Jason Horowitz’s WaPo piece revealing young Mitt Romney as a “prankster” whose version of pranking involved on one occasion, walking a visually-impaired teacher into a door and on another, involved physically assaulting another student with scissors in the company of a mob, actually turned the screw for me. My original perception of Romney was “clueless”—I thought he suffered from just a bad case of privileged boobery combined with a mild empathy-impairment. I upgraded my estimate to: “and a gutless coward, too” as the only explanation for his squishy weaseling on the issues not long ago. But that article just made me see a sociopath. That wasn’t the behavior of a dumb kid making mistakes. That was a pattern of preying on the weak and thinking their weakness was amusing. It was intolerance of differences. And I don’t think he learned thing one from his experiences because no one bothered to teach him that it was cruel, or wrong.
From the article:
A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.
(Snip)
The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall. Friedemann, guilt ridden, made a point of not talking about it with his friend and waited to see what form of discipline would befall Romney at the famously strict institution. Nothing happened.
It’s noted later in the article that Lauber was expelled for smoking. They are very different things, after all. Administering a beating and a haircut at the head of a mob is a very different thing when you are the son of someone very important from smoking while being a victimized kid of someone….probably not quite as important. I think the lesson young Mitt would have really learned is all too clear—
Whether he acknowledges how and what he learned is, of course, not quite a task Mr. Romney is up to.
Mrs. Mitt seems like a nice enough person—she comes across as exponentially more human than her husband. Admittedly, that’s a low bar since anyone who seemed less human would be relegated to the cargo hold of a commercial airliner without a notarized document from an anthropologist.
But Mrs. Mitt seems as pleasant as a clueless rich lady could possibly be when she’s trying to sell you an animatronic plutocrat with an anti-99%, anti-woman and anti-gay agenda. Sort of like a defanged Lynne Cheney. So I don’t mean to pick on her. But this passage of a Mothers’ Day op-ed she penned for USA Today struck me as odd:
People often ask me what it was like to raise five boys. I won’t sugarcoat it. There were times I wanted to tear my hair out. I can remember visiting my friends’ houses, seeing their daughters’ manners, the way they helped with the chores. Then I would return home to my boys, hoping only that my house was still intact.
Sweet al dente Flying Spaghetti Monster, is she actually suggesting that daughters are universally better mannered and tidier than boys? I’d disabuse her of that notion by posting a picture of my teenage daughter’s room right now, but that would be invading the kid’s privacy. Trust me, I’d stack that girl’s smart mouth and capacity for generating household-roiling mayhem against all five Little Lord Fontleromneys.
But that’s not all that bugs me about the piece. It illustrates something more broad and disturbing—a weird trapped-in-amber vibe to both Romneys, something that can’t really be explained away as a generational thing. They are about the same age as my parents, and though my parents’ political views differ significantly from the Romneys’ (my dad is way to their right and my mom is way to their left—divorced ages ago, obviously!), you can tell my parents experienced the decades that followed 1959 and took away certain lessons, for good or ill.
The Romneys, not so much. To paraphrase a line from “Field of Dreams,” it seems like they had six helpings of the 1950s and landed in the second decade of the 21st century pretty much unscathed. It will be a weird rolling-back in more ways than one if, FSM forbid, Mittens becomes president.
Sometimes wedge issues can give you the mother of all wedgies.
“Well, when these issues were raised in my state of Massachusetts, I indicated my view, which is I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender, and I do not favor civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name,” Romney said during a visit to Fort Lupton. “My view is the domestic partnership benefits, hospital visitation rights, and the like are appropriate but that the others are not.”
I have the same view on marriage that I had when I was governor. I believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman.
...
This is a very tender and sensitive topic as are many social issues, but I have the same views I’ve had since running for office.
To the Members of the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts:
I am writing to thank the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts for the advice and support you have given to me during my campaign for the U.S. Senate and to seek the Club’s formal endorsement of my election. The Log Cabin Club has played a vital role in reinvigorating the Republican Party in Massachusetts and your endorsement is important to me because it will provide further confirmation that my campaign and approach to government is consistent with the values and vision of government we share.
I am pleased to have had an opportunity to talk with you and to meet many of you personally during your September meeting. I learned a great deal from those discussions and the many thoughtful questions you posed. As a result of our discussions and other interactions with gay and lesbian voters across the state, I am more convinced than ever before that as we seek to establish full equality for Americas gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent.
I am not unaware of my opponent’s considerable record in the area of civil rights, or the commitment of Massachusetts voters to the principle of equality for all Americans. For some voters it might be enough for me to simply match my opponent’s record in this area. But I believe we can and must do better. If we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern. My opponent cannot do this. I can and will.
We have discussed a number of important issues such as the Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which I have agreed to co-sponsor, and if possible broaden to include housing and credit, and the bill to create a federal panel to find ways to reduce gay and lesbian youth suicide, which I also support. One issue I want to clarify concerns President Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue” military policy. I believe that the Clinton compromise was a step in the right direction. I am also convinced that it is the first of a number of steps that will ultimately lead to gays and lesbians being able to serve openly and honestly in our nation’s military. That goal will only be reached when preventing discrimination against gays and lesbians is a mainstream concern, which is a goal we share.
As we begin the final phase of this campaign, I need your support more than ever. By working together, we will achieve the goals we share for Massachusetts and our Nation.
Well, at least the Obamacare-inspiring heretic isn’t a blah person.
An endorsement via email? Isn’t that like breaking up with someone on Facebook?
Honest to god, I have zero faith in the American people’s sagacity (the dumb motherfuckers almost elected George W. Bush twice!), and the economy will probably still be in the shitter this November, which should doom the president’s reelection chances under normal circumstances.
But these aren’t normal circumstances. Romney is just an awful, horrible, terrible, heinous, unlikable candidate, and I’m not sure “at least he’s not Obama” will be enough to put Mittens over the top, since that line really only resonates with people insane enough to think Santorum, Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann, Cain, et al, aren’t bug-eyed loons and/or booger-eating idiots.
It’s not exactly where I’d hoped we’d be in the summer of 2012, but hell, I’ll take it.
One fun thing about a GOP campaign that’s permanently fixated on the current news cycle in a world where everybody has the attention span of a goldfish is that you can never guess what’s coming next, and when it does, you can’t remember what it was once it’s happened. Or apparently that’s the hope among Baron von Mitthausen’s minions.
The Baron—always a marvelous fabulist—is dialing it up to 12 with his latest tall tale, as Noreen Malone at New York Magazine reports:
Mitt Romney, infamous for penning a 2008 New York Times anti-bailout op-ed entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” declared yesterday in an interview conducted at a Cleveland auto-parts-maker that, in fact, he deserves a great deal of credit for saving the auto industry, and that President Obama had in fact followed his lead, per the Associated Press.
“I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy, and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet,” said Bloomfield Hills’ native son. “So, I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back.”
...
The new Romney campaign trail feint arrives concurrently with a new ad from the Obama camp, “Go,” in which the president reminds voters of the darkest days of 2008–09, and how Obama handled things like, oh, for instance, the auto bailout with aplomb.
The new Obama ad also echoes a newish Joe Biden catchphrase: Osama Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive. Romney already went after the first half of the slogan with his recent criticisms of Obama’s decision to use the Bin Laden raid as a campaign talking point and by saying it wasn’t exactly a tough call to make (despite his own stance at the time on the wisdom of the operation); now, it seems, he’s trying to deflate the auto-industry half as well — again, despite his own stance at the time on the wisdom of the operation.
Yup, here was the Baron in black and white back in 2008:
Let Detroit go bankrupt
If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for on Tuesday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.
He doubled down on that op-ed even after GM had been granted federal aid:
Romney also spoke out on his opposition to the government loaning money to the industry in 2009, placing some of the blame on Bush.
“Bailout of enterprises that are in trouble, that’s not the right way to go,” Romney told CNN’s Larry King in 2009. “I know President Bush started it with the auto industry. I thought it was a mistake.”
This audience member in Ohio asked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney a question about restoring the Constitutional balance of the branches of government, but not before accusing President Obama of treason and “acting outside of the structure of the Constitution”. She wasn’t specific about what she found treasonous in President Obama’s execution of his office, but without missing a beat, Romney gave an answer regarding the awesomeness of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and some right wing boilerplate complaint about Obama’s statement that the Supreme Court finding the ACA unconstitutional would be unprecedented. (Really? Is another Harvard Law school graduate actually going to accuse Obama of not understanding the process of judicial review, when he was talking about the historical precedents in favor of the commerce clause? Actually, that kind of got to me more than blowing off the treason charge did.)
But, wait—what about that claim of treason? Didn’t Mitt find anything a little weird about that?
Well—no! She did get a little applause for it, after all. These days, I don’t think that sounds too weird to Republicans anymore. He’s been compared to Hitler and to Chamberlain. The Republicans are just looking for an angle to impeach him over, so, what the hell, why not accuse him of treason? After all, the candidate himself has accused Obama of apologizing for America all over the world (and would he be so good as to tell us where those speeches were so we can queue’em up on YouTube? Oh, that’s right, it’s a damn lie.) By saying she wanted to see Obama on trial for treason. she was just saying “hello”. It’s not that Obama has to be guilty of treason, after all.
She’d just like to see him on trial for it, is all. Then watch the sentence and the execution thereof. Nothing to see here—just a Republican who wants a Democratic president facing a firing squad. And candidate Romney understands. So he gave a standard reply: Constitution, good. Declaration of Independence good. Obama, dumber than wet paint.
Now, he does develop a sense of endangered rep when called on it later by journos. But in the moment? Why would it sound funky at all? Of course Obama is guilty of treason. He’s in Mitt Romney’s way.
I’d say it was another episode of Profiles in Something Other Than Courage for Mitt, but if I have to cluck every time he plays the coward I’ll be thinking I’m a chicken before all this is over. And he wasn’t being a coward right there, exactly. He was just being a Republican.
The Bad Lip Reading folks perform their renowned schtick on Mitt Romney and make it sound like he’s spouting awkward, socially inept, mendacious nonsense.
EDIT: Oops. Sorry. That was Mitt himself speaking. Here’s the BLR version:
It’s been fun watching the RW blogs’ reaction to the election of the *ZOMG!!!! SOCIALIST!!!!* François Hollande to the French presidency—and in particular the startling revelation that President Obama has reached out in cordial terms and invited President Hollande—did I mention he’s a SOCIALIST!!!!?—to the White House for a bilateral meeting later in the month.
I’m glad to see the back of Sarkozy. It’s not politics, it’s personal. I nearly got arrested in 2007 because of him. Ms. YAFB and I were on holiday in southwest France during the election that saw him take power. This had a couple of drawbacks, as we discovered that the French take their politics seriously, and on the final election weekend, pretty much every shop in the local towns was closed for the duration. Visiting Pau to stock up with some provisions, we made the best of it by going our own ways to explore the old town, planning to meet up in one of the few open cafes later on.
Mooching around the near-deserted streets, I noticed this closed campaign headquarters for the Royal campaign, the sense of desolation of the morning after an unsuccessful bid heightened by the fact that some thoughtful soul had flung a sizeable rock through the window.
I was quite taken with the poster in the background inside, reading “Stop Violence” (which, as any phrasebook will tell you, translates into English as “Stop Violence”), juxtaposed with the smashed glass, so after reaching the endstops of what seemed worth exploring on the streets, on my way back I stopped to take a few photos. I’d have framed the shot a bit better, but I was just positioning myself to find an angle from which the jagged edges of the pane would show up in the sunlight when a woman clutching a phone to her ear darted out of the door and lunged towards me.
I know less about economics than I do about fashion, which is to say, nothing. But I can usually spot a bamboozle in the hatching phase. Here are two items on the economy that appeared within the last week. First up from a Reuters business piece:
Disability rolls may be holding economy back Those receiving benefits now account for 5.6 percent of working age population
Since the recession began, the share of Americans actively looking for work, known as the labor participation rate, has fallen to 63.6 percent from 66 percent in 2007.
Some people give up looking for work temporarily, but the size of the decline has perplexed economists and disability is clearly a factor.
JP Morgan estimates it accounts for half a percentage point of the drop. With jobs scarce, it causes little drag on growth.
But Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial, said over time, disability will rob roughly $250 billion — or 1.6 percent — from total output each year once the economy returns to full employment, probably within the next five to seven years. This will also widen the budget deficit.
Study: CEO Pay Increased 127 Times Faster Than Worker Pay Over Last 30 Years
From 1978 to 2011, CEO compensation increased more than 725 percent, a rise substantially greater than stock market growth and the painfully slow 5.7 percent growth in worker compensation over the same period.
In 1978, CEOs took home 26.5 times more than the average worker. They now make roughly 206 times more than workers, EPI found. The pay isn’t always tied to the performance of their businesses — as ThinkProgress has noted, CEOs at companies like Bank of America often pocket huge pay increases even as the company’s stock price plummets and jobs are cut.
Workers’ wages aren’t tied to productivity either. Despite substantial gains in productivity since the 1970s, worker pay has remained flat. According to Labor Department data cited by the Huffington Post, inflation-adjusted wages fell 2 percent in 2011.
How to solve the problem? Getting the feed straws of those disabled layabouts out of our wallets, obviously. And more tax breaks, a greater share of political control and higher bonuses for the CEO class.
I haven’t heard a GOPer make a big show of specifically attacking disability payments yet, but it’s coming if it hasn’t already happened. The disabled will be the new strapping young t-bone buying bucks.
It turns out Erick Erickson is more limber than generally suspected, fully capable of bending over and blowing himself on his own blog (hey, somebody has to do it):
As I’ve grown up online, I’m one of the uncommon few who has moved on to both television and radio. I have been blessed. Along the way, I find others who are making the transition too, but still others who have been toiling away in the blogosphere for years who have refused to make the transition, or been unable to despite their hopes, and they may look at me and others like me and think we’ve sold out or decided to go along to get along. But I look at them and think what a waste of talent and energy.
Erickson notes that more wingnut bloggers get “respectable” gigs like CNN analyst spots than lefties:
Though there are a few exceptions, I think more conservatives have moved into television and radio directly from blogs and new media websites than the left.
Hint: It’s not because y’all don’t suck: It’s because Fox News is eating CNN’s lunch with an all-wingnut, all-the-time format. The other media corporations want a piece of that sweet wingnut action, and they found you all tarted up on your street corner. Meritocracy!
But Erickson, having become all respectable, notes that “others” on the right could fuck the dealio up for the lot of them:
But there are others who are dragging those folks down and the rest of us too.
Sadly for them and the rest of us who get invited to nice places to meet nice people off the record, as long as the rest of us keep humoring them and their antics, those invites won’t come for any of us.
I don’t follow the wingnutosphere closely enough to know who pissed in Erickson’s cornflakes. Does anyone know?
BONUS: I hate opening the RedState page, not only because of the suckage contained within—hell, that’s what I’m there for—but because of the stupid newsletter popup that features a graphic of Erickson’s grinning melon rising from the bottom of the page like the Great Pumpkin. But all is forgiven, RedState, because this is the best wingnut website ad ever:
Willard is taking some flak from folks who observed the way he left the rabid neo-con he’d hired as a foreign policy spokesman twisting in the wind when the rabid anti-gay bigots in Willard’s party hung a “NO FAGS!” sign on the GOP clubhouse.
One of the several Sears mannequins deployed by the Romney campaign argued that Willard does TOO have the balls to push back against wingnut bigotry:
“Mitt Romney has confronted those voices of intolerance,” Fehrnstrom said. “He did it last October on stage at the Values Voters summit and denounced some of the poisonous language that is being used by some of the same people that had criticized Ric Grennel’s appointment.”
Yeah, when the talibangelicals go after Willard as a heretic for his Mormonism, he can be arsed to fire back. But when they go after someone on his staff for being gay, Willard regretfully accepts the man’s resignation. Face it, centrists: Martin Niemöller he ain’t.
Obama Launches Campaign in Empty Arena
Barack Obama launched his campaign in unspectacular fashion today at the Ohio State University, the largest college in this crucial swing state. According to a photo posted to twitter by Mitt Romney’s campaign spokesman Ryan Williams, the event was poorly attended.
Thus runs the lede at Big Government this afternoon. Disappointing, huh? Jeez, if you close your eyes tight and stick your fingers in your ears and go “LALALALA,” there’s nothing going on there at all.
This campaign season, it’s apparent we’re going to be playing the numbers game, comparing enthusiasm for President Obama’s 2012 campaign—unfavorably wherever possible—with that of 2008, if the wingnutariat, ably abetted by sectors of the MSM, gets its way.
CNN’s coverage of one person yapping and nobody there to do any clapping noted:
The top tier of this auditorium is not full. It’s empty. Mostly. You know, it’s fair to say that they expected to fill this up, so it must be a disappointment to the campaign.
Then it goes and spoils it all by shooting for the “fair and balanced”:
You should also point out that the Romney campaign has never drawn a crowd even half this size, so judge by whatever standard you will.
It’s also true that Obama’s made appearances in this neck of the woods of Ohio several times already this year, so the novelty’s no doubt wearing a little thin by now. But what the hey, what a disappointing spectacle this must have been for the campaign:
I live kind of out in the boonies in Central Florida. One of the closest towns is a massive retirement community, where you’ll find more gussied-up golf carts in the parking lots than Lincoln Town Cars and Oldsmobiles.
Not coincidentally, this town is the local mecca for medical and dental care, and during our occasional visits for these services, I get to briefly enjoy the sensation of being decades younger and a head taller than anyone else in sight—man or woman.
So I was in the waiting room at the dentist’s office while my daughter was getting her teeth attended to, thinking about the upcoming consult with the orthodontist, who has probably already nicknamed my kid “Porsche.” Suddenly, an elderly gent burst through the door and tottered up to the counter clutching a small vial.
“I brought my stool sample!” he announced loudly, flourishing the vial at the receptionist. She recoiled and told the old man he must be in the wrong office because this is a dental practice and they don’t collect stool samples.
“You’ve got to see my stool sample!” he insisted, and to everyone’s horror, he began trying to pry off the lid of the vial.
The receptionist, thinking the codger must be deaf, was shouting that he was in the wrong office, and swiveled her office chair as far away from the counter as she could in her little enclosure as the old man turned the vial sideways and removed the lid, intent on displaying his stool sample on the counter for all to see.
Which he did. It was a wooden, miniature three-legged stool, about the size of a quarter. The old fellow laughed and laughed and laughed, then made a present of his “stool sample” to the receptionist. People are weird here.
