October 26, 2012 10:00 PM
Romney Repeats False Claim That Jeep is Outsourcing All Jobs to ChinaBy Heather
Here we go again with Willard telling about his thousandth or so lie out on the campaign trail, but this time we find out that apparently badly sourced right wing blogs are his fact checking department. Explains a lot, doesn't it?
Romney repeats false claim of Jeep outsourcing to China; Chrysler refutes story:
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney repeated a false claim Thursday night that Chrysler Group may move all Jeep vehicle production to China, drawing criticism from the Obama campaign, which said the Michigan native had blatantly skewed a news wire story.
Romney’s comments came the same day that the Free Press reported that 1,100 new Chrysler workers will begin making the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs at a plant in Detroit next week.
“I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China,” Romney said during a rally in Defiance, Ohio, before 12,000 cheering supporters, according to several reports. “I will fight for every good job in America, I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it’s fair, America will win.
Romney apparently was referencing conservative bloggers who misrepresented a Bloomberg story from Monday that discussed Chrysler’s decision to consider starting Jeep production in China, the world’s largest new-vehicle market.
That story, while accurate, sparked a raft of other stories and blogs that incorrectly concluded that Chrysler might close plants or move Jeep production from the U.S. to China.
Gualberto Ranieri, Chrysler’s vice president of communications, criticized those stories Thursday even before Romney made his comments.
“Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China,” Ranieri said. “It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China, for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation.”
A spokesperson for the Romney campaign declined to comment.
In fact, Chrysler is investing $500 million at its Toledo North Assembly Plant and plans to add 1,105 new workers by the third quarter of 2013 to build an all-new SUV that will replace the Jeep Liberty.
Production of the new SUV will begin next summer and the hiring process for the new workers, who are scheduled to start by the next fall, has begun, said Chrysler spokeswoman Jodi Tinson.
Romney’s comments were immediately skewered by auto industry observers and Romney’s political opponents because Chrysler added about 7,000 workers in the U.S. and Canada since emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009.
As Rachel also noted earlier in her reporting, Romney was out there deriding the stimulus program at... you guessed it... a company that benefited from stimulus funds. This man just lies every time his mouth is open.
You'd think he'd pick his audience a little more carefully though, since all he did is make himself look like a blathering idiot less than two weeks from the election, when voters are paying attention, and when voters in the states that were saved by the auto bailout know better than to believe him.
Click to watch the pathological liar:
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October 26, 2012
The Company Romney KeepsBy CHARLES M. BLOW
NYT
The saying goes: A man is known by the company he keeps.
If that is true, what does the company Mitt Romney keeps say about him?
This week Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama again, as he did in 2008. That apparently set John Sununu, a co-chairman of the Romney campaign, on edge. Powell’s endorsement couldn’t possibly be the product of purposeful deliberation over the candidates’ policies. In Sununu’s world of racial reductionism, Powell’s endorsement had a more base explanation: it was a black thing.
On Thursday, Sununu said on CNN:“When you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder whether that’s an endorsement based on issues or whether he’s got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama.” He continued: “I think when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him.”
Talk about damning with faint praise. In other words, Sununu was basically saying that he was applauding Powell’s inability to see past the color of his own eyelids.
Sununu is the same man who said that the president performed poorly in the first debate because “he’s lazy and disengaged.” He is also the same man who said of the president in July, “I wish this president would learn how to be an American.”
Could Sununu be unaware that many would register such comments as coded racism? Or was that the intent?
To understand Sununu, it is important to understand his political history.
For starters, he is no stranger to racism controversies. When George H.W. Bush selected him as chief of staff in 1988, The New York Times reported:
“Mr. Sununu’s selection was shadowed by concern among some key Jewish leaders. The 49-year-old New Hampshire Governor, whose father is Lebanese and who takes pride in his Arab ancestry, was the only governor to refuse to sign a June 1987 statement denouncing a 1975 United Nations resolution that equated Zionism with racism.”
But that wasn’t his undoing. It was his actions. In 1991, Sununu became enmeshed in a scandal over using government planes for personal trips.
After the embarrassment of the incident, Bush ordered Sununu to clear all future flights in advance. What happened later you must read for yourself, and it is best stated by Time Magazine in a July 1, 1991, article:
“If Sununu hadn’t exactly been grounded, he had certainly been sent to his room. But Bush underestimated the depth of Sununu’s ethical obtuseness and his zeal at finding a way around the rules. Like a rebellious adolescent, Sununu sneaked down the stairs, grabbed the car keys and slipped out of the White House. After all, the old man had only said, ‘Don’t take the plane.’ He didn’t say anything about the car.”
The piece continued:
“Overcome by a sudden urge two weeks ago to buy rare stamps, Sununu ordered the driver of his government-paid limousine to drive him 225 miles to New York City. He spent the day — and nearly $5,000 — at an auction room at Christie’s. Then he dismissed the driver, who motored back to Washington with no passengers. Sununu returned on a private jet owned by Beneficial Corp.”
By the end of 1991, amid sagging poll numbers, Bush began to see Sununu as a drag and unceremoniously relieved him of his post. As The Times reported then, Sununu was made to plead for his job before he was pushed out anyway:
“Mr. Sununu and the White House portrayed the departure as voluntary. But it followed meetings in which Mr. Bush listened to Mr. Sununu’s arguments that he should stay on and then decided to follow the advice of top-level Republicans who urged the removal of his chief of staff.”
R. W. Apple Jr. wrote in The Times after the move that Bush’s “indirectly soliciting and then promptly accepting” Sununu’s resignation had made it abundantly clear what actually happened.
Sununu has apologized, somewhat, for his racial attack on Powell’s motives. But what should we make of all this?
We have a very racially divided electorate. As The Washington Post reported Thursday, “Obama has a deficit of 23 percentage points, trailing Republican Mitt Romney 60 percent to 37 percent among whites, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News national tracking poll.”
The report pointed out that nearly 80 percent of nonwhites support Obama, while 91 percent of Romney’s supporters are white.
I worry that Sununu’s statements intentionally go beyond recognizing racial disparities and seek to exploit them.
What does that say about Romney, and what does it say about his campaign’s tactics?
Remember: A man is known by the company he keeps.
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While Romney Runs and Hides, a Confident Obama Takes Media Questions in All FormatsBy: Sarah JonesOctober 27th, 2012
While the President makes the rounds and takes questions in situations where “anything can happen”, Romney won’t come on – he’s avoiding the Kids, MTV, Rock Center, Letterman, O’Reilly, and more.
On MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell tackled Romney’s lack of confidence, “The President did at least seven affiliate interviews, a handful of radio interviews and a live interview for the under-30 crowd on MTV.”
TRANSCRIPT via MSNBC with modifications/clarifications:
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: With just 11 days until election, President Obama made the media rounds this week, in between a nonstop campaign scheduled today alone, the president did at least seven affiliate interviews, a handful of radio interviews and a live interview for the under-30 crowd on MTV.
Mitt Romney on the other hand is playing hard to get.
Nickelodeon: Although it was last April when we began requesting that former governor Romney answer your questions, his team has told us he’s been, quote, unable to fit it in, unquote.
NBC NIGHTLY NEWS: We should also know once again, we’ve asked for the chance to spend similar time with the Romney campaign.
MTV: Of course we extended the same offer to governor Romney and we hoped to be able to bring you that interview sometime soon.
MTV’S SWAY CALLOWAY: He (Obama) said he’s anxious to get out there and get the message across in terms of young voters and talk about the issues that matter the most for them. And he believed that light night talk show hosts make better interviewers because it allows him to loosen up.
LOD: he also has to be comfort enough to do this. Because he doesn’t know what Sway is going to come up with. You had questions from some viewers and all that, tweeted questions all that stuff.
SWAY: Facebook and tweets.
LOD: And anything can happen in those situations. And that seems to be what mitt Romney is afraid of, is those anything can happen situations.
LOD: There were two shows, two very big ones, by which I mean tall. Complaining about this last night. Let’s look at David Letterman and Bill O’Rielly.
LETTERMAN: We have our own little problem.
O’REILLY: Romney won’t come on. He’s not coming on at all.
LETTERMAN: He doesn’t have to come on.
O’REILLY: I think you and I because he’s not on “The Factor.” We should go together and just confront him.
END TRANSCRIPT
Mitt Romney has had a long standing policy of avoiding the media at all costs. He broke with this to do a few interviews during his summer gaffe-filled diplomacy gone wrong tour, but he only allowed 6 questions in pressers during his entire tour.
Romney has refused to take questions from children, from MTV, from late night hosts, from mainstream outlets and even from Fox News.
Once again, we find in this one issue an attitude that should disqualify Romney from even running for office. If he is this afraid of the press now, how will he treat the fourth estate should he become president?
We need more transparency, not less.
The interviews done this week with the President, especially the Jon Stewart and MTV interviews, provided a chance to hear him discuss issues the mainstream media doesn’t address, like climate change. At one point in the Stewart interview, we almost got into the finer points of laws like the Patriot Act, which would have been fascinating because we never hear the President’s take on pre-existing laws that he has tweaked but kept in place. Sadly, after warning Stewart that it wasn’t sexy but starting to get into it, they had to break.
Still, we got something specific from these interviews that we don’t from mainstream outlets. We got to hear the President’s thought process in a way that reveals his values. Spontaneous interviews and live interviews provide that context and transparency, and it’s a shame that Mitt Romney refuses to do them.
Romney prefers to control his interviews tightly, which is next to impossible in a live interview situation. Romney rarely sits for even scripted, edited interviews to begin with, but when he does, he has refused to appear until the hosts agree to say the things he wants them to:
Univision says that during his townhall with them, not only did the Romney campaign pack the hall with non-students because they couldn’t find enough supporters on campus, but when the anchor gave an introduction to Mitt that he didn’t like, he refused to go on until they re-taped it. A Republican present called it a “temper tantrum”.
This allows a candidate to perpetuate a false reality for viewers.
Avoiding the press services Romney’s lies. After Romney’s egregious and outrageous lie about Jeep moving jobs to China — told in an Ohio auto industry county — The Detroit Free Press (a conservative paper that endorsed Romney, by the way) wrote that the Romney campaign refused to answer questions about Romney’s incorrect reading:
If Mitt Romney knows Chrysler will keep making Jeeps in Detroit and Toledo, neither he nor his staffers acknowledged it Friday.
A spokesman for the Republican presidential candidate declined to answer questions about the candidate’s incorrect reading of a news report that Chrysler was considering moving all Jeep production to China.
The President sat for questions in a Reddit IAmA chat, while the Romney campaign — afraid of the crowdsourced intellect of Reddit — stuck Paul Ryan on Quora where he dodged questions. Romney was too afraid to appear on The View, saying that there was only one conservative on the show. If he can’t handle Nickelodeon or The View, how would he handle Putin?
Romney’s fear and loathing of the press goes back to his father’s bad experiences during his run for the White House, but there’s no excuse for avoiding the press and certainly no excuse to avoid direct questions from voters. The fourth estate is an essential part of our democracy. While we might not like what the candidates say or agree with them on everything, it is more important that they are at least willing to subject themselves to the people’s scrutiny and questions. To refuse to do so should be a disqualifier.
It should trouble all Americans that Romney has this attitude toward the press, and it begs the question, what is he so afraid of?
***************
Mitt Romney’s 5 Point Plan is the Same Plan as McCain in ’08 and Bush in ’04By: Jason Easley October 28th, 2012
Mitt Romney’s 5 point plan to create jobs was John McCain’s 5 point plan in 2008, and George W. Bush’s 2004. In reality, voters are voting for Bush’s economic ideas, not Romney’s.
Here is Romney’s 5 point plan:
1). Achieve energy independence on this continent by 2020. America is blessed with extraordinary natural resources, and developing them will create millions of good jobs – not only in the energy industry, but also in industries like manufacturing that will benefit from more energy at lower prices.
2). Trade that works for America.
3). Provide Americans with the skills to succeed through better public schools, better access to higher education, and better retraining programs that help to match unemployed workers with real-world job opportunities.
4). Cut the deficit, reducing the size of government and getting the national debt under control so that America remains a place where businesses want to open up shop and hire.
5). Champion small business. Small businesses are the engine of job creation in this country, but they will struggle to succeed if taxes and regulations are too burdensome or if a government in Washington does its best to stifle them. Mitt will pursue comprehensive tax reform that lowers tax rates for all Americans, and he will cut back on the red tape that drives up costs and discourages hiring.
Here is John McCain’s 5 point plan from his 2008 acceptance speech at the Republican convention:
1). I will open new markets to our goods and services. My opponent will close them.
2). I will cut government spending. He will increase it.
3). Education — education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained, but what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice.
4). We all know that keeping taxes low helps small businesses grow and create new jobs.
5). We’ll attack — we’ll attack the problem on every front. We’ll produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells off-shore, and we’ll
drill them now. We’ll drill them now.
George W. Bush’s 5 point plan for the economy from 2004:
1). To create jobs, my plan will encourage investment and expansion by restraining federal spending, reducing regulation and making the tax relief permanent.
2). To create jobs, we will make our country less dependent on foreign sources of energy.
3). To create jobs, we will expand trade and level the playing field to sell American goods and services across the globe.
4). And we must protect small-business owners and workers from the explosion of frivolous lawsuits that threaten jobs across our country. Another drag on our economy is the current tax code, which is a complicated mess…
5). To be fair, there are some things my opponent is for. He’s proposed more than $2 trillion in new federal spending so far, and that’s a lot, even for a senator from Massachusetts.
Mitt Romney’s 5 point plan to jumpstart the economy is actually John McCain’s 2008 5 point plan to get the economy moving, which was George W. Bush’s 2004 five point plan to grow the economy. The plan for the Republicans is always the same, cut taxes, reduce spending, a talking point about school choice, more domestic oil drilling, and free trade.
The last time this plan was tried by a president the economy collapsed. Voters rejected a rehash of the Bush ideas in 2008, and Mitt Romney is back trying to sell the same plan in a different order in 2012. The reality is that Republicans have no idea how to fix or grow the economy, but they do have an ideology that tells them government is bad, and tax cuts for the wealthy are good.
Mitt Romney isn’t some bold visionary who has the secret to unlocking our national economic power. He is just the latest in a long line of Republican salesmen who are peddling an economic plan that didn’t work then, and won’t work now.
If you are early voting now, or will be stepping into the voting booth on Election Day, remember that you aren’t voting for Mitt Romney’s plan. You’ll be voting for George W. Bush’s, and we all remember where that got us the last time we tried it.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
TRANSCRIPT via MSNBC with modifications/clarifications:
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: With just 11 days until election, President Obama made the media rounds this week, in between a nonstop campaign scheduled today alone, the president did at least seven affiliate interviews, a handful of radio interviews and a live interview for the under-30 crowd on MTV.
Mitt Romney on the other hand is playing hard to get.
Nickelodeon: Although it was last April when we began requesting that former governor Romney answer your questions, his team has told us he’s been, quote, unable to fit it in, unquote.
NBC NIGHTLY NEWS: We should also know once again, we’ve asked for the chance to spend similar time with the Romney campaign.
MTV: Of course we extended the same offer to governor Romney and we hoped to be able to bring you that interview sometime soon.
MTV’S SWAY CALLOWAY: He (Obama) said he’s anxious to get out there and get the message across in terms of young voters and talk about the issues that matter the most for them. And he believed that light night talk show hosts make better interviewers because it allows him to loosen up.
LOD: he also has to be comfort enough to do this. Because he doesn’t know what Sway is going to come up with. You had questions from some viewers and all that, tweeted questions all that stuff.
SWAY: Facebook and tweets.
LOD: And anything can happen in those situations. And that seems to be what mitt Romney is afraid of, is those anything can happen situations.
LOD: There were two shows, two very big ones, by which I mean tall. Complaining about this last night. Let’s look at David Letterman and Bill O’Rielly.
ROLL CLIP:
LETTERMAN: We have our own little problem.
O’REILLY: Romney won’t come on. He’s not coming on at all.
LETTERMAN: He doesn’t have to come on.
O’REILLY: I think you and I because he’s not on “The Factor.” We should go together and just confront him.
END TRANSCRIPT
Mitt Romney has had a long standing policy of avoiding the media at all costs. He broke with this to do a few interviews during his summer gaffe-filled diplomacy gone wrong tour, but he only allowed 6 questions in pressers during his entire tour.
Romney has refused to take questions from children, from MTV, from late night hosts, from mainstream outlets and even from Fox News.
Once again, we find in this one issue an attitude that should disqualify Romney from even running for office. If he is this afraid of the press now, how will he treat the fourth estate should he become president?
We need more transparency, not less.
The interviews done this week with the President, especially the Jon Stewart and MTV interviews, provided a chance to hear him discuss issues the mainstream media doesn’t address, like climate change. At one point in the Stewart interview, we almost got into the finer points of laws like the Patriot Act, which would have been fascinating because we never hear the President’s take on pre-existing laws that he has tweaked but kept in place. Sadly, after warning Stewart that it wasn’t sexy but starting to get into it, they had to break.
Still, we got something specific from these interviews that we don’t from mainstream outlets. We got to hear the President’s thought process in a way that reveals his values. Spontaneous interviews and live interviews provide that context and transparency, and it’s a shame that Mitt Romney refuses to do them.
Romney prefers to control his interviews tightly, which is next to impossible in a live interview situation. Romney rarely sits for even scripted, edited interviews to begin with, but when he does, he has refused to appear until the hosts agree to say the things he wants them to:
Univision says that during his townhall with them, not only did the Romney campaign pack the hall with non-students because they couldn’t find enough supporters on campus, but when the anchor gave an introduction to Mitt that he didn’t like, he refused to go on until they re-taped it. A Republican present called it a “temper tantrum”.
This allows a candidate to perpetuate a false reality for viewers.
Avoiding the press services Romney’s lies. After Romney’s egregious and outrageous lie about Jeep moving jobs to China — told in an Ohio auto industry county — The Detroit Free Press (a conservative paper that endorsed Romney, by the way) wrote that the Romney campaign refused to answer questions about Romney’s incorrect reading:
If Mitt Romney knows Chrysler will keep making Jeeps in Detroit and Toledo, neither he nor his staffers acknowledged it Friday.
A spokesman for the Republican presidential candidate declined to answer questions about the candidate’s incorrect reading of a news report that Chrysler was considering moving all Jeep production to China.
The President sat for questions in a Reddit IAmA chat, while the Romney campaign — afraid of the crowdsourced intellect of Reddit — stuck Paul Ryan on Quora where he dodged questions. Romney was too afraid to appear on The View, saying that there was only one conservative on the show. If he can’t handle Nickelodeon or The View, how would he handle Putin?
Romney’s fear and loathing of the press goes back to his father’s bad experiences during his run for the White House, but there’s no excuse for avoiding the press and certainly no excuse to avoid direct questions from voters. The fourth estate is an essential part of our democracy. While we might not like what the candidates say or agree with them on everything, it is more important that they are at least willing to subject themselves to the people’s scrutiny and questions. To refuse to do so should be a disqualifier.
It should trouble all Americans that Romney has this attitude toward the press, and it begs the question, what is he so afraid of?