Amid the controversy over a Democratic super PAC ad featuring a man whose wife died of cancer years after Mitt Romney’s old firm Bain Capital was involved in his company, is another charge by Democrats against the GOP.
The ad asserts Republicans want to end unemployment benefits.
Created by Democracy for America, Gov. Howard Dean’s political organization, it says Republicans in their “extreme” agenda pushed efforts over the last two years in Congress to end unemployment benefits.
Online searches show plenty of discussion about how long unemployment benefits should continue but not a single report surfaced indicating Republicans were planning to end the benefits.
The email ad begins: “You’ve seen the extreme agenda – the most extreme I’ve ever seen – being pushed by Republicans in Congress over the last two years.”
It lists with bullet points “Repealing President Obama’s healthcare law,” “Defunding Planned Parenthood,” “Cutting Social Security benefits,” “Privatizing Medicare” and “Ending unemployment benefits.”
“And no action on creating jobs or protecting America’s middle class,” charges Dean’s organization. “We can’t let this extreme agenda go any further. We have to win in November. It’s not enough to re-elect President Obama. We need to take back the House from John Boehner’s Tea Party majority and elect bold progressive leaders to the Congress, or else we’ll be stuck with two more years of our economy and our middle class being held hostage by extreme ideology.”
There are two points in the ad: the promotion of “12 progressive leaders in close races who could decide control of the next Congress” and raking in donations.
While Obama’s email missives almost always ask for $3, Dean’s group apparently is more needy, requesting $12 “to help elect the Dean Dozen.”
The ad also explains a little about itself, specifying that the “Dean Dozen” is the “highest” endorsement the group offers, “a guarantee from our one million members that we will do whatever it takes to win in November.”
The email lists six candidates, Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire, Joe Miklosi of Colorado, Shelli Yoder of Indiana, Jose Hernandez of California, Kathy Boockyar of Pennsylvania and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico.
WND emailed and called Democracy for America seeking comment on the ad or an explanation for the claim Republicans are for “ending unemployment benefits,” only to be referred to a spokeswoman. A call to her number elicited a referral to another number back at DFA, where a message was left.
The controversy continues to churn over the ad by the super PAC Priorities USA, with columnist Pat Buchanan sounding off. He called the Obama advocacy ad the “moral equivalent of poison gas.”
Buchnan writes that in the ad, Romney is “charged with moral, if not material, complicity in the cancer death of the wife of a Missouri steelworker.”
“Speaking straight into the camera, Joe Soptic, 62, charges Romney with coldly shutting down the plant where he worked and cutting off his health insurance. This, says Soptic, left his wife without insurance to pay for her care, until, falling ill, she went to a doctor, who discovered stage 4 cancer, which killed her in 22 days,” Buchanan writes.
“Soptic implies a causal connection between Romney’s decision to shut the plant and his wife’s death. The ad is a premeditated attempt to murder the reputation of Mitt Romney. And from start to finish, it is a deception.”
Buchanan pointed out Romney moved out of leadership at Bain Capital in 1999, and the steel plant closed in 2001. But while Soptic lost his health insurance, his wife was still working and had hers. She lost her job and insurance in 2003. Her illness and cancer were discovered in 2006, when Romney was ending his fourth year as governor of Massachusetts.”
“The White House, through its cynical silence, has been complicit in this moral atrocity as it reaps the benefits,” he said.
Further, while an Obama campaign official denied knowing the facts of the case, she reportedly had a telephone conference call with the man about the same issue.
Fox News reported Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter yesterday said, “I don’t know the facts” about the Soptic case.
But the report said in May, Cutter herself hosted a conference call in which Soptic detailed his case to reporters.
“During the call, as he did in the ad, Soptic explained his wife fell ill after he lost his job, and he lost his health insurance. The call took place as Soptic began appearing in Obama campaign ads and was featured in a profile on the Obama campaign website,” the report said.
The Romney campaign called the Soptic ad “a new low.”
“As if the disgusting and disgraceful ad wasn’t enough, President Obama’s top campaign advisers repeatedly lied, claiming they had no knowledge about the content of the ad,” a campaign statement said.
It noted the Cutter campaign telephone call with Soptic and the campaign decision to feature Soptic in its own production, before the PAC ad came out and the denials that the Obama campaign knew of the man.
“As Reid J. Epstein of Politico wrote, ‘When President Obama’s aides said they weren’t familiar with former Missouri steelworker Joe Soptic’s life story, all they had to do was check their own campaign archives.’”
The Romney campaign said it wanted Americans “to know about this discredited, dishonest, despicable attack by President Obama’s allies designed to divert attention from his failed economic record.”
Dean’s DFA explains it is going to “fight to stop right-wing Republicans and big corporate interests from rolling back the progress we’ve made.”
Dean’s video promotion:
[This message has been edited by avengador1 (edited 08-10-2012).]
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09:17 AM
avengador1 Member
Posts: 35468 From: Orlando, Florida Registered: Oct 2001
Oops? President Barack Obama's re-election campaign washed its hands Wednesday of an independent group's vicious (and misleading) ad effectively blaming Mitt Romney for the death of a laid-off steelworker's wife from cancer. Campaign officials flatly denied any knowledge of the facts in the case—but it turns out the widower told the same story on an Obama campaign conference call in mid-May. (The Obama campaign responded late in the day: See update below).
"We have nothing, no involvement, with any ads that are done by Priorities USA. We don't have any knowledge of the story of the family," Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters aboard Air Force One on Wednesday.
The ad features Joe Soptic, who lost his job and his health benefits after Romney's Bain Capital closed the GST Steel plant in Kansas City, Mo., in 2001. Soptic later told CNN that his wife had health insurance through her own employer from that point to 2002 or 2003, when she left that job because of an injury—a detail that undermines the ad's heartbreaking narrative.
"I don't know the facts about when Mr. Soptic's wife got sick, or the facts about his health insurance," deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter told CNN on Wednesday.
But there's a problem. As Politico first reported, Soptic told essentially the same story in a May 14, 2012, conference call hosted by the Obama campaign. Here's what he said then, according to a partial recording of the call passed along by a Republican official:
After we lost our jobs, we found out that we were going to lose our health insurance, and that our pensions hadn't been funded like Bain promised they would be. I was lucky to find another job as a custodian in a local school district. They gave me some health insurance, but I couldn't afford to buy it for my wife. A little while later she was diagnosed with lung cancer. I had to put her in a county hospital because she didn't have health care, and when the cancer took her away, all I got was an enormous bill. That put a lot of stress on me: I thought I'd be paying it off until I died myself. That probably wouldn't have happened if Bain kept its promise and I was allowed to keep our health insurance.
"It's upsetting what Mitt Romney and his partners did to us," he added.
The revelation drew an immediate rebuke from Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams, who said Obama and his campaign "are willing to say and do anything to hide the president's disappointing record."
"But they're not entitled to repeatedly mislead voters," he said.
The Obama campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But aides earlier had sought to shift the conversation away from the independent ad to the Romney campaign's misleading attack on Obama's record on welfare, essentially labeling the discussion over the Priorities ad a distraction.
White House press secretary Jay Carney, speaking to reporters alongside Psaki, blasted "the categorically false and blatantly dishonest advertisement from the Romney campaign—not a third-party group—from the Romney campaign with regards to the president's policy on welfare reform."
"While we're talking about this ad, which we all know we had no involvement in, Mitt Romney's team is running a dishonest ad, an ad that is a big, bold-faced lie that even President Clinton has said was disappointing and inaccurate," Psaki agreed.
"And that's an ad that they should be held accountable for and on the facts, because right now they're out there running it across the country as if this is a true policy when in fact it's not," she said. "So that's a conversation we feel like we should be having."
UPDATE, 5:51 pm: Reached for comment, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt reiterated that the campaign "didn't produce" the ad and tried to shift the attention to Democratic criticisms of Romney's business record.
"Joe Soptic suffered when he lost his job in the aftermath of the GST Steel plant closing, and no one is denying that he discussed that when he appeared in a campaign advertisement and on a conference call," LaBolt said by email.
"The important point here is that Mitt Romney's campaign is based solely on his experience as a corporate buyout specialist, and while he has been quick to claim he created jobs, he refuses to accept responsibility for the jobs that were lost and workers that were impacted," the spokesman said.
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02:32 PM
avengador1 Member
Posts: 35468 From: Orlando, Florida Registered: Oct 2001
That was semi quick. Obama campaign finally tells truth on misleading super PAC ad
quote
President Barack Obama‘s campaign resorted to truth-telling Aug. 9 as it sought to calm the uproar caused by its support for a controversial attack ad that suggested Mitt Romney had caused a person’s death by cancer.
Spokeswoman Jan Psaki admitted Thursday that Obama’s campaign had used misleading comments from Joe Soptic, a former union organizer at GST Steel, after she had denied any connection to Soptic.
The controversy over Soptic’s comments had put the campaign on the defensive, fired up Romney’s stump speeches and obscured valuable coverage of the president’s two-day tour through Colorado.
Soptic, via an Obama campaign slideshow and a controversial video broadcast by the Obama-allied Priorities USA super PAC, had suggested that Romney was responsible for his wife’s sudden death from cancer.
Her death came five years after Bain shut down the money-losing, low-tech steel-company, and seven years after Romney left Bain to manage the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Soptic’s wife had health insurance after GST was closed down.
On Tuesday the misleading ad was condemned by Romney’s allies and even by media outlets normally sympathetic to Obama.
The super PAC’s founder Bill Burton denied any impropriety on Wednesday, and the Obama campaign initially denied any connection to Soptic.
However, reporters quickly found that the campaign had invited Soptic to talk to reporters, and had propagated his claim in an Obama campaign slideshow.
The media and GOP pressure forced Obama’s spokeswoman to revise and extend her earlier denials.
“No one is denying that he was in … one of our campaign ads,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Thursday.
“He was on a conference call telling his story, which speaks to what many, many people in this country have gone through as there have been layoffs and they’ve had their benefits reduced,” she claimed during a short press conference in Colorado.
The admission is damaging, partly because it might constrict fund-raising by Burton’ super PAC, and partly because it promotes skepticism by the public — and even the establishment media — about the president’s campaign-trail claims.
The Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee gleefully touted the turnabout.
“The Obama campaign has now admitted that it lied to the media and the American people in a disgraceful attempt to conceal their connection to this shameful [cancer-death] smear,” said a statement from Ryan Williams, a Romney spokesman.
“Americans deserve better — they deserve a president who’s willing to run an honest campaign and be honest about his own record,” he said.
The RNC also put the boot in.
“Jen Psaki is now admitting the campaign DID have knowledge of the Soptic family’s cancer story despite telling reporters yesterday the campaign didn’t,” said a Aug. 9 statement from RNC spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski.
“Yet Team Obama still won’t condemn Priorities USA for trying to smear Romney by tying him to a woman’s death,” she said.
Joe Pounder, the RNCs research chief, also used the backtrack to portray Obama as deceptive.
In an Aug. 9 stump speech, “Barack Obama decried Republican Super PACs but again refused to speak out against the widely condemned ad from his own Super PAC,” Pounder said in a statement.
“We guess Barack Obama is only offended by outside ads if they are from Republican groups and isn’t willing to stand up to Bill Burton and his liberal friends,” Pounder said.
However, Obama’s aide, Psaki, tried to go on the offensive.
She told reporters Thursday that Romney should be put through the same media wringer. because one of several anti-Obama super PAC had broadcast ads questioning the president’s birth in Hawaii.
“No one is asking the Romney campaign about that ad and what they think about that ad. So as we talk about apples and oranges, that’s the apples-to-apples comparison I’ll leave you with,” Psaki said.
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10:11 PM
Formula88 Member
Posts: 53788 From: Raleigh NC Registered: Jan 2001
In other news, the attacks on Romney have apparently worked and rumour has it that he will decline the GOP nomination at the convention. The final GOP ticket for 2012 is going to be Chris Christie & Allen West. Just to piss liberals off.
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11:06 PM
WhiteDevil88 Member
Posts: 8518 From: Coastal California Registered: Mar 2007
In other news, the attacks on Romney have apparently worked and rumour has it that he will decline the GOP nomination at the convention. The final GOP ticket for 2012 is going to be Chris Christie & Allen West. Just to piss liberals off.
I can't see them having worse chances then Rominee. Don't know why the Republican party wasting their money running unsuitable candidates would piss off liberals.
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11:41 PM
Aug 11th, 2012
Formula88 Member
Posts: 53788 From: Raleigh NC Registered: Jan 2001
On Thursday, there was a news report about Yovany Gonzalez, who was fired because his daughter Mackenzie needed to have expensive surgery. His employer, who provided his health coverage, didn't want to pay for it. Mackenzie died. The host of the show "The Young Turks" on Current TV invited Alan Grayson on the air to talk about it:
CENK UYGUR: Now, [there was] a guy who pointed out this problem. His name was Alan Grayson. Do you remember when Congressman Grayson from Florida gave this speech in the last Congress?
[VIDEO OF ALAN GRAYSON]: The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick. The Democrats have a different plan. The Democrats say, "If you have health insurance, we're going to make it better. If you don't have health insurance, we're going to provide it to you. If you can't afford health insurance, then we will help you afford health insurance." But the Republican plan is this: "Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly."
CENK: Well, he took a lot of heat for that speech. But as you see stories like the Gonzalez story throughout the country, you wonder if he'd gotten it right all along. In fact, let's bring in Alan Grayson right now -- Former congressman from Florida, running again for Congress in Florida. Congressman, talk to us about the state of health care, this case, and what you make of it.
ALAN GRAYSON: Well, we still have 50 million Americans who can't see a doctor when they are sick. And we have the Right Wing in total denial about the problem. After I gave that speech, they demanded an apology. Instead, I apologized to the dead, and gave the [Right Wing] a Harvard study that shows that 45,000 Americans die every year because they have no health coverage. If you take two people who are absolutely identical, physically identical -- same age, same gender, same weight, same smoking habits -- the one without health insurance is 40 percent more likely to die each year than the one with health insurance.
The Right Wing wants to ignore that. We set up a website that still exists, called NamesOfTheDead.com. We invited people who had lost people whom they loved, because they had no health coverage, to write in. It's some of the most poignant stories you've ever heard in your entire life. The Right Wing wants to ignore it, wish it away, pretend it's not happening. It's just wrong. CENK: You know what's fascinating is the media coverage of this. If you point out people who have died [because they have no health insurance], they get mad at you and they say, "Oh, that's uncivil," right? But if you actually take away people's insurance and they die, that they don't mind. It seems like the media thinks, "OK, well that's just life, and, you know, your family member died, and it's a sad day for you." But we [are considered] to be the impolite ones for pointing it out. Is there something wrong with our media?
ALAN GRAYSON: This has been going on now for years. The health insurance companies themselves have been doing it, for years now. For decades, they have had provisions, small print in their policies, that allowed them literally to pull the plug on you when you got too expensive for them. These lifetime caps. And that's been a plague on us, and it's killed many people.
[Grayson] introduced a specific bill, H.R. 6000, called the "Thou Shall Not Kill Thy Customers Act," to prevent them from doing that any longer. And in fact, Obamacare does prevent them from doing that. It ends lifetime caps, but the Republicans want to perpetuate that situation. It doesn't matter whom you blame, whether it is the Right Wing or the media, it's just wrong. We've known for 3,000 years now that a just society is one that shelters the homeless, that feeds the hungry, and that heals the sick.
CENK: So now Republicans are livid because one of Romney's spokespeople pointed out that his health care plan, universal health care in Massachusetts, would have saved the life of the guy they feature in a Super PAC ad for Obama. And they say, "How dare you? How dare you save her life, and claim that your program would?" How is this Republican Party even in contention? How do they get people to say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I want a lifetime cap, so that if I get really sick, my insurance pulls the plug on me, or they pull the plug on my kids. Yeah, I want corporations to crush my soul." And say, "Hey, you know what? My family member's sick, who cares? Let 'em die, because I want to save a buck." How does a party this decrepit, this sick, this grotesque, even be in contention, and let alone the wins that they had in 2010?
ALAN GRAYSON: You've got me. I don't know. I think they should be heading for an overwhelming loss, because the only thing that Mitt Romney cares about, the only thing that the Koch Brothers care about, the only thing that the insurance companies care about, is money. They take as much as they can from the rest of us, they give back as little as possible in return, and they call the difference "profit." CENK: Congressman Alan Grayson, running again in Florida. Thank you for joining us. We appreciate it. And I want to thank you for that speech you gave last time around, because you were absolutely right about it.
ALAN GRAYSON: Thank you.
Sleep well tonight, my myopic conservative friends. It wasn't YOUR wife or daughter who died to keep America safe for greed. At least not today....... ------------------ Drive safely!
[This message has been edited by NEPTUNE (edited 08-13-2012).]
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08:31 PM
avengador1 Member
Posts: 35468 From: Orlando, Florida Registered: Oct 2001
