Having never worked a day in his life poor Mitt seems to have trouble connecting with the working class.

Romney refuses to release earlier tax returns, demands President Obama apologize

As the deadline (Sept 28th) is aproching, might the ransom amount for Mitts tax returns go down? There are 8 full news days of Romney moments left and the tax returns might pale as the skelitons come out of the closet by then..

If it where me, I would have them make a counter offer to destroy them.....Perhaps by the 28th he might quit..

You all are worried about tax returns? how about releasing college transcripts? Romney is a business man and has made a fortune at it. Im not saying he is the best guy for the job, but who could do worse than Obama? Big Government is not the answer. Getting Americans back to work and off social welfare is. Too many hands in the cookie jar- leave no cookies for the one who provides! People need to be accountable!

Hi Rachel,

I just had an unsettling thought, what if Paul Ryan is the real presidential candidate and Romney is the red herring? What if it's all a smoke screen? In the coming weeks Romney is proves himself to be more and more unworthy until the party eventually ousts him, bumping Ryan to the top spot and Rubio as #2.

Ryan has been quiet for a while, well by comparison to Romney who is extremely vocal and mind boggingly controversial. Could this possibly be an angle? I mean they knew going in that even with what they consider to a horrible record, it would be difficult to beat President Obama. So what if this is all a big ruse and the intention is to drop Romney last minute and be "forced" to put Ryan's name on the ballot? Next to Mittwitt he looks like a viable candidate doesn't he?

I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories but the more I hear of the things MR says I just find it hard to believe that someone really running for president could be that arrogant, polarizing and downright dumb.

Not a big political buff but I admit it's starting to peak my interest. Please allay my naive fears and tell me it's not indeed that simple to pull such a stunt.

IH

By the way, love the show!

Just goes to show what a huge hypocrite he is --here is talking about what moochers the 47% are, when HE pays no income tax. Maybe he thinks HE's a moocher--I certainly DO! (Mooching from the less well-off). And THAT'S one of the nicer things I think of him! It's truly sad that people, like him, want to deprive the needy even further. I guess he feels seriously-ill and handicapped children aren't taking personal responsiblity for themselves, or maybe it's their parents who aren't pulling their weight. I guess when you become old and can't work any longer, you should try to anyway, whether there are jobs or not, or people who will hire you or not. Frickin' moochers! (I like that word). And medicine--who needs medicine? Only the wealthy should be able to stay hale & healthy. Have you ever seen, "The Dark Crystal," where those cute, little podlings get their life-force sucked out of them by the Skeksis, ( who grow younger and healthier by doing so? Sound familiar?

For a person like Romney who cannot even create or design something that creates jobs for people, he has some real arrogant guts. All Romney knows how to do is con people to make huge wealth. Romney must live in a fantasy world thinking that he has done it all for people and if everyone would just listen to him everything would be better. Little does he know that by implementing his ideas would cause a complete failure of having a civilized society as people would be struggling more just to survive as the rich accused everybody as being freeloaders. People have always taken personal responsibility for their lives, especially when it comes to their children. If there is any freeloaders, it doesn’t take much to see how rich people do use their workers to get things done and for ideas that keep their businesses running and profitable. If rich people didn’t have others to do the work and buy their products, they would absolutely be nothing, except the beggar in the streets. Most of these rich people born with that silver spoon in their mouths don’t even have the knowledge or brains to do anything worthwhile, except to push their con job. These rich people certainly are no Steve Jobs, but they certainly do live in an illusion thinking they deserve everything and have become use to thinking they are all that and more. Just to let people like this in power and control in such important positions as the White house that do not know the real realities of life is a major catastrophe waiting to happen. What would someone like Romney or Ryan say to the Middle East people take personal responsibility you freeloaders?

This is interesting, no mention that the Romney tape is edited/doctored/incomplete. Why is it the liberal media thinks it can get away with this kind of fraud? You'd think after the Trayvon tape manipulations people would be more careful. Tsk.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/09/19/Mother-Jones-Admits-Romney-Tape-Missing-One-or-Two-Minutes

Rachel, love you and your show but why is no one outraged that part of the 47% happens to be disabled vets that heroically fought wars to protect the likes of the Romney family who refused to contribute to America?

The silence from everyone is outrageous to me. There are many people in that 47% that are not being mentioned. How many are babies children and students? How many are elderly? How many are active Military who don't make enough to pay taxes? How many are disabled military who are barely surviving and have no choice? How many are the working poor and mentally ill? How many are non-military disabled people? How many are working handicapped with limited income but just happy to work doing anything? I'm sure I have left out some.

47% is a meaningless statistic without complete information. Someone needs to put it all into perspective. 47% may be a great number for all I know.

It's like Romney saying he produced 100,000 jobs. So what? Who gives a damned? It's incomplete and misleading data yest no one challenges this crap. We are talking about American jobs that pay a reasonable pay that a family can live on one income but he doesn't say that. We don't care how many Chinese jobs he outsourced at $2 per day.

The same thing applies to the words "Jobs" and "work". These are four letter words. I don't raise my kids to get a job or work, I try to explain the difference between these four letter words and the six letter word "Income". That's what Americans want and have to have is income. Jobs and work are only a couple ways of providing income. Romney has never had to have a job or had to work but he has always had wealth and an income from that wealth.

Please challenging all words, phrases and terminology and don't just follow the other side.

I once worked for a new power plant who used a new mind conditioning tactic called "The team concept" that some brilliant corporate psychologist came up with. The brand new hourly employees were elated with it until one day I held it back as long as I could and mentioned to them "well doesn't it matter which team you're on? You didn't notice there are two teams? A and B? and you're not on the A team? It sounded real good to them until it was pointed out to them and then they noticed "Team A" (management) received a bonus for the work and saving of "Team B" the hourly workers, while "Team B" got nothing but a slap on the back and a "You're a great Team Player, keep it up"

Thank you Rachel, keep up the good work.

Interesting article by R. Reno over at First Things analysing working class income, I was pointed to it by an article by Richard Adams at the Guardian in the UK . As someone this side of the pond the uk, this is Romney`s `bigot` moment. The striking and correct analogy that what happened with the Gordon Brown incident was to reveal the quality of the person up for the election not just the content of the video. I believe this is more damning for Romney than whatever he said. His attitude is that of someone to whom a $50,000 meal is chicken-feed, whereas to most people in America it is so far beyond them that is never going to be seen in their life-time. It reminds me of a radio interview recently on the BBC World Service of a foreign correspondent who was one of the first into New Orleans following Katrina he thought he was in a Third World country, but as the Good Lord said if you do unto the least you do to me I somehow think Romney will be among the goats!

I thought I might point you all to an interesting article over at First Things by R.Reno `Absurd Republican rhetoric` which observes the kind of Income that the 47% might earn. I wonder that this will turn into a noun and people will start saying ` I AM A 47%ER` i wonder if this will occur. The article was pointed out to me by Richard Adams at the Guardian in the UK. As someone from the UK I would suggest that this is Romney`s `Bigot` moment as the thing that was most revealing about Gordon Brown was what was revealed was the nature of the man who ever the most fervant Labour supporters found abhorent I think Americans may feel the same about Romney.

I wonder why no one has made the connection of trickle down economics with the non-disclosure of Romney's tax returns. Trickle down theory is based on business investors like Romney investing in domestic companies allowing those companies to grow and hire and improve the economy, so let's see the Romney tax returns so we can see where all the Bush tax cuts money has gone. I think most of it went to the Caymans and we know he sure didn't pay the anything over 13% which is not his tax bracket.

This trickle down theory was VODO when G HW Bush said it in the late 80's. TRMS should highlight that. It's absolutely relevant to this Republican vision of US growth but is completely opposite to Romney's own behavior.