She has plenty of money and the more outrageous she acts the more she attracts money from the flakes on the conservative far right. Bob Goodlatte is a birther and has a huge bankroll and a large following of idiots who could not care less that he regularly votes against women's rights and against seniors on their issues. Louie Gohmert is a nut job from Texas and he fits in this tea party group of half witts.
Texas Rep. Gohmert on Aurora shooting: We’ve told God ‘we don’t want him around’
In response to the mass shooting in Aurora, Colo., that left 12 dead and dozens wounded, Texas Rep.Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) talks with protesters at the Capitol in 2009.
Louie Gohmert told the Istook Live show Friday that he believed that the country’s move away from its “Judeo-Christian beliefs” was responsible for God withdrawing his “protective hand” from the country.
Gohmert also pointed to a study that he said indicated that the rate of suicide in the military was associated with atheism — drawing a connection that he said implied that a lack of faith was associated with mental health disorders.
“What they found, and I don’t know if they will make it public – one of the participants told me ‘ the results may not go public’; but, all of the people who committed suicide, within their thousands of people studied, were part of the 2 percent most atheistic members of the military. We’ve lost our faith.”
The congressman’s Web site says he “attends Green Acres Baptist Church in Tyler, where Louie has served as a deacon and still teaches Sunday school.” Louie's has dropped off the deep end. Old Jerry Falwell and Pat Robinson contend that all disasters, hurricane's-tornado's-earthquakes-drought and fire are Gods punishment because we have turned away from him. A viscous, mean god.
This is modern day America. A country engulfed in a heat wave and drought worse than the dust bowl and republicans refuse to take any action to clean up the pollution or even admit that the problem is made worse by human actions. As long as the business owners are feeding the republican donation coffers anything goes.
Billionaires like the Koch brothers can now legally buy elections and the Supreme Court gets more irrelevant with each new twisted decision. The GOP stands for just one thing, more tax breaks for big business and fewer regulations.
Now lets get back to why it is so hard to get rid of ignorant politicians.
Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann is the target of sharp national criticism, including from leaders of her own party, for saying the wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. She’s coming off a failed presidential bid that took her far from her Minnesota district. She’s amassed a fairly sizable collection of gaffes and her Democratic opponent has raised more than $500,000.
She’s a goner in November, right?
Not necessarily.
The traditional laws of political gravity don’t apply to Bachmann, who’s lived her political career on the edge.
For starters, Bachmann will have as much money as she needs to win re-election. The three-term congresswoman probably ranks as the most prolific fundraiser in the House – she’s already raised close to $15 million this election cycle. That’s an astounding figure, more than some Senate candidates will collect this year. And she collects her cash the old-fashioned way, with almost all of it coming from individuals, not political action committees.
Her fundraising is only going to get better. The best fundraisers in the House tend to be, like Bachmann, conservative or liberal provocateurs who regularly make national news with their highly-charged comments. The more embattled they seem, the better it is for their fundraising. And in Bachmann’s case, her presidential bid has only expanded her donor base.
While her congressional seat isn’t especially conservative by national standards, it’s still the most conservative in Minnesota — even after redistricting redrew the lines. In other words, if any seat in the state is going to reelect a congresswoman with Bachmann’s profile, it’s the 6th District, which includes St. Cloud and the northern Twin Cities suburbs and exurbs. Just two of Minnesota’s eight congressional districts voted for John McCain in 2008. Her seat is one of them.
The danger for Bachmann is that, despite the devotion she inspires among social conservatives and at the grass-roots level, she typically cuts it very close in November. Four years ago, she won reelection with just 48 percent. In 2010, despite spending $13.6 million, she won reelection with just 53 percent — a relatively weak
performance for a Republican incumbent who spent that much money in a great Republican year.
This time around, she appears to have credible Democratic opposition from local businessman Jim Graves, who has released internal polling that shows Bachmann is highly vulnerable.
The problem is that there’s always polling that suggests Bachmann’s in jeopardy. So far, Graves, a wealthy hotel owner, hasn’t spent nearly enough so far to suggest he can compete with her. This current controversy is going to serve as rocket fuel to his campaign – and his fundraising – but Bachmann is still going to be very difficult to dislodge in November.
Here are ten quotes that are among Bachmann's best.
1. "I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending." –Rep. Michele Bachmann, suggesting at a presidential campaign event in Florida that the 2011 East Coast earthquake and hurricane was a message from God (Aug. 2011)
2. "Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the kind of spirit that I have, too" -Rep. Michele Bachmann, getting her John Waynes mixed up during an interview after launching her presidential campaign in Waterloo, Iowa, where she grew up. The beloved movie star John Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa, three hours away. The John Wayne that Waterloo was home to is John Wayne Gacy, a notorious serial killer. (June 2011)
3. "I will tell you that I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Florida, after the debate. She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter." –Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), on the HPV vaccine, Fox News interview, Sept. 12, 2011
4. "Why should I go and do something like that? But the Lord says, 'Be submissive wives; you are to be submissive to your husbands." -Rep. Michele Bachmann, recalling in a 2006 speech at a Megachurch in Minneapolis that pursuing tax law wasn't her choice, but she did so at the urging of her husband because she was certain God was speaking through him
5. "I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?" -Rep. Michelle Bachmann, calling for a new McCarthyism, Oct. 2008
6. "I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence." -Rep. Michele Bachmann, on the 1976 Swine Flu outbreak that happened when Gerald Ford, a Republican, was president, April 28, 2009
7. "Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas." -Rep. Michelle Bachmann, April, 2009
8. "If we took away the minimum wage -- if conceivably it was gone -- we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level." -Michele Bachmann, Jan. 2005
9. "But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. ... I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly -- men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country." -Rep. Michele Bachmann, botching American history while speaking at an Iowan's for Tax Relief event in January 2011. The Founding Fathers did not work to end slavery, and John Quincy Adams was not one of the Founding Fathers.
10. "Before we get started, let's all say 'Happy Birthday' to Elvis Presley today." -Rep. Michele Bachmann, while campaigning for president in South Carolina on what was actually the anniversary of Elvis's death, Aug. 16, 2011 (Elvis was born on January 8)
The people discussed above are among the elected representatives of the people of the United States. That's how they got there, elected by the voters who are so happy with them that they elect them again and again. You get what you vote for, sometimes less.
Please Take Mitt Romney at his Word
If you take Mitt Romney at his word, he will gut Medicare, financial aid for college and nearly every federal program that helps working people in order to give millionaires more huge tax breaks. He will end all support for Planned Parenthood and destroy women's health services. Mitt and the GOP will cut support for education and end the Department of Education once and for all. Social Scurity will disappear.
The problem is: No one seems to take Mitt Romney at his word. No one believes that Mitt and the GOP would do such things. No one thinks they will rob the poor in order to give more to the rich. If the GOP and Mitt win the next election a lot of Tea Party and Republicans are in for a rude awakening. Mitt and the GOP and the Ryan budget will take everything you count on to live.
Last year allies of President Obama ran a focus group to find out what people think about Mitt Romney.
For example, when Priorities informed a focus group that Romney supported the Ryan budget plan — and thus championed “ending Medicare as we know it” — while also advocating tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing. Wake up from your misconceptions about todays Republican Party, they are the enemy within.
It’s too ridiculous to believe. More tax breaks for the rich—the hallmark of the failed Bush administration—paid for by giant cuts to the most popular government program among likely voters. But that’s exactly what Romney is for. And if he’s elected, he’s likely to have the 50 votes in the Senate he’ll need to do this and more.
And no one believes it. Republican voters live in a dream world, convinced that the poor person who might need a food subsidy to eat is their enemy. Convinced by the Republican leadership that before you can help a fellow American who has suffered thru a disaster (flood, tornado, forest fire, wind storm, ect) that you must first find something in the budget to cut to offset the help you give. Republican leadership has even taught that the young child who gets a head start on his education so he or she can be on par with their classmates is their enemy. Good Lord, even the students who gets a Pell Grant or a reduced interest rate on the cost of college have been branded the enemy. When will you foolish Republicans open your eyes and wake up? How gullible are you?
That’s why the President’s allies have been focusing on Mitt Romney’s failed tenure as governor and his business history where he showed no empathy for middle class as he invested in outsourcing and in one case asked employees to build a stage so Bain could announce they’d all been laid off.
Romney wants to end all benefits for you as he takes a $77,000 tax break on his dancing horse. In Romney's world that makes sense and is acceptable. In Romney world a presidential candidate doesn't have to release his tax returns. In Romney world you have an elevator in one your homes so you can store your automobiles in a way that pleases you. In Romney world it is OK to bankrupt a plant, send the jobs overseas and layoff all the workers so that you can realize a profit. In Romney world it is fine to take from the poor and give to the rich. You don't live in Romney world. Why waste your vote on Romney world?
The President has a jobs plan that the GOP has refused to pass, instead focusing on pretending to repeal ObamaCare, increasing pollution and decreasing women’s health options. Conservatives in Europe and our own Federal Reserve Bank are conspiring to keep our economy stalled out, at risk of recession. None of this is the president’s fault.
So now is the time when we must make clear that what Romney is proposing, according to economists, will make things worse. How do we do that? Michael Tomasky explains:
So Obama and the Democrats’ No. 1 job is clear: tie all the Republicans together—Romney, congressional Republicans, and George W. Bush—and warn people about how much worse things could be. It is not all that hard to see what the Republicans want to do, they lay it out so plainly that all but the dumbest of voters understand the cuts. Can the GOP win this race on the backs of the dumbest Americans with a lot of help from the upper 1%? Yes they can. If they suppress the vote enough and deny voting rights to tens of thousands of poor and aged voters who lack the newly proclaimed voter identifications they CAN and WILL. Two things need to happen. One, Democrats need a huge voter turnout. Two, Republicans need to wake up and use their God given minds and unravel the Republican sham job they have been presented.
To buy control of the Government of the United States of America single Conservative Billionaire's are donating over 100 Million Dollars each to the coffers of the GOP. Do any of you think they are doing this to buy good government?
The Conservative leaning Supreme Court sold the country down the tubes when it allowed unlimited amounts of money with no accountability to be the rule of the day. The republican voters slept thru this ruse seeing it as way to gain more power for the party.
Romney is Bush on steroids. His tax plan is far more extreme. He wants to give millionaires an average—average!—tax cut of $250,000. The same plan would add $3 trillion to the deficit over a decade. Haven’t we tried this before, and didn’t it help lead—along with massive deregulation, which Romney also promises to pursue—to the biggest meltdown in 80 years? The upper 1% will rule America lock, stock and barrell and the republican voters continue to snooze in their misguided trust of Republican Leadership, not realizing they they to have been sold down the river.
The choice is clear in this election: The policies that created jobs for the last 28 months versus the policies that cost our millions of jobs and created the worst income inequality since the last depression conservatives let happen.
Our job is to make people believe that the GOP is actually serious about the nonsense they’re proposing. So the question becomes "How do you wake up a dumb sleeping republican?" What do these folks get by voting republican anyway?
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Romney's Tax Returns
President Obama's campaign continues to hammer presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney over the GOP challenger's refusal to release more of his tax returns. Romney has provided one year's record and promised a second year's worth of returns. But even some of his fellow Republicans now say that's not enough.
Obama's campaign launched a new TV ad this week, shining a spotlight on what is and isn't known about Romney's taxes, asking, "What is Mitt Romney hiding?"
So far, Romney and his family trusts have released their 2010 tax returns, which fill hundreds of pages. He got an extension for his 2011 return and has promised to release that as soon as it's ready, no later than mid-October.
Romney says that should be enough.
"People always want to get more. We're putting out what's required, plus more," he said last week on CNN. "Those are the two years that people will have, and that's all that's necessary for people to understand something about my finances."
Retirement Account
But tax professionals still have plenty of questions. For example, Lee Sheppard, a contributing editor at the journal Tax Notes, wants to know how Romney amassed so much money in his tax-deferred retirement account.
"All we know is really that it's a big number, and we're a little bit baffled as to how it got so big," Sheppard says.
Candidates list their assets in broad ranges, so we know Romney's retirement account is worth somewhere between $21 million and $102 million. Law professor Ed Kleinbard of the University of Southern California says that's a lot of money considering the most Romney could ever contribute to the account was $30,000 a year.
"Either Gov. Romney is sort of the modern-day equivalent of Jack and his magic beans, who somehow created a mighty beanstalk, or he took a very aggressive position with respect to valuing insider stock," Kleinbard says.
Kleinbard means that Romney might have loaded up his retirement account with assets from his private equity firm, Bain Capital, and assigned artificially low values to those assets in order to get around the federal contribution limits.
If so, Romney would still have to pay taxes on the real value of the assets when they're withdrawn from the account. But in the meantime, the money can grow tax-free. Tax Notes' Sheppard says that's an advantage most taxpayers don't have.
"If you happen to work for a partnership and your compensation is arranged this way, you get this very beneficial treatment," Sheppard says.
Romney's campaign didn't respond to NPR's questions about his retirement account. But his taxes have been dogging the candidate since the GOP primary. At an NBC debate in January, Romney argued that there's nothing wrong with minimizing taxes.
"I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more," he said. "I don't think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes." "My lawers have devised more ways for me to not pay taxes than you can shake a stick at." "Please remember that I am innocent until proven guilty in a court of law and the IRS dares not take me on." "I will not release any more tax information, you people know all you need to know."
Role At Marriott
Romney was equally aggressive toward taxes in the business world. For years, he was a director of Marriott International, the hotel company founded by Willard Marriott. Kleinbard, who worked on Wall Street and served as chief of staff for Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation, says Marriott had a reputation.
"Marriott was always a tax shelter promoter's first call," he says. "Marriott was one of those companies that just loved to buy tax shelters."
Bloomberg reported this year on one Marriott tax shelter, known as "Son of BOSS." It involved creating paper losses to offset taxes on real income. The Internal Revenue Service challenged the shelter, and Marriott lost in court. Judges called the shelter "fictitious" and a "scheme," and the company was forced to pay $29 million. Kleinbard notes that when the shelter was adopted, Romney was the chairman of Marriott's audit committee.
"It's the job of the chair of the audit committee of Marriott to say, 'Hey, wait a minute, just because we have an opinion from Winkin', Blinkin' and Nod saying that this is a terribly clever idea, I need to apply some common sense as opposed to just signing on the bottom line,' " Kleinbard says.
A statement from Marriott says the company only engages in tax deals it believes are lawful.
"Marriott only engages in transactions that we believe are in accordance with the tax code and that we think will create shareholder value," it said.
Kleinbard sees a pattern for Romney of cutting tax corners. Asked about his taxes in that NBC debate, Romney sidestepped.
"The real question is not so much my taxes, but the taxes of the American people," Romney said.
Romney, whose 2010 tax rate was less than 14 percent, says he wants to overhaul the tax code, which he calls "far too complex," "far too intrusive" and "far too great."
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Breakdown for Amherst County
Races in Amherst County, Virginia:
White Non-Hispanic Alone (76.7%)
Black Non-Hispanic Alone (18.8%)
Two or more races (1.4%)
Hispanic or Latino (1.4%)
American Indian and Alaska Native alone (0.8%)
Some other race alone (0.6%)
Median resident age: 38.0 years
Virginia median age: 35.7 years
Males: 15,208 (47.7%)
Females: 16,686 (52.3%)
2008 Presidential Election results in Amherst County Virginia:
McCain (Republican): 57.8%
Obama (Democratic): 41.6%
Amherst County Virginia Democratic News
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