It’s a MIRACLE!!!

Oh, my freaking GOD! Romney has pulled ahead of Obama in both Michigan and in Florida! The Ryan Splat turned out to be the Ryan Kertwang after all!

That’s what one of the most highly discredited polling firms in the country, Foster McCollum White & Associates, says. Their Michigan poll, released on Friday, is breathlessly titled “Its official, Paul Ryan has created a significant bounce for Mitt Romney and down the ballot as well, creating a new challenge for President Obama and Democrats, per poll”. The poll has President Obama down by almost 4 percentage points and, hilariously, has Pete Hoekstra up by over two over Senator Debbie Stabenow.

Problem is, the people they polled were ridiculously old and white, way more so than the people who typically vote.

Details after the jump.

Who’s in charge of this party anyway?

Senate Candidate Todd Akin is now running away from his odious comment about “legitimate rape” and, in the process, proving he doesn’t have a damn clue about why it was so offensive in the first place. He’s now saying that he meant to say “forcible rape”, completely missing the point that nobody but completely out-of-touch conservatives believes that women rarely get pregnant from rape. The statistics show otherwise.

Akin’s not-so-subtle implication is that, if a women gets pregnant from rape, she must have enjoyed it.

This week the Republicans will put the finishing touches on their party platform. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have suddenly Etch-A-Sketched their positions on abortion being legal in the case of rape and now say they now support an exception being made when a woman is raped so that they are not forced to bear the child of their rapist if they choose not to. The question is how they square this with their own Party’s platform that is sure to be absent of that exception.

Let’s ask them.

Much more after the jump.

So much for charging up the base…

Although the Romney campaign clearly hoped the selection of Super and True Conservative Paul Ryan as his running mate would fire up his base and, more importantly, fire up his polling numbers, the truth is, it hasn’t.

Reuters reports that only 26 percent of people they polled view Romney more favorably after his choice of Ryan for Vice President. Gallup polling shows that his support number went from 46% to 47% among registered voters after the VP announcement.

Splat.

So much for that.

Much more after the jump.

If you have to lie, you’ve already lost

Mitt Romney has launched a desperate, two-fold plan these past two weeks. Part 1: Lie, lie, lie, lie. The only way he can change the discussion about President Obama’s record is to lie and, as we’ve pointed out already (HERE and HERE), he’s perfectly willing to go down as the biggest, most blatant liar to run for president in modern times.

Part 2: Whine about how mean and low and angry and divisive President Obama is. This guy is trying to characterize “No Drama Obama” as the Angry Black Man Republicans are well known for exploiting. They will lie and call the President all sorts of things and then turn around and accuse HIM of being low and mean and divisive. The fact is, and this has to be clear to anyone paying attention, the Romney campaign is built around a core of creating an “Us vs. Them”, “They are just jealous of you” divisive messaging.

The recent lies and scare-mongering on Medicare bring all of this into sharp focus. Romney dumbed down his dumb message even more by drawing out his lies on a white board, a la Glenn Beck. The Obama campaign responded today with another awesome video from Stephanie Cutter, the Deputy Campaign Manager for Obama for America.

Enjoy it and their latest television ad after the jump.

So, okay, NOBODY is buying this one…

The Ryan/Romney campaign appears to be in full melt down at the moment. Romney has spent the past two days whining about how mean President Obama and Vice President Biden are to any crowd or reporter that will listen. After spending the past three week telling blatantly made up lies about the President as if they were fact, he’s sniveling that the Obama campaign has “gone to the gutter” because they are telling the truth about the Ryan/Romney budget that will destroy the middle class and transfer massive amounts of their wealth to the super-rich.

It’s laughable and happening way earlier than I predicted it would. Hell, John McCain didn’t lose his shit until after he got the nomination but Romney is already going cuckoo.

But now we get the real evidence that the Republicans have gone around the bend. A group called “OPSEC” has a new 22-minute video out that claims the Obama administration leaked details about the mission that took the life of Osama bin Laden to score political points.

Details about this lame act of desperation after the jump.

These guys are out of control

As is becoming increasingly clear to anyone paying attention to the 2012 presidential election, the Ryan/Romney campaign has given up all hope of winning on the issues and on their record and have resorted to unprecedented lying — literally making things up about President Obama and then putting it out as truth in stump speeches, online videos, television ads, appearances by surrogates on news programs and in fundraising emails.

There is a new one this week and it takes the LYING and HYPOCRISY to a new and rather incredible level.

The Ryan/Romney campaign is claiming that President Obama stripped $716 billion out of Medicare benefits “to pay for Obamacare”.

This is a lie.

Also, those same cuts, which I’ll describe in a moment, are in the Ryan budget plan that Mitt Romney has endorsed.

Details and more after the jump.

You wanna schplain that one to us, Mitt?

Mitt Romney made an astonishing promise today: he told a crowd of coal miners that he will have the USA energy independent from sources outside North America by 2021.

It’s particularly astonishing given that he is against subsidizing renewable energy sources.

So, how is he going to get us off foreign energy sources? That’s a fine question and one that Romney hasn’t really answered.

This, of course, surprises exactly nobody.

Much more after the jump.

Romney Hood: stealing from the Middle Class to give to the rich

At a campaign stop in Stamford, Connecticut yesterday, President Obama referring to Mitt Romney’s economic plan, the one that pays for historic tax cuts for the super wealthy by increasing taxes on average Americans, renamed Mitt Romney “Romney Hood”. He’s a reverse Robin Hood, said the president, stealing from Middle Class Americans to give to the very rich in our country.

It was brilliant.

Transcript and more after the jump.

Keep the change I’m grateful that I have health insurance because when I saw my check from Humana, I nearly went into shock. Like most Americans, I expect to pay and pay my private insurers as I strive to never use the services for fear I’ll be branded with a preexisting condition. But suddenly, here’s Humana paying me back $61.70. […]

Success doesn’t happen by accident

I’m getting ready to head to Detroit to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) national conference at the Cobo Center where Anne and I will get to meet Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden this afternoon. It’s a significant day because we are now officially 100 days away from the general election where America will repudiate the Republican party and its ties to wealth & corporate power and give our vote to the team that works for average Americans — Biden & Obama.

What will YOU do with the 100 days you have left?

After the jump is a new video by the Obama campaign, showing the last 100 days before the election through the eyes of an OFA volunteer. It’s worth a look.

Forward!

In 2008, Anne and I worked tirelessly to get Senator Barack Obama elected. After the election, Anne wanted to do more. Realizing that she had literally thousands of photos of people who had attended Obama rallies in Michigan, she put together a photomosaic of then President-elect Barack Obama. Titled “Out of Many, We Are One”, it is composed of thousands of faces of people she photographed that summer and fall. She posted it on Flickr and, much to her surprise, it was picked up by Time magazine. In January of 2009, it ran as a full two-page spread in their Person of the Year issue.

A special offer for our Eclectablog readers after the jump!