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Meltdown on Main Street: Three Dangerous Numbers Reveal Why Obama Will Lose the Election
Thank you CG, It didn't take before.
You nutters can't go 24 hours without someone posting a "feel-good" story about Romney's chances.
The dude is unlikable. Normal, well adjusted people will not vote for him.
What on earth do you know about normal, well adjusted people?
Oh. U sooooo faaaaannnyyyy.
The economy has turned around.
Romney has nothing to offer. Obama wins.
The economy has turned around.
Romney has nothing to offer. Obama wins.
The economy has turned around.
Romney has nothing to offer. Obama wins.
Needs a link.
ROMNEYS NEW AD AGAINST OBAMA...THE TRUTH FROM OBAMA'S MOUTH
The Mitt Romney campaign continued to turn President Obamas words against him Monday in a new Web video that shows a confident Obama accepting responsibility for the state of the US economy.
The video features excerpts from a speech Obama delivered on July 14, 2009 at Macomb Community College in Warren, Mich.
(See Video)
Obama:
Now, my administration has a job to do, as well, and that job is to get this economy back on its feet, Obama said at the time. Thats my job. And its a job I gladly accept. I love these folks who helped get us in this mess and then suddenly say, Well, this is Obamas economy. Thats fine. Give it to me. My job is to solve problems, not to stand on the sidelines and harp and gripe.
Onscreen text follows Obamas remarks: So where are we now? Now, 23.2 million Americans [are] out of work, underemployed or no longer looking for work. Forty straight months over 8 percent unemployment. Middle-class struggles have deepened. And median household income has dropped by more than $4,000.
The new video from Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, follows one his campaign recirculated last week that highlights a Feb. 2, 2009 interview with NBCs Matt Lauer.
(See Video)
Obama:
I will be held accountable, Obama said at one point in the interview. Later, he added, If I dont have this done in three years, then theres going to be a one-term proposition.
Romneys point seems to be that the president once took a buck-stops-here approach to managing the nations economic recovery but now refuses to take the blame for an economy that Obama says isnt where it needs to be.
New Mitt Romney video uses President Obama’s early term words to assign blame for the economy - Political Intelligence - A national political and campaign blog from The Boston Globe - Boston.com
4 Pinocchios for Obamas newest anti-Romney ad
Posted by Glenn Kessler at 06:00 AM ET, 06/21/2012
The Obama campaign apparently loves to ding former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney with the charge of outsourcing. On several occasions, we have faulted the campaign for its claims, apparently to little avail.
Now, all of the claims have been combined in one 30-second ad, with the added incendiary charge that Romney was a corporate raider. Lets look anew at this material.
The Facts
The phrase corporate raider has a particular meaning in the world of finance. Heres the definition on Investopedia:
An investor who buys a large number of shares in a corporation whose assets appear to be undervalued. The large share purchase would give the corporate raider significant voting rights, which could then be used to push changes in the companys leadership and management. This would increase share value and thus generate a massive return for the raider.
In other words, this is generally an adversarial stance, in which an investor sees an undervalued asset and forces management to spin off assets, take the company private or break it up.
In a previous life, The Fact Checker covered renowned corporate raiders such as Carl Icahn and his ilk. We also have closely studied Bain Capital and can find no examples that come close to this situation; its deals were done in close association with management. Indeed, Bain generally held onto its investments for four or five years, in contrast to the quick bust-em-ups of real corporate raiders. So calling Romney a corporate raider is a real stretch.
So how does the Obama campaign justify this phrase? It cites a single Reuters story from last August, about a campaign stop in New Hampshire, written by a stringer, Jason McLure, who was previously based in Africa. Buried in the article is a reference to Romney as a former corporate raider.
Reuters typically refers to Romney as a former private equity executive or something along those lines, said Ros Krasny, the Boston bureau chief. Of the hundreds of times we have referenced Romney over the past year or more, honestly, that example from Jason must have just slipped through the net 10 months ago.
A better source for Romneys behavior as an investor might be someone who actually worked on Wall Street, such as former Obama auto czar Steven Rattner. Bain Capital is not now, nor has it ever been, some kind of Gordon Gekko-like, fire-breathing corporate raider that slashed and burned companies, immolating jobs wherever they appear in its path, Rattner wrote in Politico this year.
Regarding the outsourcing claims, we have frowned on these before. The Obama campaign rests its case on three examples of Bain-controlled companies sending jobs overseas. But only one of the examples involving Holson Burns Group took place when Romney was actively managing Bain Capital.
Regarding the other claims, concerning Canadian electronics maker SMTC Manufacturing and customer service firm Modus Media, the Obama campaign tries to take advantage of a gray area in which Romney had stepped down from Bain to manage the Salt Lake City Olympics but had not sold his shares in the firm. We had previously given the Obama campaign Three Pinocchios for such tactics.
The Modus Media case is also not an example of shipping jobs overseas. The company closed one plant in California and transferred the jobs to North Carolina, Washington and Utah. At the same time, it opened an unrelated plant in Mexico. The Obama campaign once trumpeted the fact that we had dinged a conservative Super PAC for making the same leap in logic.
The claim that Romney outsourced jobs as governor is equally overblown.
This concerns Romneys veto of a bill that would have prohibited Massachusetts from contracting with companies that outsourced the states work to other countries. Lawmakers were especially concerned about a $160,000-a-month contract with Citigroup to operate a system of electronic food-stamp cards that included a customer phone service center in India.
Both the liberal editorial page of the Boston Globe and conservative editorial page of the Boston Herald urged Romney to veto the amendment, saying it would cost the state money. Romney agreed, saying the measure did not protect state jobs the call center might have moved from India to another state but had the potential of costing our citizens a lot more money. The Democratic-dominated Massachusetts legislature did not override his veto, even though it overturned 117 others, suggesting that there was little real support for the measure.
When the food-stamp contract expired, the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance insisted that those jobs be returned to the United States. But they ended up in a call center based in Utah just as Romney had predicted.
As we mentioned, we recounted this ancient Massachusetts history before, giving the campaign Two Pinocchios. So we were very surprised that the Obama campaign cited that critical Fact Checker column as a source for the ad in its back-up materials.
The ad also cites as a source a Boston Globe article from last month that merely reports on an earlier ad making similar charges. Thats highly circular reasoning and is not fair play.
Upon hearing this ad was under consideration for a tough rating, the Obama campaign supplied reams of additional SEC documents regarding Romneys ownership in Bain after he left for the Olympics, most of which we had examined previously when we first looked at this question. The campaign also supplied SEC documents showing that two of these companies, Modus and SMTC, as well as one called Stream International (a predecessor of Modus), earned money in part by helping other companies subcontract work overseas. Some of this business predated Romneys departure from Bain, but thus far it seems a slim case for this particular ad.
Romney cant run from his record. At Bain and in Massachusetts, he had the chance to keep jobs in America and sent them overseas instead, said Kara Carscaden, deputy press secretary for the Obama campaign. Even while he was at the Olympics, Romney owned and profited from Bain, continues to profit from it today and cannot ignore what Bain did during that time. Whether its outsourcing public jobs to India or shipping private ones to Mexico and China, Romneys record is clear.
The Pinocchio Test
The Obama campaign fails to make its case. On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue, from the use of corporate raider to its examples of alleged outsourcing. Simply repeating the same debunked claims wont make them any more correct.
Four Pinocchios
ROMNEYS NEW AD AGAINST OBAMA...THE TRUTH FROM OBAMA'S MOUTH
The Mitt Romney campaign continued to turn President Obamas words against him Monday in a new Web video that shows a confident Obama accepting responsibility for the state of the US economy.
The video features excerpts from a speech Obama delivered on July 14, 2009 at Macomb Community College in Warren, Mich.
(See Video)
Obama:
Now, my administration has a job to do, as well, and that job is to get this economy back on its feet, Obama said at the time. Thats my job. And its a job I gladly accept. I love these folks who helped get us in this mess and then suddenly say, Well, this is Obamas economy. Thats fine. Give it to me. My job is to solve problems, not to stand on the sidelines and harp and gripe.
Onscreen text follows Obamas remarks: So where are we now? Now, 23.2 million Americans [are] out of work, underemployed or no longer looking for work. Forty straight months over 8 percent unemployment. Middle-class struggles have deepened. And median household income has dropped by more than $4,000.
The new video from Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, follows one his campaign recirculated last week that highlights a Feb. 2, 2009 interview with NBCs Matt Lauer.
(See Video)
Obama:
I will be held accountable, Obama said at one point in the interview. Later, he added, If I dont have this done in three years, then theres going to be a one-term proposition.
Romneys point seems to be that the president once took a buck-stops-here approach to managing the nations economic recovery but now refuses to take the blame for an economy that Obama says isnt where it needs to be.
New Mitt Romney video uses President Obama’s early term words to assign blame for the economy - Political Intelligence - A national political and campaign blog from The Boston Globe - Boston.com
The election will hinge on about 12 swing states and I just saw a new poll last night that shows Obama has surged ahead of Romney in Florida a key state that is desperately needed to win.
That said, the contest does not really start until after the conventions (especially the republican convention in late August). So I think there is still plenty of time for either candidate to make (and lose) ground before then.
The election will hinge on about 12 swing states and I just saw a new poll last night that shows Obama has surged ahead of Romney in Florida a key state that is desperately needed to win.
That said, the contest does not really start until after the conventions (especially the republican convention in late August). So I think there is still plenty of time for either candidate to make (and lose) ground before then.
There is no poll that shows that.
Liar.
That said, the contest does not really start until after the conventions (especially the republican convention in late August). So I think there is still plenty of time for either candidate to make (and lose) ground before then.
That said, the contest does not really start until after the conventions (especially the republican convention in late August). So I think there is still plenty of time for either candidate to make (and lose) ground before then.
Tight as hell. InTrade has Obama at about 53%, and that sounds about right to me, no shock if either guy wins, Obama has the electoral vote edge (right now).
Unless one guy shoots himself in the foot (always possible with politicians), it seems like there's a fairly finite list of variables: Fast & Furious, gas prices, the Middle East, Europe's affect on us, October unemployment figures. Romney's going to make a "safe" veep pick, I suspect, and that wouldn't change things.
Until then, it's all just babble. I do love it, though, when posters assume their guy is gonna win - I've seen a ton of posts already taking a freakin' victory lap. Should be great fun to see those assumptions deposited back in their face (and you know damn well they will be) here after Election Day.
Bring the popcorn and enjoy!
.
That said, the contest does not really start until after the conventions (especially the republican convention in late August). So I think there is still plenty of time for either candidate to make (and lose) ground before then.
Tight as hell. InTrade has Obama at about 53%, and that sounds about right to me, no shock if either guy wins, Obama has the electoral vote edge (right now).
Unless one guy shoots himself in the foot (always possible with politicians), it seems like there's a fairly finite list of variables: Fast & Furious, gas prices, the Middle East, Europe's affect on us, October unemployment figures. Romney's going to make a "safe" veep pick, I suspect, and that wouldn't change things.
Until then, it's all just babble. I do love it, though, when posters assume their guy is gonna win - I've seen a ton of posts already taking a freakin' victory lap. Should be great fun to see those assumptions deposited back in their face (and you know damn well they will be) here after Election Day.
Bring the popcorn and enjoy!
.
Got my popcorn and ready to go. I think it comes down to the economy as always and gas prices, it isn't fair because a lot of this is out of the Presidents control, yet that is the way it has always been.
It's not even a certainty that Bishop Romney is going to be the nominee the way the Paul forces are going.
Paul won Iowa, in case you didn't hear. After all that nonsense about Romney winning it, then Santorum winning it. Paul got 21 out of 25 delegates, I believe. They are taking over the state parties, and even non-Paul delegates are now demanding to be free to "vote their conscience" at the convention.
FUN!
