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What Paul Ryan’s Faked Soup Kitchen Photo Op Says About Romney Campaign

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Paul Ryan on Saturday morning, uninvited, walked into a Youngstown, Ohio soup kitchen with his wife, children, and a camera crew, and fake-washed already clean dishes, all so the Romney/Ryan campaign could get a good photo op.

There’s no question about any of this. The video, below, shows Paul Ryan, standing in front of the empty dish washing sink, where there clearly are no dirty dishes, and telling his children how they’re going to fake it for the cameras. “I’m going to water them — I’m going to get them wet,” he says, as he ties their aprons.

 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=M2WVJNxOpvY%3Fversion%3D3%26hl%3Den_US

 

So, it’s a political campaign photo op. What’s the big deal?

Consider this:

Paul Ryan didn’t ask the soup kitchen for their permission, and now the head of the soup kitchen, Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, which is strictly non-partisan, is now worried about losing funding.

Here’s how the Washington Post describes the issue:

“We’re a faith-based organization; we are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations,” Antal said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there, and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.”

He added: “The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.” Antal later told NBC News that Ryan had cleaned some dirty dishes.

Ryan had stopped by the soup kitchen for about 15 minutes on his way to the airport after his Saturday morning town hall in Youngstown. By the time he arrived, the food had already been served, the patrons had left, and the hall had been cleaned.

Upon entering the soup kitchen, Ryan, his wife and three young children greeted and thanked several volunteers, then donned white aprons and offered to clean some dishes. Photographers snapped photos and TV cameras shot footage of Ryan and his family washing pots and pans that did not appear to be dirty.

This is how the Romney/Ryan campaign treats poor people, those desperately in need, those whom they cannot for one moment consider — except as talking points and photo ops.

And what did Paul Ryan teach his children?

It’s OK to lie. It’s OK to “ramrod your way” — to quote Brian J. Antal — into a charity, a place created to help the poor, and use their plight as a photo op that’s not even real.

Can you imagine the headlines at Breitbart and Drudge, the sludge coming from Michelle Malkin’s mouth, and the vitriol from the rest of the rabid right, if President Obama pulled a stunt like this?

Paul Ryan’s photo op was a lie, just as the Romney/Ryan policies are.

Today, also in the Washington Post, Greg Sargent reports:

Romney’s claim that he will create 12 million jobs is central to his candidacy’s entire argument. It is the whole basis for Romney’s positioning of himself as the alternative to the unacceptable status quo — high (though falling) unemployment, and a too slugginh recovery — under Obama. The question of which candidate’s plans would actually fix the economic crisis is what this whole presidential campaign is supposed to be all about. And we’ve now learned that the studies the Romney campaign itself cites to back up the claim that his plan would create 12 million jobs don’t do anything of the kind. [Bolding ours]

At the Republican National Convention, we were told story after story about how Mitt Romney cares for the poor, the sick, the dying. Yet his policies will harm those people the most.

At the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney used the names of people he says he met (ok, we’ll buy it) to plead his case to the American public.

Last week, the mother of Glen Doherty asked Mitt Romney to stop using his so-called “relationship” with her son for political purposes against President Obama. Doherty was a Navy SEAL who was one of the SEAL Team Six members who killed Osama bin Laden. He later was killed in last month’s tragic September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

“I met some remarkable people, one of whom was a former Navy SEAL,” Mitt Romney had been telling supporters as part of his new stump speech focusing on foreign policy. “I just learned a few days ago that he was one of the two former navy seals killed in Benghazi. It broke my heart.”

Not according to Doherty’s friend, whom says Romney approached Doherty four times in the space of about a half hour trying to get his endorsement.

Glen Doherty is not the only dead person Romney has been using for political purposes against their families’ will. The father of Ambassador Christopher Stevens also asked Romney to stop using his son’s death.

“It would really be abhorrent to make this into a campaign issue,” Stevens told BusinessWeek as he prepared for his son’s funeral.

The faked photo op of Paul Ryan, where he lied to the American people, taught his kids how to lie, and all but literally stepped on the backs of the poor to advance his own interests, tied to the lie that is “central to [Romney’s] candidacy’s entire argument,” along with the politicization — against their will — of those who died serving their country, our country, is what we’ve learned today.

And it’s disgusting.

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Governor Bill Lee quickly drew tremendous outrage in the wake of a school mass shooting where six people including three young children were shot to death. Social media users criticized the Tennessee Republican, who had signed a permit-less gun carry law, for declaring he was “praying for the school, congregation & Nashville community,” without posting any mention of the mass shooting.

Tweeting he was “closely monitoring the tragic situation at Covenant,” Gov. Lee said, “As we continue to respond, please join us in praying for the school, congregation & Nashville community.”

There was no mention of any loss of life, and, as Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts passionately noted, the “situation” was a mass shooting.

“If thoughts and prayers alone worked to stop gun violence, there wouldn’t have been a shooting at a Christian elementary school. It’s your actions – including weakening the state’s gun laws – that’s killing kids in Tennessee,” Watts also tweeted. “SHAME ON YOU.”

Gov. Lee signed a permit-less carry bill into law in 2021, at a Beretta gun manufacturing plant.

According to the CDC, as of 2020 – one year before the permit-less carry bill was signed into law – Tennessee ranked tenth in the nation in per-capita firearm mortality.

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Meanwhile, others took notice of the gun culture Gov. Lee has fostered in “The Volunteer State.”

MSNBC analyst and Bulwark writer Tim Miller commented, “Tennessee governor Bill Lee issued a statement recently about how the drag ban in Tennessee ‘protects children.’ If only he would have instead focused on laws that might have prevented the mass murder of children in his state today.”

Historian Kevin Kruse pointed to an article from last year, after the Uvalde, Texas school shooting, titled: “Rep. Clemmons Seeks Renewed Gun Laws, Gov. Lee Requests Prayer.”

“You chose prayer over gun reforms last year after the Uvalde massacre,” Kruse wrote. “And now here we are.”

The progressive website Tennessee Holler pointed out that Gov. Lee, along with GOP lawmakers, “just appointed Jordan Mollenhour to the [state] board of education— whose company was sued for selling ammo to an underage mass killer (SANTA FE) and sold ammo to at least one more (AURORA) He has ZERO education experience.”

Let’s Give a Damn founder Nick Laparra tweeted, “We are 86 days into 2023. So far, 9859 people have died by gun violence and there have been 128 mass shootings. Meanwhile, @GovBillLee spends his days being outraged over drag queens and CRT and book bans. This is Bill Lee’s and the GOP’s fault.”

See the tweets and video above or at this link.

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Mystery Grand Jury Witness in Trump Hush Money Probe Is Former ‘Enquirer’ Publisher and Trump Ally

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March 27, 2023

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Avid followers of the Manhattan District Attorney’s moves noted the grand jury had been called into service for Monday, and soon news leaked that yet another witness would be testifying in the probe into Donald Trump’s alleged hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.

Monday afternoon, NBC News’ Garrett Haake reported live on MSNBC that the mystery witness was David Pecker, the former tabloid publisher of the “National Enquirer,” who reportedly had been looking for stories in 2016 to protect Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Haake notes Monday was Pecker’s second appearance before the grand jury in the hush money case.

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“While the focus of Mr. Pecker’s testimony is unclear, he could provide valuable information for prosecutors. A longtime ally of Mr. Trump, he agreed to keep an eye out for potentially damaging stories about Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign,” The Times reports. “For a brief time in October 2016, Ms. Daniels appeared to have just that kind of story. Her agent and lawyer discussed the possibility of selling exclusive rights to her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump to The National Enquirer, which would then promise to never publish it, a practice known as ‘catch and kill.'”

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman weighed in, noting, “nothing about that decision [to have Pecker testify] suggests any change of heart on Bragg’s part to indict Trump.”

Former Dept. of Defense Special Counsel Ryan Goodman, an NYU professor of law, notes that Pecker’s “testimony can show the [hush money] scheme was designed to affect outcome of election.”

“He reportedly communicated directly with Trump on payment,” Goodman adds.

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‘Our Children Deserve Better’: First Lady Jill Biden Speaks Out After Six Die in Nashville School Mass Shooting

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March 27, 2023

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First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, speaking Monday afternoon at a National League of Cities conference, told attendees, “Our children deserve better,” as she broke the news of the Nashville school mass shooting at Covenant Presbyterian School where three children and three adults were shot dead.

“You know,” Dr. Biden, herself an educator and clearly pained by the news, began her remarks by saying, “I hate to say what I’m gonna say next because you know you’re so enthusiastic and with so much energy and hope and I feel it.”

“But while you’ve been in this room, I don’t know whether you’ve been on your phones but we just learned about another shooting in Tennessee, a school shooting and I am truly without words and our children deserve better, and we stand – all of us – we stand with Nashville in prayer.”

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The First Lady, a former public high school English teacher and currently a professor of English at a community college, was speaking at the organization’s Congressional City Conference.

Watch Dr. Biden below or at this link.

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