located in the Caymans. But the documents offered no evidence that Romney had received tax benefits from the blockers.

A spokesman for the Romney campaign said Romney had no control over where his assets are invested.

“Governor and Mrs. Romney’s assets are managed on a blind basis,” campaign spokewoman Michele Davis said. “They do not control the investment of these assets, the investment decisions are made by a trustee. Furthermore, the trustee does not decide where funds he invests in are domiciled, the sponsors of the funds do.”

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

 

Romney dig at Obama: No one’s asked to see my birth certificate, people know I’m from Michigan

By Associate Press (The Washington Post)

Republican Mitt Romney raised the discredited rumor that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, jokingly declaring “no one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate” as he campaigned Friday near his own Michigan birthplace.

Romney later insisted the remark was just a joke and not meant to question Obama’s citizenship. But the comment risked creating an unwanted distraction for Romney in his last few days of campaigning before the Republican National Convention begins Monday. It came a day after Romney caused another stir by declaring that big business was “doing fine” in the current struggling economy in part because companies get advantages from offshore tax havens.

Romney made his birth certificate remark at a large outdoor rally in Michigan, where he grew up and where his father, George Romney, served as governor. He was joined onstage by his wife, Ann, and running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan.

Romney told supporters that he and Ann had been born at nearby hospitals.

“No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised,” Romney said.

The crowd of more than 7,000 responded with hearty laughter.

But Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt swiftly denounced the remark, saying Romney “embraced the most strident voices in his party instead of standing up to them.”

Romney was asked about his comment in a CBS interview later in the day.

“No, no, not a swipe,” Romney said. “I’ve said throughout the campaign and before, there’s no question about where he was born. He was born in the U.S. This was fun about us, and coming home. And humor, you know — we’ve got to have a little humor in a campaign.”

The authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate has been questioned by some Republican critics who insist Obama is not a “natural-born citizen” as required by the Constitution. Obama released a long-form version of his birth certificate last year as proof that he was born in Hawaii in 1961. But polls show some Republicans remain unconvinced. A Pew Research Center poll taken in April found 19 percent of Republicans, when asked where Obama was born, said they weren’t sure, and 6 percent believe he was born in another country.

Friday’s remark came as top Romney advisers were announcing convention themes designed to feature Romney’s personal side and life experiences as he introduces himself to a broad national audience with many who have yet to tune in to the presidential contest. It’s also an opportunity for Romney to cast himself as a compassionate and serious candidate for the presidency after a summer of unforced errors and tough Obama campaign ads that have portrayed him as an out-of-touch multi-millionaire.

The joke also threatened to undercut Romney’s recent complaints that Obama has been the one to inject a corrosive tone into the campaign.

Romney gave Democrats another opening Thursday when he attempted to sympathize with the struggles of small business owners.

“Big business is doing fine in many places,” Romney said during a campaign fundraiser. “They get the loans they need, they can deal with all the regulation. They know how to find ways to get through the tax code, save money by putting various things in the places where there are low tax havens around the world for their businesses.”

 

Romney May Be Nominated Early

By JEFF ZELENY (The New York Times)

Mitt Romney’s quest to formally win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination is coming two days earlier than expected.

Mr. Romney will be elevated as the party’s standard bearer on Monday – not Wednesday as previously expected – to keep the official business of the roll call delegate vote from competing with broader themes of introducing Mr. Romney. Officials also are keeping an eye on a potential threat from Tropical Storm Isaac and considering concerns about a possible disruption from Ron Paul supporters at the Republican National Convention next week.

It is a change in the script from previous conventions, where the formal nomination usually takes place on the second to last night of the convention. It is a formality, and Mr. Romney will still deliver his acceptance speech on Thursday evening, but the change is significant and an effort to keep the convention focused tightly on Mr. Romney.

“The roll call will take place on Monday,” said Jim Dyke, a convention spokesman, who dismissed suggestions that the schedule had abruptly changed. “We will go through the roll call in alphabetical order all the way through.”

Russ Schriefer, a top strategist for the Romney campaign who is overseeing convention planning, said the roll call vote will be timed for Mr. Romney to formally clinch the nomination when the network news programs begin their broadcasts on Monday evening.

“They can immediately go to Mitt Romney who went over the top in the vote,” Mr. Schriefer said. “We want to get it out of the way and not deal with it on Tuesday or Wednesday.”

The delegates to the convention are staying across the sprawling Tampa Bay area. Convention organizers were concerned that delegates would not be at the convention during the roll call vote, so officials said they decided to compress the vote into a short time period on Monday.

As soon as Mr. Romney officially becomes the party’s presidential nominee, he can have access to the general election money he has spent months raising, which puts him on the cusp of tapping into a significant financial advantage for the final two months of the race. Mr. Schriefer said that Mr. Romney would not begin accepting general election money until Thursday.

But next week’s schedule, according to discussions among party officials here, has as much to do with a desire to keep an orderly convention as it does with Isaac, the storm expected to develop into a hurricane as it moves toward Florida. The campaign had hoped that the television networks would cover the convention on Monday because Ann Romney is delivering her marquee speech that night, but so far the networks have declined. She is also expected to speak later in the week.

Some supporters of Mr. Paul also have been pushing to make their voices heard during the roll call vote. Mr. Paul, the libertarian Texas congressman whose presidential bid fell short, won a majority of delegates from Iowa, Minnesota and Nevada, but not enough state delegations to require that his name be placed into nomination.

While Mr. Paul’s advisers have worked behind the scenes with the Romney campaign for months, several supporters have signaled their interest in making their admiration known for Mr. Paul on the convention floor. The Romney campaign has worked through most of the concerns, but still preferred officially calling the roll of delegates on Monday, when television networks were not planning to broadcast the convention to diminish the potential for any fireworks.

Several Republican officials said scheduling the roll call on Monday allowed Mr. Romney to avoid drawing attention to two potential problems: from Mr. Paul’s supporters and the winds and rain of Isaac. By the time Mr. Romney arrives here in Tampa, aides hope both challenges will have blown over.

 

 

We have just had it confirmed from inside the GOP this morning that “Bain Means Pain” Romney has requested costs at the GOP Convention to be cut back due to the fact that his team figures show that “Stick My Dog Up On A Car Roof” Romney and Ryan “I Hate The Poor” will lose in November.

Defending the indefensible

By Steve Benen

Just two weeks ago, Mitt Romney suggested attack ads rejected by “the various fact-checkers” shouldn’t be on the air. Yesterday, the Republican added a caveat: when “the various fact-checkers” denounce his ads, they should be ignored as biased liberals.

To briefly recap, President Obama didn’t weaken the work requirement in welfare law; Romney has lied nearly every day for two weeks, including more than once yesterday, saying the opposite of the truth. Literally every independent fact-checker that’s looked at the claim has reached the same conclusion: Romney’s smear has no basis in fact.

Yesterday, asked why he keeps repeating a claim disconnected from this plane of reality, Romney told the Des Moines Register he has no use for independent journalists who examine the issue “in the way they think is most consistent with their own views.”

Yesterday, Romney campaign chairman John Sununu went a little further.

The full transcript of Sununu’s interview with Wolf Blitzer is online, and I’ll gladly give credit to the CNN host for pressing the Republican to defend his obvious falsehood. In fact, Blitzer literally read “the precise language from the Health and Human Services memo outlining what the states who seek this flexibility” can do.

And yet, the Romney campaign surrogate stuck to the lie anyway.

My favorite part came when Sununu explained what it would take for Team Romney to stop lying.

BLITZER: [E]very major fact checking organization out there says he has not — has not gutted, has not gutted by any means the work requirements.

SUNUNU: All they need to do is have HHS send out a hard letter making sure that the only things that will qualify under the work requirement is hard training and the — and the cooperative programs with employers and define it in such a way that what was allowed before is all that’s allowed in the future…. That’s all that’s required.

Really, that’s all that’s required? Because that “hard letter” already exists — the Obama administration published it (pdf) two months ago.

In it, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said, “Our goal is to accelerate job placement by moving more Americans from welfare to work, and no policy which undercuts that goal or waters down work requirements will be considered.”

There is no ambiguity.

Romney and his team know this, but they keep telling the same racially charged lie — five videos, including three broadcast ads, in just two weeks — because they just don’t give a damn. Confronted with reality, they’re not embarrassed or ashamed; they just stick to the lie, assuming voters won’t know the difference.

It’s the era of post-truth politics, and Romney wants to test what he can get away with.

* Postscript: A quick word about independent fact-checkers. To hear Romney tell it, they’re reliable when they agree with him, and biased liberals when they disagree with him.

That’s ridiculous. If he wants to argue that these fact-checkers aren’t always great at their jobs, he’ll get no argument from me. Indeed, I’ve expressed deep concerns with PolitiFact’s poor work on more than a few occasions. If Romney wants to say, “I’ve seen the reports, and let me tell you why they’re mistaken,” I’d be all ears.

But that’s not the case he’s making. Romney’s argument is that independent fact-checkers are to be taken seriously, so long as they agree with him. It’s intellectually lazy and unserious, and speaks volumes about his commitment to honesty.

Watch the interview here with Wolf Blitzer on CNN:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=t3qa3LCR8lw