Romney 2012?

Romney shifts focus back to Obama’s foreign policy

Romney Bombshell? Struggling Campaign Plans "October Surprise"

According to a highly reliable source, as Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama prepare for the first presidential debate Wednesday night, top Republican operatives are primed to unleash a new two-pronged offensive that will attack Obama as weak on national security, and will be based, in part, on new intelligence information regarding the attacks in Libya that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens on Sept. 11

True or false? Fact checkers expect to be busy during Obama, Romney debate
By Jonathan Karl, Richard Coolidge & Sherisse Pham | Power Players – 7 hrs ago

On eve of debate, conservatives seize on Obama video from 2007
By Mary Bruce | ABC OTUS News – 1 hr 30 mins ago
…
On the eve of the first presidential debate, the conservative website The Daily Caller Tuesday circulated previously unreported clips of a five-year-old speech in which then-Senator Barack Obama praised his controversial former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and suggested the federal government discriminated against the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
"I've got to give a special shout-out to my pastor. The guy who puts up with me. Counsels me. Listens to my wife complain about me. He's a friend. And a great leader," the president said of Wright in an address to the Hampton University Annual Ministers' Conference in Hampton, Va., in June 2007 in video posted by The Daily Caller and first aired on Fox News.

Ryan on tape saying 70% of Americans want the American dream and 30% want a welfare state. At least he has a better opinion of us that 47% Romney.

Not since 1964, when Barry Goldwater challenged Lyndon Johnson for the presidency, have the Republican and Democratic parties been in such fundamental disagreement on the matters of both policy and basic values. Yet the parties are in total agreement on one issue: that America is uniquely the land of opportunity, the place where people of humble origins can -- by dint of hard work, ambition, and sheer grit -- go as far as their abilities will take them.

But this cherished view of America is now a myth. The reality is in fact quite the opposite: Family origins matter more in the United States in determining where one ends up in life compared to other wealthy democratic countries.

This is a recent development. Studies of social mobility as far back as the 1950s and 1960s showed that rates of movement in the United States were generally comparable to other developed countries. This finding itself challenged the longstanding image of America as exceptionally open, but it is a far cry from today, when the United States rates at or near the bottom in comparative studies of social mobility.

To take just two examples, a study by Jo Blanden and colleagues at the London School of Economics found that a father's income was a better predictor of a son's income in the United States than in seven other countries, including Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom. And a review article by Miles Corak at the University of Ottawa, based on 50 studies of nine countries, found the United States tied with the United Kingdom as having the least social mobility, trailing not only Norway and Denmark but France, Germany, and Canada.

To judge by the speeches at the Democratic and Republican conventions and by the party platforms, both parties are fervently committed to the American dream and to the vision of the United States as a uniquely open society. In his speech at the Republican National Convention, Florida's Senate candidate Marco Rubio declared that there "was no limit how far I could go because I was an American." Striking a similar theme in his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, San Antonio mayor Julian Castro proclaimed that "America is a country like no other, a place where great journeys can be made in a single generation."

But the reality is that fewer such journeys take place in the United States than in other wealthy democratic countries. In a six-country study of the income of fathers and sons, children who were born into the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution had a lower chance of rising in the United States than in any of the five other countries, including the United Kingdom. Contrary to the Horatio Alger myth, the United States placed dead last in the percent who climbed from the bottom 20 percent to the top 20 percent.

Unfortunately, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans show any signs of addressing the underlying source of the problem: the extremely high levels of poverty and inequality in America. The starkly different life situations that separate rich and poor in the United States are utterly incompatible with the idea of equal opportunity that Americans, both conservative and liberal, value so highly.

While a society with high levels of inequality could in theory also be a highly fluid one, the reality is that the more egalitarian countries (for example, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland) also tend to be the societies with the highest rates of social mobility. Conversely, societies that are highly unequal (the United States and the United Kingdom come to mind) exhibit the lowest rates of social mobility. To be sure, the relationship is not perfect; Canada, for example, combines very high rates of mobility with an average level of inequality. But overall, the connection between high levels of inequality and low levels of mobility is undeniable.

But can anything be done to bring the vision of the United States as the land of opportunity -- one that is so central to America's national identity -- closer to reality?

First and foremost, the issue of poverty -- virtually invisible in the current presidential campaign, despite the fact that the United States has by far the highest poverty rate of any wealthy democratic country -- must again be placed on the national agenda, exactly half a century after Michael Harrington put poverty at center stage in his classic work, The Other America. Yet deep poverty remains a formidable obstacle to equality of opportunity, and it should be a national scandal that more than 46 million Americans -- including 16 million children -- remain in poverty in the world's wealthiest country.

Beneath the problem of poverty lies the broader issue of growing income inequality, now at its highest level since the 1920s. This growth in inequality is not simply the inevitable product of globalization or the increasing premium placed on skill in a post-industrial economy, for inequality has not increased nearly as much in other advanced societies subject to the same forces. Instead, the greater increase in inequality in the United States is, at least in part, a consequence of a series of political choices, including policies on taxes and deregulation, that are quite different from those adopted by other countries. If Americans really want more social mobility, they must choose policies that counteract rather than reinforce the growth of inequality.

At the same time, those committed to greater equality of opportunity also need to address disturbing trends in American education that have undermined its historic role as an engine of opportunity. Not long ago the world leader in the proportion of young people graduating from college, the United States has now fallen out of the top 10. Coinciding with this decline has been an extraordinary increase in student debt, which has passed the $1-trillion mark and now exceeds the total credit card debt of the United States. In no other advanced country is college so expensive or so dependent on parental resources.

Yet even in a postindustrial society, not everyone will attend college. Many of our peer countries (who are also our competitors in the global economy) have assisted the large non-college-going segment of the labor force by adopting active labor market policies, including the provision of apprenticeship programs and extensive specialized training. Of 16 OECD countries, the United States places last in the percentage of the GDP expended on such training.

So the United States now finds itself at a crossroads: still fervently committed to the American dream, but unwilling to adopt policies that would promote its realization. Put simply, Republicans and Democrats alike want something they cannot have: a society of unsurpassed opportunity to rise, regardless of family background, while tolerating exceptionally high levels of poverty and inequality. Such a society does not -- and cannot -- exist. In this presidential season, it would be bracing indeed if someone would recognize this or, better still, propose a concrete program to revive the beleaguered American dream.

The “explosive” news, according to the Daily Caller, is that Obama briefly deviated from his prepared remarks to comment on Hurricane Katrina. Obama said the federal government should do more to rebuild New Orleans, including waiving some requirements of the Stafford Act as the federal government did after 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew. Fox News, apparently, thinks this statement is outrageous and controversial. Here’s a screen shot from Sean Hannity’s show, which featured the video:

Drudge bills Obama’s 2007 remarks as a “race speech” because of the suggestion that the rebuilding of Katrina is connected to a history of racial discrimination. There was another President who made the same connection, George W. Bush:


That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday and let us rise above the legacy of inequality. When the streets are rebuilt, there should be many new businesses, including minority-owned businesses, along those streets.

During his Hampton University speech, Obama also recognized his former pastor, Jerimah Wright. Video of those comments has been available since at least 2008.


Update



CBS News’ Jan Crawford follows Drudge’s lead, says Obama’s comments about Katrina have news value.

So the United States now finds itself at a crossroads: still fervently committed to the American dream, but unwilling to adopt policies that would promote its realization. Put simply, Republicans and Democrats alike want something they cannot have: a society of unsurpassed opportunity to rise, regardless of family background, while tolerating exceptionally high levels of poverty and inequality. Such a society does not -- and cannot -- exist. In this presidential season, it would be bracing indeed if someone would recognize this or, better still, propose a concrete program to revive the beleaguered American dream.