The latest pro-Obama attack ad from the unions rips a quote from Mitt Romney’s “47% video” completely out of context:

The ads quotes a guy who picks up trash in Romney’s La Jolla neighborhood. He claims Romney doesn’t care about him. Then it shows Romney saying: “And so my job is not to worry about those people.”

OK, we’re going over old ground here, but let’s do it anyway.

As I’m sure all of you remember, the full context of the “47%” interchange has nothing to do with whether Romney would “care” about people like this guy. Romney was asked how he would get people to take care of themselves. Romney’s message in response was twofold: 1) responding to the part of the question directed at electoral strategy, and 2) dismissing the part of the question that implies he has a duty (or the ability) to convince freeloaders to take care of themselves. Here is the full context:

Audience member: For the last three years, all everybody’s been told is, “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.” How are you going to do it, in two months before the elections, to convince everybody you’ve got to take care of yourself?

Romney: There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. And he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not, what it looks like. I mean, when you ask those people…we do all these polls—I find it amazing—we poll all these people, see where you stand on the polls, but 45 percent of the people will go with a Republican, and 48 or 4…

Romney is saying: in this election, when I am seeking out votes, my job is not to seek votes from people who will never vote for me anyway. Nor is my job to preach personal responsibility to people who care nothing for the concept. My job in this election is to persuade the people in the center. Period.

To imply that he would not “care” about this American or any other as President is a completely different proposition entirely. And the people who made this ad know it.

The ad is an insult to honesty.

I await the fact-checkers with their Pinocchios and such, to tell us that this ad completely ignores the context. I’ll be holding my breath in the corner . . . turning blue.

Thanks, again, to dana.

UPDATE: And thanks to commenter, er, “BABY GLOCK,” for pointing us to this National Review piece by Charles C.W. Cooke that puts the nail in this coffin:

Get the sledgehammer message? Mitt Romney doesn’t understand! Romney could have no idea about quotidien things such as trash collection because his wealth and detachment prevent him from having to know what life is like for blue-collar workers such as Mr. Hayes.

There’s just one problem with this, and it lies on page 251 of Mitt Romney’s book, No Apology:

During my campaign for governor, I decided to spend a day every few weeks doing the jobs of other people in Massachusetts. Among other jobs, I cooked sausages at Fenway Park, worked on asphalt paving crew, stacked bales of hay on a farm, volunteered in an emergency room, served food at a nursing home, and worked as a child-care assistant. I’m often asked which was the hardest job – it’s child care, by a mile.

One day I gathered trash as a garbage collector. I stood on that little platform at the back of the truck, holding on as the driver navigated his way through the narrow streets of Boston. As we pulled up to traffic lights, I noticed that the shoppers and businesspeople who were standing only a few feet from me didn’t even see me. It was as if I was invisible. Perhaps it was because a lot of us don’t think garbage men are worthy of notice; I disagree – anyone who works that hard deserves our respect. – I wasn’t a particularly good garbage collector: at one point, after filling the trough at the back of the truck, I pulled the wrong hydraulic lever. Instead of pushing the load into the truck, I dumped it onto the street. Maybe the suits didn’t notice me, but the guys at the construction site sure did: “Nice job, Mitt,” they called. “Why don’t you find an easier job?” And then they good-naturedly came down and helped me pick up my mess.

Here’s Romney working as a garbage collector:

The video, which you have never seen before, is here:

The hype at the Caller seems a tad overdone — don’t expect Obama to scream “God damn America” or anything — but this is a nice reminder of the angry Obama who loved Rev. Wright and played the race card on New Orleans. That’s part of the real Obama. Here’s what they’re saying at the Caller:

The racially charged and at times angry speech undermines Obama’s carefully-crafted image as a leader eager to build bridges between ethnic groups. For nearly 40 minutes, using an accent he almost never adopts in public, Obama describes a racist, zero-sum society, in which the white majority profits by exploiting black America. The mostly black audience shouts in agreement. The effect is closer to an Al Sharpton rally than a conventional campaign event.

He does have that “Al Gore talking to black people” accent.

Apparently the DNC doesn’t want you to know about this video. Good enough reason to watch it, huh?

There might be more like this on the way. Keep your eyes on this space . . .

President Obama is currently exploiting Down syndrome at his website barackobama.com. He has published a letter, ostensibly from a grown Downs adult (although at the end she says she had help writing the letter from her obviously partisan relatives), that begins as follows:

Hello! My name is Brittany and I live in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. I am 25 years old (but I will be 26 on October 3rd!). I am a registered Democrat and I have been voting since I was 18. I am one of the 47% of Americans who fall under Mitt Romney’s definition of “entitled” and “unable to take responsibility for my life.” I have Down syndrome.

. . . .

I have also included my picture, not just because I’m cute, but because I wanted to give you a face of one of the 47% to share with Mr. Romney.

I wish you would come to Pennsylvania because I would really like to meet you.

Please say hello to your wife, Michelle, for me. I wish I could live in the White House, too, and I like your dog, Bo.

—Brittany

P.S. My mom and her friend helped me write this.

I bet mom and her friend would like to come along to the White House, too.

If Barack Obama could feel shame, he would probably start with his inclusion of this letter on his site. First of all, Obama supports allowing women to kill babies like Brittany, at least up until the time they are born.

Second, one of the most prominent Down syndrome babies in recent years has been Trig Palin. And while I’m sure you can find evidence of Obama giving lip service to the idea that Sarah Palin should not be mocked for keeping Trig, he didn’t go out of his way to tamp down the mockery his supporters heaped on her. Indeed, perhaps the most prominent Trig Truther, Andrew Sullivan, is a favorite of Obama’s:

I read all of the New York Times columnists. Krugman’s obviously one of the smartest economic reporters out there, but I also read some of the conservative columnists, just to get a sense of where those arguments are going. There are a handful of blogs, Andrew Sullivan’s on the Daily Beast being an example, that combine thoughtful analysis with a sampling of lots of essays that are out there.

Obama loves Sullivan so much he invited him to a state dinner at the White House this year.

But wait! I’m not done yet! How about those upcoming ObamaCare taxes? Looks like they’re going to hit the parents of special needs children especially hard:

The 30-35 million American who use a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) at work to pay for their family’s basic medical needs will face a new government cap of $2,500 (currently the accounts are unlimited under federal law, though employers are allowed to set a cap).

There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are several million families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.

This Obamacare tax provision will limit the options available to these families.

Please, President Obama, don’t pretend you’re on Brittany’s side, on the side of Down syndrome babies/fetuses or their parents, or that you have any right whatsoever to exploit this particular issue.

Thanks to dana.

Wonderful:

According to the U.S. Treasury, the debt of the U.S. government climbed by a total of $1,275,901,078,828.74 in fiscal 2012, which ended yesterday.

That means the federal government borrowed approximately an additional $10,855 for each household in the United States just over the past twelve months.

The total debt of the United States now equals approximately $136,690 per household.

I think it’s about time that we publicly acknowledged something: we are never going to pay our national debt.

At $16 trillion, we owe over $50,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country. A sizable percentage of the population (though well under 47%) contribute nothing to the country whatsoever, and never will. They always be only takers. So that $50,000 number goes up for the rest of us.

Explain to me how we’re going to pay this off. The answer is simple: we won’t. We speak of passing along a debt to our children, but really, what we’re doing is passing along the consequences of a multi-trillion-dollar debt that will never be paid.

Watch what happens in Europe carefully. This is our future. And while it’s probably not very inspiring to say it in October of a presidential election year, this is our future regardless of who gets elected next month.