Devastating David Brooks column about Romney's latest gaffe/insult

Tough to summarize this one.  Just go read the entire thing.  But here's a little from conservative opinion leader David Brooks in the NYT on Mitt Romney's extraordinary gaffe tonight in the secret video just released.

This comment suggests a few things. First, it suggests that he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?

It suggests that Romney doesn’t know much about the culture of America. 

The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees.

Personally, I think he’s a kind, decent man who says stupid things because he is pretending to be something he is not — some sort of cartoonish government-hater. But it scarcely matters. He’s running a depressingly inept presidential campaign. Mr. Romney, your entitlement reform ideas are essential, but when will the incompetence stop?

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Romney stands by comments that half the country is worthless "victims"

Unless the President does something incredibly stupid, this campaign is over.

Mitt Romney tonight is standing by his comments, revealed earlier in a secretly recorded via taken at a high-dollar fundraiser, in which the GOP candidate said that half of America - Obama voters - pay no taxes, believe they are victims, don't care for their lives.



Here's a prime snippet from the press conference, above, in which Romney stands by his idiotic comments:

"It's a message which I'm gonna carry, and continue to carry, which is, look, the President's approach is attractive to people who are not paying taxes because frankly my discussion about lowering taxes isn't as attractive to them, and therefore I'm [not] likely to draw them into my campaign as effectively as those who were in the middle. This is really a discussion about, about the political process of winning the election."

So once again Mitt Romney reiterates that the reason voters don't like his policies is because they're not paying enough taxes (guess what he's doing to you after he's election, then) - well, actually, they're not paying any taxes at all, he claims.  What an astoundingly idiotic and offensive thing to claim.  That those of who don't like this man's candidacy simply aren't paying our fair share of taxes.

Romney's right, I'm paying less in taxes today than I did three years ago.  That's because I'm making a lot less money today than I did three years ago.  And it's 1130 at night and I'm still working, so I don't appreciate being called lazy by the Republican presidential candidate.

Mitt Romney really has a propensity, a predilection really, to double down on stupid.

Remember how, after issuing that insane press release trying to take partisan advantage of the death of a State Department official last week (at the time we didn't know it was the ambassador), Romney then went on national TV the next morning, with a back drop intended to look like the White House, and stuck his foot in it even more.

It's a dilemma of his own making.  One of Romney's chief attack points against the President is the lie that the President has apologized for America around the world.  The fact checkers say this isn't true.  But Romney has so cornered himself in on the "no apologies" meme that he can't now apologize himself.

And Romney's own "no apologies" tour is running smack into Romney's other propensity for arrogance, which usually leads to insult.  Whether it's your freshly baked cookies that Romney doesn't approve of, or your entire nation, that inner sphincter that tells someone to STFU just doesn't work in Mitt Romney's case.

And it's leading to a lot of fun, and embarrassment, and a presidential campaign going down in flames. Read the rest of this post...

Video: Full of Mitt (parody)

This is really good. It's done by Ben Sheehan, the son of one of our readers. Enjoy.

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Romney says his mere presence will bring back the American economy

The Bishop speaks.

The Daily Dish latches on to another part of the now infamous secret video of Mitt Romney telling rich donors earlier this year that the 47% of Americans who support Barack Obama are all welfare queens who don't have jobs, and don't want jobs.

"My own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We'll see capital come back and we'll see — without actually doing anything — we'll actually get a boost in the economy."

Not too full of ourselves, are we?

There's almost a religious self-importance to Romney's comments.  Capital will come back (does he mean business will start to invest more?) simply because the Great Romney has spoken.

This is why Mitt Romney doesn't have any specifics to his policies.  He doesn't think he needs specifics.  He quite seriously believes that he has some magical powerful to simply bring unemployment down to 4% again.

He doesn't need a plan. He's the messiah.

What a pathetically disturbing view of one's self.

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Romney: Obama voters "pay no taxes," "believe they're victims," don't "care for their lives"

UPDATE: Romney campaign appears to stand by Romney's statement that half of America, and all Democrats, are welfare queens. In a statement just released by the Romney campaign, no clarification was given - they simply just reiterated their concerns that too many Americans are sucking at the federal teet.

"Mitt Romney wants to help all Americans struggling in the Obama economy. As the governor has made clear all year, he is concerned about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government, including the record number of people who are on food stamps, nearly one in six Americans in poverty, and the 23 million Americans who are struggling to find work. Mitt Romney's plan creates 12 million new jobs in four years, grows the economy and moves Americans off of government dependency and into jobs." – Gail Gitcho, Romney Campaign Communications Director

Actually, what Romney said was that half of Americans suck off the federal teet, and they like it because they're lazy, don't have jobs, and don't want jobs. And "my job is not to worry about those people."

Romney is basically standing by his incredibly offensive statement about half the country.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign has weighed in:

"It’s hard to serve as president for all Americans when you’ve disdainfully written off half the nation.”

And there's video of it (see below).

I've been noticing some folks on Twitter and Facebook not quite getting it. Romney wasn't talking about just "poor people." He was talking about every single Democrat in America. He specifically said he's talking about the 47% of Americans who would support the President no matter what - i.e., Democrats across the board. The only people he's excluding are independents and Republicans.

Romney was suggesting that all Democrats are poor, minority, don't have a job, and don't want one. It was racist, bigoted, and insulting to probably ten different groups of Americans in twenty different ways.  It's bad enough that he thinks minorities are lazy slobs, but to then suggest that the Democratic party is made up 100% of lazy slobs.  It's unbelievably contemptuous.

Great find from David Corn at Mother Jones, and there's video. This is from earlier this year, and was secretly recorded at a Romney big money fundraiser.

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

I pay my taxes, you jerk.  Have you paid yours?  What an incredibly obnoxious thing to say by a man who refuses to release his own tax returns when insiders are claiming that he hasn't paid taxes in ten years.

What a pompous, arrogant, elitist, jerk.

And there's video.



UPDATE: Reader Carl Kerstann weighs in in the comments:

I was supporting the Green Party but after coughing up a much higher tax rate than Romney pays this comment really ticked me off. This ass cannont be allowed to win, go Obama.

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New 65 year study shows tax cuts do not lead to economic growth

This will be shocking news for the Republicans, though it shouldn't be. The US has had higher growth rates during times of much higher taxes but somehow that is always glossed over by the tax cut proponents.

Even Mitt Romney himself proves how little tax rates are connected to employment creation investments. The man hasn't worked in years and has paid no more than 14% in taxes yet we don't see him setting up new businesses with the extra income. He fails his own test on tax breaks.

Let the GOP tax spin begin.

Analysis of six decades of data found that top tax rates "have had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth." However, the study found that reductions of capital gains taxes and top marginal rate taxes have led to greater income inequality. Past studies cited in the report have suggested that a broad-based tax rate reduction can have "a small to modest, positive effect on economic growth" or "no effect on economic growth."

Well into the 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was above 90%. Today it's 35%. But both real GDP and real per capita GDP were growing more than twice as fast in the 1950s as in the 2000s. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top tenth of a percent fell from about 50% to 25% in the last 60 years, while their share of income increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% before the recession.

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Romney aide infighting begins, they're talking to the press!

And let the games begin. When the ship starts sinking, the rats start talking to the media (to mix my metaphors). The article reads like an election post-mortem. I was waiting for these stories to begin - where insiders start talking about other insiders to deflect the blame for losing the election. I just didn't think they'd start this early.

This article is very good news for our side.

The Daily Beast's spin on this echoes mine:

Just eight days before the most important speech of Mitt Romney's campaign, his top strategist, Stuart Stevens, junked it and created a new one for the Republican National Convention. Politico reports on escalating instability within the Romney campaign that is pushing Obama into an early lead, especially after the disastrous RNC. "The hasty process resulted in a colossal oversight: Romney did not include a salute to troops serving in war zones, and did not mention Al Qaeda or Afghanistan, putting him on the defensive on national security just as the Middle East was about to erupt," Politico reports. Stevens seems to have taken on too much and the results could be disastrous for the campaign.

This is very bad for Romney. At some point, big donors are going to stop giving big bucks to a candidate who's going to lose. In any venture, you stop throwing good money after bad.

From Politico, first we learn of how they scrapped Romney's speech 8 days before the convention, and started anew, which totally screwed things up:

The hasty process resulted in a colossal oversight: Romney did not include a salute to troops serving in war zones, and did not mention Al Qaeda or Afghanistan, putting him on the defensive on national security just as the Middle East was about to erupt. It was also very light on policy specifics, much to the chagrin of conservatives who were certain the addition of Ryan and inclusion of Wehner meant a real battle of ideas was about to begin.

The damage had been compounded when, in compressing the program from four days to three because of a hurricane delay, convention organizers had scrapped a planned remote appearance by Romney and veterans that was to be fed live into the Tampa hall from a speech he was giving to an American Legion convention in Indiana. With the salute-the-troops tribute out, the assumption was Romney would pay tribute to them in the speech. He didn’t.

The convention finale was undermined even further by Eastwood’s rambling comedy routine, which became the only glimpse that many swing voters got of the Republican show. Eastwood had been added to the program after chatting with Romney at a fundraiser in Idaho just weeks before the convention.

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Why the Syrian crisis is not like Egypt or Libya

I've been reading Juan Cole's site to stay up on what's going on in the Middle East (among others). And I found this comment by guest columnist Søren Schmidt interesting (my emphasis and paragraphing):

Syria is neither Egypt nor Libya – and the conflict can therefore not be solved as it was in Egypt and Libya respectively.

The conflict in Syria worsens with each day that passes, and by now more than 20,000 people have been killed. At the same time, the parties are more keenly opposed than ever. The regime will have to go in the long run, but nobody knows how to get rid of it and get started on a democracy.

In Egypt, Mubarak was defeated by the mobilization of large masses of people demonstrating in Tahrir Square. In the confrontation between the regime and the masses of people, it was the regime that blinked first. The military quite simply did not have the stomach to beat back so many people, and in one fell swoop the regime’s authority vanished.

In Libya, Gaddafi was so isolated in his own country that the Libyans were able to defeat him militarily with a little help from the West.

But neither of these solutions can be applied in Syria, for two reasons.

First of all, the situation in Syria is a proper civil war between the country’s Sunni majority (65%) and the Alawi minority (10%) that the Assad clan belongs to; while the remaining minorities (Christians, Druze, Kurds and Shia: 25%) either support the regime or keep themselves on the sidelines.

Since the conflict can not be described, as it was in Egypt or Libya, only as a conflict between the regime and the people, but also between two parties, each of which represents an important social force, the opposition is not able to challenge the regime through mass mobilization.

Please read the rest. There's much more going on in the current Middle East crisis than this — it's a multi-party game that includes U.S. interests (including oil), Islamic fundamentalist sentiment, in-state rebellions, Al Qaeda groups of various stripes and flags, local political parties and power-struggles, distrust of Western (and U.S.) intentions and interventionism, and so much more.

For example, there's this, from later in the same piece:

Syria is an important link in the so-called resistance alliance, which in addition to Syria consists of Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah in a deterrence alliance against Israel.

Syria’s alliance partners will therefore do whatever they can to prevent pro-Israel, Western powers from taking out an important link in this alliance.

What's going on region-wide is important and complex. But Syria is a special case, and the article provides a good baseline to start your thinking from.

Don't think binarily about Syria — regime vs. people — no matter how tempting that is (or how tempted you are by mainstream media to go that way). Syria has a political party aspect, a tribal aspect, and a defense-against-Israel aspect as well.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Media now criticizing Obama for mentioning capture of bin Laden

During ABC's This Week yesterday, there was an unfortunate back and forth - several times in fact - in which PBS' Gwen Ifill and ABC's Jonathan Karl seemed to criticize the President, and his surrogates, for noting that President Obama finally captured Osama bin Laden. (Tapper simply made a quick jest about the fact that the campaign was obviously pushing the issue, he's done good reporting on this - the other two seemed actually critical of the campaign's decision.)

This was disturbing on numerous levels.

First, the Romney campaign has been mocking the President for a while on this point, suggesting that the President has nothing to be proud of (because Romney thinks President's don't matter during wartime, the military runs itself - that admission is a frightening window into a future Romney administration). So it's disturbing that the media would play into a false Romney talking point.

Second, I'm disturbed because capturing and killing Osama bin Laden was a huge deal. It is clearly on a par with saving the economy from a Great Depression and passing health care reform. And at the very least, it's easily the President's number one foreign policy victory.

So why exactly are Democrats supposed to now stop talking about the President's number one foreign policy victory?

It's not entirely clear. Read on:

WESLEY CLARK: I do disagree, because I think this is a consistent Republican narrative that Democrats are soft on defense, but we've a Democratic president who's been strongest on national security. He's completely taken the foreign policy and national security argument away from the other side.

He reinforced in Afghanistan. He got us responsibly out of Iraq. We took Osama bin Laden. He's been firm. He's been visionary. He's been tough. He's decisive.

GWEN IFILL: Not much immediately. But, you know, I find it really interesting, Jake, that a week ago we were post-convention and we were completely consumed with what we talked about at those conventions, not foreign policy, not at either convention, unless you count every Democrat talking about Osama bin Laden. Other than that...

JAKE TAPPER: You caught that?

IFILL: ... nobody really -- I picked up on that. I picked up on that.

CLARK: Actually, I don't think we are weaker. I think the whole point of going into Afghanistan in 2001, which President George W. Bush articulated, was Osama bin Laden, wanted dead or alive. And it was Barack Obama who really put the pressure on and got him.

IFILL: There it goes again. Once again, Osama bin Laden.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

CLARK: But I think it's a huge -- it was a huge marker. It was a presidential decision in the -- and he was very much aware of President Carter's problem with Desert One. And he did against the advice...

(CROSSTALK)

JONATHAN KARL: Are you at all uncomfortable, though, with how political that -- I mean, that at the -- at the national political convention, that this military operation is used as a -- as a political talking point over and over again?

(CROSSTALK)

CLARK: But here's the -- here's the...

(CROSSTALK)

KARL: The vice president talking about putting him on bumper stickers?

CLARK: We've had, since the Vietnam War, the consistent refrain has been Republicans are the daddy party, Democrats are the mommy party, Republicans are strong, robust, Democrats are soft and weak and want to negotiate, want to apologize. It's simply not true.

We're stronger. We're safer. Barack Obama has been a very robust, muscular -- has a very robust, muscular foreign policy. And as George said earlier, what's happened in the Middle East has lots of factors and lots of causes underneath. It has nothing to do with rhetoric from Washington.

Why exactly should Democrats be "uncomfortable," at a political convention for the upcoming election, talking about our number one foreign policy success, when that is exactly what conventions are about, talking about the policy successes of the nominee?

Funny how the Republican bear hug of September 11, going so far as to hold their convention in NYC in 2004, after they had berated Democrats for holding their convention in NYC in the 90s, didn't bother the media.  It didn't bother them when Rudy "A noun, a verb, and September 11" Giuliani incessantly brought up 9/11, whether to help his own personal business or his party (or both).  More from the Washington Post, back in 2004:

Republican officials said Sunday that they plan to make Sept. 11 a focus of the week in a convention that is also intended to soften some of the party's ideological edges and broaden Bush's appeal to the political middle.

"How you approach the world after September 11th is a factor in this election," Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said at a lunch with reporters Sunday. Noting that Democrats at their convention last month also spoke about the attacks, Gillespie said ignoring them would be like "a convention in 1864 that didn't take into account the Civil War."

Then there was the Bush campaign ad campaign around September 11.

President Bush's day-old reelection advertising campaign generated criticism and controversy yesterday, as relatives of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes charged that television commercials using images from the attacks were exploiting the tragedy for political gain.

But when Democrats mention their number one foreign policy success when talking about whether their president has, or has not, been a foreign policy success, Democrats are very bad people who must be mocked and silenced.

I'm not entirely sure why Ifill and Karl find this objectionable.  But for a lot of us, killing Osama bin Laden was a huge deal.  Emotionally, for starters.  And you'd better believe that when George Bush called off the hunt for bin Laden only six months after September 11, and Barack Obama then caught the bastard, Democrats are going to talk about it.  And they should.

What other top successes of the Obama administration is President Obama not permitted to talk about when asked about whether his administration was a success?

And finally, just imagine what the Republicans would have done had they caught bin Laden.  We'd never hear the end of it for the next 30 years.  And the media would say nothing about it.

PS I've noticed that often when I post any media criticism I get some responses about how all journalists suck.  They don't.  And Tapper, in particular, has been excellent over the years.  I've worked with him a long time, he's one of the good guys in terms of really doing his job well and accurately.  That doesn't mean we can't from time to time post a critique when things go south.  It also doesn't mean that the folks we're critiquing are bad people, or even bad journalists.  Some are.  Many aren't.  Remember: Conservatives want to destroy the media, liberals simply want it to do its job. Read the rest of this post...

Sino-Japanese relations deteriorate over oil

Though the story has not been widely followed in the West, in Asia, the most recent fight over the Senkaku Islands/Diaoyu Islands has the potential to cause a broad list of problems in the region. There's an interesting overview of the history over at Daily Kos (h/t @MiroCollas). Until oil reserves were noticed in 1968, none of the current countries claiming ownership expressed much interest in the distant, uninhabited island.

Banging the drums of war over oil is nothing new and it's likely to be seen elsewhere in the world as easy drilling supplies become more limited. From China's perspective, it's hard to see how this is going to help them long term. The reasonably good will that they've built up in recent years can easily be washed aside. These particular islands are only one spot of many that are being contested, so other countries in the region (Vietnam, Philippines) will be watching closely.

The other aspect that should be a concern for China is the business side of this fight. China has too many mob outbursts like this against foreign nationals and businesses. As the cost of doing business in China rises, instability like this is not going to help. A few years ago it may not have mattered as much but now that the economy is softening, China ought to give it a lot more thought. Their business model is at risk when the government allows nationalistic mob violence.

From Japan's perspective, though they can share in the blame for provoking this crisis, they no longer need China the way they did ten years ago. Their businesses are being attacked and this latest violence can easily be used as an excuse to pack up and move to another location in the region.

A skirmish of some sort is a possibility as the article above suggests, though China has a lot to risk with military action. The last thing that government needs is losing factories and foreign investment. Countries have taken stupid action over oil (Iraq comes to mind) so China will have to decide between nationalism and foreign business. For a few decades, China's growth has been tied to foreign business so any change would be a radical departure for Beijing.

China may have the upper hand in this dispute for now due to its military and control over rare earth minerals but it would also come at a heavy cost. Is a long forgotten island worth disrupting the business model and damaging regional relations? Time will tell. Read the rest of this post...

First tidal turbine in US goes live in Maine

How beneficial this will be still needs to be answered, but it's good to see new energy efforts being explored in the US. Tidal energy has been implemented in Europe and there have been some positive results in terms of generating new forms of energy. The issue of underwater damage is always going to be there so minimizing that impact is critical for the success of any of these programs.

Early days, but it's a big step.

Maine's Ocean Renewable Power Co. has started generating electricity for the power grid from its tidal energy turbine on the bottom of Cobscook Bay near Lubec, in easternmost Maine. It is the first commercial tidal energy project to do so in North America, beating larger rivals who have tested or plan to test devices of their own in the Bay of Fundy region.

Company spokeswoman Susy Kist confirmed Thursday that the turbine has been generating power for the grid.

She said power started flowing nearly two weeks ago, but the company had been waiting to announce the milestone until local utility Bangor Hydro had an opportunity to confirm it. The turbine can generate 180 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power 30 homes, according to The New York Times.

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