No more Texas governors for president

Mitt Romney thinks America would be stronger if gay people didn’t raise kids, and four other reasons to be glad you didn’t watch the ABC News New Hampshire GOP debate.

1). Mitt Romney Can’t Defend Being a Job Cremator – After being attacked by Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich for making his fortune by killing jobs, Mitt Romney stuck to and doubled down on his claim that he created 100,000 net jobs while at Bain, but Paul Krugman and The Washington Post already have debunked this claim.

2). When Given A Chance To Discuss Racist Newsletters, Ron Paul Rants On The Drug War- When Ron Paul was asked about racist news letters that went out under his name 20 years ago, he didn’t answer the question, or talk about his own feelings on race. Instead, he went the Glenn Beck route and claimed that Martin Luther King was his hero, and then pivoted to a rant about how real racism is found in the judicial system, and how war hurts minorities more than whites. While those are both good points, Dr. Paul had a chance to put this to bed in front of a national TV audience, who may not want to look up his previous answers to this question, and instead dodged the question.

3). Mitt Romney Claims America Is Better Off When Gays Don’t Raise Kids – As the candidates debated a question from a viewer that asked what they would tell gay people who want to build loving committed relationships with one another, Mitt Romney tried to walk the line between being a moderate and appealing to gay hating right. Romney finally said that America is better off when children in this country are raised by a man and a woman. Romney even went as far as to claim that gay people shouldn’t be allowed to get married, but they should be allowed to enter into “contracts” with each other.

4). Rick Perry Wants To Send Troops Back To Iraq Right Now- The other Republican candidates refused to commit to sending troops back to Iraq right away, but a desperate Rick Perry said he would, “send troops back into Iraq, because I will tell you I think we start talking with the Iraqi individuals there, the idea that we allow the Iranians to come back into Iraq and take over that country with all of the treasure both in blood and money that we have spent in Iraq because this president wants to kowtow to his liberal leftist base and move out those men and women.” (That’s just what this race has been missing an extreme blood thirsty war monger).

5). Mitt Romney Lies About The Benefits Of His Tax Plan For The Middle Class- Mitt Romney was doing the best he could to sell his Bush tax cut on steroids plan to the middle class by actually claiming that his plan would provide tax relief to the middle class, but according to Mother Jones, “ For the 95% of us who earn less than $100,000, his plan is almost laughably tilted toward the plutocrat set. There’s just no way for him to pretend that he really cares about the middle class. But for the plutocrat set itself, his plan seems downright miserly compared to the rest of the GOP field.

YouTube playlist encapsulating the Republican candidates’ thinking about black people. Using their actual statements.

Some high points:

6:29 Newt Gingrich says something about Nazis and Islam and Reagan.

6:39 Rick Santorum comes out on national TV in the hopes of getting the Log Cabin Republican vote.

6:42 Paul refuses to stop Santorum’s bleeding on the grounds that it would be government interference.

6:50: Perry kicks Romney in the balls. Romney looks puzzled.

7: 15 Ron Paul has apparently died of natural causes.

I know, I know - only 8?

1). Herman Cain claims his 9-9-9 plan doesn’t raise taxes on those who make the least.

The Truth: The Citizens for Tax Justice did an analysis of Herman Cain’s plan that found that 9-9-9 would give the 1% wealthiest Americans a tax break, and it would raise taxes on the poorest 60% by $2,000. A study of Cain’s plan by the Tax Policy Center found that taxes would go down only for those who make over $200,000 a year.

2). CNN and Michele Bachmann Claim 47% of Americans Don’t Pay Taxes

Bachmann said that every American should pay taxes, even if it is just a dollar. The problem is that the idea that 47% of Americans don’t pay taxes is a myth.

The Truth: Because of high unemployment, and the Obama tax credits, 51% of Americans paid no federal income taxes in 2009. This statistic was limited to federal income taxes for one year. The actual number of Americans who pay no taxes of any kind is only 14%, and this group mainly consists of the elderly and the disabled.

3). Michele Bachmann’s Claim that even the Obama administration wants to repeal ObamaCare.

The Truth: The Hill reported yesterday, “President Obama is against repealing the health law’s long-term-care CLASS Act and might veto Republican efforts to do so, an administration official tells The Hill, despite the government’s announcement Friday that the program was dead in the water. “We do not support repeal,” the official said Monday. ‘Repealing the CLASS Act isn’t necessary or productive. What we should be doing is working together to address the long-term care challenges we face in this country.’

4). Mitt Romney’s claim that he never, “hired an illegal.”

The Truth: Romney did hire illegal immigrants. PolitiFact graded Romney’s claim that he never hired illegal immigrants as mostly false in 2007, “Reporters tracked down three former landscapers who claimed to have been in the United States illegally when they worked on Romney’s lawn. One of the workers, Rene Alvarez Rosales, said he worked for Romney eight years landscaping his lawn, occasionally getting a “buenos dias” from Romney himself. Others told the Globe of casual encounters with Romney over the years, during which he had never inquired about their status. The Globe said Romney, for an entire decade, used a landscaping company that relied on illegal Guatemalan immigrants. Employees at the company, Community Lawn Service with a Heart, said its owner hadn’t asked them to provide documents showing their immigration status.”

5. Rick Perry claimed Texas has one of the best healthcare systems in the world.

The Truth: According to the Commonwealth Fund, Texas ranked 46th in the United States in healthcare. Forget the world; Texas has one of the worst healthcare systems in the United States.

6). Mitt Romney claimed that he never supported TARP.

The Truth: Back in March 2009 Romney told James Pethokoukis of Reuters, “The TARP program, while not transparent and not having been used as wisely it should have been, was nevertheless necessary to keep banks from collapsing in a cascade of failures. You cannot have a free economy and free market if there is not a financial system. … The TARP program was designed to keep the financial system going, to keep money circulating in the economy, without which the entire economy stops and you would really have an economic collapse.”

7). Mitt Romney’s charge that Obama doesn’t have a jobs plan.

The Truth: Obama’s plan is called The American Jobs Act. It would create 1.9 million new jobs, and unlike Romney’s bullet point smoke an mirror economic plan. Mark Zandi of Moody’s estimated that Obama’s plan would create 2 million new jobs.

8). Rick Santorum claimed Iran was not a terrorist nation when Reagan traded arms for hostages.

The Truth: Iran was added to list of states that sponsor terrorism in January 1984. The first arms for hostages transaction with Iran occurred on August 20, 1985.

Bwahahaha!!!

Savage literally created a new definition for the word “Santorum” and then made a website explaining it. That explanation has become accepted and — “in some quarters,” Sullivan said — a topic people actually go searching for when they enter santorum into Google.

One of the reasons the “Spreading Santorum” site ranks so high on Google is because Savage’s site has thousands and thousands more inbound links than Santorum’s official site does.

…

“At this point there’s nobody who could not argue [Savage’s definition of santorum] is not a definition in a lot of quarters,” Sullivan said. “So for him to say Google could get rid of it would be like him saying, ‘I don’t like the word unicorn and I think that that definition should go away.’”

And just so I can help with Rick’s Google problem, here’s the link for Spreading Santorum.