Why Vote For President Obama and Democrats in General

GOP U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock and Romney's friend believes pregnancies from rape are a gift from God. Where is he from? Iran?

Why Vote For President Obama and Democrats in General

Waiting in line for two-and-a-half hours is rarely an exciting experience. But when my son and I voted early—he for the first time—at a community center in Rockville, Md., both of us were inspired by the hundreds of other people intent on exercising democracy’s most basic right.

In our deep blue county, this was largely an Obama crowd, crossing the boundaries of race, class and age. It was white, African American and Latino, young, middle-aged and old. These citizens eager to lift their voices reminded us that in this campaign, one coalition includes almost every kind of American. If Obama wins, he will owe his re-election to a little bit of all of us: blue-collar white voters in the Midwest, upscale voters in the Northeast and on the West Coast, an overwhelming percentage of Latino voters turned off by a new nativism on the right, and near unanimous solidarity on his behalf among African Americans. Obama is not the sort to think about dismissing 47% of us.
The sweep of the Obama coalition represented in that snaking line led my son and me to conclude something else: The President Obama of 2012 may no longer stir the jubilation called forth by the Barack Obama of 2008. But the hope and resolve he spoke of then have not vanished.

Yes, those feelings have been tempered by hard times and four years of bitter political struggle. Obama appears now less as a savior than as a human being with flaws and virtues, failures and successes. The hope of four years ago has transformed itself into something more mature and durable: a confidence in what an increasingly diverse, tolerant and open America can achieve. It is a view that flatly rejects the fears of those who see our country in decline and who always insist that the good old days should be our standard for the future. A nation that has produced Greatest Generations in the past can do so again. Indeed, I think we’re doing so right now.

In making electoral decisions, voters sensibly combine hard judgments about where candidates stand with instinctive calculations about how character might influence their choices in situations we cannot imagine today.

Ronald Reagan offered the most widely honored question about the practical matters: Are you better off than you were four years ago? And for most of the country, the answer is yes. Obama inherited an economy in shambles—the GDP was shrinking at an annual rate of nearly 9% when he took office—and turned it around. Unemployment is well down from its peak, 4.5 million private-sector jobs have been created since January 2010, the stock market has doubled since it hit bottom, and the housing market is stabilizing. Mitt Romney can promise 12 million more jobs in the coming four years because Obama’s policies have already put us on track to produce them, courtesy of a revival of manufacturing, a rise in exports and a new wave of research and innovation.


Most relevant to this year’s choice is the fact that the economy is in far better shape than it would have been if we had followed the counsel of Obama’s foes. They would have allowed the auto industry to collapse. They would have ignored history’s lesson that government must step in to stimulate economic activity when private demand plummets. We know from the experience of Europe that austerity leads to stagnation. Obama made the better choice.

Romney has at times condemned Obama’s stimulus plan while standing in front of enterprises returned to prosperity by the stimulus. Paul Ryan denounced the stimulus and then sought its succor for companies in his district. Watch what they do, not what they say.

Obama has revived a practical, sober and realistic foreign policy in the tradition of George H.W. Bush. Democrats crow about the killing of Osama bin Laden and thrill to Vice President Joe Biden’s handy bumper-sticker line “Osama bin Laden is dead, and GM is alive.” But behind the quip is a reality: Obama has transformed the war on terrorism from an all-purpose slogan designed to rationalize all manner of foreign policy adventures to a focused effort to keep the country safe. By ending the war in Iraq, winding down our commitment in Afghanistan and abandoning grandiose adventurism, he has redirected U.S. foreign policy toward the classic and sensible goals of preserving our power and influence and shaping an international environment congenial to our prosperity and our values.

Republicans bridle at the idea that Obama has restored respect for our country around the world. But it’s true. An Obama defeat would threaten many of his diplomatic achievements, including building what one pro-Western ambassador called “a successful coalition of the unlike-minded and unwilling” to confront Iran.

The strongest endorsement of Obama’s choices came from his opponent. In the third debate, Romney abandoned months of bellicose rhetoric and lined up behind one Obama decision after another. In this polarized political era, poll-tested imitation is about the only form of flattery we can expect. When Romney declared that “we don’t want another Iraq,” he was blessing the transition from George W. Bush’s era to Obama’s.

Obama’s decision to ignore cautious political advisers and see through the health care reform fight came at great political cost. Even some of his allies think the electoral price was too high. But this is a measure of Obama’s fortitude. By bringing the promise of health insurance to tens of millions of our citizens, Obama ended a national scandal. No other wealthy nation allows so many to live without basic coverage for illness or to rely on emergency rooms as a last resort. They either arrive there long after the opportunity to get well has passed, or they survive only to face years, sometimes a lifetime, of debt. The Affordable Care Act is an achievement worthy of our great reforming Presidents.

Once again Romney’s behavior proves the point. He speaks of repealing Obamacare only in general terms. When it comes to so many of the specifics—on prohibiting insurance discrimination against those with pre-existing conditions, for example, or on making it easier for parents to cover their adult children—Romney winds up backing what Obama did.

Beyond these large questions are concrete Obama achievements: his support for women’s rights, including the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; the end of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and his endorsement of gay marriage; passage of Wall Street reform, including the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; reform of the student-loan program; his appointments of Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, checking the right-wing drift in the judiciary that gave us decisions like Citizens United; and many of the investments in the stimulus package, notably in clean energy. In quieter times, these would be playing a much larger role in the campaign.

All are part of the case for Obama. But the best reason for his re-election goes back to what motivated so many middle-of-the-road voters four years ago. Americans who want to replace polarization with balance, extremism with moderation, obstruction with problem solving and blind partisanship with compromise need Obama to win again. An Obama defeat would empower those whose go-for-broke approach to politics is largely responsible for the distemper of our public life and the dysfunction in Washington.

This election does not represent a choice between left and right. It represents a choice between balance and a new, extreme form of conservatism. This new conservatism cannot accept any tax increases as part of a deal to reduce the deficit. For all his attempts to sound moderate in the campaign’s closing days, Romney has not altered the response he gave during a Republican-primary debate rejecting a hypothetical deal involving a 10-to-1 ratio between spending cuts and tax increases. This refusal to acknowledge the need for more revenue is a recipe for eviscerating government—and the cuts, as Ryan’s budget shows, would fall disproportionately on programs for Americans with the lowest incomes.

The new right has broken with conservatism’s past—and our country’s most constructive traditions—by adopting a new and radical individualism that largely ignores our country’s gift for community.

The America of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln and both the Republican and Democratic Roosevelts understood that government has a role to play in tempering the market and making investments the market depends on but will not make itself. The new conservatism measures freedom almost entirely in terms of the share of the nation’s GDP that flows to the state, as if spending on Medicare, Social Security, student loans, community colleges and infrastructure improvements somehow made us less “free.” And in the face of growing economic inequality, the new conservatism regularly discounts or condemns government’s role in leaning toward modestly greater equity, promoting upward mobility and checking concentrated economic power. It is this variety of conservatism that Romney bowed to in the primaries and would be forced to accommodate if he became President, whatever his constantly shifting views might actually be.



Obama, to a fault, devoted enormous energy during his first 21/2 years in office trying to move his opponents to compromise. Thus was almost a third of his stimulus plan devoted to tax cuts. Thus did he model his health care plan after Romney’s in Massachusetts. Thus did he seek a deal with House Speaker John Boehner during the debt-ceiling confrontation that, if enacted, would have disappointed many of the President’s progressive supporters. Only those who confuse compromise with capitulation can claim that Obama did not try mightily to keep his promise to end partisanship in Washington.

Obama should win a referendum on his stewardship. But this is also a choice—a “big choice,” just as Romney says—between moderation and a return to an approach to government more suited to the Gilded Age than to the 21st century. Obama is battling to defend the long consensus that has guided American government successfully since the Progressive Era. It is based on the view that ours is a country whose Constitution begins with the word we, not me, and that the private success we honor depends on a government that serves a common good and remembers the most vulnerable among us. The task of our moment is to revive that long consensus and renew it. Of the two major candidates, only Barack Obama accepts this mission as his own.


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Richard Mourdock On Abortion: Pregnancy From Rape Is 'Something God Intended'

Indiana GOP U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock declared Tuesday night he opposes aborting pregnancies conceived in rape because "it is something that God intended to happen."

Debating Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) in their final Senate race showdown, a questioner asked them and Libertarian candidate Andrew Horning to explain their views on abortion.

All three said they were anti-abortion. But Mourdock went further, putting himself in territory near Missouri GOP Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin, the anti-abortion congressman who infamously asserted that women don't get pregnant from "legitimate rape."

"The only exception I have to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother," said Mourdock, the Tea Party-backed state treasurer. "I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."

Mourdock should offend every Christian, every descent human being in the USA for having the arrogance and morally bankrupt idea that God thinks rapes and their consequences are good deeds. How do utter wackos like Mourdock get even 2% of the vote.

President Obama handled a tough situation fairly well; Romney offers no credible alternative

President Obama handled a tough situation fairly well; Romney offers no credible alternative

The question before presidential voters is simple: Who will better serve this country for the next four years, Mitt Romney or Barack Obama? When couched in straightforward terms, the answer is clear: President Obama should be re-elected.

Obama has done a reasonably good job handling an almost unprecedented economic mess – a situation that has proved far worse than anyone knew as it developed. Still, there is room for debate about the direction the country is headed.

Unfortunately, the Republican Party has offered no credible alternative. Its platform consists of little more than nostalgia for the 1950s, and its presidential candidate largely remains a mystery.

Romney has publicly demonstrated no core convictions beyond his obvious belief that he should be president. He apparently thinks that simply not being Obama is qualification enough.

It is not.

When Barack Obama took office, the country was mired in two wars, one pointless and neither properly funded. The economy was tanking and jobs were disappearing by the thousands. The automotive industry was on the verge of collapse – threatening to take with it the entire upper Midwest. And, while no one knew it at the time, the Middle East was about to explode into chaos and confusion.

On balance, Obama’s handling of all that has been good. U.S. forces have left Iraq and the end is in sight in Afghanistan. Muammar Gadhafi was ousted with no American troops involved. Democracy has a tenuous but real toehold in some Arab countries. And while the U.S. economy is recovering too slowly, it is recovering. As Vice President Joe Biden put it, Osama bin Laden is dead and GM is alive.

Amid all that, Obama kept a campaign promise and signed into law a sweeping health-care reform package.

All told, that is not a bad record. But in considering the way forward, Americans are always interested in alternative visions.

Mitt Romney, however, has not effectively offered one. Instead, this race has been presented as a referendum on the economy and the president’s personal style. Romney has failed to explain himself or his agenda, and the voters still do not really know who he is or how he would govern.

By all accounts, Romney’s Mormon faith is central to who he is. To listen to him campaign, however, one would never know that. His business acumen is touted as his core competence, but he will not release his tax records for more than a couple of years. He promises to cut taxes, increase defense spending, lower the deficit and make the seemingly impossible math work out by reforming the tax code. But he cannot, or will not, explain what those tax changes might be.

Romney rails against Obamacare, although it was modeled on the program he enacted as governor of Massachusetts. He governed that state as a moderate, but won the presidential nomination describing himself as “severely conservative.”

He has gone from supporting reproductive rights when running for the Senate in 1994 to saying in 2007 that he would gladly ban abortion in all cases. He now says he would allow exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother.

Romney has shown some consistency on other women’s health issues. He has repeatedly said he would strip Planned Parenthood of all funding and allow employers to exclude contraception from health-insurance coverage. He wants to talk about the economy but fails to understand that reproductive autonomy is an economic issue for women.

Barack Obama is an imperfect president, of course, and to what extent he can achieve his goals for the nation remains to be seen. But he has and can articulate a vision for a better, fairer, more successful America. His opponent offers nothing of the sort.

Vote to re-elect Barack Obama.

Romney has no real jobs plan. It is all smoke and mirrors. The only way he can make his very stretchy budget and tax plan work is to raise taxes on families making under $150k per year.

Mitt Romney Supporters Show Love For China, Hatred For American Workers

GOP congressman admits Paul Ryan, GOP will “end” Medicare

Immoral Mitt Romney is hoping for another 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis,..." I will work to take advantage of the opportunity.” w/video

Inside Romney Bain's Chinese Sensata Factories, Where Workers Put in 12-Hour Days for $.99-$1.35 an Hour

Mitt Romney's New Attack Ad is Another Lie (Medicare) Filled With Empty Promises

Mitt Romney's New Attack Ad is Another Lie (Medicare) Filled With Empty Promises

The largest and clearest point of distinction in the presidential race is universal access to health insurance. If President Obama wins reelection, his law to provide access to the uninsured will go forward. If Mitt Romney is elected, it will be gutted, and Medicaid — the bare-bones coverage plan for the most desperately poor and sick — will face enormous additional cuts.

Commonwealth Fund has released a report comparing the stark choice. Estimating conservatively, Romney’s plan — to the extent that the report was able to piece it together — would increase the uninsured population to about 72 million, while Obama’s would cut it to 26 million (his plan does not cover illegal immigrants.) Probably more telling is Romney’s official campaign reaction:

    “Under ObamaCare, Americans have seen their insurance premiums increase, small businesses are facing massive tax increases, and seniors will have reduced access to Medicare services,” Ryan Williams, a Romney spokesman, wrote in an email to POLITICO. “The American people did not want this law, our country cannot afford this law, and when Mitt Romney becomes president he will repeal it and replace it with common-sense, patient-centered reforms that strengthen our health care system.”

Note that the statement is almost entirely an attack on Obamacare, with a brief clause at the end vaguely promising something good will take its place. But that something requires resources. Most people lacking insurance are either sick or have a sick family member or they're poor. If you want to cover them, you need to cough up some money. Obamacare undertook the massive political heavy lift of providing those resources, and that’s what Romney attacks — he included higher taxes on “small businesses” (i.e., people making more than $250,000 a year) and “reduced access to Medicare services” (i.e., cuts in reimbursements to Medicare providers, as a trade-off for providing them with 30 million new paying customers.)

Romney’s budget is premised on denying the government enough resources to fund any kind of universal health insurance program. His promise to cut tax rates by 20 percent would reduce tax revenue well below current levels. But even if you accept Romney’s arithmetically impossible claim that he can cut tax rates by 20 percent and raise the same tax revenue as the tax code does right now (and without raising taxes on the middle class), merely holding revenue at current, Bush-set levels would make any kind of universal coverage impossible.

Both campaigns describe the election as a stark choice, and this is correct. It’s a choice between universal health coverage for legal citizens and preserving the Bush tax cuts.

Only the elite like Romney think they people who make $250k plus per year are middle-class. Half the country has a household income under $52k. If someone making even $150k per year wants to cry that they're struggling, they need to learn some personal finance and spending discipline.

Romney Budget Proposals Would Necessitate Very Large Cuts in Medicaid, Education, Health Research and Other Programs

Romney video deceptively edits Obama speech to make it sound anti-business. Fox and CNN help spread the lie

Romney video deceptively edits Obama speech to make it sound anti-business. Fox and CNN help spread the lie

Note -- see the update at end of post, in which the Romney campaign uses astonishingly doctored audio, to make it seem as if Obama said something he never said.

Early in this campaign the Romney team put out an ad with a doctored Obama quote. Now Romney is again claiming Obama said things he never said. The billionaire-corporate-funded right-wing media machine drives the lie to millions. This might well work, which brings up a question: If someone gets into office based on lies, what kind of policies result? Those policies help the people pushing the lies, but do those policies help or hurt us in the real world in the long run?
The Lie The First Time

In November the Romney campaign was caught editing a quote in an ad [1] to make it sound like Obama had said something he never said. The ad portrayed Obama as saying, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose," when Obama had really said (four years previously), "Senator McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote, 'If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."

The Romney campaign defended this use of lies, saying they are just showing they are willing to do what it takes to win. The Boston Globe reported [2], "Romney aides even said they were proud of the reaction and suggested that the ad was deliberately misleading to garner attention."

At the time Thomas B Edsall wrote in the NY Times [3],

    "...the spot’s direct duplicity is also the latest step in the transgression by political operatives of formerly agreed-upon ethical boundaries. What was once considered sleazy becomes the norm."

    And so the sleazy became the norm for the Romney campaign.

The Lie This Time

The sleazy became the norm, so they're cranking it up. This time, the lie machine is telling people [4] that President Obama said that business owners didn't build their businesses, government did. What President Obama actually said was that businesses did not build the roads and bridges that help them get their products to markets:

    Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that.

The billionaire-corporate lie machine version? Heritage Foundation [5]: Obama Tells Entrepreneurs "You Didn't Build" Your Business.

Watch the beginning of this FOX News segment, note how the editing actually shows Obama's mouth moving, before they bring the sound up partway through what he is saying, then listen to the commentators as they pretend this is what Obama actually said. (Of course they know this is not what he actually said, which makes the performance so shocking.)

The lie is propelled through the right-wing media: FOX News, Wall Street Journal and other Murdoch-owned papers, Limbaugh and the rest of talk radio, Washington Times, Weekly Standard, NewsMax, WorldNet Daily, hundreds of right-wing blogs, etc., and then posted by paid operatives as "reader comments" at local news sites, hundreds of sports and auto and other discussion forums, and many, many other places until it "becomes truth."

Watch the kind of crap that much of the public is hearing from almost every media source many of them are exposed to. Seriously, make yourself watch the whole thing, and then think about how many people watch FOX News or listen to talk radio or read the Wall Street Journal or one of the other newspapers that pushes this stuff, or read right-wing blogs -- and even CNN [6]. There is a huge corporate-billionaire-funded media machine pushing this stuff, and it seems it is almost everywhere now.
VIDEOS are at THE TOP LINK.

And then, once it "becomes truth" the Presidential candidate repeats it. WaPo: Romney Hits 'Didn't Build That' Obama Remark [7]

Romney: "I’m convinced he wants Americans to be ashamed of success … [but] I don’t want government to take credit for what individuals accomplish” ...

FOX News dedicated [8] 2 hours, 42 segments, to pushing the lie. CNN even helped [6] push the lie.

So, once again, the lie machine is working to "kinda catapult the propaganda."

....The Plum Line: The Morning Plum: Romney video deceptively edits Obama speech to make it sound anti-business [21],

    So here’s where this is going. The Romney campaign is out with a new Web video hitting Obama over the “don’t build that” quote. It features a business owner who is angry at Obama for supposedly insulting his hard work. “My hands didn’t build this company?” the man asks. “Through hard work and a little bit of luck, we built this business. Why are you demonizing us for it?”

    But the video deceptively edits Obama’s remarks to seamlessly link up two different parts of the speech, removing a chunk in order to make Obama’s remarks seem far worse than they are.


What Did He Really Say?

President Obama pointed out that businesses did not build the roads and bridges that help them get their products to markets. He said that in the United States we succeed together. Here is the full quote:

    There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

    If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

    The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

Conservatives want to portray themselves as the comic book outer space heroes of business - they created everything on their own in a vacuum - no one built roads or bridges they used, o one provided fire and police protection. No one provided military protection so they could ship their goods or provide services around the world. They are desperate to twist the truth to suit the same radical agenda that caused the Great Recession and spent over a trillion dollars rebuilding Iraq, but fought against rebuilding America.

REPORT: Bottom Half Of American Households Have Just 1 Percent Of Nation’s Wealth. Mitt Romney and the leaching plutocrats at the top say they are "successful". Sure they are in the same way vampires are successful, like bloodsuckers on the working class.

Remember back in the good old days when honesty and integrity were values. Conservative Republicans wipe their bottoms with those old fashioned American values, REPORT: Fox News Spends Two-Plus Hours Distorting Obama's Small Business Comments .

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker(R) is Neck Deep in a Scandal He Cannot Explain Away and He is Obstructing Legal Inquires

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker(R) is Neck Deep in a Scandal He Cannot Explain Away and He is Obstructing Legal Inquires

The two-year-old corruption investigation into Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker reached a major inflection point just days before his recall election next week when it came out that Walker had transferred $100,000 of campaign money to his legal defense fund and seemed to acknowledge that he is the center of the probe.

In the final debate last night, challenger Tom Barrett repeatedly slammed Walker for his legal woes and for stonewalling the public. “I have a police department that arrests felons,” the Democratic Milwaukee mayor said, “he has a practice of hiring them.” He added, “I’ve been in public life for 28 years. No one on my staff has been charged with a felony, and I’ve never had a criminal defense fund.”

So what is the “John Doe” investigation?

The term does not apply to a single anonymous person, in this case, but rather it refers to a secret evidence-gathering investigation, much like a grand jury. The investigation has been led by a DA and judge in Milwaukee, who has the authority to compel testimony, issue warrants and carry other law enforcement actions.

The probe reportedly started with a single staffer who had worked for Walker when he was Milwaukee’s county executive, but it has since grown much larger, touching almost everyone who has worked for Walker, and even the governor himself, and producing several arrests and convictions.

Documents made public last night show prosecutors requested the secret investigation after they found Walker’s office “unable or unwilling” to provide information. “It may be the county executive’s office is reluctant to provide information to investigators due to a fear of political embarrassment,” an assistant DA wrote to a judge in May 2010. Walker has maintained that he has cooperated with prosecutors all along, so the document casts doubt on his story of the proceedings. Asked about the stonewalling last night, he essentially called the report untrue.

Already, three aides who have worked for Walker have been charged, as have two of his appointees and a major donor. One aide pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts relating to work she did for Walker’s gubernatorial campaign on county taxpayers’ dime.

Two appointees were arrested for allegedly embezzling $60,000 from a fund that was intended to be used for veterans. They used the money instead for Caribbean cruises, wedding expenses, Walker campaign barbeques and other Walker campaign activities, prosecutors claim. They are awaiting trial.

The donor, Wisconsin and Southern Railroad Co. CEO William Gardner, was convicted of violating state elections law with excessive donations to Walker’s campaign. He was sentenced to two years probation last year.

There have also been FBI raids on the homes and offices of aides and the seizures of computers. At least 13 aides have been granted immunity in exchange for cooperating with the investigation.

Walker, thus far, has maintained that he is not the target of the investigation. But under Wisconsin law, politicians can only use their legal defense funds for themselves or their staffs, and Walker said this week that none of the money from the fund would go to his staff, suggesting it would be used only to defend himself. Democrats seized on the comment as an admission from Walker that he is personally a target.

Walker had already contributed $60,000 to the fund — which comes from campaign donors whom he refuses to name — before this week’s transfer, bringing his total legal war chest to $160,000. He claims the money is being used to help turn over documents to investigators, but some experts point out this amount of money suggests a more sophisticated legal defense representing hundreds of hours of attorney work. There are also email records suggesting that Walker was personally involved in trying to stem the bleeding when the first allegations came out.

Except for the body count Scott Walker is like the deeply corrupt mayor in the Showtime series Boss. Will the people of Wisconsin have the courage to put aside politics and clean house of one of the most corrupt, arrogant, anti-American thugs to ever serve as a state governor. Walker is like a throwback to the late 1800s when politicians were for sale like dry goods from the local store.

"Miss Me Yet?" Bush Economic Makeover Hinges On Collective Amnesia. Romney and conservatives have a major issue with President Obama. Conservatives Republicans trashed the economy, losing over $3 trillion dollars of the nation's wealth. Now they're trying to blame Obama for the mess they created or are mad because he is not cleaning up their disaster fast enough.

Conservative Republican editor: Young Americans ‘so frickin’ stupid’ they shouldn’t get to vote

When Did Conservatives Exploit Terrorist Deaths For Partisan Political Gain

When Did Conservatives Exploit Terrorist Deaths For Partisan Political Gain

Perusing the political media these days you can't help but notice the hand-wringing consensus that the Obama administration is running a risk by "politicizing" the death of Osama bin Laden. Foreign policy achievements, we're told, are somehow sacrosanct and shouldn't be sullied by the taint of electioneering.

The president, according to McClatchy, is in "a roiling dispute between his re-election campaign and Republicans, who accuse Obama of politicizing a unifying event by taking credit for ordering the raid that got bin Laden." The ever-eager Fox News reports that "President Obama faced mounting criticism Tuesday for allegedly politicizing the anniversary of Usama bin Laden's death, with Sen. John McCain scolding the commander-in-chief and former New York Gov. George Pataki going so far as to call on Obama to apologize."

It would be nice if the press, when wrestling with this narrative, could dive deep into their memories and travel all the way back to June 2006, when the government of Iraq announced that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, had been killed in an airstrike. The Bush White House and the Republican Congressional majority, facing terrible poll numbers and an angry electorate, were ecstatic at the news that one of the world's most wanted terrorists had met his end at American hands and immediately set to work politicizing his death.

The New York Times reported on June 13, 2006:

    It came as Republicans began a new effort to use last week's events to turn the war to their political advantage after months of anxiety, and to sharpen attacks against Democrats. On Monday night, the president's top political strategist, Karl Rove, told supporters in New Hampshire that if the Democrats had their way, Iraq would fall to terrorists and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would not have been killed.

    "When it gets tough, and when it gets difficult, they fall back on that party's old pattern of cutting and running," Mr. Rove said at a state Republican Party gathering in Manchester.

Rove (who is now busily and dishonestly trying to diminish the Bin Laden raid) was delivering a message that synced nicely with the House Republican strategy (elucidated in a confidential memo prepared by John Boehner) to use Zarqawi's death to draw "a portrait of contrasts between Republicans and Democrats with regard to one of the most important political issues of our era."

Per the memo:

    As a result of our efforts during this debate, Americans will recognize that on the issue of national security, they have a clear choice between a Republican Party aware of the stakes and dedicated to victory, versus a Democrat Party without a coherent national security policy that sheepishly dismisses the challenges America faces in a post- 9/11 world.

Of course, even if there were no high-profile example of Republicans "spiking the football" over the death of a terrorist, are we really to believe they wouldn't have done exactly that had he been killed under Bush's watch?

So please: before we lend credence to all the pearl-clutching bluster over "politicizing" the death of a terrorist, let's pay due respect to recent history and common sense.

Conservatives lied us into Iraq as a way to promote the conservative movement. They lied about connections between Iraq and Bin Laden. Conservatives exploited terrorism at the 2004 RNC conventions - as this video clearly shows. Conservatives have no shame and no honor when it comes to doing whatever they can to unjustly promote themselves, lie to the American people and trash the economy in their spare time. Conservatives are the enemy within. Everyday doing whatever they can to make America and Democracy weaker.

Romney Wrote NYT Op-Ed Entitled "Let Detroit go bankrupt." Now Claims Auto Industry Reorganization by Government Was His Idea

John McCain still whining about 'politicizing' Mitt Romney's opposition to bin Laden raid strategy. Of course McCain's personal war experiences were awful, yet he has exploited them for political gain at every opportunity.

Paul Ryan(R-WI) has a pleasant personality - that does not mean he should get away with being a fanatic. One who would gut Medicare and increase the deficit.


Michelle Malkin hates women. Hates equal pay for women who do the same work as men. Hates that women should not be discriminated against for health insurance. Malkin basically hates every democratic ideal America stands for.