A statement from Morgan Freeman reads HERE:

“President Obama has done a remarkable job in historically difficult circumstances.  He ended combat operations in Iraq, put in place sensible reforms of Wall Street, saved the auto industry and protected the health care of every American. He has led our nation to be more tolerant and placed impressive, accomplished women on the Supreme Court. In return, he is the target of hundreds of millions of dollars from right-wing sources,” Freeman said. “I am proud to lend my voice — and support — to those who defend him. Priorities USA Action is doing a great job of protecting the values I believe in.  I am happy to help them and I hope others will join me.”

But – the Democrats aren’t raising money from at least some standard donors.  Politico details former Democratic donors who aren’t opening up there checkbooks this year HERE:

• Penny Pritzker
• George Soros
• The Crown family 
• Neil Bluhm
• Warren Buffett
• Eric Schmidt
• Tim Gill

Here is my position on Superpacs and outside giving.  I’m against them.  I would rather have a publicly financed election system where no private donations were even allowed.  But having said that – that’s not the world we live in.  Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.

And make no mistake – how much these candidates are able to raise MATTERS.  President Obama and the DNC raised $71 million in June compared to Mitt Romney and the RNC who raised $106 million.  There is going to be $500 million in SuperPAC money from outside groups on the Republican side led by the infamous Koch Brother Billionaires and Karl Rove’s political group American Crossroads which is funded by a HUGE number of billionaires and untold corporations.  And this really matters … for example – the Romney group just started airing an ad that crops out and selectively edits words from a speech by President Obama.

Here’s what the ad has President Obama saying:

Let me tell you something … If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.

Here is what President Obama actually said:

Let me tell you something. There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.

Of course – by “you didn’t build that” – he means … you didn’t build the roads and bridges or the entire system that allowed your business to thrive.  As in – we’re all in this together.  Now – for people who pay attention … they’ll watch that video and think – Romney is an asshole or that’s just politics.  And it is just politics … that’s how it works.  But these ads are meant to sway just a small slice of the uninformed electorate.  So many of the American people are like sheep; it’s like some people wear their ignorance like a badge of honor.

Greg Sargent adds HERE:

Romney supporters will respond that the parts of the speech that were included in the Web video are objectionable on their own. I don’t agree with that, but it’s a debatable point. However, there is no question that this edit is highly misleading. It deliberately removes multiple sentences about the broader theme of Obama’s speech that preceeded the “you didn’t build that” quote in order to deprive it of its actual meaning as Obama plainly intended that. And it creates the false impression of a seamless transition from the first sentences about successful business people into the key line about them — a recontextualization that turns it inot a direct insult.

This line is going to be a major target for the Romney campaign — similar to Obama’s 2008 remark about spreading the wealth — but in order to have maximum political value, it needs to be removed from context in a highly misleading way, which the Romney camp is happy to do. Don’t be surprised if this line is up in ads in the swing states within days, edited in just this fashion. If the larger context is supposedly no help to Obama, as Romney backers insist, then why the need to edit the quote this way?

Watch the video … TOTALLY OUT OF CONTEXT.  That’s just politics.

Comments

comments