"Romney's Hispanic problem is serious"

It probably isn't going to help once Latinos realize that the reason Romney's son speaks Spanish is because he was busy trying to convert them from Catholicism to Mormonism.  From Andres Oppenheimer in the Miami Herald:

Two new polls of Latino voters confirm what I have been writing for several months: Republican front-runner Mitt Romney is so unpopular among Hispanic voters that he would have a hard time winning the November elections.

A nationwide poll of likely Hispanic voters released last week by Fox News Latino shows that if the election were held today, 70 percent of Hispanics would vote for President Barack Obama, while 14 percent would vote for Romney. The poll, conducted by telephone, has a margin of error of 2.7 percent.

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The real story of how Romney put his dog on the roof of the car and drove to Canada

Gail Collins in the NYT:

The story took place in 1983, when the Romney family made a 12-hour pilgrimage from Boston to a vacation home in Canada. Romney, his wife, Ann, and their five sons were in the station wagon. Seamus was in a crate, or kennel, on the roof.

At some point — possibly in response to the excitement about being passed by tractor-trailers while floating like a furry maraschino cherry on top of the car, Seamus developed diarrhea. And Romney, who had designated all the acceptable rest stops before beginning the trip, was forced to make an unscheduled trip to a gas station. Where he kept the family in the car while he hosed down the station wagon and the dog, then returned to the highway.

“It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management,” Swidey wrote.

In a kennel, right?

“This is a completely airtight kennel, mounted on the top of our car. He climbed up there regularly, enjoyed himself,” Romney told Chris Wallace in a Fox interview that began with Wallace, a dog owner, demanding: “What were you thinking?”

Wait a minute, if the kennel was airtight, how did Seamus breathe?

Excellent question. Also hard to envision the animal continually trying to leap on top of the station wagon in order to enjoy its delights.

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Advertisers now fleeing Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and Savage

John Avalon in The Daily Beast writes that the advertisers are not merely avoiding Limbaugh, they are avoiding all 'controversial' content. He cites as evidence, this memo obtained by Tom Taylor from Premiere Radio Networks, the distributors of the Rush Limbaugh show and many other hate radio programs:

“To all Traffic Managers: The information below applies to your Premiere Radio Networks commercial inventory. More than 350 different advertisers sponsor the programs and services provided to your station on a barter basis. Like advertisers that purchase commercials on your radio station from your sales staff, our sponsors communicate specific rotations, daypart preferences and advertising environments they prefer… They’ve specifically asked that you schedule their commercials in dayparts or programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity). Those are defined as environments likely to stir negative sentiment from a very small percentage of the listening public.”

While Premiere distributes many right wing radio shows, they also distribute Randi Rhodes and Jessie Jackson, neither of whom are mentioned in the memo. While it is likely that some advertisers have decided to avoid all political advertising, the memo suggests that most are avoiding hate radio in general and not just Limbaugh.

From a business perspective, this makes perfect sense. Advertisers are worried about the next stupid and hateful outburst from a hate radio jock, not just Limbaugh or this particular incident.

It has taken long enough. Hate radio grew because the shows attracted more advertisers than non-partisan or progressive shows, not because there was more demand. And the hate radio shock jocks used the voice provided by their advertisers to drive countless liberals out of public life.

What is coming apart here is not just Rush Limbaugh's career, it is the right wing conspiracy machine. Read the rest of this post...

Krugman on whether the rich really need the rest of us

Paul Krugman has a nice column on Republican attitudes on education, contrasting "social conservative" Santorum's approach with "economic conservative" Romney's. I'll let you go read; it's excellent.

But I want to point out the following (my emphasis):

But what about people like Mr. Romney? Don’t they have a stake in America’s future economic success, which is endangered by the crusade against education? Maybe not as much as you think.

After all, over the past 30 years, there has been a stunning disconnect between huge income gains at the top and the struggles of ordinary workers. You can make the case that the self-interest of America’s elite is best served by making sure that this disconnect continues, which means keeping taxes on high incomes low at all costs, never mind the consequences in terms of poor infrastructure and an undertrained work force. ...

So whenever you hear Republicans say that they are the party of traditional values, bear in mind that they have actually made a radical break with America’s tradition of valuing education. And they have made this break because they believe that what you don’t know can’t hurt them.

I've asked many times — Do the rich really need the rest of us?

So which is it? Have the super-rich decided they don't need America any more? Or are they just so in love with Supply Side Jesus that they don't know they're burning the house down with them inside?

In other words, when this country becomes a faltering second-world economy with a useful first-world military, have the super-rich prepared their financial escape? Do the rich really need the rest of us?

I'm not alone. Over at Digby's joint, David Atkins wonders much the same thing (emphasis added):

The underinvestment in public education is very intentional. Thanks largely to Grover Norquist and his buddies, it now costs more to attend a public university in California than it does to attend Harvard. The elites don't really need that many skilled workers in America. They need some, but not that many. A lot of the needed skilled workers can come from overseas immigration. The vast bulk of the American population is much more useful to them as desperate, unskilled labor.

I don't think they think we're needed. As the Brazilian and Indian and Chinese (etc.) consumer class comes online, consumers in America (our only value to them) can be retired. At that point, we're very Old World, serving the new.

I hope hope hope I'm wrong. But if I'm not, welcome to the backside of history, my fellow Americans. Brought to you by the very very rich and the politicians who serve them.

If it's any consolation, the Brits who emerged from the Great War and saw a new American world, they preceded you. The Romans of the fourth century weren't as lucky — they didn't speak Goth.

GP

(To follow on Twitter: @Gaius_Publius) Read the rest of this post...