Meh Romney

Paul Ryan was a deer in the headlights tonight.

Mitt Romney came off sounding like the last minute stand in for the lead act that couldn't make it.  His zingers didn't zing.  Even when he talked about his father dying, he was emotionless.

Team Romney did a good job on the video introducing Mitt.  Apparently he was a human being twenty years ago.  Though even then, he was a bit of a geek.  But somewhere along the way, Mitt Romney lost his humanity.  Somewhere along the way Mitt Romney became Clint Eastwood's empty chair.

So, yeah the speech was okay.  It wasn't the disaster that was Clint Eastwood.  Or the ongoing drone that was boy-senator Marco Rubio.  Nor was it the teleprompter mess that was Paul Ryan.  But it also wasn't the rather good speech that Condi Rice gave (you'd have thought she was the nominee).

But he didn't fall flat.  He just didn't fly high either.  Which is kind of the very definition of Mitt Romney: Meh. Read the rest of this post...

Oh my God. Clint Eastwood is introducing Romney. And he's kind of looking a bit senile.

Wow, seriously awkward.  Eastwood is talking to an empty chair.  It's more than a bit odd.  Turn it on.

You seriously have to tune into Twitter.  He just said that lawyers shouldn't be president.  Romney is a lawyer.

"I never thought it was a good idea for attorneys to be president anyway."

Read the rest of this post...

NYT: Mormons tipped scale in ban on gay marriage, gave 50% of total Prop 8 budget

BUMP

The NYT confirms it. Mormons gave half of the total $40m donations that the bigots at Yes on 8 received. (Hat tip, Rex.)

First off, we learn that the Mormon involvement in Prop 8 was unusually large, even for them:

“We’ve spoken out on other issues, we’ve spoken out on abortion, we’ve spoken out on those other kinds of things,” said Michael R. Otterson, the managing director of public affairs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormons are formally called, in Salt Lake City. “But we don’t get involved to the degree we did on this.”

The California measure, Proposition 8, was to many Mormons a kind of firewall to be held at all costs.

Then we find out that Mormons were 80% to 90% of early volunteers:

Shortly after receiving the invitation from the San Francisco Archdiocese, the Mormon leadership in Salt Lake City issued a four-paragraph decree to be read to congregations, saying “the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan,” and urging members to become involved with the cause.

“And they sure did,” Mr. Schubert said.

Jeff Flint, another strategist with Protect Marriage, estimated that Mormons made up 80 percent to 90 percent of the early volunteers who walked door-to-door in election precincts.

One lead Mormon gave $1m:

On Oct. 28, Mr. Ashton, the grandson of the former Mormon president David O. McKay, donated $1 million. Mr. Ashton, who made his fortune as co-founder of the WordPerfect Corporation, said he was following his personal beliefs and the direction of the church....

In the end, Protect Marriage estimates, as much as half of the nearly $40 million raised on behalf of the measure was contributed by Mormons.

And then to finally throw in a slur, the top Mormon donor, and son of a former Mormon leader, refers to us as "fruit":

[T]he extent of the protests has taken many Mormons by surprise. On Friday, the church’s leadership took the unusual step of issuing a statement calling for “respect” and “civility” in the aftermath of the vote.

“Attacks on churches and intimidation of people of faith have no place in civil discourse over controversial issues,” the statement said. “People of faith have a democratic right to express their views in the public square without fear of reprisal.”

Mr. Ashton described the protests by same-sex marriage advocates as off-putting. “I think that shows colors,” Mr. Ashton said. “By their fruit, ye shall know them.”

Read the rest of this post...

ABC News: Mormons baptized Obama's deceased mother in June of 2008

BUMP.

From Jake Tapper:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints confirmed Tuesday afternoon that someone improperly, posthumously baptized the late mother of President Obama into the Mormon faith.

Last June 4 -- the day after then-Sen. Obama secured enough delegates to win the Democratic presidential nominee -- someone had the president's mother Stanley Ann Dunham, who died in 1995 of cancer, baptized.

On June 11, she received the sacrament.

The White House had no comment.

The baptism and sacrament, which appear on FamilySearch.org, the LDS Church's genealogical site, were first reported by John Aravosis at the liberal Americablog.

The Mormons, however, did have a comment:

Mormon Church spokeswoman Kim Farah said that "the offering of baptism to our deceased ancestors is a sacred practice to us and it is counter to Church policy for a Church member to submit names for baptism for persons to whom they are not related. The Church is looking into the circumstances of how this happened and does not yet have all the facts. However, this is a serious matter and we are treating it as such."

Yeah, I'm sure no one at Mormon headquarters noticed that the woman's husband was named Barack Hussein Obama. She just "happened" to be baptized 13 years after her death, five months before the presidential election. All a big unfortunate coincidence.

Yeah. Um, what to say? That they even have a practice that allows posthumous baptism is disturbing enough. Counter to church policy? Really? Was it counter to church policy when the Mormons kept baptizing Holocaust victims even though they were repeatedly -- for years -- asked to stop. Sounds like lying for the Lord.

To be fair, last year, the Mormons were way too busy trying to pass the anti-gay Prop. 8 in California to worry about anything as mundane as baptizing the dead mother of the Democratic nominee for president (or anyone else's dead relatives.)

And, any comment from the Catholic Church leaders, who cozy up to the Mormons to get money for anti-gay efforts, on how they feel about dead Catholics being baptized?

This is really sick and very twisted. Read the rest of this post...

Mormons baptize Anne Frank AGAIN, for the ninth time

UPDATE: Now that the Romney campaign is arguing that Mitt Romney's Mormonism is a reason to vote for him, let's have an honest discussion about what the Mormons believe and do.  And people can decide for themselves if this is a reason to vote for Mitt Romney.

I'm I'm bumping this post.  Among others.

From Andrea Stone at Huffington Post:

Anne Frank, the Jewish girl whose diary and death in a Nazi concentration camp made her a symbol of the Holocaust, was allegedly baptized posthumously Saturday by a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to whistleblower Helen Radkey, a former member of the church.

The ritual was conducted in a Mormon temple in the Dominican Republic, according to Radkey, a Salt Lake City researcher who investigates such incidents, which violate a 2010 pact between the Mormon Church and Jewish leaders.

Radkey said she discovered that Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank, who died at Bergen Belsen death camp in 1945 at age 15, was baptized by proxy on Saturday. Mormons have submitted versions of her name at least a dozen times for proxy rites and carried out the ritual at least nine times from 1989 to 1999, according to Radkey.

How intolerant of Anne Frank to keep saying "no."

I wonder how many times Daniel Pearl will have to go through this. Read the rest of this post...

A word from Brigham Young on Adam's "wives" and how sleeping with blacks will get you killed

BUMP

Now that Mitt Romney has informed us that President Obama's pastoral influences are fair game this election, folks are taking a look at Mitt Romney's religious mentors as well.

And with no further ado, I give you Brigham Young.  (And I checked the quotes on Google, they're real.)

On polygamy:

"Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives, and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned," (Journal of Discourses, vol. 3, p. 266). Also, "The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy," (Journal of Discourses, vol. 11, p. 269).

Eve was "one" of Adam's "wives," plural:

"Now hear it, O inhabitants of the earth, Jew and Gentile, Saint and sinner! When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world. He is Michael, the Archangel, the Ancient of Days! about whom holy men have written and spoken -- He is our Father, and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do. Every man upon the earth, professing Christians or non professing, must hear it, and will know it sooner or later." (Journal of Discourses, vol. 1, p. 50).

It's Adam and Eve and Eve and Eve and Eve and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

Oh, and this just in: God will kill you on the spot if you have sex with a black person:

"You see some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind....Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been killed, and that would have put a termination to that line of human beings. This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin." (Journal of Discourses, vol. 7, p. 290). "In our first settlement in Missouri, it was said by our enemies that we intended to tamper with the slaves, not that we had any idea of the kind, for such a thing never entered our minds. We knew that the children of Ham were to be the "servant of servants," and no power under heaven could hinder it, so long as the Lord would permit them to welter under the curse and those were known to be our religious views concerning them." (Journal of Discourses, vol. 2, p. 172). "Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so." (Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 110).

I'd like to know what influence Mormon racism, which was mainstream during Mitt Romney's life as a young adult, had on his worldview. What did Mitt Romney say when these racist views were being espoused by the Mormon leadership? Did he sit by silently? Is he claiming he didn't attend temple the days that racist views were promulgated?

Mitt Romney thinks that a man's religious influences, and the crazy things said by those influences, are fair game. So be it. Read the rest of this post...

Catholic Church leader says child rape "understandable," blames children

So absolutely disgusting. And sadly typical. They should all be in jail.

Via Andrew Sullivan's blog we hear from Father Benedict Groeschel, the director of the Office for Spiritual Development for the Catholic Archdiocese of New York:

People have this picture in their minds of a person planning to — a psychopath. But that's not the case. Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him. A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer ... It's not so hard to see — a kid looking for a father and didn't have his own — and they won't be planning to get into heavy-duty sex, but almost romantic, embracing, kissing, perhaps sleeping but not having intercourse or anything like that.

It's an understandable thing ... there are the relatively rare cases where a priest is involved in a homosexual way with a minor. I think the statistic I read recently in a secular psychology review was about 2%. Would that be true of other clergy? Would it be true of doctors, lawyers, coaches?

Here's this poor guy — [Penn State football coach Jerry] Sandusky — it went on for years. Interesting: Why didn't anyone say anything? Apparently, a number of kids knew about it and didn't break the ice. Well, you know, until recent years, people did not register in their minds that it was a crime. It was a moral failure, scandalous; but they didn't think of it in terms of legal things.

Most of us don't find child rape "interesting." But then again, most of us don't run the Catholic church.

And they're still making excuses for child rapists, while telling the rest of us how to live.  Newsflash: I don't take moral advice from men who rape, and aid and abet, the rape of small children.

Absolutely disgusting.

Even better: The National Catholic Register is now apologizing for publishing the accurate comments of the church leader.  They're suggesting he may have lost his mind.  Right, because no Catholic leader has ever tried to blame the victim or excuse the rape of children. Read the rest of this post...

Bloomberg News all but calls Paul Ryan's speech a total lie

Devastating analysis from Bloomberg News of Paul Ryan's speech last night.  None of the main points were true.  Not what he said about the stimulus, Medicare, the budget, nothing. Read the rest of this post...

Romney, Ryan and the post-truth age

I used to rent an old boat for the day and explore the Mississippi just north of St. Louis.

Once the rental guy warned me the anchor on the boat wasn't quite right- but said just to call him if I had any trouble. I soon found out for myself when I became stuck near the banks of a forested island. The river was high and fast moving. I couldn't get a signal to call the marina, but finally a call went though. Expecting the owner to come out and help, he instead suggested I dive down and free the anchor - then the call was dropped. Nice.

A sense of calm determination fell over me when I realized I was on my own. I wasn't about to dive to the bottom of that deadly river but using my own strength eventually I freed the anchor.

A similar feeling has fallen over me as I've witnessed the Republican Party come completely untethered from the truth.

Watching my countrymen gleefully repeat lies without shame, and when called out for the lies, in the case of the Romney campaign, defiantly proclaim: "We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers."

What we're seeing is disturbing and radical. Sure Karl Rove was a master of deception during the Bush years, but his game was manipulating the gullible base. Now the base, once thought of as sheltered church ladies, are as calloused and cynical as a lineup of old hookers. They need no manipulation - they're joyful co-conspirators.

The morally righteous party of "values" has officially and without shame said to hell with truth.

Seasoned journalists and political observers alike are watching this election cycle with jaws agape. Romney, Ryan, and Boehner all keep repeating the lie about Obama removing the work requirement from welfare recipients. Paul Ryan outrageously continues to blame Obama for the 2008 closure of a GM plant, when of course George W. Bush was still in office.

The hatred of [insert Democratic president here] has convinced Republicans to sell their souls en masse in order to win. It's an amazing and historic spectacle. The problem for them is that the Devil is not known for keeping promises. The problem for the rest of us is how to function in a post-truth environment when occasionally the crazy people are going to win the election.

I've never voted Republican and was unlikely to start, but it was comforting to think that, however extreme, they at least believed in something.  Not any more.

The past six months have revealed how cheap and empty their leaders and institutions are. Serial adulterer Newt "Open Marriage" Gingrich is their "family values" guy. Churches tell their flocks to not worry about the poor and instead focus on Republican politics. Their political discourse has been further monetized.  And, appropriately, the greasy fast food bag has become the celebrated symbol of their moral compass.

Deserved or not, there's often been the perception that the Republicans were the extreme-but-responsible grown-ups in the room. While we're out exploring, they could be counted on to hold down the marina.

This campaign has put that notion finally to rest.

When the anchor gets stuck, they're not going to help, even though they're the ones who got it stuck in the first place.

We're the only adults here. It's up to us, and us alone, to lead.

@EmperorAndoe Read the rest of this post...

Racist assault against black CNN camerawoman at GOP convention

Via MIJE:

Carroll, who agreed to be named for the first time, said she does not want her situation to be used for political advantage. "This situation could happen to me at the Democratic convention or standing on the street corner. Racism is a global issue," she said by telephone from Tampa.

Unlikely. The Republicans routinely bash the media, portray them as just as commie pinko as they portray the Democrats. She was assaulted the same reason media have been assaulted at other GOP election events - and the same reason that government officials are the target of violence in this country - because Republicans feed the hatred of the media and our government.

Carroll said no one took the names of the attendees who threw peanuts at her Tuesday on the convention floor and told her, "This is what we feed animals." She alerted fellow camera operators, producers and CNN security. The head of the delegation — she was not certain of the state — told her the perpetrators must have been alternates, not delegates.

Nice of the GOP not to take the incident seriously.

But Carroll, 34, said that as an Alabama native, she was not surprised. "This is Florida, and I'm from the Deep South," she said. "You come to places like this, you can count the black people on your hand. They see us doing things they don't think I should do."

Carroll noted of the Republican convention, "There are not that many black women there."

Bingo. Read the rest of this post...

GOP platform promotes national security pork for GOP Rep. Mica

GOP Platform
pork promoter
Cong. John Mica

Smooth one, GOP.

Not only are they promoting pork for their own, but they're building it right into the Republican platform.

Even better, it's at the expense of our national security.

The Republican platform includes a plank promoting the pork of influential GOP Congressman John Mica, who's been trying to privatize the TSA for a while now on behalf of a corporate campaign contributor in his district.

Attacking federal workers is nothing new for the GOP, but they have yet to explain how a privatized TSA workforce will do anything other than shovel money into the campaign coffers of Congressman Mica and his well-to-do corporate constituent.

A lot of Americans are frustrated or fed up with the TSA policies, but none of those policies change if the TSA is privatized. If anything, the problem gets worse because instead of being (somewhat) accountable to the public via our elected representatives, under the Republican plan the TSA will only be accountable to its shareholders and business owners.  And as bad as government can sometimes be, the private sector is usually worse (e.g., you can complain about Medicare problems to your congressman, who do you complain about Blue Cross to?)

Again, how does privatizing help address the problems that annoy Americans about the TSA?  It doesn't.  It simply helps Republican Congressman John Mica get pork for a constituent at the potential expense of our safety.

The platform calls for the privatization of airport security screening, a role now undertaken by the Transportation Security Administration.

The platform characterizes the TSA as a "massive bureaucracy" made up of employees "who seem to be accountable to no one for the way they treat travelers."

The agency, created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has long drawn the ire of lawmakers, both for mismanagement of agency programs as well as the often inconvenient screening process.

A massive bureaucracy that would only answers to a Congressman Mica is not very comforting.  Cong. Mica apparently agrees with Mitt Romney that corporations are people too.  Too bad Mica and Romney don't have the same respect for actual people.

Treat the Republican party platform as one big pork opportunity is no way to treat something as serious as national security.  Then again, when were the Republicans ever serious about national security?  Only one President actual caught Osama bin Laden - actually tried - and that's the Democratic President Barack Obama. Read the rest of this post...

Fox analyst blasts Ryan for "world record for the greatest number of blatant lies"

UPDATE: Fox's Web site calls Ryan out for his lies.  Wow.  In an article titled "Paul Ryan's speech in 3 words," word number 2 is "deceiving."

Deceiving

On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.

The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.

Paul Ryan gave his keynote address at the GOP convention last night, and the fact-checkers are finding that some of the only times that Ryan told the truth were when he was NOT attacking President Obama.  When Ryan DID attack Obama, his biggest anti-Obama zingers were all lies.

Don't take my word for it.  The title of the Associated Press article on Ryan's speech is the following:

FACT CHECK: RYAN TAKES FACTUAL SHORTCUTS IN SPEECH

All caps, even.  Factcheck.org concurs.

Next, let's hear from Politifact - note how the truths are about things that aren't attacks, but the lies are from direct attacks against Democrats:

First the innocuous truths....

Now the lies:

ABC on the plant that shut down - it actually shut down in December of 2008, before Obama was sworn in as President.

THE FACTS: The plant halted production in December 2008, weeks before Obama took office

This one is particularly egregious since the Romney people have been using this example for days and already got fact checked on it - but they didn't care, they still included it as Paul Ryan's top zinger. A total lie.

AP has even more on the GM plant lie.  You see, Obama's eventual auto bailout, that Paul Ryan opposed, saved GM.  So Paul Ryan is criticizing President Obama for something Obama didn't do, and something that Paul Ryan would have done - i.e., let the plant die.

THE FACTS: The plant halted production in December 2008, weeks before Obama took office and well before he enacted a more robust auto industry bailout that rescued GM and Chrysler and allowed the majority of their plants - though not the Janesville facility - to stay in operation. Ryan himself voted for an auto bailout under President George W. Bush that was designed to help GM, but he was a vocal critic of the one pushed through by Obama that has been widely credited with revitalizing both GM and Chrysler.

ABC on the Medicare lie:

Ryan's claim ignores the fact that Ryan himself incorporated the same cuts into budgets he steered through the House in the past two years as chairman of its Budget Committee, using the money for deficit reduction. And the cuts do not affect Medicare recipients directly, but rather reduce payments to hospitals, health insurance plans and other service providers.

In addition, Ryan's own plan to remake Medicare would squeeze the program's spending even more than the changes Obama made.

AP agrees:

THE FACTS: Ryan's claim ignores the fact that Ryan himself incorporated the same cuts into budgets he steered through the House in the past two years as chairman of its Budget Committee

ABC has more, this time on Ryan's lies about the stimulus:

RYAN: "The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism at their worst. You, the working men and women of this country, were cut out of the deal."

THE FACTS: Ryan himself asked for stimulus funds

AP agrees:

THE FACTS: Ryan himself asked for stimulus funds shortly after Congress approved the $800 billion plan

What's more - not only did Ryan try to carve out some of the stimulus for his own constituents, but the notion that the stimulus only went to the political cronies is interesting since one of those political cronies spoke right before Ryan at the convention - the Republican convention speaker received over $200,000 in stimulus monies.

And another from ABC:

RYAN: Obama "created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way and then did exactly nothing."

THE FACTS: It's true that Obama hasn't heeded his commission's recommendations, but Ryan's not the best one to complain. He was a member of the commission and voted against its final report.

Ryan has a long history of criticizing Obama for things he did. Such as Medicare - Ryan's budget includes the same savings from Medicare that he is attacking Obama for.

ThinkProgress catches two more lies in their live blog of the speech:

10:44: Obama hasn’t amassed more debt than all past presidents combined, as Ryan claimed. The New York Times beaks down the math: “The national debt stood at $10.626 trillion on the day that President Obama took office. It now stands slightly above $15 trillion.”

10:42: Ryan just brought up a “downgraded America.” It was his party that held the debt ceiling hostage, causing America’s creditors to lose faith and downgrade the country. In fact, the ratings agency repeatedly blamed Republicans for refusing to raise taxes.

Read the rest of this post...

Norquist on Romney: "Pick a Republican with enough working digits" to sign the Ryan budget

This is perfect, and perfectly phrased. David Frum in The Daily Beast quotes Norquist at this year's CPAC convention (my emphases and paragraphing):

All we have to do is replace Obama. ...

We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. ...

We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate. ...

Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen ... This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.

Memorize this, kids. It's well written (Norquist is a stylist) and he's dead right.

Four points from me:

■ Frum paints this as an example of Romney's weakness:

They have reconciled themselves to a Romney candidacy because they see Romney as essentially a weak and passive president who will concede leadership to congressional conservatives:

In this he's dead wrong.

This is not evidence of Romney's weakness, but the strength of the billionaires who now fund (and increasingly own) the Republican Party. See below for explanation.

■ The Movement Conservative Project (current home, the modern Republican Party) has itself been couped in a hostile takeover run by its funding billionaires (see here for that discussion).

The takeover is nearly complete; coup leaders (the funding billionaires) have cleared the city. They're busily rounding up the fleeing soldiers (non–Tea Party–loyal "party regulars") still hiding in surrounding villages (party committees).

The regulars have two choices — join the coup or find new work. Norquist has joined the coup (read the caption). Frum, Steve Schmidt and a good many others have not. Some who have not surrendered have found new work. Others are facing a decision.

If you're looking for proof, look at the conflict between the AFP-funded (Koch–funded) Tea Party–branded candidates in 2010 and the desire of real party regulars to actually win the Senate that year.

Then look at the selection of billionaire-supported Paul Ryan as VP, versus all the safe Pawlentys of the world. Ryan is an election-killing choice according to party regulars, Dems as well as Republican. Dems are ecstatic; Republican regulars know the election is over.

But don't worry, fans-of-Koch — the AFP-loyal coup continues in the states, the Scott Walkers of the world are still reporting for duty, and at some point, vote manipulation (all types) will give national power back to Republicans. Then watch if they ever give it up.

Read Norquist's quote again. They'll try it till they get it. It's catfood for Tea Party grannies as well, but by then it will be too late.

I'll have more on this later; the dynamics among the four R-party groups — the voters (TP-believing rubes); the two types of candidates (AFP-funded and TP-branded; all others); the top party elders (the Norquists and Roves, the Schmidts and Frums); and their owners, "ten billionaires" who now control the purse — this interplay is fascinating to watch and easy to suss.

We're seeing an historical takeover, in my view, and I'll detail it separately later. But for now, just observe the battle. Frum is on one side with the resisting old-party regulars, and Norquist on the other, bowing to the coup.

Choices. For Norquist and Rove, an easy one to make. For guys like Frum and Schmidt — well, maybe they have their own lines of conscience. Maybe.

For the rest of you elders and regulars, pick your career carefully. MSNBC can't hire all of you.

■ The battle has moved firmly to the states — governorships, state house races, state House and Senate battles. You're seeing it already. Reread the quote — Norquist just told you the plan.

■ Romney knows his role, in the same way that Scott Walker knows his role.

Romney's role is to bow to the coup, play the role outlined above, and execute the plan. That's not weakness; that's being a good soldier.

The difference between Romney and the lesser good soldiers — Romney will cash in like an owner when the Koch-couped Republicans finally do take power. His reward will be great; he has no incentive not to go along.

My bottom line — If you're not watching Koch-and-friends play their Republican cards, you're not watching the game. They're at the center of it.

And if you don't think the phrase "Tea Party" has two meanings, you're misusing the term.

Tea Party voters really do believe; it's an ideology they eagerly buy. Tea Party politicians are branded salesmen, hawking a product and running under a banner; employees. Some believe, some just do the job.

As I said before, fascinating stuff, if it weren't all so dangerous. Still, something to amuse us before the climate takes center stage.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
  Read the rest of this post...

Ann Romney lectures Latinos to "get past some of their biases"

From ABC:

“It really is a message that would resonate well if they could just get past some of their biases that have been there from the Democratic machines that have made us look like we don’t care about this community,” [Mrs.] Romney said. “And that is not true. We very much care about you and your families and the opportunities that are there for you and your families.”

I especially loved this little ending to the ABC article:

She was introduced by her youngest son, Craig. He’s fluent in Spanish and often campaigns for his father in this state and has even starred in Spanish language radio and television ads for the campaign.

Know why Craig speaks Spanish? Because he went on a Mormon mission to Chile in an effort to convert those heathen Catholics to the one true religion, Mormonism. That's why he speaks Spanish. That's how much the Romneys respect Latinos. Read the rest of this post...

Brits increasingly see politicians as out of touch

Welcome to the party! It's more surprising that anyone even sees the political class as in touch with the reality of the middle class or poor. Since the days of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, even the mainstream left has sold out to the wishes of the rich. Unemployment support? Freeloaders, cut it! Tax cuts for the rich that throw more costs onto the middle class? Sounds like a plan! We all know the routine.

It's been a winning plan at the polls for the mainstream "left" (which is now the right) and from a personal perspective, it's been financially rewarding for the likes of Clinton and Blair. Sucking up to the rich while giving a gentle pat on the head to the left is the model and until there's a firm rejection of this from voters, it will only get worse.

More on politicians not getting it via The Independent:

The stark finding emerged as George Osborne, the Chancellor, dismissed a call by Nick Clegg for the Government to bring in a temporary "wealth tax" on the rich to ensure the burden of a new round of spending cuts does not fall on the poor.

The Resolution Foundation think tank found that 43 per cent of adults agree that "most politicians" do not understand the financial pressures facing people like them. The figure is highest (50 per cent) among those on low and middle incomes, the so-called "squeezed middle" earning between £12,000 and £48,000 a year – a key electoral group including millions of floating voters. The view is also shared by 49 per cent of people on lower incomes and 48 per cent of those on higher incomes. It is highest (53 per cent) amongst people between the ages of 45 and 54.

A survey of 1,900 adults by Ipsos Mori for the think tank also found that 36 per cent feel "financially squeezed"; 27 per cent expect their financial position to get worse in the next year; 25 per cent plan to cut back their spending in that period and less than half (42 per cent) feel secure in their job.

Read the rest of this post...