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Thursday, September 6, 2012

September 6, 2012 - Morning Headlines

- Bill Clinton, the Democratic National Convention's big-ticket speaker for Wednesday night, made his case for why the country should re-elect Barack Obama (Fox News): http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/05/bill-clinton-praises-obama-for-putting-america-on-long-road-to-recovery/

- The Secret Service is investigating an alleged theft of Mitt Romney's tax returns from PricewaterhouseCoopers (CBS News): http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57507097/secret-service-probing-claimed-theft-of-romney-tax-records-$1m-hush-money-demand/?tag=stack

- A new report by the Department of Labor shows that 15% of all Americans are now on Food Stamps (NBC News): http://bottomline.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/05/13682742-report-15-of-americans-on-food-stamps?lite

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7 comments:

  1. Interesting analysis over at politifact:
    http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/

    PolitiFact evaluated 508 promises and concluded that the president has kept 37% of them, compromised on 14% of them, has broken 16% of them, has gotten stalled on 10% of them and 22% are still "in the works."

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    1. Politifact has lost all credibility. It immediately claimed the Janesville WI GM plant closed before it checked its "facts." Local reports, former workers, and all other information showed that Paul Ryan was right, and the plant closed in 2009. On top of that, Paul Ryan NEVER made the claim that Obama said "I will keep this open." Politifact said that's what Ryan said, but it's not true. It's now air apparent they are in Obama's pocket, too.

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    2. Good morning Texas.

      I certainly understand your point, and approaching their articles with the same skepticism/magnifying glass as you would for other sources. I’m always for that.

      But I think it would be a bit disingenuous to immediately dismiss anything and everything coming from any site/person/article because of one mistake they’ve made. Of course I’m sure there are certainly more examples of where Politifact may have messed up, but most of their articles and statements require a minimum of 10+ other ‘credible’ sources backing the claim (which are found to the right of any given article, and openly invite criticizing to the legitimacy of their conclusions and findings).

      And in this case, most of their statements/analysis that I viewed thus far in the linked article appear relatively solid. I certainly still feel an element of ‘depends on perspective’ on some conclusions, but most of them feel completely fair (both ones supporting and against Obama/Democrats).

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  2. Darn my connection! I can't get into FB for the link I posted yesterday re: Romney's Tax Returns Hacked.

    That was the upshot of the article, but there were two comments from CPA's who claimed the 'claim' was 'very unlikely' to be true.

    The article stated that the 'hackers' had also obtained Romney's electronic signature on the forms.

    The CPA's said that they always prepare three copies of the forms - all are signed by them (the preparer) on delivery, BUT none are signed at the time by the customer.

    The customer 'normally' only signs the ONE copy that is sent to the I.R.S.

    I believe the whole thing is a hoax...

    But... IF the CPA's are right, and IF someone DID have copies of Romney's electronically signed tax returns, it would seem that in all probability they'd have HAD to come directly from the I.R.S.

    And I don't even want to THINK about the implications of that scenario..

    Watergate comes to mind.

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    1. Hi Dara,

      I can help you out with that, I saw a few articles mentioning that yesterday:
      http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2012/09/05/cp-hackers-say-they-nabbed-romneys-tax-records-through-franklin-office-plan-to-release
      http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/secret-service-takes-alleged-stolen-romney-tax-records-sent-williamson-political-g

      And the demands they made:
      http://pastebin.com/1j1yzQ9S

      Seems pretty unbelievable to me, though I wouldn’t put it past people to attempt to capitalize on the situation. Very low and completely unacceptable, in any case. No one benefits from these kinds of actions.

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    2. Good morning RKen, Dara, and Texas...

      Busy day for me at the office: yuck... but I did want to comment on this since I saw it on my phone.

      This is disgusting. I don't care who did this, left or right, or who it was done to... this isn't right. Thuggery should never be tolerated. The issue is not Mitt Romney's tax returns... it's theft. Additionally, this truly has nothing to do with his tax returns. The fact that these goons are holding them ransom for personal gain shows this. If this was truly a "Mitt should release his tax returns and if not, we will do it for him" they would do it without the ransom.

      I'm glad there are wise people like RKen, Dara, and everyone else out there that think, regardless of political affiliation, that any acts like these are abhorrent. Thanks to Dara and RKen to bringing the details of this to light. I hope more people see it.

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  3. My favorite part of the convention last night was the way that my Dallas Cowboys defeated the defending Super Bowl Champions, the New York Giants. On the Giants home field. HOW "BOUT THEM COWBOYS.

    My second favorite part of the DNC convention last night was the way that they held their little vote to put God and Jerusalem back in to the DNC platform. That definitely sounded like a 2/3rds majority vote to me. LOL Just kidding. It sounded pretty divided to me.

    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/05/Democrats-change-platform-God-Israel

    This may come as a surprise to some of you, the omission of God and Jerusalem originally was NOT 0bama's fault. Here is the real shocker though, it wasn't Bush's fault that it got left out.

    http://weaselzippers.us/2012/09/06/axelrod-and-jarret-throw-fellow-dems-under-the-bus-say-it-was-their-fault-jerusalem-and-god-were-left-out-of-democratic-platform/

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