When Mother Jones released the video clips of Mitt Romney speaking at a private fundraiser yesterday, it reported that this was the “complete” audio and video of his comments. But now it turns out there was actually a chunk of the speech missing. Legal Insurrection’s William Jacobson first noticed the gap in the video last night:
David Corn of Mother Jones released the “complete” audio and video of the secretly recorded Mitt Romney speech at a private fundraiser.
Yet the complete audio and video is not complete. There is a gap in the recording immediately after Romney’s now famous discussion of the 47% of voters who don’t pay taxes. The cut in the audio and video comes while Romney is in mid-sentence, so we actually do not have the full audio of what Romney said on the subject.
Something is missing. Romney’s 47% answer was cut off before completed, and is not picked up on the Part 2 audio video.
Jacobson contacted Mother Jones reporter David Corn, who acknowledged that a one-to-two minute part of the speech was missing from the initial recording, apparently due to technical issues:
According to the source, the recording device inadvertently turned off. The source noticed this quickly and turned it back one. The source estimates that one to two minutes, maybe less, of recording was missed.
At the very least, this seems to bolster the Romney campaign’s pushback against the video. Romney initially criticized it as just a “snippet” of his comments, and called for the release of the full tape. According to Corn, that’s not possible since his source was only able to capture a partial recording.
Was there anything in the unrecorded speech that would have vindicated Romney? It’s possible. But it’s hard to imagine what could change the meaning of the comments leading up to the gap in the video, particularly Romney’s psychoanalysis of the 47 percent “victims” and his seemingly-cavalier statement that he’ll “never convince them that they should take responsibility and care for their own lives.” Unless one of the omitted sentences was “Just kidding about everything I said earlier, guys,” how would it negate his previous remarks?
Lesson for campaigns: Record your own events. If there actually was more context to what Romney was saying, his campaign could have cleared that up immediately if it had a tape of its own.
If the mainstream media was fair, it would dismiss the Romney video as meaningless without the missing context — something it would surely have done if damaging but incomplete footage of an Obama fundraiser was leaked to Breitbart. Of course, the mainstream media isn’t fair, which is why the Romney tape is hotter news than the terrorist attack in Benghazi last week.
Yeah, the double standard is ridiculous. But it's there. It's not like the Romney folks shouldn't be prepared for stuff like this. No excuse. Here's another double standard: Obama goes on and on about how the wealthy aren't paying "their fair share" and we're all supposed to nod. Romney accurately points out that almost half the country may be paying less than their fair share and it's an outrage.
It's the two minutes where Romney said he plans to buy every poor family in America a dancing pony. n nOr, two minutes of Mitt sensuously licking caviar off his fingers while smacking his lips. n nOr, "Incidentally, I don't believe anything I've said in the previous 45 minutes." n n n n n n n n n
Or, those were the two minutes Mitt spent staring at the poolside orgy. n nOr, someone had the decency to edit out the sounds of some poor waiter being beaten? n n n n
This Romney tape is a blessing in disguise. It should help him considerably. We needed a national discussion on the 47% topic.
Romney cannot get to that 47% without including students, seniors, soldiers and young married couples putting in a claim for President Bush's child tax credit. Not to mention that 3/5 of his 47% work and pay payroll taxes. Romney left himself dangling in midair beyond a cliff like Wile E. Coyote. It's no blessing, disguised or obvious.
Mitt Romney's off the cuff remark was taken out of context. He now has the golden opportunity to explain himself further. Most voters agree with him.
It was not off the cuff nor out of context. It was a direct answer to a direct question. Perhaps he might start his golden opportunity to further explain himself by apologizing for his inelegance. Most people don't appreciate being labeled a parasite.
Sorry, but if most voters agreed with Romney, he would be way, way ahead in EVERY poll, but he isn't is he? Doesn't that tell you anything? America has changed. You want to believe you are still in the majority, but you aren't. And neither am I. Face it.
And then we have how the welfare state is harming — yes HARMING college students. n nIn his autobiography, Jack Welch of GE wrote that he went to what is now UMass Amherst because back in 1950 it only cost $50/semester. That's $478/semester in today's dollars, less than $1000 per year which anyone could earn on their own spending a summer at WalMart or McDonalds. But because of the financial aid — and Peter Wood has written about this — colleges raised their prices to maximize the money they could receive lest it be "wasted." n nInstead of costing $1000/year, UMass now costs something like $18,000/year — and that is in-state — with nonresidents paying a lot more. We are allowing students to borrow vast sums of money with fictitious promises of jobs that will never exist and the very real requirement that they repay these loans — they are now starting to deduct repayments from Social Security checks….. n nThis is how the government entraps people.
Pageing Rose Mary Woods, Pageing Rose Mary Woods!
What Romney could have said, what Star Parker once *did* say, is that the government is a better husband, a far better provider, than any man whom a single mother could marry. What Romney may have said — and in any case should say here & now — is that the government would much rather have folks dependent upon the government than able to provide for themselves. n nFurthermore, and Maine Governor Paul LaPage has pointed out how he encountered this working for Mardens (a Maine-based salvage/retail chain) — people can often do better financially by not working than by working — the example he gives is the woman who refused a pay raise because the extra money she would be earning would be far offset by an even greater reduction in her assorted welfare benefits (think being pushed into a higher tax bracket, only much more so). n nLet's take a real example from the Section 8 housing subsidy program, simplified for demonstration purposes. A woman has 2 children (boy & girl) and thus lives in a 3-bedroom apartment that costs $2000/month. She does not work (hence no "income") and receives WIC and other stuff. n nShe has no income, so her share of the rent is $25 — and we pay $1975. n nShe goes to work at WalMart and earns $250/week ($1000 per month). Her share of her rent then becomes 30% of her GROSS income — $300 — with us paying $1700/month. Except she is not getting $300 — 7.65% of her income goes to FICA, even with the Earned Income Credit she is starting to pay some taxes, and because she has this income, some of her "welfare" money dries up (e.g. less in food stamps each month). n nThe end result, in terms of real purchasing power, she has less money now. Because she is working. The message is clear — you will have more if you don't work. And then we have that part about marrying the guy who got you pregnant — how quaint in the era of the welfare state. n nI am way too professional to ever do anything like this, but I once had a woman — four children by four different men — refer to the children and their respective fathers in such third-person terms that I honestly wanted to say "excuse me, maam, but weren't you present when each of these children was conceived?" She knew how to play the game, quite well, right on down to helping her oldest daughter to get pregnant, at age 15 I believe it was, and we now live in an era of girls getting pregnant in Middle School… Yes, pregnant 12-year-olds, children with their own children… n nWe already have three generations of this and are working on the fourth. In the low income community, girls look forward to when they will be old enough to become pregnant because then they will be able to have their own household (their own apartment) and hence be an adult. I spent nearly 5 years as a Section 8 Administrator, this stuff is real and it is really sad. As is the average (mean, not median) tenure of the live-in boyfriend being only 18 months — my guess is the median would be somewhere in the 4-5 month range — and words do not do justice to the damage that having a new "father" (and never again seeing the other man) every few months does to young boys. n nWe won't get into the drugs or the gangs or why I actually feel sorry (in a way) for gang members — they are dangerous individuals but they are incredibly, INCREDIBLY insecure. We could get into how the average Black Male high school *graduate* has the reading & writing ability of a 7th grade White Girl and ask exactly what kind of job is this guy ever going to be able to hold — as well as whom we should blame for this. n nThe 47% are trapped, are forced to vote for Obama because they have no other options. n nTHIS is what Romney could have said, what he should say now. Will he — I doubt it, but he should! nForget even wanting to win, from everything I hear, Romney is a decent man and these are true victims of the welfare state. The Dems get re-elected, the welfare administrators have their jobs (that they come in late to and leave early from), and the people allegedly being helped wind up worse and worse and worse off. AND THE COUNTRY IS CONCURRENTLY GOING BROKE BECAUSE OF THIS! We can't afford it, and it isn't compassionate.
Just reviewing your figures… Her rent costs $24,000 a year. The largest employer in the USA sees fit to pay her $12,000 a year. Tell me again who is putting her in a trap? n n n
pccaper, n nDid you ever hear of Stein's law: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop". In our topic today, "something" is our country. The acceleration of new debt acquisition is now supersonic speed. The current Congress, the 112th, ONLY borrowed an average $103 billion a month. Only? n nLose solvency and what is left? Chaos. If you have suggestions on how to run the country fairly and avoid bankruptcy, run for office. You'll get my vote.