Kiss my ass. This is a holy site for the Polish people. Show some respect.

Mitt Romney’s traveling press secretary RICK GORKA, in not allowing reporters to ask his boss questions while at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw. Romney has only held one press availability during his gaffe-filled European trip.  He would later tell another reporter to “shove it.”

Hey, great idea for a press secretary to do.  In front of cameras and microphones.  And journalists!

Also telling people to “kiss my ass” and “shove it” at  ”holy site for Polish people” is way less disrespectful than… oh wait.  It isn’t.

(via ABC News)

demnewswire:

Romney: The country doesn’t need more firefighters, police or teachers

The New York Times | By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

“Could Mitt Romney be any more disconnected from the concerns of middle-class Americans?” said R.T. Rybak, the vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “To suggest that police, firefighters and teachers aren’t helping the American people and aren’t vital to our communities shows that he has no clue what’s going on in the real world.”

Mr. Rybak added: “Mitt Romney’s assertion that the American people don’t benefit from firemen, policemen and teachers is so detached from reality I did a double take – I had to check twice to be sure he had actually said it.”

“We knew Mitt Romney liked firing people, but we didn’t know that included firefighters and cops,” Mr. Schumer said. “Middle-class voters already distrust Mitt Romney for being out-of-touch and uncaring about regular folks. Bragging about wanting to give pink slips to first responders only cements that perception.”

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We’ve been hearing a lot about the war on women, which is real enough. But there’s also a war on the young, which is just as real even if it’s better disguised. And it’s doing immense harm, not just to the young, but to the nation’s future.

Let’s start with some advice Mitt Romney gave to college students during an appearance last week. After denouncing President Obama’s “divisiveness,” the candidate told his audience, “Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.”

The first thing you notice here is, of course, the Romney touch — the distinctive lack of empathy for those who weren’t born into affluent families, who can’t rely on the Bank of Mom and Dad to finance their ambitions. But the rest of the remark is just as bad in its own way.

I mean, “get the education”? And pay for it how? Tuition at public colleges and universities has soared, in part thanks to sharp reductions in state aid. Mr. Romney isn’t proposing anything that would fix that; he is, however, a strong supporter of the Ryan budget plan, which would drastically cut federal student aid, causing roughly a million students to lose their Pell grants.

So how, exactly, are young people from cash-strapped families supposed to “get the education”? Back in March Mr. Romney had the answer: Find the college “that has a little lower price where you can get a good education.” Good luck with that. But I guess it’s divisive to point out that Mr. Romney’s prescriptions are useless for Americans who weren’t born with his advantages.

… What should we do to help America’s young? Basically, the opposite of what Mr. Romney and his friends want. We should be expanding student aid, not slashing it. And we should reverse the de facto austerity policies that are holding back the U.S. economy — the unprecedented cutbacks at the state and local level, which have been hitting education especially hard.

Yes, such a policy reversal would cost money. But refusing to spend that money is foolish and shortsighted even in purely fiscal terms. Remember, the young aren’t just America’s future; they’re the future of the tax base, too.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste; wasting the minds of a whole generation is even more terrible. Let’s stop doing it.

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, “Wasting Our Minds.”

Go read the whole damned thing.

(via inothernews)

Romney’s stance on this just infuriates me because it reflects so many of conservatives’ own views: that with enough hard work, anyone can be successful and if you’re not successful then you’re not working hard enough.

So many of my peers have this idea that being raised in an upper-middle-class neighborhood and having jobs in the summer constitutes hard work, and when their good grades (furnished by the best schools) get them scholarships, they really truly deserved that money over a student at an inner-city school who faced an entirely different set of challenges everyday that are not conducive to good grades. And what that doesn’t cover isn’t a big deal - mom and dad have it. 

I am LUCKY that my father believes in the value of education and good performance in school. I am LUCKY that I had the option to attend an in-state school where my tuition is half-off thanks to the fact that he’s a professor, and that the basic HOPE covers virtually everything else. Still, he’s willing to dish out his retirement (that yes, he built from scratch) to pay my bills so that I can focus on my studies. If not, I (like a few of my roommates) would be strapped with so many student loans I’d be in debt for possibly forever. 

Wealthy conservatives often profess how “blessed” and “thankful” they are but what they do not understand is that they were LUCKY to be born into their circumstances. They want people to work hard to go to college but they do not understand that even those who DO work very, very hard simply cannot afford it — and the conservative fiscal decisions regarding education will only result in fewer people being educated, NOT reserving higher education for those who “deserve it.” Everyone deserves it and everyone deserves it to be affordable. Anything else constitutes a complete lack of insight as to how the world works.  

(via jessicaicampbell)

“Remember, the young aren’t just America’s future; they’re the future of the tax base, too.”

Pretty much the whole thing in a nutshell. If you want to keep your economy strong, America, you simply do not have a choice.

(via jessicaicampbell)

Source: inothernews