Bad Deeds for 7-30-2012

Limbaugh Says Don’t Tell People on Welfare When the Election Is – Rush Limbaugh is calling on his listeners to keep the election date a secret from the poorest Americans.

Limbaugh said, “We shouldn’t remind people on welfare when the election is. That may not be something we want to actually do.”

Guy Who Boasted His Family Built Their Business On Their Own in Romney TV Ad Actually Took Over $1 Million in Government Loans – The up-by-his-bootstraps businessman who stars in an ad for Republican hopeful Mitt Romney seems to have built his business through government-sponsored loans, putting a dent in the campaign’s attack on President Barack Obama’s saying to business owners, “you didn’t get there on your own.”

“My father’s hands didn’t build this company? My hands didn’t build this company? My son’s hands aren’t building this company?” New Hampshire businessman Jack Gilchrist, president of Gilchrist Metal asks in the ad that’s been making waves since last week.

Reporting by The New Hampshire Union Leader disputed this claim by looking into Gilchrist’s history, revealing that he took over $1 million in government loans since the 1980s, including $800,000 in tax-exempt bonds issued by the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority to build a new manufacturing plant and buy equipment. Gilchrist also admitted to the paper that he took a U.S. Small Business Administration loan of “somewhere south of” $500,000 in the 1980s, and said that to this day about 10 percent of his business comes from defense-related projects.

Romney Does Not Believe All People Created Equal; Judges Them By Their Income – Mitt Romney of racism after he told wealthy donors — including billionaire Sheldon Adelson — that Israelis were more economically successful because of their culture and intervention by God.

“And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things,” Romney remarked at a $25,000-a-plate fundraiser, adding that a climate of innovation and the “hand of providence” also played a part.

“As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality,” he said.

According to the CIA, Israelis had a 2011 per capital income of $31,400, while Palestinians had a per capita income of just $2,900.

Activists have long said that Israel’s restrictions on trade and strict border blockade are responsible for crippling the Palestinian economy.

Romney Insults Both Countries He Has Visited on Foreign Tour – Romney wanted to show that he is a statesman. So, first, Romney insulted the British about their readiness for the Olympics.

Then, in Israel, Romney was forced to cancel a high-price dinner fundraiser because it was scheduled for a Jewish day of fasting. The Republican presidential candidate originally had planned a $50,000-a-plate dinner in Israel for Sunday night — even though it is also Tisha B’Av, a Jewish day to mourn the victims of the Holocaust and the destruction of first and second Temple of Jerusalem. It is traditionally a day of fast when restaurants in Israel are closed by law.

Romney Lies About His “Friendship” With Netanyahu – Mitt Romney, who’s currently in Israel holding secretive fundraisers out of the view of the press, loves to brag about his close friendship with with Bibi Netanyahu.

“We can almost speak in shorthand,” Mr. Romney said in an interview. “We share common experiences and have a perspective and underpinning which is similar.” […] “Before I made a statement of that nature, I’d get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say: ‘Would it help if I say this? What would you like me to do?’”

And, Romney also said, “Israel’s current prime minister is not just a friend, he’s an old friend.”

Mitt and Bibi: BFFs!

Except no one told Bibi.

“I remember him for sure, but I don’t think we had any particular connections,” Netanyahu said. “I knew him and he knew me, I suppose.”

Yes, Bibi Netanyahu just called Mitt Romney a liar.

Joe the Plumber Spent Campaign Donations on Personal Clothing – Joe the Plumber, running for Congress as a Republican in Ohio and certain to lose, spent $634 in campaign money at Jos. A. Bank in April and May. The Toledo Blade calls him out.

NRA Scuttles International Arms Trade Treaty and Then Brags About It – The NRA is taking credit for scuttling a UN treaty that would have limited the sale of weapons to potential human rights abusers overseas.

In a triumphant email titled “NRA Stops U.N. Arms Trade Treaty” and sent to constituents within hours of the Arms Trade Treaty’s (ATT) death on Friday, the NRA wrote:

“NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre testified before the U.N. making it clear that the NRA would fight any international treaty that included civilian arms.”

To be crystal clear, no constitutional right could possibly have been affected by this treaty: First, because it would only have dealt with international arms trade, and second because no treaty can supersede the U.S. Constitution, period.

What the treaty would have done is abrogate U.S. arms manufacturers’ time-honored right to sell guns to warlords and insurgent militias. Which if you’re the NRA, which relies on arms manufacturers’ donations and good will, is pretty much something you’d want to stop at all cost.

And, in the “It takes one to know one” department – PALIN BACKS FLAKE: “Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has endorsed U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake in Arizona’s bitterly contested Republican Senate primary,”

And now, the good news:

Koch-Funded Climate Scientist Admits He Was Wrong, Now Says Humans Are Causing Global Warming – The founder and director of a climate change study project funded heavily by the Koch brothers, who last year reversed course and said he believed global warming was real, has gone one step further, writing in a weekend op-ed in the New York Times that he is now convinced the phenomenon is caused by humans.

In a piece titled, “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic,” Richard A. Muller, a University of California, Berkley physicist who founded the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature study (BEST) wrote that his, “total turnaround, in such a short time,” was driven by a new report from the group that concluded for the first time that global warming is a man-made problem. That revelation brings Muller essentially full circle from his stance a few years ago, when he criticized other global warming studies as flawed and questioned whether the Earth was even warming abnormally, dangerously fast at all.

Muller’s conversion is particularly notable because his research had been heavily bankrolled by the Koch’s, who have a well-documented history of financing climate change denial. A Greenpeace report earlier this year found that the Koch’s had given nearly $61.5 million since 1997 to groups denying climate change.

Romney Praises Israel’s Health Care System Which Includes Individual Mandate – Mitt Romney had kind words for Israel’s health care system Monday, even though, as ThinkProgress reports, it resembles the recently passed Affordable Health Care Act, which his party has been trying to repeal.

Israel’s health-care system includes an individual mandate clause, requiring citizens to buy one of four HMOs offered by the government since 1995, with the state covering 60 percent of a person’s medical costs. The remaining 40 percent is covered by income-related tax collections.

Last month, The Jewish Daily Forward reported that Israel boasts an average life expectancy of 82 years, four years more than the U.S., with half the mortality rate due to heart disease.

Regards,

Jim