The Romney tax

There’s Mitt Romney, praising then what he detests now as a tax. There is one big difference between the Romneycare tax and the ACA/Obamacare tax: under both plans people who can easily afford health insurance but choose to put the risk on the rest of us pay a small fine. That’s what the tax part really is. But right now the ACA tax is purely voluntary, there’s no penalty for not paying it. Romney’s tax was enforced the Massachusetts state revenue office, similar to the IRS.

Morning Joe gets his ass kicked

This might have made a great Netroots Nation 2012 party theme if it had happened sooner. Yesterday morning MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough was whining about a piece in the NYT about Romney’s wealth and his recent multimillion dollar makeover of a beach mansion. The conservative commentator immediately went into the all too familiar rightwing persecution mode [Read more…]

Mitt the mendacious

Steve Benen has been cataloguing Mitt Romney’s lies and it has become quite a list. There is something new going on here we haven’t seen before in presidential politics. It’s not just that Mittens garnishes his speeches with a few zombie lies, it’s that he lies so continuously that his entire stump speeches are now nothing but one easily debunked lie piled on top of another from end to end. It’s unprecedented. Here’s a just a few of Romney’s serial whoppers, the rebuttals are linked in the original piece: [Read more…]

Mitt Romney: bull in a China shop

Romney has only himself to blame for what is shaping up to be yet another looming campaign screw up created by eagerly inserting his foot into his partisan mouth before thinking. A few days ago, a Chinese dissident under house arrest managed to sneak away and make it to the US embassy. Imagine the embarrassment and heads rolling over that in the People’s Republic: a blind guy essentially broke out of jail guarded by the Chinese gestapo. They wanted him back, real, real bad. [Read more…]

Obama addresses troops & nation on anniversary of bin Laden’s death

Moments ago President Obama addressed the nation from Afghanistan. Without the prop of mission accomplished banners and wearing no pilot costume, the President spoke to civilians, service members, and members of the House and Senate, commenting on our future timeline for ramping down the war in that battered nation (Mitt Romney celebrated the non-use of 9-11 and/or the bin Laden hit with a completely non political photo op surrounded by a company of fire fighters alongside former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani a few miles from ground zero). The President’s full prepared marks below the fold. [Read more…]