Day: 5/14/2012

Mitt Romney’s Impotent Response To Obama’s Campaign Ad

Posted by on May 14, 2012 at 2:19 pm. 4 Comments :

As I reported earlier today, the Obama campaign released an ad that criticized Mitt Romney’s failed record of job creation while at Bain Capital. Now Romeny’s camp has weighed in with their own ad that seeks to rehabilitate Romney’s reputation.

My earlier article noted the rapid response attack on Obama’s ad by Romney’s comrades at Fox News. I also noted that their attack was a pathetic effort that failed to make their case against the President. If they are interested in learning how a credible rebuttal is constructed, they should pay attention to the way ThinkProgress has responded to Romney’s ad. Firstly, ThinkProgress noted that the Romney ad…

“…implies that the plant would not have been built without Romney’s assistance. Steele Dynamics ‘almost never got started,’ the narrator says. ‘When others shied away, Mitt Romney’s private-sector leadership team stepped in.’

“But the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reported at the time (via Nexis), that Bain was just one of eight financiers for the project — hardly the lone white knight.”

They went on to reveal that in addition to the numerous investors in the business, it also was not the free-market miracle that Romney implied. In fact, it received millions of dollars from local and state funding, including revenue generated specifically by raising taxes to support the new company. In other words, just about every point that Romney made was rendered moot by a recitation of the facts.

I would add to this analysis that, while the citizens featured in Obama’s ad were all identified, those in the Romney ad were all anonymous. For all we know they were actors, because there is no way to certify their identities or their glowing accounts. Which is further evidence that Obama’s ad team produces documented facts while Romney’s people pump out propaganda.

Fox Nation’s Impotent Attacks On Obama’s Campaign Ad

Posted by on May 14, 2012 at 12:13 pm. 3 Comments :

The Obama campaign released a new ad today that points out Mitt Romney’s failed record on job creation as the CEO of Bain Capital. It tells the story of former employees of a company that Bain drove into bankruptcy, destroying the jobs and dreams of the people who worked there for decades.

It didn’t take long for Fox to ramp up a rebuttal to the ad. In fact, they rushed two responses to their Fox Nation web site in the hopes of quickly diminishing the impact of the ad. Unfortunately, they neglected to insure that their rebuttals made any sense.

Fox Nation

In one of the articles the Fox Nationalists assert that the “Obama Camp Attacks Capitalism.” However, nowhere in their article do they support that assertion. It is just a dangling notion that appears to rest on the fact that the Obama ad criticizes Romney for presiding over the loss of thousands of jobs while he ran Bain Capital – which is unarguably true. In fact, Romney’s own response to the ad doesn’t argue with its truthfulness. It said simply that “We welcome the Obama campaign’s attempt to pivot back to jobs and a discussion of their failed record.” It never disputed the facts presented in the ad. However, it did make a laughable attempt to tie Obama to “wealthy campaign donors,” apparently forgetting that it is Romney who is most dependent of such support.

The other article makes an even more blatantly false claim that Obama’s ad had been debunked. The substance of the debunking consisted of presenting a timeline that supposedely absolves Romney of any responsibility: “Romney’s departure from Bain: 1999. GST Bankruptcy Filing and layoffs: 2001.”

That’s true, but it neglects to note that it was Romney’s actions while at Bain that resulted in the bankruptcy. As noted in the ad: (and at Obama’s RomneyEconomics web page) 1993: Romeny and his partners invest $8 million to acquire GST. 1995: Merger creates $378 million in debt. 2001: GST files for bankruptcy with $500 million in debt. With Romney at the helm, Bain had sucked the blood (and money) out of GST leaving it unable to meet its obligations. The profits Bain secured were all prior to his departure in 2001. The fact that the shell of the company didn’t collapse for a couple of years after Romney left is irrelevant.

So neither rebuttal to the ad hits home if all the facts are presented. And it’s notable that even Romney’s response did not dispute the facts in the ad. But none of that prevented Fox from posting not just one, but two lame rebuttals that will be devoured by their dimwitted audience.

Fox News Culture War: Obama’s Gay Marriage Endorsement Like Another 9/11

Posted by on May 14, 2012 at 11:34 am. 2 Comments :

Leave it to Fox News to escalate every political discussion to a nuclear holocaust. In the wake of President Obama’s personal support for gay marriage, Fox, and the rest of the Right-Wing Noise Machine, has declared yet another “war.”

Fox News Culture Warrior

And if it’s not enough that Fox characterizes a position with which the majority of the country concurs as hostile, they up the ante by posting an item on their Fox Nation site that compares this position to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Fox Nation

The Fox Nationalists quote controversial right-wing pastor Dwight McKissic, who has a history of virulently anti-gay rhetoric. He has said that the Anti-Christ will be gay and that Hurricane Katrina was God’s wrath on the “sinners” of New Orleans. He also says that the gay rights movement was inspired “from the pit of hell itself.” Now he says of Obama’s remarks that…

“The moral impact of this day and decision is equal to the military impact of AL-Queda when they attacked the Twin Towers on 911.”

Of course. It’s exactly the same thing. Who could deny the similarities between extremist religious zealots murdering thousands of innocent people, and the President’s expression of support for unconditional love. If there is any similarity it is between the Muslim radicals who hate homosexuality as much as Christian radicals do.

Fox, for its part, is demonstrating their innate bigotry by providing a national platform for McKissic’s repugnant views. They are giving a megaphone to a known homophobe and professional hate monger. And nowhere in their reporting do they elaborate on the character of McKissic. They do, however, go out of their way to note that McKissic is black, a fact that has no bearing on the subject other than as an attempt to create a wedge between the African-American community and the President.

The Fox faction is again demonstrating their desperation to smear the President because they have no substantive case to make for their own candidate, Mitt Romney. Expect to see more of this culture war propaganda as the campaign progresses. It’s the only thing that Fox and their GOP enablers have to talk about.