And You Thought It Was Because He Didn't Have One

Mitt Romney - during the campaign, did it ever seem like his heart really wasn't in the whole being president thing? Well, it probably wasn't.

More than being reticent, Romney was at first far from sold on a second presidential run. Haunted by his 2008 loss, he initially told his family he would not do it. While candidates often try to portray themselves as reluctant, Tagg insisted his father’s stance was genuine. 

“He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire to . . . run,” said Tagg, who worked with his mother, Ann, to persuade his father to seek the presidency. “If he could have found someone else to take his place . . . he would have been ecstatic to step aside. He is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them, but he has deep faith in God and he loves his country, but he doesn’t love the attention.”

Who else has Tagg Romney met, who was reluctant to run for President? Hmmm.

Anyway, that would explain THAT campaign pretty handily, right?

Hamlet Was Right

So I'm listening to Rush Limbaugh this morning (yes, for schaudenfreude) and he is completely mystified that Obama could have won both the electoral college AND the popular vote, after that disastrous first term. And I realized that it's exactly the way I felt in 2004. Mitt Romney is their John Kerry - an unappealing rich weirdo who you nominate when you think you can run ANYBODY and the results are still in the bag because the other candidate is so awful.

Turns out, not so much.

As Hamlet said, "there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy". Such things include independent voters, people who were neither thrilled nor disgusted by either candidate. Strange as it seems, THESE PEOPLE EXIST. I know, weird right? Anyway, there were enough of them to overcome the hoards of people who had made up their minds LAST year about which guy to vote for.

It's important to note that the victory is pretty narrow here. We shouldn't consider it a mandate. What a sensible person will see from this is everybody should compromise and listen to each other's ideas.

I'm sorry this post wasn't more snarky... check out twitter and facebook feeds for that. I'm exhausted from snarky.

Quote of the Day: Yeah! Wait NO! Edition

Ginny Lewis, a Democrat and 72-year-old retired district attorney from Princeton, Ky., says she'll vote for Romney because "I'm tired of the Republicans blaming all the debt on Democrats, so let them take over and see what they do."

CBS News

It Must Be Loud In The Fox News Offices!

If you missed the debate last night, you will want to turn to transcripts to find out what was said. The snarky folk at Wonkette noticed last night that Fox News had an unfortunate audio gap (click on the above pictures to see it more fully) which was pretty lengthy! It was about a minute and a half of audio which couldn't be transcribed.

The good news is that every other news organization in the country managed to get the response down. It went like this:

We, of course, don’t want to have automatic weapons, and that’s already illegal in this country to have automatic weapons. What I believe is we have to do, as the president mentioned towards the end of his remarks there, which is to make enormous efforts to enforce the gun laws that we have, and to change the culture of violence that we have.
And you ask how — how are we going to do that? And there are a number of things. He mentioned good schools. I totally agree. We were able to drive our schools to be number one in the nation in my state. And I believe if we do a better job in education, we’ll — we’ll give people the — the hope and opportunity they deserve and perhaps less violence from that. But let me mention another thing. And that is parents. We need moms and dads, helping to raise kids. Wherever possible the — the benefit of having two parents in the home, and that’s not always possible. A lot of great single moms, single dads. But gosh to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone, that’s a great idea.

Thank heavens! I mean maybe someone was cleaning their AK-47 in the newsroom and it went off. In any event, good thing for Fox News that they're not the only network! Sometimes you need the biased totally-in-the-tank-for-Obama ones to take up the slack.

Hey by the way, Mitt Romney is for gun control! Who knew, right?

Building A Mittstery

Hat tip to Sarah McLaughlin for the title; in other words, the gag only works if I explain it. And actually, still not.

A lot of people have called Mitt Romney inconsistent in his views, but that's because they simply aren't paying attention. Well I am. And here is a great example! In 2007 Mitt Romney was talking to Glenn Beck about health care and he said "When they show up at the hospital, they get care. They get free care paid for by you and me. If that’s not a form of socialism, I don’t know what is."

Wouldn't make a thing like that up! So you might think from that statement that Romney is against the emergency room system in this country. But au contraire, mon frere! Here he again, last night on 60 Minutes.

"Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance...If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care."

Has Romney changed his mind about emergency rooms? No! What we can conclude is he is a socialiast. It seems a little odd probably that a socialist ran Bain Capital but it's not like he was a communist. He was merely exercising the model of consolidating small companies so they could be run by a large central authority.

This weekend Sarah Palin (the other great Sarah of the North) suggested it's time for Mitt and Paul Ryan to go rogue. I think she's onto him too and wants to encourage him and his French socialist views. Vive le Mitt! 

Ann Romney Tells Mitt To STOP IT.

July 29, JERUSALEM (AP) — Mitt Romney says that if he paid more taxes than were required, he wouldn't be qualified to be president.

Romney just released his 2011 taxes today! Per a statement from Romney's campaign:

Regarding the newly-filed 2011 Tax Return:

In 2011, the Romneys paid $1,935,708 in taxes on $13,696,951 in mostly investment income. 

The Romneys’ effective tax rate for 2011 was 14.1%. 

The Romneys donated $4,020,772 to charity in 2011, amounting to nearly 30% of their income.

The Romneys claimed a deduction for $2.25 million of those charitable contributions. 

The Romneys’ generous charitable donations in 2011 would have significantly reduced their tax obligation for the year. The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the Governor's statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years.

Virtual highlighter mine.

Let's face it, when you yourself are sniping in public at your bid for the presidency, maybe it's time to just endorse Obama. Republicans hate Romney so much now, it would probably help.

Don't Be Alarmed!

He is only this dark when he appears on Univision.

Rubber 'n' Glue Department

Oh yeah? I'll tell you who doesn't pay taxes! ANY OF THE PEOPLE WHO VOTE FOR OBAMA! 

If you voted for Obama in 2008 and have paid any taxes since, perhaps you want to drop a note to Romney. Or the RNC. Or anybody who runs a talk show on radio.

 

I Apologize For My Tweet

A Backhanded Defense of Mitt Romney

Romney has gone out of his way to point out that he left Bain Capital in 1999, so the Obama campaign claim that he was running it when the company liquidated (and fired the staffs of) a bunch of companies. So when the Boston Globe dug a little and found that Romney is listed as "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president" of the company until 2002 according to documents filed with the SEC, the Obama campaign ran with that in a big way.

My gut feeling is this is a non issue - I don't read SEC filings but he could have stopped running the company while still maintaining the need to have SOMEONE in those slots on the forms. Probably the company was run by an autonomous subordinate, but in order to avoid contractual problems they couldn't "promote" him for a few years. Plausible.

Where I can fault the Romney campaign is that they don't offer any evidence one way or the other. You can't just say, "I'm a politician, trust me." That's crazy talk. You know what might help? If we had access to 12 years of tax returns.

Mitt Romney Addressed The NAACP This Morning

It's amazing they were able to be so loud when they were booing the affordable care act!

Quote Of The Day: Beyond That, Whatevs Edition

“He is the leader of our party from now until November."

- Mitch McConnell, explaining why he won't disagree with Romney about the Dream Act today.

More and more, Romney is starting to look like a good choice for President. He'll legislate like Obama (right toward the center), nothing significant will get done because the tea party will filibuster it (just like they do Obama) and he'll spend the next four years fighting with the Republicans. What's the difference? With Obama it's frustrating. With Romney, it would be hilarious.

People You Trust, Telling You To Not Vote For Mitt

They all endorse him now, because he has given them money.

Romney Apology Raises Troubling Questions

You may recall that I hold the opinion that going back into candidates' childhoods and even college years is stupid. We all realize that whatever mistakes we made growing up, that's how we learned to be adults. So if Mitt Romney harassed a gay kid when he was in prep school, I sincerely believe it's a non-issue NOW. Similarly I don't care what Obama's grades were in college. Good grades aren't a constitutional requirement for Presidency.

It's the things you do now that illustrate your character.

So here's what Mitt Romney did last week.

“Back in high school,” Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said today, “I did some dumb things, and if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize.”

At the same time, Romney maintained in an interview on Fox News Radio that he couldn’t recall the incident for which he was apologizing: As reported in the Washington Post, the accounts of several then-teenage classmates of Romney at the all-boys Cranbrook School in Michigan recalling him and a group shoving and cutting the long hair of a student presumed to be gay.

“I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual,” Romney said of the fellow prep school student. “That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case.”

So what does this say about Mitt Romney?

1. Whether he did something or not, he'll apologize for it. Happy now?
1a. He's not the kind of guy who would remember whether he beat up a kid in prep school. Either he beat up so many of them that he can't pick one particular one out, or - well, that's really the only possibility if he's telling the truth.
2. He'd rather not tell you whether he thinks it's wrong to beat up a fellow student; he's just sorry if YOU think it's wrong.
3. He uses the term "fellow" in conversation, even though he is not Mr. Peanut.

So, judge him accordingly.

The Escape Hatch

I must admit I'm forcing myself to write today. It's so nice outside, too nice to think about politics. I've been spending a lot of time lately watching TV from other countries thanks to the internet. Most of it doesn't look like, but does FEEL, like this:



I recommend the Russian MTV to you - those guys may be freezing in abject poverty, but they know how to corral all their good looking yunguns into one place and put a camera on 'em.

So yeah, escapism in it's most extreme form. I also spent Saturday night at a Hollywood red-carpet party celebrating the Burbank Film Festival. The raven-haired one on the end is named Minna and I'll send her the pictures as SOON AS SHE GIVES ME AN EMAIL ADDRESS.

The highlight of the party for me was getting pigeonholed by this attractive, kinda-drunk Scottish nanny who kept explaining that she didn't do it for the money, but for the r-r-r-rewar-r-rd of shaping young lives. "I believe the children are the future," I told her, and she was drunk enough to totally buy it.

Anyway, this is also escapism, parties like this. And why not escape. Is anyone really excited about the coming elections? No. The best you can say is that people are hyper-annoyed that people they don't agree with are also running. For Republicans the choice is betwen Obama and the second most-hated man in politics, Romney. No one is running for anything, they're running against things which they will label as far worse. 2012 will be a dreary as anything you've seen in your lifetime. I understand the film festival is throwing another party in the summer. Man, I'm totally there.

Humor, the Right-Wing Way

Now and then the left is mystified by talking points that come out of the right, because they seem hypersensitive or wierd and you couldn't have imagined anybody would actually think that way. Since so many of the leaders of the Conservative Movement are not really leaders, but ENTERTAINERS, you might confuse these things for stuff they really feel. Remember, James O'Keefe and Rush Limbaugh and (I Hope) Glenn Beck are trying to be funny. They're not really outraged, they're poking fun at liberal outrage. Nothing they say is actually meant to be a real point, and anyone who thinks otherwise is just being stupid.

As an example, Jim Treacher:

Can you name the author of this quote?

“With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.”

Give up? That’s Barack Obama, writing about his childhood with his stepfather Lolo Soetoro in Indonesia, from Chapter Two of his bestseller Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

“So what? It was a long time ago,” you say. “He was a lot younger. Customs are different there. He was just doing what his stepfather told him. And hey, you can’t even prove that the dogs were ever left on top of a car, you racist.”

Hey, whatever you have to tell yourself, libs. Say what you want about Romney, but at least he only put a dog on the roof of his car, not the roof of his mouth. And whenever you bring up the one, we’re going to bring up the other.

It’s no fun when we push back, is it? That’s why it’s so much fun.

Ho ho, you got us Jim! He's just making fun of the way people are making an issue out of ignoring the terror of a live animal for twelve hours. Why wouldn't you want a guy like that for president? What's wrong with you people! So he's turning it around, get it? Because being made to do something bad when you were a child is no different than being an adult with a family and choosing to do it.

Republicans are actually almost never outraged by anything. They don't mind most government malfeasance (unless Democrats do it) and they don't really care about attacks on women. I mean, they spent the better part of last week destroying Hillary Rosen. What does enrage them is when people say unkind things about RICH WOMEN. Well, just Ann Romney or Sarah Palin. Then their blood boils and no amount of apologizing can get them to calm down.

Good Luck, Mitt - Duck!

An auditoriumful of people, enraged that you are the Republican nominee. It's a likely scenario this year in Florida.

Hoping to head off violent protesters during the Republican National Convention, Mayor Bob Buckhorn has proposed a litany of items that will be considered security threats during the week-long event.

The list runs from air pistols to water pistols and also includes items such as masks, plastic or metal pipe and string more than six inches long.

Conspicuously absent from the list of potential weapons: Firearms.

That's because state law bans local governments from placing any restrictions on the carrying of guns in public spaces.

"If we'd tried to regulate guns, it wouldn't have worked," said City Attorney Jim Shimberg.

Guns will be banned from the security zone the Secret Service will set up around the convention site, Shimberg said.

But outside that perimeter, in the area Buckhorn as labeled "the clean zone," state gun laws will prevail.

State law bans civilians from openly carrying handguns. But anyone – even protesters banned by the proposed city ordinance from wielding a piece of wood larger than a ruler – may carry a concealed handgun if they're licensed to do so.

So hey, good news - a brokered convention may not exactly be necessary if you know what I mean. If you have been wondering why Rick Santorum has been making noises about being willing to be the VP to Romney, I think that might be making a little more sense now.

Common Ground

Watch Rick Santorum agree with me!

 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It's kind of adorable watching him realize around the :40 mark that maybe he's climbed into a talking point where he shouldn't be. Listen pal, you're the one who demonized teleprompters.

While I'm at it, this is a great argument for your grade school English. Always avoid double negatives, especially double negative campaigning!

Still obviously the point he was TRYING to make is the same one I made a few weeks ago: do you want to lose with a sad attempt to pander to both sides, or do you want to lose with a rock-ribbed conservative like Santorum? I say again, go down blazing.

Followup - DeNiro Really DOES Apologize

This screen grab from FoxNews.com just now. Normally I'd cut and paste, but what's with the picture of Mitt? Has Ailes decided they might as well start loving Mitt after all, so much that they'll put him in all the stories? Or is it an illustration to demonstrate that despite DeNiro's slanderous words, Mrs. Romney is not a white woman?

Anyway well played, RNC, for recognizing the terrible stigma that being called "white" engenders nowadays.