Romney Repeatedly Said Obama ‘Made The Recession Worse,’ Now Claims ‘I Didn’t Say That Things Are Worse

By Scott Keyes /Think Progress

From the onset of his presidential campaign, Mitt Romney has “bet his candidacy on the economy,” as Dan Balz of the Washington Postput it. During the former Massachusetts governor’s announcement speech, he declared:

Barack Obama has failed America. When he took office, the economy was in recession. He made it worse.

Romney has repeated the same line during campaign stops since, including as recently as three days ago.

The Massachusetts Republican was asked about this charge by NBC’s Sue Kroll during a press conference in Allentown, Pennsylvania yesterday. Romney claimed to never have said it, responding, “I didn’t say that things are worse”:

KROLL: You continue to say that the economy is worse, but unemployment is lower than it was in 2009, the stock market was tumbling and it’s now above 12,000, and it is growing slowly, we just had a two percent gain this last quarter.So how can you continue to say that things are worse when they really aren’t worse?

ROMNEY: I didn’t say that things are worse. What I said was that the economy hasn’t turned around. That you’ve got 20 million Americans out of work or seriously unemployed. Housing values are going down. You have a crisis of foreclosures in this country. By the way, if you think the economy is great and doing well, be my guest.

Watch it:

During his 2008 presidential bid, Romney garnered a reputation as a flip-flopper. As far back as his Senate run in 1994, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy coined the term “multiple-choice Mitt.” Romney’s words Thursday did little to shed that image.

Washington Monthly’s Steven Benen summed up the situation well: “Even for Romney, who’s flip-flopped more often and on more issues than any American politician in a generation, this is ridiculous. He’s argued repeatedly that Obama made the economy worse, and when asked to defend the bogus claim, says he never made the argument in the first place.”

Pat Robertson warns God will destroy America over same sex marriage

By David Edwards

Television evangelist Pat Robertson(R-noted douche) responded to New York’s decision to legalize same sex marriage by warning Monday that the result would be America’s destruction.

“I think we need to remember the term sodomy came from a town known as Sodom and Sodom was destroyed by God Almighty and the thing that they practiced was homosexual activity and even they tried to rape angels who came down there, so that’s the kind of people they were,” Robertson said. God “sent an angel down there and He said to Lot and his family, ‘get out now because I’m gonna destroy this whole area.’”

“We’re heading that way as a nation. In history there’s never been a civilization ever in history that has embraced homosexuality and turned away from traditional fidelity, traditional marriage, traditional child-rearing, and has survived. There isn’t one single civilization that has survived that openly embraced homosexuality. So you say, ‘what’s going to happen to America?” Well if history is any guide, the same thing’s going to happen to us,’” he predicted.

Robertson also admitted that Jesus “didn’t say anything about the homosexuality.”

Watch this video from CBN’s The 700 Club, broadcast June 27, 2011.

Cain Trips Over The Constitution Again, Bungles The 14th Amendment At GOP Debate

By Travis Waldron

Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain has had his struggles with the Constitution lately, confusing it and the Declaration of Independence, misunderstanding a clause about bankruptcy, andfailing to grasp the unconstitutionality of religious tests in determining someone’s fitness for employment.

At last night’s GOP primary debate in New Hampshire, Cain stretched his misunderstanding of the Constitution into a new subject: birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment. During the debate, Cain said the law needed to be changed so children of undocumented immigrants were not granted citizenship upon birth. He elaborated on his position after the debate:

CAIN: The 14th Amendment doesn’t talk about people that were here illegally. The 14th Amendment applies to slaves, black people, and their descendants who were here.

REPORTER: So you’re suggesting that the 14th Amendment does not say that people who are born in this country are naturalized citizens?

CAIN: …It does say people who are born here. But when it was written, it was written in the spirit of the slaves who were brought to this country. It was not written in the spirit of people who came here illegally. That’s where I’m coming from.

Watch it:

While the 14th Amendment was ratified following the Civil War and granted citizenship to blacks and former slaves who had previously not been considered citizens, its language in no way limits its protections to former slaves: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has ruled that the amendment’s protections extend to anyone under the jurisdiction of the United States, even undocumented immigrants:

…the Fourteenth Amendment extends to anyone, citizen or stranger, who is subject to the laws of a State, and reaches into every corner of a State’s territory. That a person’s initial entry into a State, or into the United States, was unlawful, and that he may for that reason be expelled, cannot negate the simple fact of his presence within the State’s territorial perimeter. (Plyler v. Doe)

Cain said he did not believe in changing the 14th Amendment but wanted to change the law or add an amendment to clarify it, and he pleaded ignorance when asked if he’d support legislation proposed by Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and David Vitter (R-LA) that would significantlynarrow the amendment’s scope. But recent polling shows his view is out of touch with primary voters in New Hampshire, where 65 percent of Republicans prefer not to change America’s birthright citizenship laws.

Allen West Suggests Anti-War Congressmen Should ‘Get Shot At A Few Times’

By Alex Seitz-Wald 

In the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the House came closer than it ever has to voting for an end to the war in Afghanistan today when a bipartisan amendment that would have required President Obama to submit a timetable for withdrawal failed by just 12 votes, netting approval from 26 Republicans.

But some Republicans were not pleased with the vote. Tea Party firebrand Rep. Allen West (R-FL) — a retired Army officer who was discharged after shooting at an unarmed detainee in Iraq — denounced the amendment, telling the Miami Herald that his anti-war colleagues should “get shot” to understand the true threat of the Taliban:

“Is the Taliban still fighting? I spent 2.5 years in Afghanistan. Just because you kill Osama bin Laden does not mean that the Taliban has stopped fighting,” he said. “Now can we fight a little smarter? Absolutely.”

Asked about efforts to curb U.S. involvement, West said, “I would take these gentlemen over and let them get shot at a few times and maybe they’d have a different opinion.”

With the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) still fresh in Americans’ minds, West’s comments are especially irresponsible. But perhaps this should be expected from West. In January, he criticized Obama for traveling to Afghanistan with a security detail, saying, “[I]f I’m asking my young men and women to go out there and put their lives on the line, I should be willing and able to do the exact same thing.” West also had no problem hiring right-wing Florida radio host Joyce Kaufman to be his chief of staff, even after she proclaimed at a Tea Party rally, “if ballots don’t work, bullets will.”

As Revenues Plunge To 60-Year Low, GOP Congressman Claims ‘We Have Too Much Revenue’

By Alex Seitz-Wald

Appearing on MSNBC’s Jansing and Co. this morning, Rep. Todd Rokita (R-IN) ran into some problems defending a GOP talking point when he claimed that the federal government has “too much” tax revenue coming in:

ROKITA: Washington does not have a revenue shortage problem, it has a spending problem. [...]

JANSING: I know that’s a talking point, I’ve heard it from every Republcian. The whole revenue/spending thing. But when I read indepdent economist’s analyses, they say you need to do both.

ROKITA: I don’t think so. … Again, we don’t have — we have too much revenue as it is. We spend to much.

Watch it:

The Republican message about a revenue vs. a spending problem is silly, as they are each flip sides of the same coin, but Rokita’s statement is just wrong. If the government spent only what it takes in in tax revenue, it would have to slash nearly half its funding to every program, from defense to Medicare, yet Rokita apparently thinks even that is too much. As a share of GDP, government revenue in 2009 (the most recent year available) was at its “lowest since 1950.” As this chart from the Congressional Budget Office demonstrates, the recession decimated the federal tax base:

But even before the recession, there simply wasn’t enough money coming into the federal government to cover costs, forcing the government to borrow 40 cents of every dollar it spends, as Republicans like to remind Americans so frequently.

It’s worth noting that the last time Republicans claimed there was too much revenue coming into the federal government, they ended up solving that problem by helping to create the deficits of today. “[M]ore than any other” reason, President Bush justified his 2001 tax cuts by claiming the budget surplus President Clinton created was actually bad. “A surplus in tax revenue, after all, means that taxpayers have been overcharged,” Bush explained. Of course, the Bush tax cuts are one of the largest contributors to today’s budget deficit by depriving the government of needed revenue.

There wasn’t “too much revenue” in 2001, and there’s far less today. As a member of the budget committee, Rokita should be aware of that.

Limbaugh: Idea That Tax Cuts Must Be Paid For Is "Communist Talk," The "Kind Of Thinking That Gets Us $14 Trillion As A National Debt"