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 ...

Crap! Even the cheerleading section is getting ticked off

Transcript below the fold ...

The GOP's ever-shrinking pup tent

Romney thinks you're stupid, you are if you invite Bush back into your home

Imagine you just hosted a big neighborhood gathering. Everybody came over, ate the food, drank the beer and left the typical big old mess. Then, on top of that, you realize that one sketchy neighbor, whom you really never trusted in the first place, got a hold of your laptop while everyone was distracted by the festivities and hacked into your bank account wiping it out.

As though the theft itself wasn't bad enough, not only could you not get law enforcement's attention but as you're falling behind in various payments and losing your home, the neighbors for some alternate reality reason all pitched in and decided to help the thieving neighbor because he'd blown through his ill-gotten and is now teetering on bankruptcy.

Now, would any right-thinking person expect you to .. or even ask you to ... invite this miserable soul to your next get-together? I'd think not. But former governor Romney thinks you should and, remarkably, that you would offer such thievery re-entry to your home. 

 In May of 2000, when George W. Bush was running for president on a platform of extravagant tax cuts for all, his campaign did something that would be considered remarkable today: it submitted his tax plan to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, to see how much all those tax cuts would cost the Treasury.

The bipartisan committee ran through the details provided by the campaign and predicted that the tax plan would cost about $1.3 trillion over nine years, an underestimate but a clear sign of its high price tag. With the budget in surplus at the time, Mr. Bush didn’t dispute that cost, and never tried to pretend that the cuts would be free. Within a decade, in fact, they would turn out to be the biggest factor in the huge deficit he created.

Twelve years later, Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, claims his far deeper tax cuts would have a price tag of exactly zero dollars. He has no intention of submitting his tax plan to the committee or anywhere else that might conduct a serious analysis, since he seems intent on running a campaign far more opaque than any candidate has in years.

Romney's message to voters? We decide, you abide.

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.

Romney campaign dishes first dose of truth

 President Barack Obama heads out of the national political conventions with a much clearer path to winning, top advisers to Mitt Romney privately concede.

FLASHBACKS

"I think we are going to get a bump; I think we have a better opportunity for the bump as a party, as a challenging party... I can't give you a scope, but I can tell you I think it's going to be real and it's going to be visible, but I don't know what it will end up being."

-- Reince Priebus (minus vowels=RNC PR BS)

Romney is going to have a great convention. It's going to be incredible. 

He should gain a 5 or 6 point lead.

-- Dick "People Are Stupid Enough to Keep Paying Me" Morris

As a result of all that positivity and the flood of coverage, Romney, like many before him (pretty much everyone other than John Kerry in 2004) will receive a post-convention bounce in the polls that will likely be short lived, but significant enough to make headlines.

-- Brian McGovern, SaveJersey.com

In case you thought this slipped our minds: #releasethereturns

'Don't serve as a high priest wearing magical underwear'

"I will not take God out of our platform," the Republican nominee [Romney] said after reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. "I will not take God off our coins, and I will not take God out of my heart."

Of course he won't .. 'cause

"When you vote for Mitt Romney, you get a Mormon president."

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:

The Lighter Side of Mittmania

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.