Beauty,
truth,
friendship,
love,
creation
these are the great values of life.
We can't prove them,
or explain them,
yet they are the most stable things in our lives.
Jesse Herman Holmes
Earlier One-Off Post
Earlier today I posted my second RAG American Olympian Award selections. Did you agree with my selections? Do you have others?
Obama Reelection Campaign Just Pathetic
If anyone read yesterday's post and thinks I'm a shill for the Romney campaign, he or she is in a state of denial. I have made it clear in multiple posts that I'm not a fan of RomneyCare and/or Mitt Romney's rationalization of it.
I expected and predicted that Obama reelection campaign would run a gutter campaign. If anyone hasn't noticed, they aren't really rerunning (for good reason) Reagan's 1984 "It's Morning in America Again" ads. BUT, COME ON, ROMNEY! Stop letting these buffoons pull your chain! It's embarrassing. I mean, REALLY: does anyone seriously doubt that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is a village idiot? Reid spins out an allegation from an unnamed source--an INVESTOR--that Romney hasn't reported income over the past decade? We are not talking the IRS, or a former Romney tax adviser or anything resembling a credible source--but an INVESTOR? I'm sure if the IRS wasn't getting credible tax returns, we would have heard about it by now. It's bad enough that Reid is undermining his credibility and abusing his position and authority, but for Romney to give this windbag oxygen by telling him to "prove it"? Are we in fifth grade? I might have said something to the effect that "Reid's ignorance of my personal finances is only exceeded by his ignorance of the nation's economy..."
Let's be clear: we see the Politics of Envy playing all over the place. We know the real reason behind the Democrats trying to manufacture an issue over Romney's tax returns: they are looking for additional material to use in ad hominem attacks: look how the Democrats used his earlier release of a couple of years of tax returns: they were immediately out with class envy attacks against Romney.
In a sense, I don't blame Romney; for example, the Obama campaign has attempted by raise questions of investments MADE BY A BLIND TRUST, not Romney personally (e.g., investments in the Caribbean or Switzerland). But I do agree with George Will that Romney would have been better served to have done this from the get-go if and when he announced for President. Now the Democrats are resorting to a campaign of innuendo over "missing" tax returns. What's the point? The guy is worth over $200M. Even if his wealth generates say 5% a year, that results in a multi-million income.
A couple of points about one of the latest Obama ad attacks on Romney's tax rate and a disingenuous comparison: the Romney campaign should simply point out that the average effective tax rate for the middle class is something like 11%, significantly below Romney's.. Second, the income that Romney is reporting has already been taxed at the business/corporate rate.
Then there's the ad being run by one of the Obama super PAC's, involving a steelworker Joe Soptic whose wife died of (previously not diagnosed) cancer 5 years after the steel plant was shut down in 2001. Here is the debunked story:
- Romney was not involved with operational details of the plant in question: he was working on rescuing the Winter Olympic games in Salt Lake, taking leave in early 1999
- the steel plant went bankrupt during a bad time for the steel industry as a whole: over 2 dozen other plants went bankrupt in the early 2000's
- Soptic's wife was insured through her own job for at least a couple of years after Soptic lost his job; she was injured on the job and lost coverage when she lost her job; Soptic's new janitorial job did not come with health care benefits
On Phony Democratic Job Statistics:
Veronique de Rugy / National Review,
I am getting sick and tired of partisan windbags like Debbie Wasserman Schultz pointing out Bush's anemic job record (just over a million in 8 years--BOOKENDED BY RECESSIONS) and then picking the low point during the Obama economy as the baseline for showing "millions" of jobs added. Let's just quote some inconvenient facts from de Rugy, whom I've quote in related commentaries in the past:
- Each month, the working-age population grows by an estimated 180,000 people. Simply to support this growing population, we need to add at least 130,000 new jobs. [To improve labor force participation rate] would mean adding at least 250,000 new jobs per month, every month, for years
- The employment-to-population ratio was 59.4% three years ago. It hit a 25-year low of 58.5% in October of 2009, and yet it remains at just 58.6% today.
- This is the slowest recovery in history.
- Wage growth over the last twelve months is the slowest ever.
- We have the slowest economic growth of any recovery
- For a true comparison, we need to consider BOTH unemployment and labor force participation rate
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| Courtesy Veronique de Rugy / National Review |
The REAL Boobs Are In Local Government
Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn't satisfied with checking salt content of soups and other meal courses, the presence of trans fats, or the sizes of sweetened beverages that are sold. He wants you to know that he's also looking out for the little guy (or gal)--like under 23 inches long.
Within a few weeks, the mothers of newborn babies in NYC area hospitals will have to jump through hoops (industrial-strength brassieres sold separately) if they decide to choose to feed their infants formula over their own breast milk.
Don't get me wrong: I am generally in favor of nursing. I believe that my mom and 4 sisters all nursed their children (although I've never raised the topic with them). But I think that the decision is a parental one, and mothers shouldn't need to account to anyone over how they feed their children, short of malnutrition.
I can just see the rollout of the mayor's campaign now: Kate Upton wearing a tight t-shirt reading "Got Milk?" and a little dude with a milk mustache.
Let's hope that Mayor Bloomberg didn't see that controversial Time Magazine cover a few weeks back...
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Frankie Valli, "My Eyes Adored You"
