The raid Romney dreams of commanding

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."

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

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.

When Americans fight for their lives against terrorists overseas, Romney critiques their choice of weapons

I get that political campaigns are intramural sport. Protecting American lives is not. Americans rightly expect presidential candidates to know the difference.

Hitting send on their fax machines even as American public servants overseas were being slaughtered by rocket-bearing marauders, the Romney campaign, in it's effort to cross the finish line and shout "First," proved it could not distinguish between the two.

It wasn't just about his habitually dickish shoving to get his entitled, pasty ass at the head of line (son Tagg on dinner: "Dad always goes through the line first") it was about his warped sense of "winning." Just as he did at Bain, Romney merely saw the dead and dying Americans in harm's way as nothing more than a means to furthering his personal fortunes.

Displaying the most unpatriotic, unAmerican crassness imaginable, Mitt Romney saw not dead and injured foreign service workers who could be serving him if, God or Mohammed forbid, he were president, but a commodity to be traded on the public opinion market. In that moment, the Great Mormon Hope went from auditioning for Head of State of the most powerful nation in the world to The Great American Head Case by sniping at the embassy's weapon of choice as the assault of their compound became imminent.

The bi-partisan gut reaction was swift, visceral and resoundingly negative. The moment was called Romney's "Lehman" moment, harkening back to his predecessor John McCain's campaign meltdown in the face of the financial crisis. But it was much greater than even that. And his current opponent Barack Obama didn't miss the point.

"Governor Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later."