Mitt Romney Gives Over 20% Of His Earnings To Church And Charity

Again, you'll hardly hear about this in the mainstream media:

There’s been much ado made about Mitt Romney‘s tax returns this election cycle, and generally Romney’s defense for not releasing them as been that additional returns would make him a bigger target for attack, that the opposition will always want something more. In this Sunday’s edition of Parade magazine, Romney offers another reason: His donations to his church.

One reason he’s kept his returns private is because he wants to keep his donations to the LDS Church private, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Romney told Parade:

“Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given,” Romney tells Parade magazine in an edition due out Sunday. “This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church.”

Thus far, Romney’s released his 2010 return, and a summary of the following year’s (promising to release it in its entirety). The Tribune notes that members of “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are encouraged to donate 10 percent of their gross income to the faith, and Romney’s disclosure early this year shows he did just that and also forked over more through his family charity.”

Romney pulled in more than $40 million in 2010 and 2011, his campaign reported, and paid about $4.1 million to the LDS Church. That’s in addition to about $4.8 million his Tyler Charitable Foundation donated to the faith.

Just last week, Romney told reporters that over the past 10 years, he’s never paid less than 13 percent in taxes — also making mention of his charitable donations. “But every year I’ve paid at least 13 percent and if you add in addition the amount that goes to charity, why the number gets well above 20 percent,” he said.

RELATED: NYT's Trip Gabriel Accuses GOP of Out-of-Context 'Misrepresentation' of Obama's 'You Didn't Build That'

Anderson Cooper Grills Debbie Wasserman-Schultz: Why Are You Lying About Romney’s Position on Abortion?

Mediaite.com:

On Thursday night, Anderson Cooper in his “Keeping Them Honest” segment confronted Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz for “misquoting” the Los Angeles Times in a fundraising email that sought to link Mitt Romney‘s abortion stance with Rep. Todd Akin‘s. Repeatedly challenging her assertions, Cooper asked her to acknowledge the incorrect quote. Schultz refused.
The email said the GOP “just voted to embrace Akin’s position by including a constitutional ban on all abortions — even in cases of rape or incest — in their 2012 platform.” Then, Cooper noted that Schultz calls out Romney and Paul Ryan for “saying they don’t entirely agree with that plank,” and moved on to the LA Times quote the email cited to back up the point:

“…but guess what? The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that the platform was, and I quote, ‘written at the direction of Romney’s campaign.’”

While those quoted words did appear in the Times, Cooper said, they were taken “completely out of context.” For reference, the portion in question from the Times (emphasis mine on the quoted bit):

There is no doubt about who is in charge, of course. Delegates for presumptive nominee Mitt Romney are voting down substantive changes to the platform language that was written at the direction of Romney’s campaign. The biggest question is whether the tone remains polite, as it was at the outset of two days of deliberations, or whether dissenters spoil the image of harmony that the Romney campaign is working hard to produce.

Cooper argued that the email uses the quote to make a point that the original statement doesn’t suggest — and that the facts aren’t quite solid: “First, the abortion language in the 2012 platform, it hardly differs from the 2008 language and the 2004 language in the platform. That language obviously wasn’t written by the Romney campaign.” Second, Cooper said CNN’s Peter Hamby was in the room while the platform was being drafted, and Hamby said Romney advisers made a suggestions, but not on the abortion plan.

Turning to Schultz, Cooper confronted her with their attempts to tie the Romney/Ryan platform on abortion to Rep. Akin (given his recent controversy). He then asked whether she acknowledges that Romney does support abortion in cases of rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother. In response, Schultz fell back on her decided talking points, noting the need for voters to see the dramatic contrast between the two sides when it comes to women and their reproductive choices — and pointing to the GOP platform that makes no exceptions in its stance against abortion.

Cooper challenged her, reminding her that the email said the Romney campaign directed the writing of the platform. Factually speaking, he said, Romney did not design the abortion platform nor was it among the topics of suggestions the campaign made. 

Pressed further, Schultz acknowledged that Romney’s stance on the issue differs from his party’s platform, but she argued that he talks the talk and “certainly doesn’t walk the walk.” Upon her asserting that he’s “embraced his party’s platform,” Cooper again came back to the issue of the misquote — further egged on by Schultz’s nonchalant response: “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” he said. “I don’t understand why you would need to do that.”

After a bit more of Schultz driving her point about the contrast between the two candidates, Cooper asked whether she acknowledges that the quote in the email is “completely incorrect.”

“No, I don’t acknowledge that,” Schultz replied, adding that Romney “can’t separate himself” from the GOP platform. A visibly frustrated Cooper told her, “He has.”

RELATED: Anderson Cooper grills Debbie Wasserman-Schultz: Why are you lying about Romney’s position on abortion?

Niall Ferguson Tells Liberal Critics To Stick It

TheDailyBeast.com:

First, duck the argument. Second, nitpick. Third, vilify. That’s what Niall Ferguson says liberal bloggers did after reading his Newsweek story on Obama’s record. Here, he offers a point-by-point defense of his argument.

The other day, a British friend asked me if there was anything about the United States I disliked. I was happily on vacation and couldn’t think of anything. But now I remember. I really can’t stand America’s liberal bloggers.

“We know no spectacle so ridiculous,” Lord Macaulay famously wrote, “as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.” But the spectacle of the American liberal blogosphere in one of its almost daily fits of righteous indignation is not so much ridiculous as faintly sinister. Why? Because what I have encountered since the publication of my Newsweek article criticizing President Obama looks suspiciously like an orchestrated attempt to discredit me.

My critics have three things in common. First, they wholly fail to respond to the central arguments of the piece. Second, they claim to be engaged in “fact checking,” whereas in nearly all cases they are merely offering alternative (often silly or skewed) interpretations of the facts. Third, they adopt a tone of outrage that would be appropriate only if I had argued that, say, women’s bodies can somehow prevent pregnancies in case of “legitimate rape.”

Their approach is highly effective, and I must remember it if I ever decide to organize an intellectual witch hunt. What makes it so irksome is that it simultaneously dodges the central thesis of my piece and at the same time seeks to brand me as a liar. The icing on the cake has been the attempt by some bloggers to demand that I be sacked not just by Newsweek but also by Harvard University, where I am a tenured professor. It is especially piquant to read these demands from people who would presumably defend academic freedom in the last ditch—provided it is the freedom to publish opinions in line with their own ideology.

***

Let me begin by restating my argument. President Obama should be judged on his record in office. In my view, he has not only failed to live up to the high expectations of those who voted for him, but also to the pledges he made in his inaugural address. (In order to be fair, I deliberately did not judge his performance against his campaign pledges.) The economy has performed less well than the White House led us to expect, despite a bigger increase in national debt than it led us to expect (exhibit 1).

Note, however, that I cut the president some slack on the economy. He inherited a bigger mess than most people appreciated back in November 2008. And forces beyond his control (Europe) have clearly dampened the recovery. Here’s what I wrote:

It was pretty hard to foresee what was going to happen to the economy in the years after 2008. Yet surely we can legitimately blame the president for the political mistakes of the past four years. After all, it’s the president’s job to run the executive branch effectively—to lead the nation. And here is where his failure has been greatest.

Notice, then, that my central critique of the president is not that the economy has underperformed, but that he has not been an effective leader of the executive branch. I go on to detail his well-documented difficulties in managing his team of economic advisers and his disastrous decision to leave it to his own party in Congress to define the terms of his stimulus, financial reform, and health-care reform. I also argue that he has consistently failed to address the crucial issue of long-term fiscal balance, with the result that the nation is now hurtling toward a fiscal cliff of tax hikes and drastic spending cuts.

The second part of my argument is that these failures of domestic leadership have fed into a failure of foreign policy. As commander in chief, President Obama has earned a relatively strong public reputation mainly thanks to a campaign of assassination that liberal bloggers would have excoriated if it had been conducted by his predecessor. His withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan will, in my view, prove to have been premature. More importantly, he has been indecisive in his responses to the revolutionary wave that has swept the Middle East since the Iranian “green” revolution of 2009. And, finally, he has been inconsistent and ineffective in his handling of the major strategic challenge of our times, the rise of China. (By the way, I base these judgments on a great many off-the-record conversations with influential policy-makers here and abroad. When a very senior military man asks you: “Have we any global strategy beyond just trying to hang on?,” you have a right to wonder if the answer might be “No.”)

RELATED:  Academics predict economy will drive a Romney victory

Nebraska Lesbian Lied About Hate Crime Attack

Put aside the fact that "hate crimes" are a farce in of itself. If only more people (esp. law enforcement agencies) took into account that homosexuality is an immoral, anti-God, lifestyle choice, there'd be more skepticism about accepting as truth allegations like this from any person who lives as a homosexual:

A Nebraska woman who claimed she was the victim of a horrific hate crime in July and subsequently charged with making false claims to police pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charge Tuesday.

Police in Lincoln, Neb., who spent weeks investigating the case, arrested Charlie Rogers Tuesday for making a false report. Lancaster County Attorney Joe Kelly said a judge issued the warrant for her arrest earlier Tuesday.

Rogers, 33, of Lincoln, pleaded not guilty to the charge and was released on a personal recognizance bond after a brief court appearance Tuesday afternoon.

Her lawyer, Brett McArthur, said she maintains that the attack happened, according to The Associated Press.

Rogers told police three men wearing black ski masks broke into her home during the early morning hours on July 22, bound her wrists and ankles with zip ties, beat her and carved anti-gay slurs into her arms and abdomen.

Rogers also alleged the men spray painted homophobic slurs inside the home and poured gasoline around the house before lighting it on fire.

Rogers said she was bound and naked when she escaped and managed to knock on a neighbor’s door at about 4 a.m. July 22.

Police said they interviewed Rogers on four separate occasions. Because of inconsistencies in her various accounts of the attack and forensic DNA evidence, a warrant was issued for her arrest.

“A great deal of time and resources were spent investigating Charlie Rogers’ claims in hopes of identifying and arresting the three suspects in this case,” Lincoln Police said in a statement. “As the investigation progressed and additional interviews were completed, the department received results from forensic analysts and experts making it apparent that the physical evidence conflicted with Charlie Rogers’ version of events.

RELATED: Romney Advisor Argues Against Civil Unions In GOP Platform, Likens Homosexuality To Drug Use

Lolo Jones : If I Wanted Just Fame I'd Do A Kim Kardashian Sex Tape

For Hip Hop News & Entertainment at DimeWars.Com

Teenage pregnancy rising. More women committing crimes. Morally bankrupt reality-TV stars and the liberal media combining to wreck havoc on Christian values and good parents trying to raise their daughters to do something positive with their lives. Needless to say women in this country are in desperate need of positive role models and Lolo Jones is one to look to.

RELATED: Tearful Lolo Jones: Media 'ripped me to shreds' before race

Hypocrite-In-Chief: Obama Blasts Medicare Cuts to Fund New Healthcare Program

You won't hear about this from the liberal media:

We generally try to reserve the "pure gold" label for truly irresistible instances of flagrant hypocrisy and irony.  To wit, our last usage came while flagging a clip of President Obama ripping into President Bush's "unpatriotic" accumulation of $4 Trillion in debt over eight years ... just after Obama eclipsed the $4 Trillion mark himself after just two-and-a-half years on the job.  That reminder seems especially relevant this week, since we now find ourselves on the precipice of blowing past the $16 trillion national debt mark.  It'll probably happen by week's end.  In any case, and without further ado, here's candidate Barack Obama in 2008 informing voters about John McCain's risky and dangerous Medicare-slashing vision for healthcare reform:

"It turns out that Senator McCain would pay for part of his plan by making drastic cuts in Medicare!  (Boos) $882 Billion worth. (Boos) $882 billion in Medicare cuts to pay for an ill-conceived, badly-thought-through healthcare plan...even though Medicare is already facing a looming shortfall...If you rely on Medicare, it would mean fewer places to get care, and less freedom to choose your own doctors."

It's uncanny, isn't it?  Four years hence, the Republican ticket has managed to swipe this potent attack from Obama's arsenal because the president's own plan is now doing precisely -- and I mean precisely -- what he warned about four years ago.   Allow me to update and paraphrase:

This president has paid for part of his plan by making drastic cuts to Medicare. $716 Billion worth.  $716 Billion in Medicare cuts to pay for an ill-conceived, badly-thought-through Obamacare plan.  If you rely on Medicare, it will mean fewer places to get care, and less freedom to choose your own doctors.

Lefty "fact-checkers" are tripping over one another to declare this Romney/Ryan criticism of The One a "myth" (in a stunningly deceitful piece) and "half true," but Obama cannot escape the empirical fact that he has, in fact, cut hundreds of billions from a program "already facing a looking shortfall" in order to fund his unpopular, unaffordable and destructive Obamacare power grab.  Team Obama can scream "lie!" until they're blue in the face.  That won't change the reality that President Obama has admitted to these Medicare cuts on national television, and that his Deputy Campaign manager touted the cuts as a presidential "achievement" as recently as last week.

RELATED: Paul Ryan’s Debut: What Went Right, What Went Wrong? (The Note)

Sean Hannity Panel Uses Akin Controversy To Slam Left’s ‘Double Standard’ In Accountability

Mediaite.com:

On his show Tuesday night, Sean Hannity invited Dana Perino and Stuart Varney to weigh in on the latest developments in the controversy surrounding Rep. Todd Akin. Namely, his refusal to drop out of the Missouri Senate race. While all three encouraged Akin’s exit, they went on to draw a contrast between the left and the right when it comes to accountability, criticizing what they called a double standard.

“He seems delusional,” Perino concluded bluntly, in a discussion about Akin’s refusal to step out of the race.

“He made a terrible mistake,” Hannity chimed in, noting that he accept’s Akin’s apology and thinks “he misspoke.” But staying in the race simply isn’t a smart choice, he said.

Varney agreed, and said that Akin “knows he stakes” — a point Perino disputed, pondering whether Akin’s political consultants might also be driving him to stay in. “But it’s not the right thing to do,” she said.

To that point, Hannity said, “The conservative movement is more important than any one person. If it was me, and I thought I could potentially hurt Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in defeating Obama, I would step aside.”

He went on to criticize the double standard he said exists when it comes to accountability. “Isn’t it great that the right has standards?” Perino asked. “And we hold people to that account.”

Meanwhile, Varney said, liberals can say what they like and not have to resign. Pointing in particular to Vice President Joe Biden, Hannity said, “Democrats can say anything.”

RELATED: Akin allies: 'The only deadline is November'

Is Elizabeth Warren Tanking?

The architect of "You didn't build that" could be in for a major loss...to a Republican in a liberal state:

I joked the other day about Elizabeth Warren’s Mike Dukakis Tank moment.

Maybe tanking was the right word, because a PPP poll just released shows Warren 5 points behind and Warren’s negatives rising dramatically (emphasis mine):

PPP’s newest poll on the Massachusetts Senate race finds Scott Brown opening up a 5 point lead, 49-44. This is the first time Brown has led in one of our polls since June of 2011. Our last poll, in June of this year, found a tie and the two before that had modest leads for Elizabeth Warren.

Brown continues to do well because of his personal popularity and because voters see him as different from the Republican Party as a whole. 53% of voters approve of the job he’s doing to 36% who disapprove. Incumbents with those kinds of approval numbers generally don’t lose. Brown’s approval has improved a net 14 points from March when he was at +3 (45/42).

Warren’s numbers are headed in the other direction. On that poll her favorability was 46/33 and now it’s 46/43- her negatives have risen 10 points over the last five months while her positives have remained unchanged.

Got that?  Warren’s negatives have risen 10%.  I’m not about to take any credit for that.

Oh, hell, on an akin, breakin day like this, I need to cheer myself us, so I’ll take a small bit of the credit for helping to expose the truth, which necessarily would cause Warren’s negatives to rise.

I’ll leave it to others to see if there are any sampling differences which might explain the change from the prior poll by PPP.  I’m just going to take whatever good news I can get today without question.

And I’ll add this, from Cole DeLaune writing at Indian Country Today, accusing Warren of “spiritual genocide” and calling her a “pathological revisionist”:

In Warren’s model of ethnic distinction, neither practical experience nor community affiliation applies; one can simply appropriate the mantle of Cherokee lineage at personal discretion. Per this formulation, the disparities between discrete cultures are meaningless, and Professor Warren is effectively championing a subtle variety of spiritual genocide.

A November victory for this pathological revisionist will legitimize abjectly appalling notions about indigenous identity….

If you disagree with Professor Warren’s assault on the Indian landscape, please consider recording a brief statement on your mobile phone or laptop for the Natives United Against Warren campaign and submitting your message (warrendoesnotrepresentme@gmail) via e-mail.

The professor’s actions demand a vigorous and unmitigated response lest her destructive and assimilatory species of racist ruse—an increasingly grotesque variant of intellectual blackface—prevails.

More to come.  Trust me on that.

RELATED: Obama's Elizabeth Warren Test

'Newsweek' Cover Story: Obama's Got To Go

Considering Newsweek's notorious liberal bent, this cover and article is quite a shocker. Too bad for all the Obama stans out there, everything Niall Ferguson writes here is true...just look it up:

I was a good loser four years ago. “In the grand scheme of history,” I wrote the day after Barack Obama’s election as president, “four decades is not an especially long time. Yet in that brief period America has gone from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to the apotheosis of Barack Obama. You would not be human if you failed to acknowledge this as a cause for great rejoicing.”

Despite having been—full disclosure—an adviser to John McCain, I acknowledged his opponent’s remarkable qualities: his soaring oratory, his cool, hard-to-ruffle temperament, and his near faultless campaign organization.

Yet the question confronting the country nearly four years later is not who was the better candidate four years ago. It is whether the winner has delivered on his promises. And the sad truth is that he has not.

In his inaugural address, Obama promised “not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.” He promised to “build the roads and bridges, the electric grids, and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.” He promised to “restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.” And he promised to “transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.” Unfortunately the president’s scorecard on every single one of those bold pledges is pitiful.

RELATED: ‘Newsweek’ cover story: Obama’s got to go

Politiks As Usual: In The News 8/20/12

'Solid South' No Longer Just All-Red Or All-Blue

Rick Santorum Says Biden Played The ‘Race Card’

Soledad O’Brien’s Progressive Nostalgia and the Collapse of CNN

Eight Arguments You've Probably Heard Against Mitt Romney

The Liberal Sisterhood of the Plundering Hacks

HuffPo Attacks Family Research Council as ‘Hate Group’ Even After Shooting

Peggy Noonan: If Biden Were Republican Meet the Press's Topic Would Be 'How Stupid Is This Person?'

Trump Fires Back at Obama Campaign Smear

Liberal 'Media Matters' Writer Calls SEALs Gutless for Criticizing Obama

DC Shooting: Evidence of Media Bias? 

Is PolitiFact Campaigning for Obama? 

Does Ryan Have a “Catholic Problem”?

Like MSNBC, CNN Ignored Poll Showing 74 Percent of Americans Support Showing Photo ID to Vote

Newsbusters.org:

In spite of a Washington Post poll showing 74 percent of Americans favor government-issued photo ID mandates at polling places, CNN skipped those numbers this past week in six separate segments on voter ID laws.

As a Mediaite study noted, MSNBC aired 19 segments on voter ID laws from Monday through Thursday without mentioning the poll. While CNN's coverage was largely balanced, the poll numbers still should have been reported in their discussions on voter ID laws.

In one instance of liberal bias, anchor Fredricka Whitfield teed up liberal guest Professor Jonathan Turley on Thursday by asking if ID laws were "a solution in search of a problem."

"And a number of reports show however that voter fraud is actually not much of a problem. So is this a solution in search of a problem?" she asked Turley, who responded that "a national study found that voter fraud is virtually nonexistent when they looked at the 2000 election."

On Friday's The Situation Room, CNN hyped "growing outrage" over new voter ID laws.

Voter ID is a topic CNN has tackled before – with liberal gusto. For instance, anchor Zoraida Sambolin asked former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young the other week if new voter ID laws might " suppress the minority vote."

Anchor Carol Costello asked a La Raza chairman last month "Is there a war on minority voters in this country?" while discussing a Texas voter ID law challenged by Obama's Justice Department.

RELATED: Pennsylvania civil rights coalition appeals ruling in voter ID case

Under Barack Obama Unemployment Rate Rises in 44 States

TheHill.com:

Close to 90 percent of states saw their unemployment rates rise in July, a potentially worrisome development for President Obama’s reelection campaign.

The Labor Department reported Friday that 44 states in all saw their jobless rate go up, with four states seeing no change at all. Only Idaho and Rhode Island — along with Washington, D.C. — saw their rates drop last month. 

The economy added 163,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department said earlier this month, a figure that beat expectations and outpaced the sluggish job growth of the previous three months. 

But Republicans also latched on to the fact that the national unemployment rate ticked back up, from 8.2 percent to 8.3 percent. 

The strength of the job market and the economy at large is still expected to play a key role in November’s match-up between Obama and the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.

At the same time, Romney’s recent choice of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the House GOP’s budget guru, as his running mate also appears to have brought issues like Medicare and budget deficits more to the forefront of the campaign. 

Even though the unemployment rate remains north of 8 percent, some analysts expected Obama to get a boost because many of the swing states that both campaigns are targeting have jobless rates below the national average. 

But among the dozen or so states that both parties are contesting, only Ohio — which saw its rate stay at 7.2 percent — did not see an increase in July.

RELATED:  'We Did Build It': Small Business Owner Taunts Obama Motorcade