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metronews.ca Thursday, September 20, 2012
Democrats malign Romney for his latest public-relations disaster U.S. Election. Republicans weary as Mitt Romney’s string of summer blunders weakens his campaign Republicans are in apparent panic mode in the wake of Mitt Romney’s very bad summer, particularly over the latest firestorm engulfing his campaign after he was secretly filmed deriding almost half of Americans as government mooches. Several Senate Republicans in tight battles against Democrats were quick to publicly distance themselves from Romney’s four-month-old remarks that the 47 per cent of Americans who don’t pay income tax are freeloaders who expect Uncle Sam to take care of them. In fact, most of those 47 per cent don’t make enough money to pay income tax or are seniors or military vet-
Quoted
“He’ll only worry about how the other half lives, I guess.” Senate majority leader Harry Reid On how he assumes Mitt Romney is bent on leading only the wealthier half of the United States.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney poses for pictures with supporters, before boarding his campaign charter plane at Love Field in Dallas, Wednesday. G.J. McCarthy/the associated press
erans on government assistance. They also pay payroll and other taxes. Romney was attempting to explain to the US$50,000-aplate fundraiser why a certain segment of Americans won’t vote for him.
On the campaign trail on Wednesday, Romney once again took pains to explain himself. “(Obama) really believes in what I’ll call a governmentcentred society,” he said in Atlanta, accusing Obama of
advocating the redistribution of wealth in America. “I know there are some who believe that if you simply take from some and give to others, then we’ll all be better off. It’s known as redistribution. It’s never been a characteristic of
America ... I believe the way to lift people, and help people have higher incomes, is not to take from some and give to others but to create wealth for all.” Nonetheless the silence was deafening on the Senate
floor on Wednesday when Democrats maligned Romney for his latest public relations disaster. Republican senators offered up no defence of their candidate for the White House. “This week we learned that Mitt Romney only wants to be president of half of the United States,” said Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a thorn in Romney’s side ever since he alleged in the same chamber earlier this summer that the millionaire presidential hopeful didn’t pay income tax for 10 years. “He’ll only worry about how the other half lives, I guess.” the associated press
Photo op: Mars’ Curiosity Rover wows earthlings On Mars, a partial eclipse of the sun isn’t quite as rare as on Earth. So NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover is snapping hundreds of pictures of the spectacle for the folks back home to ooh and aah over. Two moons zip around the red planet and they’re closer and faster than our lumbering moon, so eclipses are more common. Scientists say there’s even somewhat of an eclipse season on Mars, and it’s that time of year when those Martian moons take turns taking bites of the sun. Curiosity turned its cameras skyward to watch the action in three different eclipses, starting last week and continuing Wednesday, when a moon partially slipped between Mars and the sun. The rover has been beaming back a stream of photos of the Martian landscape since landing near the equator last month. Texas A&M University scientist Mark Lemmon said the eclipse pictures will help scientists track the fate of the larger Martian moon, Phobos, which is slowing down in its orbit around Mars. In 10 to 15 million years, Phobos will get so close to Mars it will
This photo, from yesterday, provided by NASA shows a rock about 2.5 metres in front of the Curiosity rover on Mars. JPL-Caltech/the associated press
break up and crash into the planet. These moons aren’t mere curiosity factors. They get so close to Mars that “they change Mars’ shape ever so slightly” with their pull, Lemmon said. Past rovers have taken pictures of solar eclipses from Mars, but not with such good cameras that take high resolution photos and so many shots that it produces a movie of sorts, Lemmon said. And now that Curiosity has gazed skyward, it’s time for
the Mini Cooper-sized spacecraft to focus on the ground. On Friday, Curiosity will test its first rock with a laser and other chemical testing kits on the end of its robotic arm. Its first target is a pyramidshaped dark rock, about 10 inches tall and 16 inches wide at the base. Two of the arm’s chemical-sniffing devices will snuggle up against the rock — named for Jake Matijevic, a Mars rover engineer who died recently — so scientists can figure out what it is made of. the associated press