As President Obama has surged in the polls, Republicans have been quick to identify the problem: Mitt Romney. Peggy Noonan eloquently voiced what many conservatives believe when she said that Romney’s campaign has been a “rolling calamity.” Others have been equally critical of his candidacy. And yet, shouldn’t it puzzle us that Romney is so “incompetent” (also from Noonan), given his deserved reputation for, well, competence? He founded one of this country’s most successful financial firms, turned around the flailing Salt Lake City Olympics and was a successful governor. How did he get so clumsy so fast?

In fact, the problem is not Romney but the new Republican Party. Given the direction in which it has moved and the pressures from its most extreme — yet most powerful — elements, any nominee would face the same challenge: Can you be a serious candidate for the general election while not outraging the Republican base?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-romney-is-the-gops-pretzel-candidate/2012/09/26/728b35ea-080a-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_story.html?hpid=z2

While CEO of Bain Capital, Mitt Romney said the firm "harvested" the companies in which it invested to produce a "significant profit," according to a new video obtained by Mother Jones.

The video of Romney, who made the remarks in 1985, was part of a CD-ROM produced in 1998 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Bain & Company. In the video, Romney says, "Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/27/mitt-romney-video-bain-harvest-companies_n_1918892.html?utm_hp_ref=elections-2012

----------------------------------

If you are not familiar with "harvesting companies", we used to call its cousin "bottom of the harbour" scheme in  Australia... Schemes that eventually were made illegal of course...

Medicare working to boost Obama in swing states, poll findsBy N.C. Aizenman, Jon Cohen and Peyton M. Craighill, Published: September 27 | Updated: Friday, September 28,10:33 AM

Voters in three critical swing states broadly oppose the far-reaching changes to Medicare associated with the Republican presidential ticket and, by big margins, prefer President Obama to handle the issue, according to new state polls by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

For seniors in Florida, Ohio and Virginia, Medicare rivals the economy as a top voting issue. And by majorities topping 70 percent, seniors say they prefer to keep Medicare as a program with guaranteed benefits, rather than moving to a system in which the government gives recipients fixed payments to buy coverage from private insurers or traditional Medicare, as Romney advocates.

Among all voters, the desire to keep the system as it is peaks at 65 percent in Florida, where more than one in five Americans who voted in 2008 were age 65 and older.

Generally, the more voters focus on Medicare, the more likely they are to support Obama’s bid for reelection.

read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/medicare-working-to-boost-obama-in-swing-states-poll-finds/2012/09/27/b8a53a0e-0822-11e2-858a-5311df86ab04_print.html

You might conclude that Todd Akin, the Republican Congressman from Missouri who is running for the US Senate against the Democrat incumbent, Claire McCaskill, just isn't a very modern man.

The case against him is not just that he causes serial offence to women but also that he is perhaps not very well educated. At a press conference yesterday, he greeted this reporter – who had introduced himself as "from The Independent in London" – with a chirpy "top of the morning to you" (your correspondent is not Irish), prompting chuckles in a hotel meeting room. Some saw it as another insensitive cultural gaffe by Mr Akin, and instantly posted the exchange on YouTube.

Being old-fashioned might be alright. But that is not why national leaders of the Republican Party are in despair. Rather, it's because Mr Akin – who, by the way sits on a science and technology committee in the House of Representatives – is the extreme pro-life candidate who averred in a television interview last month that in cases of "legitimate rape" women "rarely" become pregnant because of some kind of mechanism in their bodies that blocks conception

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/legitimate-rape-two-words-that-could-cost-republicans-everything-8190466.html

Greg Gutfeld and guests discuss Sen. Mitt Romney’s video showcasing his love for hot dogs on National Hot Dog Day on ‘Gutfeld!’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTKnv3VrGUE

READ FROM TOP.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW................!@#$%^!!!!!