DOWNLOADS: (134)

PLAYS: (1207)

Embed

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) on Monday said that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney's ad suggesting that Chrysler was moving Jeep production to China was "100 percent correct and accurate" -- even though fact checkers have determined the claim is false.

"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," the Republican presidential candidate told supporters in Defiance, Ohio last week.

In an ad released on Sunday, the campaign repeated the claim, saying that Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians, who are going to build Jeeps in China."

The candidate apparently picked up idea that Chrysler was going to move all production to China from conservative bloggers who twisted an otherwise-accurate story from Bloomberg News.

And even Gualberto Ranieri, Chrysler’s vice president of communications, has said that the claims are just not true.

"Despite clear and accurate reporting, the take has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. workforce," Ranieri wrote on Oct. 25. "It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats."

"A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments," he added.

After reviewing the ad on Sunday, BuzzFeed's McKay Coppins tweeted: "There's really no good explanation or excuse for it. Mitt Romney's Jeep ad is misleading. Full stop."

"Ads that mislead or stretch the truth are nothing new for presidential campaigns," Business Insider's Grace Wyler explained. "But this ad — and Romney's comments last week — has prompted harsh criticism from the media, likely because it strikes reporters as not only disingenuous, but irresponsible. For Romney to suggest that the livelihoods of specific voters — namely workers at the Jeep plant in Toledo — are in danger in order to win an election comes across to many as the type of fear-mongering that no one wants in a president. "

During an interview on Monday, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell asked Chaffetz if the Romney campaign should stop running the ad.

"No!" Chaffetz replied. "It's 100 percent correct and accurate. The Romney campaign stands behind it."

For its part, President Barack Obama's campaign released an ad on Monday calling Romney's assertion an outright "lie."

"When the auto industry faced collapse, Mitt Romney turned his back," the Obama ad says. "Even the conservative Detroit News criticized Romney for his ‘wrong-headedness’ on the bailout."

"And now, after Romney’s false claim of Jeep outsourcing to China, Chrysler itself has refuted Romney’s lie."

Speaking to supporters in Youngstown, Ohio on Monday, Vice President Joe Biden said Romney's ad was "absolutely, patently false" and he had "never seen anything like that."

"Have they no shame?" the vice president wondered. "Romney will say anything, absolutely anything to win it seems."

(h/t: Political Carnival)

DOWNLOADS: (161)

PLAYS: (1188)

Embed

Just one more reason why the Jets suck this year. Not exactly the thing you want to say to your fans after a 34-0 shellacking at home either. Johnson, who serves as Romney's campaign chairman in New York, is already hearing about this in the New York media.

via the NY Daily News

Woody Johnson says if he was forced to choose, the Jets would be his No. 2 priority. The Jets owner appeared on Bloomberg TV Monday and was asked: which would he prefer, a winning season for the Jets or a victorious election for Mitt Romney?

"Well I think you always have to put country first," Johnson said. "So I think it's very, very important that for — not only us — but in particular for our kids and grandkids that this election come off with Mitt Romney and Ryan as president and vice president."

DOWNLOADS: (412)

PLAYS: (5096)

Embed

Romney adviser Bay Buchanan on Tuesday declared that the release of leaked campaign videos showing the Republican presidential nominee writing off 47 percent of the country as "dependant" and "entitled" was just a "bump in the road."

In an edited video published by Mother Jones on Monday, Mitt Romney had told wealthy donors that almost half of the country "pay no income tax" and were going to vote for President Barack Obama.

"My job is is not to worry about those people," Romney asserted. "I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

On Tuesday, Buchanan had the unenviable task of trying to do damage control while being grilled by CNN host Soledad O'Brien.

"As a candidate, he can't worry about those he can't get," Buchanan explained, adding that the media should be focusing on "one out of every six Americans are in poverty today and that 47 million are taking food stamps in order to take care of themselves and their families."

"Listen, I fully understand the strategy is to turn to the 'real problem' and talk about something else, but I'm going to keep you on this," O'Brien said. "He says 47 percent of Americans pay no tax. That's not correct. ... Forty-seven percent of those people who pay no income tax -- look at that chart there -- 61 percent of those folks, they're paying payroll tax, money is coming out of their paycheck. It's being described as the myth of sort of the deadbeat nation."

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (52)

PLAYS: (260)

Embed

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade says that cutting defense spending is just not the Christian thing to do.

During a Thursday Fox & Friends segment about a defense industry-sponsored study that warns unemployment will rise if Congress does not find a way to avert $500 billion in sequestration cuts, Kilmeade declared that it would be a "sin" to reduce defense spending back to 2006 levels.

"Could the $500 billion in cuts from the next budget mandate potentially trigger a recession?" Kilmeade exclaimed. "According to the Aerospace Industry Association, the unemployment rate would climb above 9 percent and more than 2 million jobs would be lost all in the name of cutting back defense!"

"It threatens our national security, it threatens our economic security, it threatens our technological leadership, it threatens over 2 million jobs," agreed Jay DeFrank, a public relations official with defense contractor Pratt & Whitney.

"It's a sin that Republicans and Democrats both brought the defense industry in to this," Kilmeade asserted. "They had nothing to do with the [debt ceiling negotiations] impasse that took place last year."

But even as defense contractors are warning of a recession, their stock is up 11 percent this year, outperforming Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

Lockheed Martin CEO Bob Stevens recently told the House Armed Services Committee that "sequestration kills jobs," but his company's earnings are also up 26 percent.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Robert Stallard told Bloomberg that defense contractors that "stray into the area of politics" by threatening mass layoffs could open themselves up to questions about profits and executive compensation.

"It is potentially a risk down the line that these politicians come back with things that maybe the defense industry is not prepared for," he explained.

(h/t: Media Matters)

DOWNLOADS: (75)

PLAYS: (321)

Embed

Andrea Mitchell let Mayor Bloomberg more or less say whatever he wanted about the #OWS protesters without challenging any of his assertions. As he rambled on about the protesters, he compared them to the tea party, saying OWS protesters operated outside of the system, whereas the tea party worked inside the system, a patently false equivalence.

He goes on to patronize the protesters just a little more, reminding them that they have a right to protest, just not camp out in parks, as if to say that the First Amendment is just fine provided it doesn't inconvenience anyone else, or isn't too public, or isn't too obvious. How utterly one-percent of him.

There were a couple of places where I raised my eyebrows, like when he defended the NYPD's actions clearing Zuccotti park. He says this:

In spite of everybody yelling and screaming, virtually no arguments that the police abused their power. Remember, every cop has to make a decision right then and there. Somebody's starting to throw something at them or punch them, a cop's got to make a decision. It's easy to second-guess everybody but I think we have the best police department in the world. They're well-trained, they're certainly well-led, and I think they handled themselves in an exemplary manner. Would every single cop do everything right every time? Of course not, that's not the real world where everybody is pushing and shoving.

As one who observed the live stream the night they cleared Zuccotti Park, I have to take issue with Mayor Bloomberg's framing here, because the protesters in Zuccotti Park were, as best as I could tell, peaceful and nonviolent. There wasn't anyone throwing things or punching cops. In fact, one of the hallmarks of the Occupy protests around the country has been the commitment of the OWS movement to remain nonviolent. The violence has come from police using clubs and pepper spray on protesters, not protesters throwing things at police.

Further, I wonder if Mayor Bloomberg is proud of the police destroying tents, books and computer equipment alongside the bicycle generators and other possessions of protesters? That, more than many other things, cemented his leadership as authoritarian and anti-Constitutional. The images of police destroying books will remain with me for a very, very long time.

But wait, he had more. Here's where he calls them all whiners and complainers:

But we have a reason to be very proud of our police department and proud of the fact that in New York and I think throughout America generally, that you can come and you can say what you want to say and in some ways come, and pray what you want to pray, you can be in charge of your own destiny.

Remember, we're going about in this country complaining and we're going about things, pointing out what's wrong. Just remember, when somebody in this world decides to pick up their family and all their belongings and move to someplace where they can express themselves and pray and be in charge of their own destiny, they come to the United States. They don't go anyplace else.

This just proves how out of touch he really is with things. When people are deported daily for trying to "take charge of their own destiny", when that destiny involves being jobless and saddled with thousands in student debt, and when that destiny includes ridicule and a complete lack of understanding on the part of the Mayor about what exactly it is that OWS is protesting, it doesn't add up to a place I'd want to take my family. Not at all. This does not make me a whiner. It makes me a frustrated citizen who is tired of working really hard only to lose it every time the compulsive, money-grubbing gamblers on Wall Street decide they need a few hundred million more in their pockets.

Perhaps Mayor Bloomberg should talk to American expats around the world to make sure he really understands what he's talking about.

In fairness, the other utterly frustrating part of this interview was Andrea Mitchell, just letting Bloomberg roll on without any pushback at all on any of it. In fact, she leaned into him at the end of this segment and practically begged him to run for President. Liberal media? Where?

DOWNLOADS: (82)

PLAYS: (388)

Embed

Rep. Michele Bachmann took a shot at Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan during the Oct. 11th GOP debate hosted by The Washington Post and Bloomberg.

BACHMANN: I would have to say the 9-9-9 plan isn't a jobs plan, it is a tax plan. and I would say from my experience being in Congress, but also as a federal tax lawyer, whey you, the last thing you would do is give Congress another pipeline of a revenue stream. And this gives Congress a pipeline in a sales tax, a sales tax that could also lead to a value added tax. The United States Congress put into place the Spanish American war tax in 1898. We only partially repealed that in 2006. so once you get a new revenue stream, you're never going to get rid of it.

And one thing I would say is when you take the 9-9-9 plan and you turn it upside down, I think the devil's in the details.

From The Daily Show:

Mike Bloomberg connects with the common man, Jon Corzine attacks Chris Christie's waistline, and Doug Hoffman passes Glenn Beck's test.