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.

Butter and jam for your #Romneytoast

AmericanBridge Pac 21st Century  strikes back

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.

Adventures in Wingnutia: High Priest of The Stupid Edition

 Speaking before a conservative audience at the annual Values Voter Summit Saturday, former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said that conservatives “will never have the elite smart people on our side.”

“We will never have the elite smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do,” said Santorum, adding, “So our colleges and universities, they’re not going to be on our side.

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.

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."

Look who says America's doing better four years later

via Washington Monthly's
Political Animal

 Consider this remarkable exchange between Romney and conservative radio-host Laura Ingraham late [Sept. 4, 2012]:

INGRAHAM: You’ve also noted that there are signs of improvement on the horizon in the economy. How do you answer the president’s argument that the economy is getting better in a general election campaign if you yourself are saying it’s getting better?

ROMNEY: Well, of course it’s getting better. The economy always gets better after a recession, there is always a recovery. […]