So-called "Celebrated" and increasingly depressed Wall Street Journal writer Peggy Noonan apparently doesn't realize she can just walk out of her bad hotel when she realizes it isn't the Ritz-Carlton. Instead, she projects own sadness (probably about Mitt not winning the election, as predicted by her special vibrations about yard signs) and feels moved to write an extended Best-Days-are-Behind-Us metaphor about Apocalypse America because . . . it's Obama's fault.
Apparently she's never visited Trip Advisor. Or perhaps her secretary should.
The Anti-Confidence Man: Just when America needs a boost, we're stuck with Dr. Doom in the White House.online.wsj.com/article/SB1000…
I'm in Pittsburgh, making my way to the airport hotel. The people movers are broken and we pull our bags along the dingy carpet. There's an increasing sense in America now that the facades are intact but the machinery inside is broken.
The hotel has entrances on two floors. I search for the lobby, find it. Travelers are milling about, but there's no information desk, no doorman, no bellman or concierge, just two harried-looking workers at a front desk on the second level. The man who checked me in put his phones on hold when I asked for someone to accompany me upstairs. As we walked to the room I felt I should explain. I told him a trial attorney had told me a while back that there are more lawsuits involving hotels than is generally known, and more crime, so always try to have someone with you when you first go to your room. I thought the hotel clerk would pooh-pooh this. Instead he said, "That's why we just put up mirrors at each end of the hall, so you can see if someone's coming." He made it sound like an amenity.
"What should we do then, scream?" I asked. He laughed and shrugged: "Yeah."
Things are getting pretty bare-bones in America. Doormen, security, bellmen, people working the floor—that's maybe a dozen jobs that should have been filled, at one little hotel on one day in one town. Everyone's keeping costs down, not hiring.
What that hotel looked like is America without its muscle, its efficiency, its old confidence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A few hours after this column reached WSJ readers, we learned American businesses added 246,000 jobs in February, and 2.33 million jobs over the last year. It's unfortunate that Noonan received poor service at a hotel, her attempt to extrapolate from that experience misses the mark.
I'll never know why Noonan's editors didn't send her a quick note, saying, "Um, Peggy? Are you sure you want to publish this?"
~ Steve Benen on Maddow Blog
Note the seamless segue from Peggy's statement of the preternaturally boring thing she is doing, straight into an unqualified statement about the "sense" of a nation of 300 million people. Peggy Noonan knows these things. She has traveled from frontier to frontier. Of airport hotels.
~ Gawker
Peggy Noonan Didn’t Like Her Hotel Room. Thanks Obama!
. . . Can’t you just smell the mines and poverty and sadness? Can’t you see the little children, their faces unwashed and bodies shriveled, an army of walking Walker Evans photos, making Peggy Noonan sad? Oh, sorry, no, we forgot. There are no waifs in this story, just a dingy carpet.
. . . Why did Obama fire all the hotel workers? Is it because he hates capitalism, and jobs, and wants everyone to be poor so they can all be ACORNs?
Yes. Stupid Obama murdered all the jobs.
~ Wonkette
"The room had one of those sad clown pictures from 1971, and when I looked closed, I could see a resemblance to America. I gazed longingly for a time in America when a gin and tonic before breakfast was okay, and I realized I was staring at myself in the mirror. When had I become a sad clown? Probably 1972."
~ EatsBabyDingos on Wonkette
The bedbugs heard Peggy was checking in and they left in a huff.
~ Barbara on Wonkette
peggy noonan tries to exercise at the ymca: another in a series of tales from barack obama’s degraded amercia
. . . It is Wednesday morning, 8:30 AM, and I find myself carrying a faded pink duffel bag across the beaten and worn floors of my neighborhood YMCA as I search in vain for the duffel bag porter to relieve me of this burden and take it to my locker. A fire, perhaps the same fire that is smothering the very richness of American ingenuity under this blinkered administration, as rendered my usual workout facilities unusable, and I am left without recourse on this bitter morning, as bitter as the shapes of discarded American lives I see strewn all around me as I furtively look for someone, anyone, to assist me. There’s no one to call to, no one who can answer my plaintive cry for help, just as the White House is empty of anyone who can respond in kind to the plaintive cry of America herself in this dark time. There is no information desk, no concierge, no sports drink sommelier at this facility. These are good jobs that are going unfilled because of President Obama’s inability to fill them.
I go to the information desk and ask why there are no valets to take my duffel bag, but I am brusquely told to produce an “identification card” by which I may obtain entry into the facility. Yes, in Obama’s America, we are denied access to that which would nourish the steel and brawn of this nation . . .
~ Parody by FastEddie9318 on Wordpress
Yes, Peggy Noonan will still have a high-paying job tomorrow. It boggles the mind. salon.com/2013/03/08/cel…
Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers
— Jack Welch (@jack_welch) October 5, 2012
(Scroll Down for complete transcript of Chris Matthews Interview with Jack Welch w/video at bottom of post)
Anybody, any serious person who has any familiarity with how these numbers are tabulated understands that these are career employees at the Bureau of Labor Statistics that are responsible for compiling and analyzing these numbers and they do that on their own.
~ White House Spokesman Josh Earnest
I think it would be impossible to really manipulate the numbers. Certainly, it would be impossible to manipulate the numbers and not be found out.
. . . At turning points, sometimes the household survey turns a little quicker than the payroll survey does. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t give out false signals
~ Keith Hall, former Head of Bureau of Labor Statistics, on LA Times
. . . There’s nothing wrong with the numbers. The only issue is the interpretation of the numbers. The numbers are what they are.
~ Keith Hall on Wall Street Journal
Listen, I would never send a tweet like Jack Welch, and I respect Jack - he's a great guy. That's why last month I said it would be below 8% before the election. That's why I said it. I don't say things I can't prove - that was my prediction. I will leave it at that.
. . . Of course a lot of people are staying home working on their computers, selling things on Ebay, and they're probably part of that 800,000 number. It's not the kind of jobs I want, but I can't prove that it was fudged. I do find that that's the kind of question I'm finding on the Trading Floor. It is what it is. I'm on record last month saying it would be below 8 and if you look at interest rates, they all popped. I told you they'd get it under 8 percent -- they did! You can let America decide how they got there!
~ Rick Santelli on CNBC
If you go just based on Twitter right now, and the people I follow who are conservative - they're about to make a huge mistake. They're gonna say BLS numbers are horrible, some people are already saying the numbers are made up to help the president politically. They have to find a way to talk about the economy and why Governor Romney would be better, not to try to - it's exactly what they did with the polls the last two months, to attack the methodology. These numbers are good. They're not only good symbolically, they represent the economy moving in a better direction.
~ Mark Halperin of Time on MSNBC's Morning Joe, via MMFA
I don't think BLS cooked numbers. I think a bunch of Dems lied about getting jobs. That would have same effect.
— Conn Carroll (@conncarroll) October 5, 2012
October "surprise:" 43 consecutive months of above 8% unemployment, & 1 month before election, the rate miraculously drops to 7.8%. Ahem.
This just proves what a criminal Obama is. He has lied & forced his labor dept to report 7.8% Unemployment with only 114,000 jobs created.
— Fritz Harrod (@bignels2) October 5, 2012
How do 800,000 people leave the work force; 114,000 jobs created and this is touted as good news...? Unemp rate is rigged!
— Barbara Foss (@b_bfoss) October 5, 2012
Another name for the Labor Dept's bogus "7.8 percent" unemployment number -- "Obama's October Surprise." Thanks, Hilda.
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) October 5, 2012
I agree with former GE CEO Jack Welch, Chicago style politics is at work here. Somehow by manipulation of data we are all of a sudden below 8 percent unemployment, a month from the Presidential election. This is Orwellian to say the least and representative of Saul Alinsky tactics from the book "Rules for Radicals"- a must read for all who want to know how the left strategize. Trust the Obama administration? Sure, and the spontaneous reaction to a video caused the death of our Ambassador......and pigs fly.
~ Congressman Allen West on Facebook
We’ve hit that moment in the election when people begin to lose their minds. Case in point, within minutes of the jobs report, Twitter filled with Republicans claiming the books were somehow cooked, the numbers aren’t real, etc.
Let’s take a deep breath. Jobs reports are about the economy, not about the election. Confusing the two leads to very bad analysis.
. . . The fact is that there’s not much that needs to be explained here. We’ve seen drops like this — and even drops bigger than this — before. Between July and August the unemployment rate dropped from 8.3 percent to 8.1 percent — two-tenths of one percent. November-December of 2011 also saw a .2 percent drop. November-December of 2010 saw a .4 percent drop. This isn’t some incredible aberration. The fact that the unemployment rate broke under the psychologically important 8 percent line is making this number feel bigger to people than it really is.
~ Ezra Klein on Washington Post
Martin Bashir: Republicans appear to have more conspiracy theories than L. Ron Hubbard produced in his lifetime. Goldie Taylor: I don't know if there's anything that this particular Republican Electorate believes in, whether it's global warming or the unemployment numbers . . . Martin Bashir: Conspiracy. Conspiracy. Conspiracy. Out to Chicago. Conspiracy. Goldie Taylor: As Toure said earlier (on the Cycle), "White Folks be Trippin'".
~ Martin Bashir Show in MSNBC
Trustworthy economic data is a very valuable public good that serves as a useful production input for tons of private businesses. It also helps smaller-scale government agencies and nonprofits make smarter decisions. And last but by no means least, precisely because the BLS is credible presidents know that they'd take an enormous political hit if they were seen as manipulating it.
~ Matt Yglesias on Slate:
The way things are going, if the GOP doesn't win this election, I'd say there's a 20% chance of a congressional investigation into vote fraud and a 5% chance of an Avignon Presidency set up by those who refuse to believe the election was lost.
~ David Weigel on Slate
Today’s full-scale freakout over a decent jobs report is a sight to behold. Spare me the false equivalence: yes, you occasionally find people on the left claiming that the numbers have been faked or the truth hidden, but not leading figures in the media and major-league plutocrats. (Next time people try to portray Jack Welch as an icon of success, a man we should listen to, remember this moment)
. . . The thing is, although such antics are funny in a way, they’re also menacing. By attacking anyone who presents awkward facts, the right exerts an intimidating effect. It won’t get the BLS to retract today’s jobs report, but it might bully news organizations into avoiding objective economic analysis, and maybe even into blurring their reporting right now.
So this is crazy and stupid; but it’s also scary.
~ Paul Krugman on The New York Times
COOPER: Well, you said these Chicago guys will do anything.
WELCH: A question mark might have been better. Last night I had a question mark.
COOPER: So you wish you would have --
WELCH: A question mark would have been better.
COOPER: So, you don't really stand by the notion --
WELCH: I stand by it. I stand by that these numbers have to be examined.
...
WELCH: Somebody ought to be investigating. Somebody should have looked at this and said wait a minute, we just dropped the GDP this much. How can we have the greatest economy since June of '83?
COOPER: But, there are legitimate questions about how the house - I mean, it seems like your problem is how the household survey is done and that's very legitimate. There are always questions and they're always revising the numbers.
WELCH: I want to have a long discussion about it.
COOPER: Right. And certainly, your tweet certainly has provoked discussion but again --
WELCH: It's to important. This election is too important for one number based on 60,000 phone calls and 100 million plus people to determine the outcome.
COOPER: But again -- to say these Chicago guys will do anything --
WELCH: That's what I tweeted.
COOPER: Right. But, you don't stand by that tonight?
WELCH: What do you mean, I don't stand by it? I've got a tweet out there. I stand by it.
. . .
ALI VELSHI: There are two great facts you make, Jack. You know, as the best CEO America has ever had, there are two very powerful things you can say here. One is let's take a look at how the BLS, bureau of labor statistics and department of labor measures unemployment, number one, and b, maybe you think Barack Obama's not doing a good job and Mitt Romney should be replacing him. But to honestly suggest that there's corruption, that the Obama campaign may have had something to do with cooking these books, why do you need to do that at a time when U.S. trust for government and institutions is at an all-time low. That is not good for society. What does Jack Welch gain by introducing this? There are so many CEOs who talk nonsense. What do you gain from this, Jack? Why don't you take this opportunity to take it back?
WELCH: Ali, I love you. I'm not talking nonsense, OK?
VELSHI: I love you more, Jack, but fix this.
WELCH: Wait a minute. Wait a minute before we have this love- fest. I told you that these numbers are implausible. We don't have a five percent GDP growth in this quarter. We don't have it, Ali. We revised the second quarter down, I'm involved in 14 businesses, I've been looking at them over the last week. The third quarter is not strong. It's not strong, from restaurants --
VELSHI: OK. Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this, Jack.
I agree with you. This is a lousy economy. 1.3 percent GDP growth is lousy and yet on Wednesday night, Mitt Romney said again and by the way, Barack Obama backs up this claim that either one of them will create 12 million jobs in four years. That is three million jobs a year or 250,000 jobs a month. We got 114.
At 1.3 percent economic growth there's not an economist in this country who thinks it will be higher than three percent in 2013 and probably similar in 2014 and 2015. That's a lie, too, right? Why don't you call Mitt Romney out on that?
WELCH: Well, because Mitt Romney is thinking about a plan which would lower regulations, which would change the tax, which would drive an energy policy that's very aggressive. I don't know if he's going to get 12. I'm not a Romney surrogate. I'm not in the campaign. I have never talked to the campaign. I have nothing to do with Romney. I just believe this number should not determine the outcome of the presidential election. Did you see today -- VELSHI: I agree with you. Jack, you're a hero to business people in this country. You're a hero to all sorts of people. Just do it now. Let's do it. I can go back to loving you and you can go back to loving me. Just do it now and say it's not right what you said. Nobody cooked the books. You don't truly believe that, do you?
WELCH: I said I should have put a question mark at the back of it.
Welch: Chris these numbers are a series of assumptions. Tons of assumptions. And it just seems somewhat coincidental that the month before the election the numbers go one-tenth of a number below where it was when the President started. Although I don't see anything in the economy that says these surges are true. The 873,000 jobs in the household survey is the strongest economy since 1983. I don't think you can find an economist - there were 25 of them this morning that predicted 8.1 to 8.2 but they did predict 114,000 jobs. We got 114,000 jobs. And somehow the assumptions ended up at 7.8%.
Matthews: Let me just go back to your tweet this morning. It must be embarrassing for you to do a tweet now with the power you used to have. I mean "tweeting" doesn't seem like something I'd see from Jack Welch and I mean it. But here - you put out the word here - "Unbelievable jobs numbers" - fair enough - "these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers." What evidence do you have that they got to the BLS, that Chicago guys got to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and jimmyed these numbers by .3% as you put it?
Welch: I have no evidence to prove that. I just raised the question.
Matthews: No, you didn't just raise the question. (reads tweet again) So you're just asserting here in your tweet that you put out at 8:35 a.m. this morning, five minutes after the report came out. Did you talk to any economists or anyone in the National Income Accounting world that understood how these numbers were put together before you accused the "Chicago Guys" of changing the numbers?
Welch: Chris, I know that these numbers are gathered by a series of wild assumptions. Maybe they weren't right at 8.5 - maybe they weren't right at 8.4 - but it seems coincidental that one month before the election they would end up at 7.8%.
The President today is on the stump. The President - all he's talked about is 7.8. He didn't mention 600,000 jobs added in the government sector . . .
Chris: See, you're . . . It’s not your attitude about Obama people care about, it's your analysis. And you came out this morning and asserted, not a question mark, or concern about a coincidence, but you say "These Chicago guys will do anything so they change the numbers." Do you want to take that back?
Welch: No. I don't want to take anything back.
Matthews: This is an assertion that there was jimmying with the numbers, that there was corruption here, that there was infiltration getting to--
Welch: Laughs
Matthews: It’s not funny, Jack. You’re talking about the President of the United States playing with the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ numbers. This is Nixon stuff. This is what Nixon did back in the old days, accused of this.
Welch: Chris, don’t lose it now.
Matthews: I'm not losing it. (smiles) Look at my face, I'm not losing it.
Welch: I can't see your face.
Matthews: Do you want to take back the charge that there was corruption here?
Welch: No, I don't want to take back one word in that tweet.
Matthews: So you assert right now as of 5 o'clock this afternoon that (reads tweet again).
Welch: I didn't say what they did, I said they'll do anything.
Matthews: And what did they do here?
Welch: They've been calling Mitt Romney a liar, a falsehood, for the last 48 hours after the debate.
Matthews: But you don't have any independent evidence. You didn't - from the time the numbers came out this morning at 8:30 and 8:35 when you tweeted. You didn't use that 5 minutes to gather any actual information or evidence?
Welch: No but Chris, I tweeted last night that I predicted they'd be at 7.9%.
@dmacd11 at 7.9 it would be Chicago and labor Sec in action
Matthews: Okay. And? Why did you make that prediction?
Welch: 'Cause I guessed that's what would happen a month before the election.
Matthews: So you guessed that the "Chicago Guys" would do this.
Welch: Well . . . I don't want to put words in the mouth of what I said last night. But that's what I did.
Matthews: Let's go back to the tweet. What started this whole band today, with people with a lot less IQ than you, and certainly a lot less business sense, like Alan West, and some of the real screwballs out there are following the band you're leading, and the band you put together today was that there's corruption here from the Chicago people, meaning the guys around President Obama, got to the BLS and manipulated the numbers.
Welch: Chris, stop it, now! I reviewed 15 businesses this week, from restaurants to rental cars to widgets. I have seen everybody with a third quarter equal-to or weaker-than a first quarter. In order to get 873,000 new jobs you would have to have a GDP going at 4-5%. The second quarter was downgraded from 1.7 to 1.3. The third quarter is not going to be very strong. It just defies the imagination to have a surge larger than any surge since 1983 a month before the election. I leave it to you to do all the analysis.
Matthews: (Reads Quote from Keith Hall, previous Head of Bureau of Labor Statistics that "numbers are good") So why do you know more than him? Do you really think - it gets back to the question of integrity. Do you believe the BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, lacks integrity? That a President of the United States . . . Nixon said he could never get to them. He used to say there was an ethnic factor, that they were all Jewish people over there and he didn't trust them. He thought they were all out to get him. Now you say the President controls the BLS? Previous Presidents said they couldn't get their hands in that place because it was so independent.
Welch: You don't think it's coincidental that we've got the biggest surge since 1983 in the job surge? Come on, Chris.
Matthews: It's .3 of one percent shift this month. It went from 8.1 down to 7.8.
Welch: It was .2 - 8.3 last month, 8.1 to 7.8 this month. It's a 6% improvement in employment in two months. Chris! 6% improvement? It would require a GDP - the numbers -
Matthews: Jack, all I want to know is when we write this down three weeks from now or four weeks when the election's over, I want to know what you meant. Do you mean it's a coincidence, or do you mean you have evidence that there was corruption here in these numbers.
Welch: No evidence of corruption. None whatsoever.
Matthews: Okay. So these "Chicago guys" had nothing to do with the numbers that came out today.
Welch: Oh, I don't know that.
Matthews: Then why'd you say it? (reads tweet again). You just said it in your tweet! I'm always careful when I tweet, Jack. I usually have someone like my producer and say 'read my tweet.'
Welch: I'm careful too.
Matthews: Do you stand behind your tweet?
Welch: I wanna raise the question of these numbers.
Matthews: You just raised the question.
Welch: Chris, these numbers defy logic. They defy logic. We do not have a 4-5% booming economy with 873,000 people added. I mean - stop it, Chris! On the face of it, we don't have this GDP. I love you, but you can't get there.
Matthews: I think you're a great brilliant businessman who's in some ways - I wish you were in charge of my stock options these days because you made a lot of money for us here. But let me ask you this one more time so that all the people out there of lesser intellect will stop marching in your band - Jack Welch thinks this is a coincidence. Jack Welch does not think the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the boys in Chicago changed the numbers.
Welch: No, no - Jack Welch is raising the question for some good analyst to go look at.
Matthews: Okay, good - you're raising the question. You certainly did that. Jack Welch, thank you very much for joining us at the very top of Hardball tonight.
It's tough being middle class in America right now. The waiters and waitresses that come in and out of this room and offer us refreshments, they're not having a good year. The people of the middle class of America are really struggling. And they're struggling I think in a way because they're surprised because when they voted for Barack Obama...he promised them that things were going to get a heck a lot of better. He promised hope and change and they're still waiting. ~ Candidate Mitt Romney at a $50,000-a-plate dinner in Mississippi
"We’re accused, by the way — in our party — of being the party of the rich,” Romney told the crowd among the tinkling of glasses. “And it’s an awful moniker, because that’s just not true. We’re the party of people who want to get rich. And we’re also the party of people who want to care to help people from getting poor. We want to help the poor."
~ Via the Atlanta Journal Constitution
Many of the 300-plus attending were among the wealthiest in the state, and sprinkled among them were some of the state’s powerful political figures, including Gov. Phil Bryant and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves.
U.S. Reps. Alan Nunnelee and Gregg Harper also were in attendance during Monday night’s event that raised over $1.7 million — with ticket prices set at $2,500, $10,000 or $50,000.
The presidential hopeful charmed the crowd, provoking more than one ovation (they already were all standing).
There were men and women dressed in cocktail attire — sharp suits and black dresses — accompanied by the traditional seersucker suit look that seems to always make its way into any formal Southern event.
One woman showed her enthusiasm by her bright pink outfit.
And once the speeches were made and the last glass of wine put down, the club cleared quickly. Even with the celebratory mood in the room, by the time 7 p.m. hit, the party was over. It was time to go home.
Romney to waiters at $50,000-a-plate fundraiser: "Obama has let down you ghastly peasant rubes most of all. Now bring our feast of ossifrage in aspic and abscond via the service chute, that we might be spared your hideous countenance"
~ Fark.com
What better time than a high-dollar country club fundraiser to defend against charges of plutocracy and express sympathy for the little people?
~ comment by Laura Clawson on Daily Kos
If the GOP cared about the poor, they would not block every thing in the house, that alone is proof they do not care about the poor people in this country.
~ comment by J Mullis on ABC News
Romney only pretends to care about whether waiters and waitresses are having a bad year.#PoliticsNation
— Armenta Chavis (@ChavezChavis) July 17, 2012
Romney: "One day when waiters and waitresses become millionaires they can claim $77,000 tax break for horses too" dailykos.com/story/2012/07/…#p2
— karl knox (@knoxkp) July 17, 2012
Romney: "Times are hard for the waiters here. Why else would they staff an event for a group that wants to destroy their quality of life?"
— Mark Loiseau (@markloiseau) July 17, 2012
Mitt Romney raise more than $1.7 million in contributions during Monday's fundraiser in Jackson, Ms the poorest state in the nation #tcot
— Napolean (@Buckhead_CEO) July 17, 2012
#politicsNation I'm hoping some of the waiters at Romney's$50k event after his stupid comment gave the guests a phlegm burger.
— D D West (@DellaATL) July 17, 2012
He (President Obama) does not want you to have the self-esteem of getting up and earning, and having that title of American. He'd rather you be his slave.
~ Alan West quoted in Huffington Post
. . . an unfortunate consequence of failing economic policies coming from the president so that now when people are running out of the unemployment benefits, now they are looking toward going on Social Security disability… so once again we are creating the sense of economic dependence, which to me is a form of modern, 21st century slavery.
~ Rep. Allen West (R-FL) on Fox News via ThinkProgress
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The whole Republican party are slaves of Norquist, the tea party and the right wing religious and afraid to say, "NO" to them. If that isn't slavery, you Republican, scared ditto heads had better speak up and begin saying "NO" to following liars & hate jocks.
~ comment by IamRebelRiser on Huff Post
There are 500,000 more registered Dems than Cons in FL. The UN needs to monitor FL elections like it;s a foreign country. It is becoming more and more incomprehensible that people actually vote for candidates like West.
~ comment by Lynettema on Huff Post
Really, how far is today's GOP from "freedom is slavery, war is peace, ignorance is strength"? Orwell knew his stuff.
~ comment by 17andLiberal on Huff Post
Yeah, because it's SO easy to get SS Disability, everyone whose unemployment has run out is trying to get on SS.
Where do they get these guys?
Where do they get these ideas?
It frequently takes YEARS for people under age 65 to get on disability... even when they're truly disabled!!
~ comment by NonetheWyzzer on Huff Post
Social Security is slavery. Being worked to death on a plantation for no money is laissez-faire capitalism. Got it.
~ comment by Tax the Church on Huff Post
How is being paid because you are disabled and can't work anything like slavery? Slavery is working for nothing. SS disability is the antithesis of slavery and is more like what Romney does without the inconvnience of being disabled, waiting for the monthly check o arrive without having done anything recently to get it.
~ comment by Mitch Smith on ThinkProgress
“For the president of the United States to stand up and say the private sector is doing fine is going to go down in history as an extraordinary miscalculation and misunderstanding by a president who’s out of touch,” the GOP hopeful charged.
“And his answer for economic vitality, by the way, was, of course, pushing aside the private sector, which he said is doing fine,” Romney continued. “Instead, he wants to add more to government. He wants another stimulus. He wants to hire more government workers." “He says we need more firemen, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did! It’s time for us to cut back on government!”
~ Mitt Romney Via Raw Story
One of the biggest weaknesses has been state and local governments, which have laid off 450,000 Americans. These are teachers and cops and firefighters. Congress should pass a bill putting them back to work right now, giving help to the states so that those layoffs are not occurring.
~ Line from an Obama Ad hitting back at Romney
KILMEADE: [Obama] says you want to cut firefighters and teachers, that you don’t understand what’s going on in these communities. What do you say to that, governor? ROMNEY:Well, that’s a very strange accusation. Of course, teachers and firemen and policemen are hired at the local level and also by states. The federal government doesn’t pay for teachers, firefighters or policemen. So obviously that’s completely absurd.
~ Mitt Romney on Fox and Friends stating that certain public jobs receive no federal funds, when in fact they do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sounded like an attack on public workers to me. Um...does he know HE'S a public worker? Maybe someone should tell him.
~ comment by catgirl1973 on ABC News
Federal block grants to states were introduced in 1973. They were mostly used for the 3 professions Romney refers to. As Gov of Mass. he filtered that money to municipalities for the very thing he now disparages.
~ comment by WowJones on Huffington Post
It seems like Mitt could have taken time away from his busy schedule to read up on what the federal government spends money on by now.
~ comment by onasphere on Huff Post
I think they have gone stark raving mad! Lets see we have heard how awful American schools are and we are not competing with other nations and yet you have Romney saying we need less teachers. Romney has not a clue. From his past bulling and other things it is clear he skated through school also ! They would pack kids in a class room like sardines and careless ! Pathetic is what they are!!!!
~ comment by Pam52 on MSNBC
Willard's campaign is an on going, avante garde, theater of the absurd. Way, way off Broadway and totally unaware of recording devices.
~ comment by Hoodathunk on Raw Story
I'm sure the Federal Government (or any governmental agency) didn't fund the schools Mitt Romney (or his kids) attended.
Give Mitt a break. He's new at this "being just a regular guy" thing. His team is attempting to gather all of Mitt's (seemingly) contradictory positions, so they can try to come up with a coherent, somewhat believable explanation (at least to the average Fox News viewer).
~ comment by Docmark on Huffington Post
Mitt Romney: We don't need more firefighters! Times are tough, America. If your house is on fire, just move to one of your other ones!
