A political gripe

I am not going to link to the thousands of articles about Mitt Romney's tax returns and the silly 'effective' tax rate. I am just going to rant a little. By inventing this 'effective' rate, democrats can pretend that Mitt does not pay his fair share of taxes, or, that he hides his money somewhere so that his real rate is lower.
It is a disgusting play, absolutely disgusting, and I don't like Mitt (see, I use his first name). The Romney's gave 16% of their income to charity, I wonder how many of the journalists who are crowing about the invented rate gave that much of their income to charity. No I don't, I know the number, none of them, not one. By virtue of the tax code, charitable donations are deductible, therefore his tax rate was exactly what it should have been, but the stinkin' lousy losers that pretend to be journalists don't report that. They take the amount of taxes he paid and divide that number by his total income.
Is that how we all do taxes? Really? You out there, do you take deductions before your figure your tax? Do you have dependents? Do you take the standard deduction or do you itemize? If so, your 'effective' tax rate is much lower than what the effing democrats say you pay, and if you make less than about $35,000 your freaking 'effective' rate is freaking 0, yeah, 0.
Why do people not take the time to learn this stuff? Why is this number going to be repeated for the next month, like it means anything?
I am going to ask anyone who uses on me if they paid taxes on their gross income or if they deducted anything.