Hail to the Chief: President Obama 44 + 4!

Willard's wild 'Welfare on Wheels' joyride

 Who in the hell is Willard Romney trying to fool taking the high ground on welfare reform after he was such a train wreck on the subject in Massachusetts?

Aside from his request for the very exemption about which he lyingly bashes President Obama, he went all in on a program he created to give welfare recipients free cars, which included AAA membership and state-funded insurance. His Democratic successor Deval Patrick shut it down due to the budget crisis he inherited.

 Under Romney’s Car Ownership Program, the state paid out one year’s insurance, inspection, excise tax, title, registration, repairs and a AAA membership for cars that were donated to welfare recipients. Under the plan, those who lost their jobs and ended up back on welfare were allowed to keep their free wheels. ...

The Patrick administration, mired in a fiscal crisis, hit the brakes on the program that year after a Herald front-page story sparked public outrage.

#Romneywheels

Latina not amused by Romney's Latino fundraiser joke

Outsourcer-in-chief keeps outsourcing badly

Buried deep in the breaking news about election fraud enveloping Willard Romney and the Republican party is a nugget that could negatively impact the candidate's ability to rally his troops in advance of November 6.

The bombshell hidden behind the fraud allegations is the fact that the Romney campaign had depended on the firm behind the scandal for much of its GOTV (Get Out The Vote) efforts in some hotly-contested swing states. Willard's team outsourced this activity to the RNC, which in turn paid state parties which further paid consulting firm Strategic Allied Consulting to energize the base and ensure voters showed up to cast ballots.

The development puts the ground game advantage back into the Obama team's court.

After dumping about $3.1 million into the coffers of the Republican vendor, now under investigation for submitting 108 fraudulent voter registrations in Florida, Romney and the party pulled away from deals with the company. The GOP political teams, aware of the firm's past allegations of electoral indiscretions, agreed to embrace the business if it changed its name, so as "to not be a distraction."

Story of Mitt's very different 47-percent moocher class

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what ... who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that 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," Romney said in the fundraiser video.

Chart via Huffington Post

Forget Romney's dismissal of "dependency" of low-wage, federal income tax non-payers, his campaign apparently is rife with moochers riding the coattails of his own wealthy donors. One can hardly wait for the secret tape of him disparaging yet another group of Americans -- his own small non-donor class.

Tick tock goes the clock, Now summer's gone away?

The lyrics are from "Doctor Who"'s Night Terrors Nursery Rhyme, the horror is Willard Mitt Romney's alone, as voters start sealing the deal by casting early votes. Below is the schedule for states early voting that may well seal the lying Weathervane Willard's destiny.

Bonus entertainment round: Video of The Tick Tock Nursery Rhyme from "Doctor Who."

Science slaps Republican ignorance upside the head

Republican embrace of creation theory over empirically-determined scientific knowledge leads to serious stumbles along the campaign trail. The GOP strategy for fixing the nation's dearly beloved safety network raises voter eyebrows because their methodology defies easily verifiable biology.

Face it, people make babies, babies grow older, some take care of their parents and later some elders are cared for their kids. The Romney/Paul message to seniors is "We're cutting the social fabric down to a tiny voucher just not for you." Now that's all well and good until scientific realities remind you that many of those seniors have children for whose futures they have concerns. And then you have that moment when those children realize that Mitt's talking about them.

"Stop it, this is hard." Mitt muffs the math on healthcare.

Another area that eludes the education averse right wing is mathematics - that lynchpin of all things scientific. Seniors 65 and older comprise 17 percent of all active voters; alas, this is dwarfed by the 83 percent of the 18-64 age group. Therefore, pandering reassuringly to a smaller group of voters, while waving off younger groups with vague generalities, explains why the electorate, as it wakes with a pounding hangover after indulging too heavily in the sweet Romney party juice, is feeling morning after remorse and returning to the Obama fold.

When a campaign caricatures its Faithful

[UPDATE: 9/25/2012 Bonus video added]

A funny thing happened during Willard's black March to the White House. Somewhere along the way it stopped doing what campaigns do out of tradition -- sketch out the broad outlines of its candidate -- and bizarrely put pen to paper to draw the most farcical caricature possible of its ardent supporters.

Led by the odd choice of putting a rambling old man on stage to hold court with an empty chair, Mitt Romney's staff has stumbled into simultaneously painting the boss and his adherents as something his earlier campaign most decried: weird.

That word first spoken in a still, small voice -- describing Mitt's religion, his cardboard stiffness, his inability to relate to people -- has crescendoed into a cacophonous roar of disapproval for nearly everything he touches.

“What Romney does not get,” says Jack Blum, a veteran Washington lawyer and offshore expert, “is that this stuff is weird.” - Vanity Fair, Aug 2012

"Bill Kristol: ‘Kinda weird’ Romney pays lower tax rate than middle-class people" - Raw Story, Aug. 20, 2012

"Romney: Old Rich Weird Dude" - WRKO Boston, Aug. 28, 2012

"Romney Aides Call Eastwood Speech ‘Strange,’ ‘Weird,’ ‘Theater Of The Absurd’" - Talking Points Memo, Aug. 31, 2012

Fox, Ann Romney still whine about getting picked on

[Update: 9/23/2012] In our latest bawlfest, Miss Ann lashes out at Republicans for taking her husband to task for his “rolling calamity” of a presidential run. After breaking the "no crying in politics" rule yet again, the Romneybot's Best Asset and Woman Whisperer was yanked off the trail and relegated to scrounging for cash. Bonus "This is Hard" video courtesy of ColumnFiftyFive.

[Now back to our regularly scheduled entertainment from Fox Comedy]

Based on this interview, Fox News should immediately surrender their White House press credentials, not being members of "the media" and all. Top that with the ongoing whinging of poor, pathetic Ann Romney who's spent her life living comfortably on the backs of outsourced American jobs and off-shored American tax dollars.

Break out the hankies before viewing our aspiring First Bellyacher in her heroic campaign to stand beside our first Wimp-in-Chief. This political soap opera will just break your heart.

Been outsourced? Offshored? Thanks Mitt!

The Romney campaign's awe-inspiring response to the Washington Post grenade that blew up his "job creator" braggadocio?

"This is a fundamentally flawed story that does not differentiate between domestic outsourcing versus off-shoring"

 HAHAHAHAHA ... Comedy gold. Oh, here's one back atcha, Mr. "I'm unemployed, too".

Two unemployed #Sensata workers are sitting in a bar drowning their sorrows over losing their jobs and having to face their families with the news..

The outsourced guy turns to the other and asks, "Hey dude, were you outsourced or off-shored?"

"Off-shored," replied the second man, "yet neither of us has a job."

'Nuff said.

GOP tax pros throw in towel on Mitt's 'middle income' plan

Suppose a group of Republican economists got together with just one purpose -- to prove "liberal bias" of a non-partisan tax policy think tank report that found their candidate's tax plan raised taxes on the middle class.

Eureka! The team declared. We discovered fire can make Romney's plan work, pronounced President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors chief Martin Feldstein. Nip an alternative minimum tax here. Lop off the estate tax there. Slice away almost every deduction for people making $100K or more and, voilà, you got your revenue neutral tax plan that doesn't touch the middle.

Then, almost immediately after revealing their great discovery, the candidate on whose behalf they're a-cyphering decides to define "middle income" as $200,000-$250,000 or less. Being good economists, despite their conservative motives, they'd been working from a ceiling of $100,000 for their "middle class."

 In an article first published in the Wall Street Journal last month and expanded on later, Feldstein said that "it is feasible to combine tax cuts and base broadening as Gov. Romney suggests without raising the budget deficit or imposing any middle-class tax increase."

Well, then their candidate opened his mouth during a "Good Morning America" interview and changed the parameters of the calculus. "Middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less," Romney declared. The analysts were left gobsmacked.

Like his money and our jobs, Willard promises to off-shore foreign policy decisions on Israel

Thank goodness for phones.

Had Alexander Graham Bell never invented the telephone, a Mitt Romney presidency would be devoid of a working policy on relations with Israel and the general Middle East. In chiding Republican contender Newt Gingrich in a 2011 primary debate for calling Palestine an "invented" people, Romney made clear just who would pull the strings for his administration in all things pertaining to the Middle East.

“Before I made a statement of that nature, I’d get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say: ‘Would it help if I say this? What would you like me to do?“

According to a New York Times article, a United States ambassador to Israel under Clinton Martin S. Indyk, said that whether intentional or not, Mr. Romney’s statement implied that he would inappropriately “subcontract Middle East policy to Israel.” Others have warned of a shadow government that would operate with impunity within a Romney administration and cover a vast network of policy decisions.

Netanyahu has pulled Romney's governance strings since he took the reins of Massachusetts as governor back in 2003. The Times again tells us that the prime minister has advised Romney over the years in matters of politics, economics and the Middle East.

 When Mr. Romney was the governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Netanyahu offered him firsthand pointers on how to shrink the size of government. When Mr. Netanyahu wanted to encourage pension funds to divest from businesses tied to Iran, Mr. Romney counseled him on which American officials to meet with.

Chinese formally chide Willard, outs his source of wealth

"I also want to make sure that if a nation cheats like China has cheated, we call them on the carpet and don't let it continue." - Romney at Sept. 13 campaign rally in Virginia

 Just one day after climbing atop his high horse vowing to clamp down on China, calling it a "currency manipulator" and a "cheat," Romney was toppled by a scathing swipe from one of the country's official government newspapers.

Citing the irony of America's outsourcer-in-chief bashing China's currency values after having cashed in on it to great personal advantage, the article noted Romney has damaged relations between the countries and suggested he abandon "short-sighted China-bashing tricks and adopt at least a little bit of statesmanship on China-U.S. ties."

 What is more sensational is that this millionaire GOP candidate has vowed to declare China a currency manipulator on the first day of his presidency if elected.

Yet it is rather ironic that a considerable portion of this China-battering politician's wealth was actually obtained by doing business with Chinese companies before he entered politics.

The piece contends that Romney's "blaming-China-on-everything remarks are as false as they are foolish" and went on to lay blame for U.S. economic woes at the feet of its debtor, as only a note-holder might.

Fallon gives comedic 'tribute' to Willard and his company

After hearing James Taylor perform some of his hit songs at the Democratic National Convention, late night host Jimmy Fallon was apparently inspired to honor Mitt Romney's ability to lose his own convention to a crazy man and a chair. Fallon took the lyrics to Taylor's "Fire and Rain" mixed in comedic convention postmortems and gives us "Romney and Bain."

Lyrics below the fold ...

Romney scores first negative bounce in poll's history

From the goldmine that is No More Mister Nice Blog:

 The question in the CNN/ORC poll (PDF) was "Does what you saw or read of the Republican National Convention in Tampa make you more likely or less likely to vote for Mitt Romney?"

More people said "less likely" than "more likely."

That's the first time a candidate has ever been underwater on that question in the history of CNN polling.

The Old Man and The Seat

Laughed at or with? Clint Eastwood at RNC in Tampa

I've always pretty much appreciated most of Clint Eastwood's early works but it wasn't until Gran Torino that I found him both inspired and inspiring. Then came his "Morning in America" ad, which spoke to an ailing nation looking for a ray of hope and he knocked it out of the park.

I don't much idolize actors or actresses, whether they politically agree with me or not. I recognized the absolute star power Oprah brought to a young senator's campaign in 2008 and I was excited that she lent her gravitas to the affair. I was similarly impressed to see the Hollywood lineup that stood in support of Barack Obama. Not that they swayed my thinking on the politician, it just made the campaign more fun and I do tend to gravitate toward and support like-minded individuals. Sue me, I'm human.

On the other hand, I still watch re-runs of Frasier, howbeit with fewer personal laugh lines after learning of Kelsey Grammer's support for the Tea Party. Frankly, I more hold him in contempt for being a manwhore and stinking up my TV than for his political views. He's comported himself as a relatively sane Tea Party supporter, unlike the few third string losers such as Nugent, Norris and Voight with little else to lose, and have hitched their fading stars to that mob.

So now we return to Eastwood standing on stage talking to a chair. Despite Bill Maher's  full-throated defense (which seems so desperate, one wonders where his defense of Clint's comedic efforts ends and his own begins) of the roundly mocked schtick, it did "kill," as Maher contends -- just not in the way Bill thinks.

The other attempted defense is that of "senior abuse." Read how The Examiner valiantly works to distort Rachel Maddow's critique of the farce into some horrifying form of attack on seniors:

Mitt's USA, Inc. was no slip but HELL YEAH it's showing

If you pay attention to nothing else uttered by Willard Romney in the course of this election season, mark his following words as those which illuminate the soul and motivations of the former governor of Massachusetts in his run for the presidency:

"We understand how Washington works. We will reach across the aisle and find good people who, like us, want to make sure this company deals with its challenges. We’ll get America on track again."

His words should terrify you.

On its face, this statement, in particular the underlined word, seems merely one of those gaffes Beltway insiders get all giggly over and regular voters, like us, just shrug off. I cannot state how strong a warning these words serve nor how devastating their impact will be for this country should Romney win this election.

If you think I've somehow set my hair on fire in hysteria, consider that similar words threw off balance a man described as "a voracious dealmaker and not a very scrupulous one." Yes, none other than Rupert Murdoch, a man in many ways now master of the Republican candidate's destiny.

"At one point, Mr. Romney declared that 'I would probably bring in McKinsey,' the management consulting firm, to help him set up his presidential cabinet, a comment that seemed to startle the editors and left Mr. Murdoch visibly taken aback."

 This consultancy gambit is the high-performance engine that drives the Romney campaign. It is a backdoor attempt to pad his personal wealth using the clan's "blind" trust (a ruse as he has called the practice in past) as his personal piggy bank. The same trust that openly enriches his family and stashes proceeds accumulated in league with Bain co-conspirators.

Romney takes campaign etch-a-sketch way downmarket

AP/Romney scrawls his meandering lie on a whiteboard in SC

"Name calling to me and somehow by you repeating a number of $716 billion, that you can make that stick when [you say] that figure is being 'stolen' from Medicare, that's not true. You can't just repeat it and make it true, sir."

- Soledad O'Brien, CNN

Willard must tell this lie and it is vital to his divine candidacy that you believe it: President Obama's prescription for Medicaid surgically removes $716 billion from the program in the form of reductions in benefits to seniors.

He is compelled to repeat this lie until hopefully it sinks into the American electorate's consciousness by some sort of osmosis.

Ryan: Let them eat corn!!

Unless you're someone who makes the state fair circuit a regular pastime, news that Iowa State Fair's giant pumpkin competition took a huge hit this year is barely a blip on your radar.

Due to a persistent drought and the hottest July in the recorded history of Julys, this year's weigh-in for the behemoth gourds showed significant weight reduction among its top giants. For the first time in years, the winner clocked in at under 1,000 pounds.

As though to soften the competitive blow, farmer Dan Carlson, half of the winning Peterson-Carlson team for the past three years, pointed to farmers facing fates worse than their own, asking, "Have you seen the corn crop lately?”

It was among all this talk of less than super-sized pumpkins and drought and devastated corn crops that Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan came to stump for votes.

Mitt proves his campaign stops DO go better with coke

Mitt Romney held a campaign event Monday evening at a Miami juice shop owned by a convicted cocaine trafficker, according to a report on the CBS News web site.

 Romney appeared at El Palacio de los Jugos, which is owned by Reinaldo Bermudez. Court records show that Bermudez pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine in 1999 and served three years in federal prison.

Stumping for now-elusive Florida votes after his pick of Paul Ryan as his running mate, Willard and Marco Rubio managed to pick the one juice joint in all of Miami belonging to a guy who can't even vote for either due to his felony conviction and Florida law.

And it wasn't just you regular old campaign stop either. The Romney campaign was actually memorializing the visit by filming a political campaign ad at the juice bar. Bermudez was busted for shipping nearly 500 pounds of coke concealed in containers filled with fish that were imported from Trinidad.

The two guys seem to have common ground in their affinity for tiny Caribbean islands: Romney has money hidden in Bermuda to avoid US taxes; Bermudez got busted for shipping cocaine from a nearby south Caribbean island. Guess campaigning is a lot more fun when you can swap stories of solidarity concerning your off-shore activities.

But it's all good, Bermudez notes.

"Here in Miami there are a lot people with money who have had problems with the law."