Wealthy business man who thought he was taxed enough already; who believed poor people who couldn’t pay for the necessities of life – like food and health care – should die and decrease the surplus population; yep, ya got to admit he’d be cheered at any Tea Party debate today …
The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that Republican Tea Party (GOTP) darling New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has endorsed Mittens Romney for the GOTP presidential nomination, sending a signal to the skeptical GOTP establishment to fall in line behind the former Massachusetts governor.
“I’m here in New Hampshire for one simple reason: America cannot survive another four years of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney’s the man to lead America and we need him now,” Christie said, standing alongside Romney.
There’s speculation Christie’s endorsement could influence groups Mittens has struggled to win over – a core segment of the GOTP establishment that isn’t enthused by him, and the Tea Party, many of whom view him as insincere on issues they hold dear, and who don’t like him because he’s a Mormon, and since a large portion of the Tea Party is made up of uber-conservative evangelical Christians that’s a big deal.
The AP is reporting Christie has closer ties to the former Massachusetts governor than to other candidates. Romney endorsed Christie when the former U.S. attorney ran for governor in 2009. And in January, he became the first Republican presidential contender to visit Christie at the governor’s mansion in Princeton.
On a conference call later in the day, Christie addressed a supporter’s suggestion that he become Romney’s running mate.
“That’s going to be Governor Romney’s choice,” Christie said. “I’ve told him my only interest is helping him get elected and serving my state.”
He added that he has “every expectation” that he’ll serve the remainder of his term as governor, which expires after the presidential election at the end of 2013.
And now we come to probably the biggest reason for Christie’s support – Romney’s going to name him as his VP choice. Christie will bring support to the ticket Mittens can’t get any other way; Bachmann won’t bring it; Perry won’t bring it; Cain won’t bring it; Santorum won’t bring it and Rubio won’t bring it …
A 25-year-old Army captain from southwestern Michigan whose boyhood maneuvers with toy soldiers were more like training than play and who was planning a military career was killed along with a comrade from Tennessee when Afghan insurgents attacked their unit with a rocket propelled grenade, his family and the military said.
CPT Drew E. Russell of Scotts and CPT Joshua Lawrence, 29, of Nashville, Tenn., died Saturday after enemy forces attacked their unit in Kandahar province, the Defense Department announced Monday.
Russell’s hometown is in Kalamazoo County, about 10 miles southeast of Kalamazoo.
Russell and Lawrence were assigned to the 1st Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colo.
Russell graduated from Vicksburg High School in 2004 and entered Western Michigan University as an ROTC student, graduating in 2008 with a double major in criminal justice and military science, the Kalamazoo Gazette reported.
Jim Russell, 59, said his son planned a military career. He said his son spent long hours as a child arranging units of toy soldiers around the house and staging mock battles. It was more practice than play, the father said.
“I always looked at him and wondered if he was (Gen. George Patton,” the father told The Gazette of Colorado Springs, Colo. “Ever since he was a little kid, he was in the Army. That’s what he wanted.”
Russell also had a playful side, his father said. He once broke into a friend’s house while she was on vacation and ripped the labels off of every can of food.
“She spent three or four months guessing what dinner was going to be,” his father said.
Russell’s first overseas deployment was to Afghanistan, starting June 13. He was responsible for U.S. and Afghan soldiers at police stations around Afghanistan, his family said.
“He was a wonderful son,” said mother Patti Russell, 52. “He was very loving and he had a great sense of humor. There’s just an empty hole in my heart that will never be filled again.”
Russell’s remains were flown to Dover, Del., Air Force Base on Monday afternoon.
“Drew won’t even be able to have kids,” Jim Russell said as he choked back tears. “What do you say? He had a good future in front of him.”
Drew Russell is also survived by his brother, James. Funeral plans were not immediately announced.
CPT Russell is the 1,804th U.S. casualty in Afghanistan.
United States Army Captain Joshua S. Lawrence became the 1,803rd U.S. casualty in Afghanistan on 8 Oct 2011 when he died of wounds sustained in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Kandahar.
He was based with the 1st Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division out of Fort Carson, Colorado.
CPT Lawrence was from Davidson County, Tennessee; he was 29.
As news of his death spread on the Internet, classmate Stacey Shirley Old posted on Facebook, “Please be in prayer for the Lawrence family. Joshua was recently killed in Afghanistan. His mother, Judy found out this morning. He was recently married. He went to Rosebank Elementary and graduated from Hume-Fogg, class of 2000.”
Lawrence majored in Political Science at Austin Peay University.
Lawrence leaves behind a wife, his mother, a brother and a sister. No one was home at the family home in East Nashville Monday night.
Some of Joshua’s fraternity brothers have created a memory page on Facebook. You can find a link to that page here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/In-Memory-of-Joshua-S-Lawrence/257412630969922
Lawrence had received the following awards during his time in the Army: Bronze Star Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Joint Service Achievement Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and Korea Defense Service Medal.
A WP/Bloomberg/PSRAI poll conducted from 06 – 09 Oct 11 shows that Mittens Romney is now firmly in the lead of the Republican Tea Party (GOTP) nominating circus.
The current WP/Bloomberg/PSRAI poll shows:
Mittens Romney 24; Herman “Pizza Man” Cain 16; Reverend Rick Perry 13; Ronny Paul 6; Michele “Krazy” Bachmann 4; Newter Gingrich 3; Ricky “The Ric” Santorum 1 and Jon “I can’t believe it’s not butter” Huntsman 0 …
So, Mittens is – it appears – firmly ensconced in the lead; “Herb” Cain still appears to be the “flavor of the week” while Perry is now plummeting of the scope; Paul, Krazy and Newter are floating in no-man’s land; Santorum is stuck in neutral and Huntsman’s campaign has stalled once again.
In Iowa, a new PPP (D) poll conducted from 07 – 10 Oct 11: Cain 30; Romney 22; Paul 10; Perry 9; Bachmann and Gingrich both 8; Santorum 5 and Huntsman 1…
There’s some movement in the middle of the pack, as a fresh New Hampshire poll from Harvard/Saint Anselm conducted from 2 – 6 Oct 11 indicates: Mittens 38; Cain 20; Paul 13; Gingrich 5; Perry and Huntsman 4; Bachman 3 while Santorum and Gary Johnson both have 1.
This week I’m adding polling concerning the South Carolina Primary – a poll conducted by Winthrop from 11 – 18 Sep 11 shows a very tight race up front: Perry 31; Romney 27; Cain 8; Gingrich 5; Bachmann and Paul 4; Huntsman and Santorum both 2.
According to a PPP (D) poll – conducted from 07 – 10 Oct 11, if the general election were held today:
President Obama 45/Romney 45
President Obama 49/Perry 40
President Obama 48/Cain 42
President Obama 50/Gingrich 39
President Obama 47/Paul 39
President Obama 50/Bachmann 38
For some strange reason Rasmussen Reports conducted a poll 2 – 3 Oct 11 to see how Santorum was doing:
President Obama 45/Santorum 34
Unfortunately for Huntsman, pollsters have decided it’s time to stick him with the proverbial fork – because he’s done; of course, truth be told, so are Santorum, Bachmann, Perry, Paul and Gingrich.
President Obama/Huntsman
If the GOTP nomination circus – and the general election – had both ended today, Mittens would now be the GOTP candidate, and he would have tied with President Obama.
However, there’s still (even more now than before) the reality that evangelicals are generally not going to vote for a Mormon; so, if Mittens wins the nomination it is probable that a large section of the GOTP base will likely vote for someone else (a third party candidate – like a Bachmann) or just stay home. Romney has a huge credibility issue due to some major flip-flops on issues, and his inability to know fact from fiction on national defense questions, or the so-called job creation while he was governor of Massachusetts – amongst other things …
According to the Associated Press (AP) Republican Tea Party (GOTP) presidential candidate Willard Mitt Romney promised in his first major foreign policy speech to reverse “massive defense cuts” that haven’t happened, and he pledged to deploy missiles and ships that already are in place.
The AP reported Romney pledged, “As president, on day one, I will focus on rebuilding America’s economy and I will reverse President Obama’s massive defense cuts. Time and again, we have seen that attempts to balance the budget by weakening our military only lead to a far higher price, not only in treasure, but in blood.” Mittens also has vowed to increase the size of the military by 100,000 troops, a move he says is needed to reduce the hardship of long and frequent deployments.
Unfortunately for Romney there have been no “massive defense cuts” under President Obama, although he has slowed the “projected” rate of increase and in April asked the Pentagon to identify an additional $400 billion in reductions over the next 12 years, he hasn’t “cut” a single penny from defense spending.
When President Obama was sworn in, the defense budget was $513 billion, not counting $153 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the budget year that ended 30 Sep 11, the figure was $530 billion, with an additional $159 billion to pay for the wars. So, as anyone can plainly see, there has been an increase in defense spending under President Obama, not some imaginary “cuts”; and for the current fiscal year (FY 12), the President has requested $553 billion for the defense budget, exclusive of war costs. But in a deal worked out by Congress and the White House as part of a deficit-reduction plan in August, he was forced to come down to $513 billion – I hope everyone was paying attention to who wanted to spend $553 billion and who forced it to go down to $513 billion; in case you missed it, it would be the Republican Tea Party controlled Congress – meaning the House of Representatives – who as any fifth grader knows, controls the federal purse strings.
So, Mittens could – I suppose – if he’s elected, force the GOTP controlled House to stop cutting defense; but to claim its President Obama is either to do so deliberately, as in a lie, or out of ignorance for the facts. Since Romney is not ignorant, it must be a deliberate lie.
As for troop numbers, the AP reported President Obama’s previous defense secretary, Robert Gates, put the Army and Marine Corps on a path to reducing troop numbers to adjust to the winding down of combat in Iraq and plans to reduce troops in Afghanistan. The Army is to drop from its current 569,000 to 547,000 by September 2013, and then to 520,000 by 2015. The Marines are to drop from 202,000 to a figure yet to be specified but in the neighborhood of 186,000 by 2015, the Marine Corps – not he President – has been advocating cuts to its size; traditionally it numbers around 175,000, and was only bumped up to its current size of 202,000 to address its long “Army-like” missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, by-the-by, when you end wars, you scale back on the number of troops, planes, ships, tanks, etc … just thought I’d mention that.
To add 100,000 soldiers to current troop strengths would be not just expensive, but very expensive and it’s not even remotely clear from Romney’s remarks what they would do, or how he would pay for them especially since he’s part of the “let’s not raise taxes” choir. Oh wait, I know, we’ll just cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and with 100,000 new troops we can, wait for it, invade Iran!
Mittens also pledged that within his first 100 days in office, he’d “reverse the hollowing of our Navy and announce an initiative to increase the shipbuilding rate from nine per year to 15. I will begin reversing Obama-era cuts to national missile defense and prioritize the full deployment of a multilayered national ballistic missile defense system. … I will enhance our deterrent against the Iranian regime by ordering the regular presence of aircraft carrier task forces, one in the Eastern Mediterranean and one in the Persian Gulf region.”
Once again, Romney’s view of reality doesn’t measure up; the total number of ships in the Navy has been declining steadily since the 1980s. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the need for large numbers of warships has not been a priority when the military has been fighting small-scale wars with minimal combat at sea. Dating back well into the Bush/Cheney era the Navy has said it needs a minimum of 313 ships to perform its missions. It now has 284 ships, up from a low of 278 in 2007. Hold on now, that’s an increase from the previous President?
Despite Romney’s inference, there’s a full-time carrier presence in the Persian Gulf and has been pretty much since Desert Storm, but while there’s no full-time presence in the Mediterranean, carriers are frequently there for deployments in the Middle East.
So, let’s see; there’s been an increase in ships since President Obama took office; and we’ve had a commanding carrier presence in the Persian Gulf – that would be the area Iran uses incidentally – another couple of lie perhaps, or is Mittens ignorant of foreign affairs, in spite of trying to portray himself otherwise?
On the topic of national missile defense; Earth to Mittens, it’s already deployed and is being expanded, not cut. There are 30 ground-based interceptors based in Alaska and California, along with a network of radars and command and control stations to operate it. Additionally, there are 24 Navy Aegis ships with a missile defense capability already in service.
Mittens is clearly mistaken in all his assertions; the question now is, was he lying, or his he that woefully ignorant on national defense issues; unfortunately, I think it’s the former; it appears he’s deliberately trying to mislead voters; it’s bad enough to lie, worse yet is to lie about the Commander-in-Chief at a Military School in front of Cadets who will one day serve.
The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that a pastor who introduced Republican Tea Party (GOTP) presidential favorite Reverend Ricky Perry at a conservative gathering has said rival presidential candidate Mittens Romney is not a Christian and is in a cult because he’s a Mormon.
This is another reason why I’m not a Republican – I don’t like be associated with ignorance and intolerance.
Robert Jeffress, the so-called senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas, is no stranger to showing his religious bigotry; as he made an identically imperceptive remark during the 2008 then GOP campaign.
Reportedly, the event organizers at the Values Voters Summit selected Jeffress to introduce Perry, but the Perry campaign was consulted about the choice and approved Jeffress to introduce the Texas governor.
So, Perry’s people obviously share the same lack of unprofessionalism and inability to vet people as Senator John McCain’s staff demonstrated – or do they? Perry’s steady slip in the polls coupled with Michele “Krazy” Bachmann’s push to make nice with evangelicals may have rattled the Texan’s cage enough that he’s ready to start playing the “Mormon” card.
Jeffress – whose comments about Romney clearly show him to be utterly unreliable in judging who is and who is not a Christian – endorsed Perry at the event and introduced him as “a proven leader, a true conservative, and a committed follower of Christ.”
After his remarks, Jeffress told reporters Perry’s religion is different from Romney’s.
“Rick Perry’s a Christian. He’s an evangelical Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ,” Jeffress said. “Mitt Romney’s a good moral person, but he’s not a Christian. Mormonism is not Christianity. It has always been considered a cult by the mainstream of Christianity.”
“It has always been considered a cult by the mainstream of Christianity.”? Did you really just say that chuckles? Because if you did, clearly mainstream doesn’t mean the same thing to you that it does to, well, to mainstream.
I’m fairly confident Reverend Dullard was meaning the adjective definition of mainstream when he spoke, which is defined as, “belonging to or characteristic of a principal, dominant, or widely accepted group, movement, style, etc…”
I’m equally confident that mainstream Christianity – meaning those Christians whose beliefs are not steeped in the ignorance of 19th century southern religious sophistries – know that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not only Christian, but devotedly so.
To his credit, Perry – and his campaign – attempted to say he disagrees with Jeffress.
Asked by reporters in Tiffin, Iowa, whether Mormonism is a cult, Perry replied, “No.”
Perry spokesman Mark Miner also said that “the governor does not believe Mormonism is a cult.”
While those comments are reassuring, the campaign refused to say whether it was accepting Pastor Dolt’s endorsement. “The governor is running a campaign of inclusion and looks forward to receiving the endorsement of many people,” Miner said. “People can endorse whoever they like.”
So, by that kind of logic, the Perry campaign will probably not be saying if they’d refuse the endorsements of other individuals or organizations? I’ll leave that up to the imagination of the reader what kind of individuals or groups might want to endorse someone of Perry’s character and background.
Jeffress – who has also said “… the deep, dark, dirty secret of Islam: It is a religion that promotes pedophilia – sex with children. This so-called prophet Muhammad raped a 9-year-old girl – had sex with her”; and who put businesses on a “Naughty or Nice List” based upon the depth to which they celebrated Christmas – said in a 2007 sermon that “Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. Even though he talks about Jesus as his lord and savior, he is not a Christian.
“Mormonism is not Christianity. Mormonism is a cult. And just because somebody talks about Jesus does not make them a believer.”
Reportedly, in that sermon, Jeffress said he was frustrated that some religious leaders had backed Romney anyway. “What really distresses me is some of my ministerial friends, and even leaders in our convention, say, `Well, he talks about Jesus, we talk about Jesus, what’s the big deal?’ It is a big deal.”
The AP said Perry’s campaign initially said the decision to have Jeffress introduce Perry had been made strictly by organizers, but a Perry spokesman later backtracked and said the campaign had agreed to it.
“It was their suggestion; it was their choice of who introduced us. They asked our campaign what we thought, and we said OK,” Miner said.
The AP also reported that Jeffress is a prominent religious leader in Texas, and that Perry specifically recognized Jeffress by name during his speech at a dinner for the Light of Life dinner and gala in Dallas.
Perry and Reverend Pudden-head are clearly known associates; the campaign knew what he thought about Romney – their disavowals aside – and they used the opportunity to score much needed points with the uber-conservative evangelical wing of the Tea Party. Romney may eventually win the nomination, by the slightest of margins, but it is very doubtful that the evangelical block will ever vote for him. And while they won’t vote for the President either; they’ll probably just stay home.
A Marine Corps sniper from San Antonio, the son of a former newspaper columnist and the team doctor for the Spurs, died Thursday in Afghanistan.
Lance Cpl. Benjamin Whetstone Schmidt, 24, who died on the eve of today’s 10th anniversary of the start of the Afghan war, was the son of Becky Whetstone and Dr. David Schmidt, team physician for the Spurs.
Whetstone described her son, who attended Alamo Heights High School, and played football there, as a charismatic, charming young man who hoped to complete his military service in May.
“The sky was the limit for this man. He was special,” said Whetstone, a former advice columnist for the San Antonio Express-News and former wife of U.S. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez.
No official details of his death were available, but Schmidt died from a gunshot wound to the head, his mother said.
He’d done a four-month tour of Afghanistan about two years ago, and started his second deployment in early September.
He was in his fourth year with the Marines, and hoped to start a new life, possibly going into politics, she said. He loved history and also considered becoming a professor of military history.
“At first, he had a passion for the military. But over time, he decided he didn’t like it, and didn’t like the policies of the war,” his mother said. “He had never been interested in politics before, but that changed in Afghanistan.”
Schmidt had fallen in love for the first time with a “beautiful young lady” in California, she said, speaking by phone from her hometown of Little Rock, Ark., where she was surrounded by family members late Thursday.
“We’re all crushed tonight,” Whetstone said. “I’m trying to wrap my head around all of this.”
Besides his parents, Schmidt’s immediate family included a sister, Casey, 21.
His mother said Schmidt, the 21st San Antonian to die serving in Afghanistan since 2001, wanted to be buried at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.
“We talked long about those kinds of things before he left,” she said.
Media Matters is pointing out typical FOX PAC hypocrisy after Bill O’Reilly discussed the recent uproar over Hank Williams Jr. invoking Adolf Hitler while criticizing President Obama; O’Reilly said that it’s “always bad to use Nazis in analogies.” But O’Reilly himself has a long history of using Nazi analogies.
“He was trying to make an analogy, and [it’s] always bad to use Nazis in analogies — you don’t do this. And he basically said, look, if you get guys together like President Obama and Speaker [John] Boehner it’d be like Hitler playing golf with [Benjamin] Netanyahu,” he said.
“I’m of two minds. It’s dumb to bring Hitler up, you’re absolutely right. Can’t do that in this PC society. But what he said, it isn’t — he isn’t comparing Obama to Hitler. He’s comparing the situation, the strange bedfellows. He’s not saying Obama’s Hitler. Williams isn’t saying that. I mean, I’m just trying to be fair here, OK. But it doesn’t matter, I guess.”
OK, whatever Bill; the only man Williams could find to use in his analogy was Adolph Hitler? No, he meant to compare the President to Hitler, this isn’t some “honest mistake” it was a white red neck comparing the first Black President to the Nazi Dictator.
But even though O’Reilly claims using Nazi analogies is not smart he’s done it a number of times.
On his 2 Mar 2010 program O’Reilly claimed that liberals who support gun control are “today’s totalitarians.” He added that in the past, people like “Hitler and Mussolini” held such positions in favor of “state control.”
In his 16 Jul 2009, syndicated column, O’Reilly wrote, “The far left is trying to create a huge federal apparatus that will promote income redistribution and ‘social justice.’ Also, the left sees a major opportunity to knock out Judeo-Christian traditions, replacing them with a secular philosophy.
“In order to accomplish this, the left-wing media is marginalizing people like Sarah Palin who oppose the strategy. Under the guise of hard news reporting, the media is pushing rank propaganda on the citizenry. Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, successfully developed this tactic in the 1930’s.”
On his 10 Mar 2008 program O’Reilly said, “And I said that these tactics that are being used on this website, The Huffington Post, are the same exact tactics that the Nazis used in the late ’20s and early ’30s to demonize certain groups of people, so it would become easier for them, the Nazis, when they took power, to hurt those people.”
On his 27 Feb 2008 program O’Reilly said, “I don’t see any difference between [Arianna] Huffington and the Nazis. … I don’t see any difference.”
On his 16 Jul 2007 program he said that the Daily Kos is “like the Ku Klux Klan. It’s like the Nazi party. There’s no difference here.”
So, oh yes, it’s “always bad to use Nazis in analogies” unless of course you’re Bill O’Reilly.
Isn’t it interesting that the same Arthur (aka Art) Laffer, the former Reagan economic underling, who is now making a splash on FOX PAC interviews crying “TAX CUTS FOR ALL, TAX CUTS FOR ALL!” wrote in June 2004 – for the Heritage Foundation no less – that as a result of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (ERTA) and other tax acts (meaning increases) in the 1980s, the top 10% were paying 57.2% of total income taxes by 1988 – up from 48% in 1981 … Why, that looks like a tax increase on the top tax bracket under Ronald Reagan, creating more tax revenue and stimulating the economy … and wow, President Obama has proposed increasing taxes on the top echelon of earners just like Reagan did to create more tax revenue and to help stimulate the economy, and yes Virginia, that would mean not only that there is a Santa Clause, but that the rich would be paying a higher percentage of total income taxes.
Additionally, a report from the Joint Economic Committee in 1996 found that the bottom 50% of earners share dropped from 7.5% to 5.7% from 1981 to 1988, and that the total share of taxes on middle income earners in the 50th to 95th percentile decreased from 57.5% to 48.7% between 1981 and 1988 … now that’s just amazing, the President’s jobs bill would reduce payroll taxes on both workers and employers, extend long-term unemployment benefits and invest in public works and teachers, police officers and other public servants – in effect reducing the tax burden of the lower and middle class, gee, just like Reagan did.
So, just to recap, from 1981 to 1988 we see an increase on taxes during Reagan’s presidency on the upper percent of earners (the top 5% to be exact) aka the fabulously wealthy so-called job creators, while at the same time tax rates were cut for the middle class and lower income classes and the economy grew right along with tax revenues helping the country out of a devastating economy … curse those darned facts!
The Liberty Tree 