THE HUFFINGTON POST

MASON CITY, Iowa — Mitt Romney on Thursday sought to portray President Barack Obama as out of touch with the struggles of everyday Americans — a charge he himself has often faced — by comparing the president to a former French queen who was overthrown during the French Revolution.

“When the president’s characterization of our economy was, ‘It could be worse,’ it reminded me of Marie Antoinette: ‘Let them eat cake,’” Romney said, referring to the infamously dismissive remark toward the poor attributed to the queen.

“This is not a time to be talking about, ‘It could be worse.’ It’s a time to recognize that things should be better,” Romney said during an interview on his campaign bus with The Huffington Post. “And the president’s policies have failed the American people, have led to 25 million people still being out of work. He didn’t cause the recession, but he has made it deeper and has made the recovery more tepid and the pain last longer.”

Obama said during a Wisconsin town hall meeting in June 2010 that “it’s hard to argue sometimes, things would have been a lot worse” without the stimulus plan he pushed through Congress. He also said that while unemployment was high, it was not as high as it could have been if he had done nothing.

The comments have become a regular talking point for Romney on the trail here in Iowa, as he seeks to keep his fire trained on the president. He has the luxury of doing so — just a few days ahead of next Tuesday’s caucuses — because the rest of the primary field is scrambled and increasingly looks unable to put forward an alternative who is capable of defeating him.

Romney said he could not predict whether unemployment will move down from its current level of 8.6 percent in the next year, ahead of the fall contest between the Republican nominee and the incumbent president.

“If I could predict what the unemployment rate was going to be a year from now, why, you know, I could demand the world,” he joked.

But he tried to undercut any argument the White House might make if the economy should improve even slightly this year.

“This has been already the worst recovery since Hoover. [Obama] may say it’s getting better and try to take credit for the fact that the economy recovered. But the economy will always recover,” Romney said. “We’ve never gone into permanent recession or depression. The economy will come back after recession. The question is, did he help it or hurt it? Did he prolong the pain or reduce the pain? The truth is he made things harder to recover, he made more people suffer longer.”

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Is there something I am missing about The Huffington Post?

I always got the impression that it’s 25 Million or so readers were all under the guise of of it all being for ‘The Greater Good’.   The countless contributors that never saw a dime, were actually increasing the value of a commodity to AOL.

Just ask cartoonist Ward Sutton: “I’ve contributed writing to HuffPost, but of course [have] never been paid, as they generally do not pay contributors. I’ve inquired about the possibility of creating cartoons for HuffPost, but again, they have claimed to have ‘no budget’ for such a thing.”

With the sale of HuffPost to AOL, I wonder if anyone apart from Arianna Huffington will see any ‘Share The Wealth’ activity from the purchase.  I guess you would call those antics ‘Hip’-Hypocrisy.  Or I am just another ‘Right-Wing Fascist’ that doesn’t understand double standard of the left?

Craig Edwards

Outside of Australia, ‘Larrikinism‘ is a hard thing to culturally interpret. A ‘Larrikin’ is any person, group, or collective that challenges, or engage in concocted mockery against any form of social/structural authority. It allows Australians to view criminals like Ned Kelly, and Mark ‘Chopper’ Reid as revered folk heroes. It rewards self-deprecation, it honors stupid behavior, so long as it’s a devastating to blow to anyone in authority. Needless to say, Julian Assange is in a new category of ‘Intellectual Larrikins’, and now is being hailed as a cultural hero. I still have several friends back in Australia, and most of them are wholeheartedly behind Assange. He has after all, delivered a devastating blow against authority.

Larrikinism aside, never in my lifetime have I witnessed a complete breakdown of logic as I seeing now over Wikileaks. Assange has maintained his actions amount to freedom of the press, and his repulsive legion of followers have fallen into line to support a flawed argument.  Assange defenders have taken upon themselves to disrupt cyber commerce and critics to uphold a movement that supports open espionage. Assange defenders have sprouted nothing but insane psychobabble and self assuring rationalization for the release of the stolen documents.

Then there is the blackmail factor, like when Assange threatens to release more stolen documents if he is arrested. When buffoons like Huffpo apologists are lining up to justify his actions, masking Wikileaks espionage and blackmail, they become what Lenin called ‘The Useful Idiots’.  One has to wonder, why are a certain sector of scoundrels so intent on banking on America to fail so miserably? Why do they seek on beating American down like a piñata? As Isaiah once said “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil”. I would also add, “Woe on those that maintain the end justifies the means”.

Post Vietnam War, the only type of propaganda Wikileaks like to portray is that of an America as the aggressor, and threat to the world’s well being.   Sadly, there are enough people believing the rhetoric against America, that even past history is open to revisionism. To those too lazy to open a history book, the stigma of Hiroshima, and Dresden is now the only proof they need to cite for aggression.  If America along with it’s Allies forced a Treaty of Versailles V2.0 on a defeated Germany and Japan in WWII, would they have experienced the strong economies  they have today?   Ask yourself, why did America assist their defeated enemies and treat them like Allies?

To any follower of Wikileaks, to any supporter of Julian Assange, do you ever consider the consequences of your actions?  When you achieve your results, when America is finally dismantled, what will happen to the rest of the world? Good luck on finding a another country that will come to your rescue, protect your countries, protect democracy, or uphold your rights and your freedoms. Good luck on finding a country that will provide you with a blue print to re-build your nations, rebuilt your infrastructure, and restore your economy. Good luck on hoping radical Islam will uphold equality for women, and consider gay rights.  Good luck on hoping China will consider abiding to your precious levels of carbon emissions.  Good luck on hoping defamation laws allow you free speech. Good luck on hoping none of your enemies maim or destroy infrastructure, communications, or your own livelihood from information released by the Wikileaks.

When a civil society is transfixed upon adopting the rhetoric of their critics, even at the sheer detriment of their own security, their demise is guaranteed. The failure to recognize the consequences of the leaked intelligence memos, the new risks that America and the world will now face, has placed us all on uncertain ground. When the antics of Abbie Hoffman takes the form of Wikileaks, decline is not only on it’s way, it’s already here.

Craig Edwards
Dual Australian / American Citizen

When Sarah Palin returned to Iowa on Thursday to promote her new book, America By Heart, the former Alaska governor and possible 2012 presidential hopeful found herself caught off guard when confronted by reporters about whether she plans to mount a bid for the White House in the next election cycle.

The unanticipated run-in between Palin and the press went down at a local Walmart in the Hawkeye State. With supporters of the conservative star on the scene, a crew from CNN cut straight to the chase and asked if she was any further along in her decision-making process about a presidential run. Jim Acosta and Bonney Kapp report:

The country music that Palin’s handlers had blaring at the signing station presumably to drown out such questions suddenly stopped. We asked the question again.”Am I doing interviews?” the former Alaska governor asked. “I thought I got to talk to the nice people. And where’s our music and where’s our good enthusiasm?” she persisted.

We repeated the question. “Not any closer. No,” she responded.

Since breaking onto the political scene during the 2008 presidential campaign, Palin has developed a reputation for maintaining an icy relationship with the mainstream media — or the “lamestream” media as she often puts it. Despite embarking on a book tour packed with public events, the Tea Party favorite has reportedly made attempts to dodge the press along the way.

Nevertheless, the CNN crew managed to hit Palin with one more question during Thursday’s book signing. The topic: an apparent shot taken by rumored 2012 presidential hopeful Mitt Romney the night earlier on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno.

“What did Governor Romney say on the ‘Tonight Show’?” responded Palin when asked about the criticism in question, which seemed to take aim at her decision to resign as governor of Alaska.

LENO: Now let me ask: you were governor of my home state of Massachusetts. And this is the one thing I think will stop — well, not stop — but I think really impede Sarah Palin — the fact that she quit as governor.Now you were a governor of a state. Could you ever see yourself quitting for any other reason?

ROMNEY: No, it’s hard to imagine a circumstance where I’d have quit. I loved the job. The truth was: being governor is the best job you can think of, because you have a real impact on the lives of people you care about, you meet wonderful people, you can improve schools, and get health care for folks.

After being filled in on what Romney had to say, Palin told responded to CNN, “Oh, he probably had some different conditions.”

During Romney’s interview with Leno, he also made a point to shower Palin with praise. “She’s a remarkable, energetic, powerful figure in my party — and attractive too,” he said. “She’s a qualified, capable person.”

~~John Cronin~~

THE HUFFINGTON POST

So as President Obama gears up for a re-election battle in 2012, the economy is unlikely to be much different than the one that sank the Democrats in 2010. The question is whether Obama and the Democrats can change the national understanding of what caused the economic collapse and who is blocking the recovery.

In this enterprise, I don’t have high expectations for Obama. I cannot recall a president who generated so much excitement as a candidate but who turned out to be such a political dud as chief executive. Nor do his actions since the election inspire confidence that he will be reborn as a fighter.

The president’s defenders offer an assortment of alibis for the epic defeat. The in-party always loses seats in the first mid-term (but not this many). The recession was far more protracted than anticipated (Obama’s own chief economic adviser, Christy Romer knew how bad things were pressed for a much larger stimulus than Obama was willing to embrace.) The Republicans blocked him at every turn (yes, and he kept trying to conciliate rather than fight.)

Consider that the Democrats got particularly shellacked, as Obama put it, among the elderly. When you remember that the Republicans hope to gut Social Security, this is quite remarkable. When you add the fact that Democrats have been far more committed to defending Medicare than Republicans who want to turn it into a voucher, the sheer political malpractice of this election loss among seniors is just stupefying.

Because of the poor design of the Obama health plan, and the ineptitude of explaining or marketing it, older voters came away convinced that the scheme would come at the expense of their Medicare. Even today, as a fiscal commission appointed by Obama tries to take more money out of Medicare and Social Security, our president and his budget wonk advisers cannot bring themselves to draw a simple line in the sand and declare that the Democrats will never cut Social Security benefits. Had Obama done so before the election and dared the Republicans to match the pledge, dozens of Democratic House seats might have been saved.

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