Parasites R Us

We knew that Paul Ryan believed this country was made up of "the takers vs the makers" but we hadn't heard Mitt Romney explicitly make that case until now. David Corn has obtained the full video (pieces have been floating around on Youtube for a while) of Romney talking to a bunch of his fellow one percenters. This pretty much lays it all out:

Fielding a question from a donor about how he could triumph in November, Romney replied:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

You realize that he's talking about around a hundred and fifty million people, don't you? He's literally saying that nearly half the country is a bunch of parasites.

Read on....

Romney Supports Voter ID Laws That Could Disenfranchise 25% Of African-Americans

Mitt Romney is scheduled to speak at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) convention. He will purportedly focus solely on the economy, steering clear of addressing the controversial voter identification laws that the civil rights organization sees as “systematically suppressing voters of color, students and the elderly.” Indeed, Romney has previously backed the very efforts the NAACP opposes, saying, “I like Voter ID laws by the way… more of them,” ignoring the evidence that voter ID laws disproportionately disenfranchise African-Americans:

• A Center for American Progress investigation concluded that “these laws hinder voting rights in a manner not seen since the era of Jim Crow,” given that minorities (along the young and the poor) are more likely to be unable to acquire photo identification.
• Indeed, 25 percent of African-American voters lack the type of ID required to vote under these laws.

Read on...

Brady Campaign Statement on Romney's Appearance at NRA Convention

Statement of Brady Campaign President Dan Gross on GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney's appearance at the NRA convention:

WASHINGTON - April 13 - "Mitt Romney has already established a clear reputation for flip-flopping and pandering to win votes, and that is just what he is doing by speaking at the NRA convention. This time he is going too far. He is proudly aligning himself with a lobby that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans every year, a lobby that uses a mentality of fear and paranoia, tinged with just the right amount of racism, to promote its sole agenda of selling more guns, with no concern for who buys those or how they are used. As the nation focuses on the arrest of George Zimmerman, Mitt Romney is pandering to the very people who put the gun in his hands. I'm sure Romney will have a lot of very "American" things to say about supporting the Constitution and the right to bear arms and our founding fathers. None of those things have anything to do with what the gun lobby does. In fact, I could not think of anything less "American" than appearing at the convention of a lobby that is responsible for killing so many of our citizens."

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and its legislative and grassroots affiliate, the Brady Campaign and its dedicated network of Million Mom March Chapters, is the nation's largest, non-partisan, grassroots organization leading the fight to prevent gun violence.

We are devoted to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in our communities.

Mitt Romney Courts Big Tin Foil

In the last four years, the National Rifle Association has accused President Barack Obama of plotting to ban handguns, quintuple the price of ammunition, eliminate the entire legal construct of "self defense," and working with the United Nations to do everything short of taking Charlton Heston's Glock from his cold dead hands—although surely that will come in due time. Few organizations have done as much of the nation's leading gun lobby to gin up right-wing fears about the President's secret motives—a sinister agenda that could end, NRA president Wayne LaPierre warned in February, with the end of freedom and the collapse of America as we know it.

Their reward: A meeting on Friday with the man who just might be the next President. For the NRA, Mitt Romney's speech at their annual convention in St. Louis (alongside luminaries like Ted "suck on my machine gun" Nugent) was continued validation of their privileged status in national politics; for Romney, it was a reminder of just how far he's willing to go prove to conservatives he's one of them. Even if it means speaking to a group whose recent rhetoric would make the Birchers blush.

Read on...