Remember when Ron Paul was at the GOP convention and his delegates were kicked out? Remember when this guy was trying to speak, probably trying for the love of republic and this old ignorant hag shoved paper in his face? Remember when they gave Ron Paul 89 seconds in the debates when the other candidates got 20 minutes? Remember when they blacked him out, totally leaving his name out of polls, removing his face from the graphics as though he didn't even exist? Do you remember the documented GOP voter fraud in Maine, Nevada and Washington? Do you remember every time you turned on the TV, radio or picked up a newspaper and Ron Paul was brought up, how he was a "racist, old, anti semitic, isolationist with a tin foiled hat"?
Maybe if you didn't follow the campaign closely you have forgotten these things. I haven't forgotten. We haven't forgotten. These atrocities are still fresh in our minds, it seems like yesterday I was livid about Ron Paul getting less than 1.5 minutes when everyone else got 20 and I took out my anger by doubling down, by reading more, writing more, talking to people about Ron Paul more. I still remember 2008 when Giuliani tried to make Ron Paul look stupid on the national stage just so he could look patriotic. And when the ghoul Carl Cameron disrespected Dr. Paul asking "the next question is on electability, do you have any sir". These things will never be forgotten, they are just fuel.
So We The People, the true patriots, the the remnant who wants to keep this once great republic just as the Founders intended, WE SHUT MITT ROMNEY AND THE ENTIRE GOP DOWN!
So think twice you rats before you fuck with us again.
Congratulations America, you did it. You rejected the only man who has a proven track record of abiding by the Constitution, the only one who is true to the vision of our founders. You pissed on this man, you laughed along with Hannity, you let Fox News and talk radio fill your head so full of shit it was running out of your ears.
The way Ron Paul was treated by the jews media and by the GOP left a taste so bitter in my mouth I will never forget it. I said at the time when Ron Paul was constantly slandered to the point where he lost the primary, that if he isn't the nominee I hope they lose every single election from now until eternity. I'm not going to just go along and grab my ankles and vote for some marxist asshat like Mitt for Brains.
So way to go America, you rejected the only man who could've beaten Obama, twice.
People get the government they deserve, unfortunately in a democracy I also get the government they deserve. Which is one reason why democracy is a horrendous system.
We have already seen evidence that a Romney victory will lead to black on White crime, and today may be your last day to prepare. So I hope everyone is doing last minute preparations, and topping your car and spare gas cans with fuel.
I will remind you that after BHO won the first time, ammunition was incredibly scarce even a year later. Every gun I saw doubled in price for at least a year so if you are on the fence, now is the time to buy when things are still relatively available.
If you live in a high crime area, be doubly on your guard tomorrow as we may see all manner of shenanigans before during and after the polls close.
They aren't permitted to ask each other questions, propose pledges to each other, or walk outside a "predesignated area." And for the town-hall-style debate tomorrow night, the audience members posing questions aren't allowed to ask follow-ups (their mics will be cut off as soon as they get their questions out). Nor will moderator Candy Crowley.
Most bizarrely, given the way the debates have played out, the rules actually appear to forbid television coverage from showing reaction shots of the candidates: "To the best of the Commission's abilities, there will be no TV cut-aways to any candidate who is not responding to a question while another candidate is answering a question or to a candidate who is not giving a closing statement while another candidate is doing so." The "best of the Commission's abilities" must be rather feeble, seeing as how almost every moment of the two debates so far was televised in split-screen, clearly showing shots of a "candidate who is not responding to a question while another candidate is answering a question."
Which means some of the rules below that both campaigns stipulated to in a desperate attempt to wring any serendipity out of the events may be honored in the breach:
"The candidates may not ask each other direct questions during any of the four debates."
"The candidates shall not address each other with proposed pledges."
"At no time during the October 3 First Presidential debate shall either candidate move from his designated area behing the respective podium."
For the October 16 town-hall-style debate, "the moderator will not ask follow-up questions or comment on either the questions asked by the audience or the answers of the candidates during the debate...."
"The audience members shall not ask follow-up questions or otherwise participate in the extended discussion, and the audience member's microphone shall be turned off after he or she completes asking the questions."
"[T]he Commission shall take appropriate steps to cut-off the microphone of any...audience member who attempts to pose any question or statement different than that previously posed to the moderator for review."
"No candidate may reference or cite any specific individual sitting in a debate audience (other than family members) at any time during a debate."
For the town-hall debate: "Each candidate may move about in a pre-designated area, as proposed by the Commission and approved by each campaign, and may not leave that area while the debate is underway."
Well it's been a long time since I have had an article with the good shabbas goy Glenn Beck in it.
So let me get this straight, in 08 Beck says RP supporters are "terrorists" sometime around 2010 he says RP is the wisest man ever, now in 2012 he says that RP supporters need to give it up and rally behind the pro abortion, pro war, pro tax, pro universal healthcare Romney. And you think Glenn Beck really has core convictions?
Check out the "Glenn Beck" tag for more stories shining light on this snake.
Today, Glenn Beck on his radio show called on Ron Paul supporters to stop supporting Ron Paul, he is not running. Prior to that statement, Beck also stated that he’s an Independent and not a Republican or a Democrat and discussed the polls numbers between Romney and Obama with his co-host, Pat Gray.
Beck's comments came toward the end of the show when Beck stated his views about the Ron Paul supporters and said, “Ron Paul people, I have had it up to here.”
“Romney called the Fed and begged them not to do this. Romney is not an “abolish” the Fed guy but at least he’s a “Let’s not burn the country down guy”,” Glenn said.
Glenn went on to say, “You guys are so delusional you’re going to lead to the Arab Spring. What is wrong with you people? Ron Paul is not running. He’s not running.”
“Please by all that is holy, don’t split that vote,” Pat said in reference to libertarians who want to vote for Gary Johnson.
“If you think he can win God bless you then vote for him. If you’re trying to make some point you’re out of your mind,” Glenn added.
On Obama if he is reelected, Beck stated, “Obama’s going to be worse than he was in the first four years. What do you think when he says I’m going to get a little more latitude when I’m elected the second time? What do you think he’s going to do?”
His war was almost over. Or so Marina Buckley thought when her son, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr., told her that he would be returning from southern Afghanistan to his Marine Corps base in Hawaii in late August, three months early.
Instead, Buckley became the 1,990th U.S. service member to die in the war when, on Aug. 10, he and two other Marines were shot inside their base in Helmand Province by a man who appears to have been a member of the Afghan forces they were training.
A week later, with the death of Army Specialist James Justice in a military hospital in Germany, the U.S. military reached 2,000 dead in the nearly 11-year-old conflict, based on an analysis by the New York Times of Defense Department records. The calculation includes deaths not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan and other nations where U.S. forces are directly involved in aiding the war.
Nearly nine years passed before U.S. forces reached their first 1,000 dead in the war. The second 1,000 came just 27 months later, a testament to the intensity of fighting prompted by President Obama's decision to send 33,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in 2010, a policy known as the surge.
A higher casualty rate
In more ways than his family might have imagined, Buckley, who had just turned 21 when he died, typified the troops in that second wave of 1,000. According to the Times analysis, three out of four were white, nine out of 10 were enlisted service members and one out of two died in either Kandahar Province or Helmand Province in Taliban-dominated southern Afghanistan. Their average age was 26.
The dead were also disproportionately Marines like Buckley. Though the Army overall has suffered more dead in the war, the Marine Corps, with fewer troops, has had a higher casualty rate: At the height of fighting in late 2010, two out of every 1,000 Marines in Afghanistan were dying, twice the rate of the Army.
Suffering the most casualties was the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment out of Camp Pendleton, Calif. Twenty-five of its Marines died and more than 180 were wounded, many with multiple amputations, during a seven-month deployment in Helmand that began in fall 2010.
The analysis also shows that Army casualties during the surge fell heaviest on two bases with frequently deployed units: Fort Campbell in Kentucky, home to the 101st Airborne Division, which recorded the most Army deaths in the surge, and Fort Drum in New York, home to the 10th Mountain Division.
The summer remained the peak season for fighting, with the single highest period for U.S. deaths being July, August and September 2010, when at least 143 troops died. And as has been the case since at least 2008, improvised explosive devices, known as IEDs, remained a leading cause of death and injury, along with small-arms fire, the analysis showed.
Insider attacks
But this year, a new threat emerged: attacks by Afghans dressed in the uniforms of Afghan security forces. In just the past two weeks, at least nine Americans have been killed in such insider attacks, and for the year to date, at least 39 non-Afghan troops, most of them American, have been killed by men dressed as members of the Afghan security forces, the most since the war began.
Those insider attacks have increased concerns about NATO's ability to turn security operations over to Afghan forces by 2014, the deadline set by Obama for withdrawing the remaining U.S. forces.
For families, the deaths have raised hard questions about whether the Pentagon is doing enough to protect its troops from their own allies.
Staff Sgt. Scott Dickinson was coming home early. He was originally scheduled to remain in Helmand until November 2012, but the Pentagon was pulling Marines out of Afghanistan quickly, looking to get the surge forces out of the country by fall and shrink the U.S. footprint to about 70,000 troops. He would be home in Hawaii within a week or two, he told his father early this month.
Not long after that conversation, his father, John Dickinson, saw an article about a soldier who had died just a week before he was to come home. "I thought, 'He's not safe until he sets foot in Hawaii,' " recalled Dickinson, an architect in San Diego.
He was right. Dickinson, 29, a supply specialist who had volunteered to help train Afghan forces, died with Buckley on Aug. 10. They were among six Marines killed that day in two separate attacks by men who appeared to be Afghan security force members.
Has it made a difference?
The Pentagon asserts that most of those attacks have been the result of personal grudges, disputing Taliban claims to have widely infiltrated the Afghan security forces. But the attacks have raised anew concerns about the integrity of the Afghan forces that NATO expects to secure the entire nation after NATO troops withdraw in 2014.
More fundamentally, the continued deaths, occurring even as U.S. forces are conducting fewer combat missions, have prompted service members and military families alike to wonder: Has the decade-long U.S. presence in Afghanistan made a difference?
Lt. Col. Jason Morris, the former commander of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment at Camp Pendleton, who led his troops in 2010 into Helmand Province, Afghanistan's opium-producing heartland, has little doubt that it has. After months of fierce fighting, he saw clear changes when he left in early 2011. Those improvements remain, he asserts, with residents participating in elections and going to school with less fear of Taliban intimidation.
"Every single Marine in my battalion could see the impact they had," he said. "Things had changed so dramatically, it was a validation of everything they had sacrificed for."
Despite his son's death, Dickinson agrees. Marina Buckley is not so sure.
She recalled how her son watched "The Notebook" five times with her because he was a romantic. "He was the most lovable, caring human being," she said. "He wore his heart on his sleeve. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful."
He had wanted to join the Marine Corps ever since 9/11, despite her many attempts to dissuade him. He came to relish the brotherhood of the Marines and adored his first posting, in Hawaii. But deployment was a different matter. The loneliness, the heat and the Meals Ready to Eat wore on him, Buckley said. And he never felt secure living alongside Afghans, she said.
"If they want to kill themselves, let them," she said of the Afghan people. "But they are killing people who shouldn't be killed, who have lives here, and family here, and brothers and sisters here."
Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Postreported
that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an
investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a
medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion
groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning
clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to
sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the
revelation had the potential to damage the candidate's reputation among
values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion.
But Bain Capital, the
private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The
company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled
2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with
the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed
by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and
obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant
in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a
poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in
profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was
signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney's exit
from Bain.
The Stericycle deal—the abortion connection aside—is relevant because
of questions regarding the timing of Romney's departure from the
private equity firm he founded. Responding to a recent Washington Poststory
reporting that Bain-acquired companies outsourced jobs, the Romney
campaign insisted that Romney exited Bain in February 1999, a month or
more before Bain took over two of the companies named in the Post's
article. The SEC documents undercut that defense, indicating that
Romney still played a role in Bain investments until at least the end of
1999.
Here's what happened with Stericycle. In November 1999, Bain Capital
and Madison Dearborn Partners, a Chicago-based private equity firm,
filed with the SEC a Schedule 13D,
which lists owners of publicly traded companies, noting that they had
jointly purchased $75 million worth of shares in Stericycle, a
fast-growing player in the medical-waste industry. (That April,
Stericycle had announced plans to buy the medical-waste businesses of
Browning Ferris Industries and Allied Waste Industries.) The SEC filing
lists assorted Bain-related entities that were part of the deal,
including Bain Capital (BCI), Bain Capital Partners VI (BCP VI), Sankaty
High Yield Asset Investors (a Bermuda-based Bain affiliate), and
Brookside Capital Investors (a Bain offshoot). And it notes that Romney
was the "sole shareholder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and
President of BCI, BCP VI Inc., Brookside Inc. and Sankaty Ltd."
The
document also states that Romney "may be deemed to share voting and
dispositive power with respect to" 2,116,588 shares of common stock in
Stericycle "in his capacity as sole shareholder" of the Bain entities
that invested in the company. That was about 11 percent of the
outstanding shares of common stock. (The whole $75 million investment
won Bain, Romney, and their partners 22.64 percent of the firm's
stock—the largest bloc among the firm's owners.) The original copy of
the filing was signed by Romney.
Another SEC document
filed November 30, 1999, by Stericycle also names Romney as an
individual who holds "voting and dispositive power" with respect to the
stock owned by Bain. If Romney had fully retired from the private equity
firm he founded, why would he be the only Bain executive named as the
person in control of this large amount of Stericycle stock?
Stericycle was a lucrative investment for Romney and Bain. The
company had entered the medical-waste business a decade earlier, when it
took over a food irradiation plant in Arkansas and began zapping
medical waste, rather than strawberries, with radiation. The company
subsequently replaced irradiation with a technology that used
low-frequency radio waves to sterilize medical waste—gowns, masks,
gloves, and other medical equipment—before it was transported to an
incinerator. By mid-1997, Stericycle was the second-largest
medical-waste disposal business in the nation. Two years later, it was
the largest. With 240,000 customers, its operations spanned the United
States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Fortune ranked it No. 10 on its list of the 100 fastest growing companies in the nation.
But the company had its woes, accumulating a troubling safety record
along the way. In 1991, the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration cited its Arkansas operation for 11 workplace safety
violations. The facility had not provided employees with sufficient
protective gear, and it had kept body parts, fetuses, and dead
experimental animals in unmarked storage containers, placing workers at
risk. In 1995, Stericycle was fined $3.3 million—later decreased to
$800,000—by Rhode Island for knowingly exposing workers to
life-threatening diseases at its medical-waste treatment facility in
Woonsocket. Two years later, workers at another of its medical-waste
processing plants in Morton, Washington, were exposed to tuberculosis.
In 2002 and 2003—after Bain and its partners had bought their major
interest in the firm—Stericycle reached settlements with the attorneys
general in Arizona and Utah after it was accused of violating antitrust
laws. It paid Arizona $320,000 in civil penalties and lawyers' fees, and paid Utah $580,000.
Despite the firm's regulatory run-ins, the deal worked out well for
Bain. In 2001, the Bain-Madison Dearborn partnership that had invested
in the company sold 40 percent of its holdings in Stericycle for about
$88 million—marking a hefty profit on its original
investment of $75 million. The Bain-related group sold the rest of its
holdings by 2004. By that point it had earned $49.5 million.
It was not until six years later that anti-abortion activists would
target Stericycle for collecting medical waste at abortion clinics. A Stericycle official told Huffington Post
that its abortion clinics business constitutes a "small" portion of its
total operations. (Stericycle declined a request for comment from Mother Jones.)
In response to questions from Mother Jones, a spokeswoman
for Bain maintained that Romney was not involved in the Stericycle deal
in 1999, saying that he had "resigned" months before the stock purchase
was negotiated. The spokeswoman noted that following his resignation
Romney remained only "a signatory on certain documents," until his
separation agreement with Bain was finalized in 2002. And Bain issued
this statement: "Mitt Romney retired from Bain Capital in February
1999. He has had no involvement in the management or investment
activities of Bain Capital, or with any of its portfolio companies
since that time." (The Romney presidential campaign did not respond to
requests for comment.)
But the document Romney signed related to the Stericycle deal did
identify him as a participant in that particular deal and the person in
charge of several Bain entities. (Did Bain and Romney file a document
with the SEC that was not accurate?) Moreover, in 1999, Bain and Romney
both described his departure from Bain not as a resignation and far from
absolute. On February 12, 1999, the Boston Heraldreported, "Romney said he will stay on as a part-timer with Bain, providing input on investment and key personnel decisions." And a Bain press release
issued on July 19, 1999, noted that Romney was "currently on a
part-time leave of absence"—and quoted Romney speaking for Bain Capital.
In 2001 and 2002, Romney filed Massachusetts state disclosure forms
noting he was the 100 percent owner of Bain Capital NY, Inc.—a Bain
outfit that was incorporated in Delaware on April 13, 1999—two months
after Romney's supposed retirement from the firm. A May 2001 filing with
the SEC identified Romney as "a member of the Management Committee" of
two Bain entities. And in 2007, the Washington Postreported
that R. Bradford Malt, a Bain lawyer, said Romney took a "leave of
absence" when he assumed the Olympics post and retained sole ownership
of the firm for two more years.
All of this undermines Bain's contention that Romney, though he
maintained an ownership interest in the firm and its funds, had nothing
to do with the firm's activities after February 1999. The Stericycle
deal may raise red flags for anti-abortion activists. But it also raises
questions about the true timing of Romney's departure from Bain and
casts doubt on claims by the company and the Romney campaign that he had
nothing to do with Bain business after February 1999.
Not a chance in hell I'd vote for either Paul Ryan or Willard Romney, they can jump in a damn lake for all I'm concerned, this smooth talking bullshit might work with Obama because his supporters are low IQ ghetto dwellers, I however am not.
(CBS News) LAKEWOOD, Colo. -- Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan is scheduled to hold a private event on Tuesday evening in Las Vegas that reportedly includes GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson. But the event isn't a fundraiser; an aide said Ryan will take part in a meeting with Mitt Romney's Nevada Finance Leadership team that was scheduled before Romney tapped him as his running mate.
The Romney campaign hasn't always had a smooth relationship with Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate who spent millions of dollars backing former House Speaker Newt Gingrich during the GOP primary campaign. He has turned his support to Romney during the general election, and hosted a fundraiser for Romney during his recent trip to Israel.
The event, which will be held at the Venetian Hotel, will be closed to the news media. Romney generally has permitted coverage of fundraising events held in public venues, but an aide said the rule didn't apply in Ryan's case because the event isn't a fundraiser.
JERUSALEM--Mitt Romney took a break from meeting Israeli officials here this afternoon to visit the Western Wall, one of Judaism's holiest places.
Arriving on Tisha B'Av, a Jewish day of mourning, Romney was quickly surrounded by dozens of worshipers, some of them Americans.
The candidate and his wife, Ann, parted ways upon arrival at the historic site, also known as the Wailing Wall. Ann Romney went to a part of the wall restricted to women.
Surrounded by Secret Service and machine gun-holding Israeli security on a sunny day, Romney made his way to the wall, greeting and thanking admirers who were shouting their approval for the Republican.
He was met at the wall by a rabbi bearing a map of the site and chatted with him for a minute before taking a slip of paper and making an inscription. Romney put his right hand on the wall and bowed and prayed for about 20 seconds. He then found a clear space in the wall, which is filled with slips of paper, and put it in the crevice.
Leaving the wall, Romney was given a copy of a book, "Touching the Stone of Our Heritage," by the rabbi.
The candidate ignored a variety of questions shouted at him by both the American and Israeli press as well as the worshipers.
When of the Americans yelled, "Mr. Romney, say hello to Georgia!" the candidate looked over his shoulder and waved: "Hello, Georgia."
Other Jews at the wall yelled out pleas for Romney to stand with Israel, release Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard from prison and recognize Jerusalem as the Jewish capital.
Also present with Romney at the wall were his son, Josh, and one of his top donors, Phil Rosen, a New York lawyer, who is here partly for a Romney fundraiser tomorrow morning.
I have criticized Rand Paul for 2 years now, (here, here, here and here) and while I have slightly softened in the meantime I am still convinced fully that at best Rand is no Ron. At best he plays ball with hopes of changing the establishment from within (foolish) and at worst he is just an opportunist riding his fathers coattails into a powerful position.
I can't say that it came as a complete shock when I heard he had sung Mitt Romneys praises on Fox News, but it was maddening nonetheless.
