Quick Hits - January 12, 2012

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (DWS), the Chair of the Democrat National Committee, hack, and otherwise one of the dimmest of the dim bulbs on Capital Hill, has apparently forgotten the first rule of hole digging. 

Here's DWS blaming the Tuscon shooting by nutcase Jared Loughner on the 'Tea Party'.

Now DWS is saying her words were 'taken out of context'...and is sending out tweets whinging that 'I'd NEVER politicize Tuscon...".  Hmm, what should be believe?  This hack or our own lying eyes?

Her words weren't taken out of context - and she's an expert on doing so.

I thought the DNC hit rock bottom when Howard Dean (Arrrgggghhhh) was the Chair.  There's a new bottom.

Some of the GOP candidates for President are reaching similar levels of....desperation?  One of Rick Perry's major financial supporters based in SC has defected from the Perry camp and joins the Romney camp over Perry's continued attacks Mitt Romney describing the former Bain Capital CEO as a 'vulture capitalist'. 

Newt Gingrich is also continuing the desperate attacks on Mitt Romney in South Carolina hoping that this smear on Romney and capitalism will be sufficient to promote him to a win in South Carolina.  According to RealClearPolitics, Romney has a 9.3% lead (29.3) over Gingrich (20) who has a slim 1 point lead over Rick Santorum.  Paul (11.3), Perry (5), and Huntsman (3.5) trail well in the distance.

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani asks Newt - 'What the hell are you doing?'

“I’m shocked at what they’re doing,” Giuliani said of Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry Thursday on "Fox and Friends." “It’s ignorant and dumb. It’s building something we should be fighting in America, ignorance of the economic system, playing on the dumbest, most ridiculous ideas about how you grow jobs.”

The US Chamber of Commerce President Thomas J. Donohue is also raising questions at Gingrich and Perry for their attacks from the OWS left on Romney - calling the attacks 'foolish'. 

Lost within these 'foolish' and inaccurate attacks from the OccupyWallStreet left on Mitt Romney are the facts...as is often the case.

A company went into bankruptcy (Smith Corona) and was sold to another company (Ampad). The new company, 80% of which was owned by Bain Capital, tried to make the old company profitable—and even offered to rehire the old employees at slightly lower wages—but the union (United Paperworkers International Union) insisted on the status quo and went on strike. All of the employees lost their jobs when the company moved to a right-to-work state. So who is to blame for the workers losing their jobs?

Not Mitt Romney, as Newt Gingrich, the DNC, and MSNBC would have you believe, but Randy Johnson, the union vice president who refused to compromise.

Johnson even coordinated with Ted Kennedy to help prolong the strike so as to damage Mitt Romney’s candidacy. Romney was leading in the polls against Ted Kennedy or tied before the story broke. Johnson and Kennedy had even met at an AFL-CIO rally. Johnson admitted after the election that he and Kennedy had stayed in touch about the strike all along. (“Romney’s retribution – and Kennedy’s response,” Robert A. Jordan, The Boston Globe January 8, 1995, Sunday)

This is what private equity venture capital / investment companies do.  They acquire troubled companies or agree to invest in up and coming new incubating companies - and then try to develop these companies to their highest potential at which point they would be spun off.  In terms of troubled existing companies, these are companies that are on the verge of failure - where everyone would lose their jobs.  In the vast majority of the cases by Bain, they were successful in turning the companies around - changing the failing business model and practices and then were able to spin them off at a profit.  But facts are inconvenient when one is trying to define a perception to replace reality as Gingrich is doing.

In the PJ Media's PJ Tatler - there is an interesting look at the GOP race....as if they were applicants for a job...

In the Republican primary, it’s not all that unusual, unfortunately, for rivals to attack each other from positions that end up being counterproductive. And it’s not all that uncommon for Democrats to attack their rivals from the right. George H. W. Bush dubbed Ronald Reagan’s supply side economics “voodoo economics” before becoming Reagan’s own vice president and then president. Al Gore attacked Michael Dukakis as being weak on crime, via the infamous Willie Horton ad (when Bush used the same story, Democrats smeared him for it). Barack Obama hit Hillary Clinton from the right, and she hit him back from the right. And they hit each other from the left too. Obama even played the race card on Clinton, before naming her his secretary of State.
All of these tactical attacks we’re seeing now, we’ve seen before. It’s not new. They’re distasteful, but they won’t go away because we will them to. To an extent, the current “vulture capitalist” attacks on Romney, while ridiculous, could inoculate him from similar attacks by the Democrats if he is the nominee. They certainly seem to be helping him now, and they’ll be old news later. None of that are reasons to continue the attacks. They betray a disturbing lack of principle in those launching them.

Lost in all of this kerfuffle around the desperation of Gingrich and Perry is a big endorsement that Mitt Romney picked up yesterday.  John Bolton, the respected (and very conservative) former US Ambassador to the United Nations, endorsed Romney for President.  Steps like this work against the meme being floated by Gingrich, Perry, and Santorum that Romney is not conservative enough...

The Attorney General of New Hampshire has launched an investigationO'Keefe (did the video's exposing ACORN) showing how easy it is to vote in NH using the name of someone who recently died.  The NH AG seems quite concerned about the possibilities of voter fraud.  In fact, former Democrat Congressman, Artur Davis, says 'voter fraud is common in many jurisdictions' and calls for strict Voter ID rules as well as far more attention made to ensuring the voter lists are as current as possible.
Eric Holder was unavailable for comment or playing the race card.

Speaking of Eric Holder, and segueing to Fast and Furious - his program to walk guns from the US to Mexican Drug Cartels in order to justify tougher US gun controls - we know that these efforts have resulted in hundreds of deaths- including those of Americans.  Did you know that the last 5 years of the war between the Mexican Government and Drug Cartels have claimed 47,500 lives?  I surprised that more is not being said about this carnage that is being done south and on our borders.  Of course, I'm also surprised there isn't more outrage over the Administrations involvement in that carnage, their cover-ups and lying to Congress, and the fact that it was all to create a justification for an Administration policy wish.

An Arab League observer in Syria has resigned from his position saying that the Arab League mission is a 'farce' and that the observers 'can't halt the killing in Syria'. 

In this week's job numbers, the first time unemployment claims jumped by 24,000, to 399,000 reflecting businesses shedding workers after the Christmas holidays. 
On This Day in History

1969 - Broadway Joe Namath and the AFL's New York Jet's stun the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.  The Jets won 16-7.

1943 - The Soviet Armey creates a breach in the German siege of Leningrad - which allows supplies to be trucked into the city via Lake Ladoga for the first time since September 8, 1941.  650,000 residents of Leningrad died in 1942 during the siege - starvation, disease, exposure, and injuries from the continual German artillery bombardment of the city.  1 million residents were also evacuated through this breach as the route remained open until the spring.  The siege wasn't completely ended until January 27, 1944 - lasting 872 days.


2010 - A 7.0 earthquake devastates the impoverished nation of Haiti - killing over 300,000.  2 years later, the country is still in despair.  Aid that was promised wasn't given, corruption remains rampant, and UN troops sent to help kicked off a cholera epidemic that killed thousands.