From Politico, from a press conference today:

“I don’t have lobbyists running my campaign,” (Mitt) Romney said. “I don’t have lobbyists that are tied to my — ”

Glen Johnson, an Associated Press reporter who was sitting on the floor as he typed on his laptop computer, interrupted to point out that Ron Kaufman, one of Romney’s top advisers, is a lobbyist.

“That’s not true, governor!” Johnson interjected, according to CBS News’ Scott Conroy, who was there. “That is not true. Ron Kaufman is a lobbyist.”

CBS has posted the video.

“Did you hear what I said — did you hear what I said, Glen?” Romney replied. “I said, ‘I don’t have lobbyists running my campaign,’ and he’s not running my campaign. He’s an adviser. And the person who runs my campaign is [campaign manager] Beth Myers, and I have a whole staff of deputy campaign managers.”

Objectively Unfit Mitt is trying to play the media persecution card on this incident. Give me a break.

Romney specifically said “I don’t have lobbyists that are TIED to my –” before being interrupted. Obviously the missing word is “campaign.”

Romney then admitted that Ron Kaufman is TIED to his campaign by when he acknowledged that Kaufman is an “adviser,” and again later when he agreed that Kaufman has been in debate preparation(s).

But then, Romney tried to pretend he only said “running,” when everyone in the room, and now every video viewer, clearly saw him say “tied to.”

AP reporter Johnson is right. He caught Romney red-handed.

Leave it to Mitt Romney to make an AP reporter actually look good.

And Eric “Don’t Be Argumentative with the Candidate” can take a flying leap.

Objectively Unfit Mitt looks more like the second coming of Bill “Meaning of Is” Clinton with each passing day. In fact, “Romnian” would likely replace “Clintonian” in the lexicon if, heaven forbid, he were elected President.

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UPDATE: Allah at Hot Air gets it right (”Mitt gets testy with AP reporter over lobbyist accusations”) –

The charge is that Romney, the self-styled candidate of vacuous “change”, is letting his campaign be run by a guy who not only served as political director in the George H.W. Bush administration but is known to some as a “mega-lobbyist”, whose firm raised more than $21 million in fees in 2006 alone. True? Strictly speaking, no. Ron Kaufman appears to have no formal role with the campaign, although he’s mentioned in this Fox News story as a member of Mitt’s “inner circle” and is frequently described as a “senior advisor” in other news reports.

But of course, Kaufman is TIED to the campaign.

Bryan’s assessment at the same Hot Air post misses the mark. Romney comes off as a near-bully, and Fehrnstrom as a definite bully. That’s would be a net loss for Objectively Unfit Mitt, who turned a molehill into a mountain.

I am pleased to report that the word about Mitt Romney’s myriad weaknesses is spreading, and continues to be enhanced by the contributions of others.

This is the fourth of a series of several daily links to others who have news about Objectively Unfit Mitt.

Here goes.

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A Wall Street Journal editorial on GOP presidential candidates’ tax-cut plans notes that all have come around to presenting specifics — except, oh-so-predictably, one:

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is proposing to expand tax free savings accounts and he speaks vaguely of cutting tax rates. That’s fine with us, though in his typical fashion it seems like the path of least polling resistance. For all of his talk about “changing” Washington, Mr. Romney so far hasn’t offered a tax reform that would reduce the sway of lobbyists and money changers.

Earth to Journal, and to GOP voters: Mitt Romney would more than likely be the lobbyists’ and money changers’ best friend — no matter where they’re from or who they represent. Watch this if you think my concern is without foundation.

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RomneyFacts.com has a great comparison of Blue Mitt and Red Mitt, showing contradictions in his statements — including one instance of where the contradictions occurred on the very same day.

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Salt and Light compares Romney on Reagan in 1994 and 2008:

• 1994 (video): “Look, I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.”
• 2008 (video): “Back in 1994 I was making it clear that I was my own man. And I am my own man.”

Sorry, Mitt — any viewer can see that the borderline anger on display in 1994 was meant to tell the audience that you were not only not a fan of Reagan-Bush, but downright hostile towards them.

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Where does he find these people? Romney finance chair choices have turned out to be embarrassing — or they would be, if they got reported:

Romney’s finance team co-chair has been indicted:

A federal grand jury has indicted Fabian for allegedly making $32 million in false purchases of computer equipment to pay for his lavish spending habits. Prosecutors are seeking $32 million worth of Fabian’s assets, including beach real estate in North Carolina, property in Maryland and a yacht.

….. and his Utah finance chair is a crook:

Lichfield was named in a June 2007 complaint filed in federal court in Utah by the families of 133 children who have attended schools associated with WWASP, alleging that they were subjected to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Plaintiff Chase Wood, who attended the Cross Creek Center for Boys (founded by Lichfield in the late 1970s) and another WWASP-affiliated school, claims he was fondled, forced to eat his own vomit, and locked in a dog cage.

Fabian and Lichfield are now former co-chairs. A video about Lichfield’s “schools” is here.

Here’s something about a current co-chair. Romney’s Idaho guy, Frank Vandersloot, is an art-of-intimidation bully who expended an incredible amount of energy attempting (and failing miserably) to defend (get this) pedophile Boy Scout leaders in the Grand Teton Council. Really, even though a local-area paper found that there had been at least four Scout leaders who had preyed on dozens of victims.

A full list of Romney co-chairs is here. Anyone with relevant info on any of these folks is welcome to e-mail me.

By the way, I predict that if Romney is the nominee, there will be a concerted effort by Old Media to get to the bottom of what appears, based on this simple Google search on “Mormons and ‘child abuse’” and other information I have learned, to be a serious child-abuse problem that exists in the Mormon Church and segments of the Mormon community.

Since a Republican is involved, I predict that Old Media will do a thorough job.

I further predict that if they do that thorough job, they will find a lot to write about.

I finally predict that they will get to within, excuse the expression, close enough striking distance of Mitt Romney’s circle of friends (Update: and acquaintances — Ed.) to have an impact on his prospects, and that the impact will not be favorable.

According to a Wall Street Journal op-ed today by Richard Rahn, Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani’s tax-reform proposal includes indexing of capital gains for inflation.

Good for Rudy. I’ve covered this before but examples that make the point need to be brought up again and again until people get it. Here’s Rahn’s:

Assume you purchased a common stock in a company in 1984 for $100 a share and sold it in 2007 for $200 a share. Have you received any “income” from the sale of the shares of stock? The IRS would say “yes,” but this is clearly wrong. The IRS will claim that you had a $100 per share capital gain on the stock in the above example, yet actually the increase was solely a result of inflation. Because you cannot buy more goods and services with $200 now than you could have with $100 in 1984, you have had no “income” or wealth accretion.

Yet you owe capital-gains tax on that fictitious $100 “gain.” That is, and always has been, horse manure.

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Apple, with its movie download service and its ultrathin laptop, is definitely on the move.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Vista, which corporate users stubbornly, and unfortunately justifiably, are shunning, continues to hold back productivity growth, to the point where I believe it is harming the economy.

Some of the companies avoiding Vista like the plague should seriously consider thinking different, if you know what I mean.

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A lot has been made of Glenn Beck’s harrowing hospital experience a few weeks ago. Read up on it here if you aren’t familiar with the story.

Beck has the prescription for preventing future occurrences right, but misses the cause:

“The politicians are right that we have a health care crisis in this country,” he said. “Where they’re wrong is that it’s not going to be solved by government, it’s not going to be solved by getting the HMOs out, it’s not going to be solved by a new marbled-lobby health center,” he said. “It’s by hiring people that understand about caring for people.”

But the reason that the people in health care don’t care as much is because the government has gotten too involved in health care. The resulting bureaucracies in the government and forced on care providers have brought the “compassion” (i.e., lack of it) found at the post office and drivers’ license bureau into the examination room and the hospital ward. Reducing government involvement and getting more people in the profession who have strong Judeo-Christian ethics would go a long way.

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Proving that it’s never been “count all the votes,” but instead “count only MY votes’ — John Fund, in a Wall Street Journal column, boils down the Hillary Clinton campaign’s vote-suppression efforts in Nevada’s upcoming caucuses:

it’s still breathtaking to see how some Democrats ignore that it was only last week they argued before the Supreme Court that an Indiana law requiring voters show ID at the polls would reduce voter turnout and disenfranchise minorities. Nevada allies of Hillary Clinton have just sued to shut down several caucus sites inside casinos along the Las Vegas Strip, potentially disenfranchising thousands of Hispanic or black shift workers who couldn’t otherwise attend the 11:30 a.m. caucus this coming Saturday.

D. Taylor, the president of the Culinary Workers Union that represents many casino workers, notes that legal complaint was filed just two days after his union endorsed Barack Obama. He says the state teachers union, most of whose leadership backs Mrs. Clinton, realized that the Culinary union would be able to use the casino caucuses to better exercise its clout on behalf of Mr. Obama, and used a law firm with Clinton ties to file the suit.

….. the lawsuit has created an uproar among voters. It was the No. 1 issue among 30 Nevada Democrats participating in a Fox News focus group on Tuesday night; the anger among rank-and-file voters was palpable. The left-wing Nation magazine has denounced the suit as an attempt to “suppress the vote.”

The case goes before a federal judge in Las Vegas this morning.

With all due respect, Dem voters, where have you been? The Clinton-Gore axis controlling your party has been about the raw exercise of power over principles and the politics of intimidation for as long as I can remember. Now that they have turned their legal guns on rank and file party members in the name of preserving that power, you’re soooo surprised. How about soooo naive?

More info on the controversy, and the hypocrisy, can be found here, here, and here.

From McAllen, Texas:

Reunited: A once-sickly child makes her triumphant return to visit the hospital and staff that saved her life.

January 12, 2008 - 9:47PM

The newborn girl entered the world three months early, weighing just 1 pound 13 ounces.

Her mother, unable to care for her, gave her up for adoption. McAllen Medical Center placed her in its neonatal intensive care unit, located on the third floor.

Normally, the staff there works with new mothers, and together they care for premature babies. A combination of medical science and human touch brings the infants to full strength. The mothers bid thanks and farewell, and they leave for home.

On July 23, 2006, the preemie girl came to the third floor.

She came to the unit with no name, no family and no toys — with virtually nothing but a collection of medical problems and special needs.

On Saturday, she returned to the third floor weighing about 20 pounds. She walked through the room, she smiled and she posed for pictures. She brought with her a pair of beaming parents.

She also brought many of her former nurses to tears. In the same room where they once fought for her life, the staff of the neonatal intensive care unit reunited with the girl.

They decked out the former preemie care area with Sesame Street tablecloths and little red balloons. The girl had left the hospital after a couple adopted her last year. On Saturday, they celebrated her vibrant health.

The only baby without a toy or a name

One baby stood out.

She needed nutritional boosts and constant physician care just like the other premature newborns. But unlike them, she had no balloons, blankets or baby clothes at her bedside. She didn’t have a single toy.

Motherless, fatherless, she waited for adoption.

The nurses, the doctors and even the secretary on the preemie ward each pitched in 25 cents to buy her a plush, pink poodle that they then placed near her bed.

They had bought a toy for … Baby. Wait, they remember saying, we can’t just call her Baby. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.