President Obama distorts Mitt Romney’s record and ignores his own
President Obama distorts Mitt Romney’s record and ignores his own
Class warfare is no way to win a presidential election
NY Daily News Editorial
Running far less on his own record than against that of his opponent, President Obama has latched on to Mitt Romney’s career in venture capitalism as a centerpiece of his reelection campaign.
These desperate times for Americans have called forth desperate measures from an incumbent weighed down by an 8.2% unemployment rate and the barest flicker of job growth. Say, why not suggest that Romney could even be a felon? Oh, right, an Obama aide did that.
Masterfully and disappointingly, the President’s campaign is branding Romney as a rich (repeat, filthy rich) corporate buccaneer who made a fortune sending jobs overseas and bankrupting companies.
In states where voters are in neither camp solidly — the crucial swing states — Obama is executing a distort-and-destroy media blitz. A primary goal in campaign-speak is to “define” Romney as not just out of touch, but as an agent of fat cats who want to take everything.
Secondarily — never mind the results of his almost four years in office — Obama is trying to frame the campaign as a referendum on a clash between a compassionate there-for-you Democrat and Republican forces that would strip government bare to get theirs.
The rhetoric distills to class warfare and is intended to deflect discussion of how exactly Obama would rev the economy any better in a second term. Follow his logic, and you arrive at the extreme Obama reached in a speech in Virginia, where he described how “wealthy, successful” Americans achieved their standing.
“I’m always struck by people who think, ‘Well, it must be because I was just so smart,’ ” he said. “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.
“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.”
Regardless of whether Obama was talking about “roads and bridges” or about “a business” when he said, “you didn’t build that,” there is no question that as he extolled the virtues of government — the government he claims Romney would dismantle — the President demeaned the qualities of initiative, industriousness and ingenuity that drive America’s ladder-climbers.
Just as revealing have been Obama’s attacks on Romney’s tenure as head of Bain Capital, the firm he created in 1984 and built into a powerhouse with a strategy of buying underperforming companies and attempting to straighten them out and increase their value.
Romney’s record at Bain is more than fair game, not least because he has used economic savvy and jobs that Bain helped to create as key credentials for the White House. But the President’s swing-state advertising blitz on the topic was rife with cynical mischaracterizations.
The ads labeled Romney a “corporate raider” who had “shipped jobs to China and Mexico.” Really? The invaluable nonpartisan truth squad at FactCheck.org researched the Obama assertions and reported that “we found no evidence to support the claim that Romney — while he was still running Bain Capital — shipped American jobs overseas.”
The campaign similarly leaped on Bain paperwork that seemed to suggest Romney had stayed involved with Bain in years when the firm took actions that might be stretched to weakly support the outsourcing accusation. Out of this came the suggestion of a felony.
Actually, the evidence all but conclusively indicates that Romney had broken from decision-making at Bain in 1999 to devote his energies to rescuing the scandal-scarred Salt Lake City Olympics from collapse.
He made the games a hit, as well as a financial winner. Obama avoids that part of Romney’s record, just as he has shied from putting his own tenure front and center before voters.
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Another telling article; thank you for posting it. I'm encouraged to see that even the New York papers are figuring out that our current administration is made up of a bunch of empty suits who are incapable of effectively running the Country, and having no history of successes of their own to run on, their only defense is to tear down their opponent's record.
And, Jonathan Lavine is not your average Obama Bain donor. Lavine is one of Barack Obama’s top bundlers.
ABC reported:
While Democrats assail presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital business practices, Republicans note that President Obama has not been bashful about accepting cash from Bain executives or other high-profile figures in the corporate buyout business…
…One of Obama’s top campaign financiers – Jonathan Lavine – is also managing director at Bain, bundling between $100,000 and $200,000 in contributions for the 2012 Obama Victory Fund, according to estimates released by the Obama campaign. The president has also relied on other leading figures in the private equity sector as hosts for high-dollar fundraisers and as members of his Jobs Council.
A must read!
Please read the rest here:
Oops!… Obama’s Top Bundler Jonathan Lavine Was In Charge of Bain During GST Steel Layoffs
Posted by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, July 18, 2012, 5:43 AM
Link
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/07/oops-obam as-top-bundler-jonathan-lavine-was-in-charge-of-ba in-during-gst-steel-layoffs/
Kuhner: Arpaio probe could dwarf Watergate
Times247
by: Jeffrey T. Kuhner
Thursday, July 19, 2012
If Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his Cold Case Posse are right about Obama's birth certificate, then the president has perpetrated the most elaborate hoax in U.S. history.
America may be facing a constitutional crisis. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., has made a startling declaration: President Obama's birth certificate is fraudulent. If true - and I stress if - then this scandal dwarfs Watergate. In fact, it would be the greatest political scandal in U.S. history.
Recently, Sheriff Arpaio held a news conference. He said that his team of independent investigators - composed of former law enforcement officials and reporters - have for months meticulously examined the computer-generated birth certificate that Mr. Obama revealed to the public in April 2011. Their stunning conclusion: The document is a forgery. His chief investigator, Mike Zullo, says that the document is full of errors and omissions. In particular, Mr. Zullo claims that numeric sections are not filled out that otherwise would have been in birth certificates from Hawaii during that time. But other sections, such as those dealing with Mr. Obama's race and his father's work and field of study, are completed. Hence, Sheriff Arpaio's investigative posse definitively believes the birth certificate is not authentic, but was manufactured to provide Mr. Obama with a veneer of constitutional legitimacy.
Sheriff Arpaio's findings threaten to plunge America into an unprecedented crisis. For if - and again, I emphasize if - he is correct, then Mr. Obama has perpetrated the most elaborate hoax in U.S. history. A fraudulent birth certificate would mean that Mr. Obama is ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief. His presidency would therefore be legally and constitutionally illegitimate.
The consequences would shake the country to its very foundations. It would mean that he should be immediately removed from office - impeached. Moreover, every law and executive order passed under his administration - Obamacare, the economic stimulus, the Dodd-Frank financial reform, the government takeover of General Motors and Chrysler, the granting of amnesty to nearly one million illegal immigrants, the National Defense Reauthorization Act, the drone assassination list - would be null and void. The logic is inexorable: Should the president's legal authority be deemed invalid, then everything resulting from it is also baseless. The Obama presidency would be overturned. Mr. Obama himself would be facing criminal charges - and possible jail time - for committing fraud.
Yet, the birth certificate issue would repeal more than the Obama administration. It would bring down the entire liberal regime. The ruling elites - the establishment media, the Hollywood left, the federal bureaucracy, the myriad regulatory agencies, the public sector unions, big banks and the financial sector - have refused to seriously examine Mr. Obama's background. In fact, they have repeatedly propped him up. He defends the liberal corporatist status quo, constantly expanding government power. This is why they are determined to destroy anyone who seriously challenges Mr. Obama's constitutional authority. To simply inquire into the status of his birth risks being called a "birther" - a kook and conspiracy theorist akin to Holocaust deniers. Having coddled and protected him, the ruling class could not survive if Mr. Obama was exposed as a slick con man. Their moral and intellectual legitimacy would be discredited as well.
The topic has become toxic. Even Fox News refuses to touch it. Many leading conservative radio talk-show hosts ignore it. The editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal mock so-called "birthers". Meanwhile, the liberal media continues to vilify Sheriff Arpaio. He is being accused of racial profiling, committing civil rights abuses and having failed to effectively prosecute sex crimes. They allege he is waging a baseless, personal vendetta against Mr. Obama. Liberals are portraying him as a Southern stereotype: a racist, out-of-control sheriff determined to bring down a black president.
The very opposite, however, is the case. It was the citizens of Maricopa County who through a petition asked Sheriff Arpaio to investigate Mr. Obama's birth certificate. The sheriff is not the only one with doubts. Many question the president's status as a natural-born citizen. Mr. Obama's grandmother says he was born in Kenya. This is echoed by Obama relatives. Members of the Kenyan parliament have repeatedly claimed Mr. Obama as their native son. The Kenyan media asserts he was born in Kenya. For nearly 15 years, Mr. Obama's literary agent produced a pamphlet describing him as being Kenyan born. In his 2004 race for the U.S. Senate, wire stories - including by the Associated Press - frequently referred to Mr. Obama's place of birth as Kenya. As late as 2009, the Kenyan government sought to build an official monument commemorating the site of Mr. Obama's birth (until the State Department ordered the project be shuttered).
The president is a brazen opportunist; a political hustler who mastered his craft on the streets of Chicago. When it suited his interests to come across as a cosmopolitan, multicultural liberal, Mr. Obama pushed a Kenyan persona. When it was no longer politically expedient, he abandoned it. Yet, Mr. Obama cannot escape a fundamental dilemma: He either lied then or he is lying now. He was either born in Kenya (as he claimed during the 1990s and part of the 2000s) or he wasn't (as he has insisted since 2007). Both cannot be true.
At best, Mr. Obama is a shameless liar. At worst, he is a foreign usurper.
Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute.
Read the original article at Times247
At best, Mr. Obama is a shameless liar. At worst, he is a foreign usurper.
I have read that many Democrats are trying to distance themselves from Obama, for they feel that their chances of re-election are hurt by the association.
Perhaps the Democrats should investigate Obama's birth place, social security number, Selective Service registration, etc. If all is in order - and it should be easy to prove, if all is legal - I would think that their chances of re-election would improve considerably.
Is there a reason that Democrats and MSM won't discuss this?
Because it's easier to call people names?
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