That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a “circle of life” like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me.

So when businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it’s a little like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it’s the other way around.

Anyone who’s ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalists course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it.  In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn’t just inaccurate, it’s disingenuous.

That’s why our current policies are so upside down. When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.

Since 1980 the share of income for the richest Americans has more than tripled while effective tax rates have declined by close to 50%.

If it were true that lower tax rates and more wealth for the wealthy would lead to more job creation, then today we would be drowning in jobs. And yet unemployment and under-employment is at record highs.

Preach brotha, preach!

Mitt Romney is just simply a liar:

“I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry’s come back.”

[...]

“It was the UAW and the president that delayed the idea of bankruptcy. I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet.”

source:  Romney: I Take Credit for the Auto Rescue | TPM Editors Blog.

Again: Mitt Romney opposed government backing for GM and Chrysler prior to bankruptcy. GM and Chrysler needed bridge loans to get to the pre-packaged bankruptcy and no one with the money required for such a big bankruptcy in the private sector was willing to do it. It’s a clear distinction, with a huge difference. For months he’s been running around and saying that Obama doesn’t understand the economy and yet he is either too dishonest or too ignorant to know he makes no f*cking sense when he claims he takes credit for the auto rescue.

Not only does Romney remind people of their asshole boss, he reminds them of their asshole boss who takes credit for everything he had nothing to do with.

So in one week, Romney feigned disgust with President Obama for leading the strategic efforts to capture and kill bin Laden and then taking credit for it, but then he takes credit for an auto-bailout implemented by Presidents Bush and Obama that he opposed  while Romney was a professional campaigner for the last 5 years.

“I say any president, Jimmy Carter, anybody, any president would have, obviously, under those circumstances, done the same thing.  And to now take credit for something that any president would do is indicative of take over campaign we’re under — we’re — we’re seeing…So all I can say is that this is going to be a very rough campaign,” McCain told Fox News in an interview set to air Monday night.

Can “Any President would have” be taken seriously? The Romney campaign is trying to create a feeling that a candidates positions and political patrons don’t matter by blurring distinctions between Romney and Obama. Republicans know Romney fares better if  undecided voters believe that we’ll be OK no matter who we elect. They know Obama’s muscular foreign policy record and aggressive methods have taken away a public opinion advantage most Republican candidates have enjoyed for years.

From Mediate, Romney 2007:

While Barack Obama’s rivals attacked him vigorously over the statement at the time, not all of them did so on the basis of opposition to unilateral action. What did Mitt Romney say then? A source from Priorities USA Action points out that he said this to Reuters at the time:

“I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours… I don’t think those kinds of comments help in this effort to draw more friends to our effort,” Romney told reporters on the campaign trail.

…Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is one of the Republican front-runners, said U.S. troops “shouldn’t be sent all over the world.” He called Obama’s comments “ill-timed” and “ill-considered.”

“There is a war being waged by terrorists of different types and nature across the world,” Romney said. “We want, as a civilized world, to participate with other nations in this civilized effort to help those nations reject the extreme with them.”

Bush claimed that he wasn’t worried about Bin Laden’s whereabouts. Romney, McCain, and Clinton campaigns all dinged Obama for this stance during the 2008 campaign. Obama committed to quite a few things unequivocally regarding military action in the Middle East during the ’08 campaign: ending the war in Iraq, re-dedicating US Forces to Afghanistan, and hunting Bin Laden and al Qaeda in Pakistan with or without Pakistan’s permission.

In the first quarter of this year, the real gross domestic product for the government — including state and local governments as well as federal — was 2 percent lower than it was three years earlier, when Barack Obama took office in early 2009.

The last time the government actually got smaller over the first three years of a presidential term was when Richard M. Nixon was president. That decrease was largely because of declining spending on the Vietnam War.

[...]

The private sector grew faster in the first three years of the Obama administration than it did in three of the previous five administrations — the exception being Bill Clinton’s administrations, when private sector growth was more rapid. In both of George W. Bush’s terms as well as in the first three years of the George H. W. Bush administration, though, the private sector grew more slowly.

A simple observation  that illustrates that Republican Administrations nor those called Republican “Deficit hawks” are really primarily worried about “deficits” and “spending” growing to fast.

If you look at the full chart, back to George HW Bush, you reach an inescapable conclusion: the biggest spenders and borrowers are Republicans and the most fiscally conservative presidents have been Democrats. Given the last two decades, the TeaParty, if they really want to shrink government, should be voting for Obama.

“Big Government” Obama? – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast.

Facts, you know, suck for people who want everyone else to ignore them.

Mitt Romney should probably deploy a barbecue + tire swing strategy to show how much of a great f*cking guy he is unlike the “aloof”, tire swingless Obama.

This morning on ABC’s This Week, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., weighed in on Mitt Romney’s hotly anticipated vice presidential pick. The former presidential candidate’s advice was clear.

“The absolute, most important aspect is, if something happened to him, would that person be well qualified to take that place?” said McCain. “I happen to believe that was the primary factor in my decision in 2008. And I know it will be Mitt’s.”

Here is his qualified replacement.