An open letter to President Obama

Mr. President,

I respectively beg you to get involved. Now. Americans have a 30 second attention span. They can’t and worse won’t make the effort to actully discover the facts behind Mitt Romney’s misinformation, disinformation and lies.

And the press won’t because it takes too long to explain and that ‘too long’ loses the attention of their viewers.

Because of your and the Party’s failure to take the fight to Wisconsin, the tide has turned.

We Mr. President, America, need you to be the President we had last September. Engaged. Forceful. Dynamic. Message driven.

Shake off Wisconsin. Don’t return to the President we had for the first 2 1/2 years of your term. Aloof. Remote. Giving a speech and then returning to the Residence to read another boook about another President.

Be a President that we know you can be. Be a President that others will write books about.

Don’t expect us to follow.

Lead us!

Use your voice, your ideas, YOUR ‘bully pulpit’, Air Force One and the press to actively promote your message. The alternative of two Americas.

Your vision and the consequences of austerity the Conservatives will impose.

Begin every event with handing out ‘fact sheets’ of Mitt Romney’s top 25 misinformation, disinformation and lies. Refine these down to as short of a paper ‘sound bite’ as you can. Also hand out the top 25 pieces of legislation the House has passed that would raise taxes on the poor or cut services to the poor and elderly while cutting taxes to the wealthy or NOT cutting subsides or closing tax loopholes to profit fat corporations. And hand out the third ‘fact sheet’ with the Republican Senate’s filibuster record.

Then, in your speech, ignore Mitt Romney and run against the obstructive Republican Congress that’s blocking your vision, your proposals.

Mitt Romney is running a campaign of attack and then run and hide, diverting the attention from what he said if confronted. He is a moving target that you will never pin him down to be held accountable for his words.

Don’t even try.

Mitt Romney is only blaming. He is NOT proposing any vision.

Run against the obstructive, do-nothing Congress.

They can’t run and hide or deny the legislation they write.

Run against them.

Force Romney by default in the media, to defend what would be ‘his’ Republican Congress record on legislation.

Leave the one on one confrontation with Mitt Romney to VP Biden, former President Clinton, Mayor Booker The First Lady and others.

Mitt Romney is not proposing a legislative vision so don’t give him respect until he does.

Mr President, respect us.

Lead us Mr President with a message that YOU believe in and we will believe in you.

Sincerely,

America

Mitt Romney Lies #9 -‘Mitt Romney demands President Obama’s jobs plan. Apparently, he forgot the one Republicans blocked’

Misinformation. Disinformation. Lies. Or is he just stupid? Or does he think WE are that stupid?

Doing my very best Captain Jack Sparrow – ‘WHAT?!’

 

Mitt Romney – “[W]ith America in crisis, with 23 million people out of work or stopped looking for work, he hasn’t put forth a plan to get us working again,” Romney said Tuesday. “Now I know we’re getting close to an election so he’ll come out with one soon, but three and a half years later, we’re waiting.”
From : http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/06/1097835/-Mitt-Romney-demands-President-Obama-s-jobs-plan-Apparently-he-forgot-the-one-Republicans-blocked

Oct 12, 2011
‘Republicans block American Jobs Act’
From : http://www.politicsplus.org/blog/2011/10/12/republicans-block-american-jobs-act/

Republicans. Pants on Fire? – ‘Politifact, Politifact, Who Is The Truthiest Of Them All’?

 

Andrew Sullivan is a Conservative no matter what Forbes says.

He and I most likely would not agree much on policies but I would fight to my death to defend his right to speak because he said this :

“The second reason I am now labeled a “liberal” is that conservatism has become a religious movement. Although I am a religious person, I do not believe that any specific form of religion has a veto in determining who is or is not a political conservative in a secular society”.
From : http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2009/01/forbes-definition-of-liberal/206413/

‘A reader with too much time on his hands dug into Politifact’s massive data base of corrections and analysis. As he puts it :

‘What I’ve been doing the last couple days is manually transferring all the Politifact rulings from people here …that have “Republican” and “Democrat” next to their name, into a great big spreadsheet’.

‘Of course, there’s a big bold disclaimer: Politifact picks and chooses what topics it covers; it itself is not unblemished in its impartiality; none of this pretends to be a comprehensive, independent analysis of large swirling, now uncoordinated campaigns’.

‘Nonetheless, you can separate out party leaders on both sides, as selected by Politifact, and gauge their truthfulness, as measured by Politifact. Based on the following leaders – Romney, Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Gingrich, Perry, Santorum for the GOP and Obama, Biden, Reid, Pelosi, and Clinton (Hillary) for the Dems, we get this graph:

 

‘That’s a lot of flaming trousers’.

‘Now for the media: Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Erick Erickson, Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Grover Norquist, Bill O’Reilly, and Michael Savage for the GOP and Paul Begala, Donna Brazile, James Carville, Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher, Chris Matthews, Michael Moore, Lawrence O’Donnell, Keith Olbermann, Ed Shultz, and Cenk Uyger for the Dems’.

‘Hail the presence of Fox News at the far end of truthiness’:

 
‘One last graph, comparing Obama and Romney in the words that come out of their own mouths, as measured by Politifact’:

 

From : http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/06/politifact-politifact-who-is-the-truthiest-of-them-all.html

Mitt Romney Lies #8 – But America just doesn’t care because Romney is ‘Actively’ running while President Obama is ‘Passively’ defending

 

‘Mr. Romney said “there was discussion about the fact that Obamacare would slow down the economic recovery in this country.”

And therein lies the problem.

Mitt Romney has a powerful, 30 second sound bite based on twisting disinformation that’s repeated 24 hours a day on FOX and other Conservative news and opinion outlets.

The Obama campaign responds by issuing a statement that Romney is being “willfully dishonest” and as Governor, ranked 47th in job creation.

It takes time to explain the twisting of Mitt Romney’s words. And by the time you have, he has moved on to another attack.

And the press is reporting THAT, not your explanation.

‘Mitt Romney has referred to a book “by a guy named Noam Scheiber” to accuse the president of deliberately slowing the economic recovery to first push health reform’.

‘The book, “The Escape Artists,” published in February, is a behind-the-scenes account of President Obama’s top economic advisers confronting the financial crisis during his first years in office’.

‘Mentioning a passage on Wednesday he called “pretty disturbing,” Mr. Romney said “there was discussion about the fact that Obamacare would slow down the economic recovery in this country.”

“And they knew that before they passed it,” he said. “But they concluded that we would all forget how long the recovery took once it had happened, so they decided to go ahead.”

‘But this account of the book, which Mr. Romney has given two or three times in recent weeks, is disputed by no less than the author, Mr. Scheiber, a senior editor at The New Republic. After Mr. Romney apparently first publicly mentioned “The Escape Artists,” at a May 18 rally in New Hampshire, Mr. Scheiber posted a blog item accusing Mr. Romney of twisting his words’.

‘Mr. Romney’s account is apparently drawn from an interview Mr. Scheiber conducted with Lawrence H. Summers, the former chief economic adviser to Mr. Obama. Mr. Summers told Mr. Scheiber that it was “unlikely” that pursuing health care would slow the recovery — not, as Mr. Romney describes, that the president’s advisers knew this to be the case. Here is the passage from the book’:

“I always admired the president’s courage for recognizing that 50 years from now, people would remember that all Americans had health care,” Larry Summers later said in an interview. “And even if pursuing health care affected the pace of the recovery, which was unlikely in my view, people wouldn’t remember how fast the recovery from this recession was.”

‘Mr. Scheiber, in his New Republic blog post, said that although Mr. Romney misrepresented administration thinking, there was “a kernel of truth” to his interpretation of Mr. Scheiber’s view in the book’.

“I argue that Obama really was more focused on long-term, historically significant accomplishments than marginal, near-term differences in the pace of the recovery,” Mr. Scheiber wrote’.
From : http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/romney-touts-a-book-but-reads-it-selectively/

A ‘Conservative’ vision for America – ‘Republicans don’t think the government should feed hungry children or old people’.

 

‘The Government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep’.
‘Republicans – 63 percent disagree’)
‘Democrats – 21 percent disagree’.

‘The Government should take care of people who can’t take care of themselves’
Republicans – 54 percent disagree’.
Democrats – 19 percent disagree’.

‘The government should help more needy people even if it means going deeper in debt’
‘Republicans – 76 percent disagree’.
‘Democrats – 31 percent disagree’.
From : http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/section-4-values-about-government-and-the-social-safety-net/

A ‘Conservative’ vision for America – ‘Courageous’ Governor Scott Walker

‘Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker survived yesterday’s recall attempt. Walker has often been described as courageous by his supporters, like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Senator Ron Johnson’.

‘Walker seems to think of himself as courageous, too’.

‘In his victory speech he reprised a theme he’s struck before, in which he becomes the bearer of a legacy that dates back to the founding fathers and “men and women of courage” throughout history “who stood up and decided it was more important to look out for the future of their children and their grandchildren than their own political futures.”

‘He stops just short of calling himself one such “leader of courage” but it’s clear that’s what he’s getting at’.

‘And how does he display this courage’?

‘By picking on people nowhere near his own size. People like the state’s working poor whose low wages can’t support a family and who rely on the Earned Income Tax Credit to make up some of the difference. Walker cut that.
See : ‘Over 140,000 Wisconsin families will get smaller tax refunds from the state while businesses and higher-income residents were receiving about $210 million in new tax breaks’.
From : http://wisconsinbudgetproject.blogspot.com/2012/04/tax-filing-season-brings-smaller.html

‘He also cut medical programs and property tax credits that the state’s poor and elderly depend on’.
See : •Funding for Medicaid and BadgerCare will be cut by $500 million;
•Funding for Child Care will be cut by $15 million;
•Funding for the Property Tax Circuit breaker will be worth $13.6 million less;
•Funding for technical colleges will lose $71.6 million, or 25% of its total funding;
•Funding for Public Transportation will be cut by $9.2 million;
From : http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/2011/06/in_wisconsin_governor_walker_c.php

‘This is courage’?
From : http://ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/2012/06/governor_walker_courageous_we.php