Huge signs appear at Romney rally in Poland ...

... supporting Ron Paul

..

"Under the headline 'Governor Romney won’t like this' we saw a big sign in the crowd for Rep Ron Paul." - Greta Van Susteren, FOX reporter

Romney bores a friend in Poland

At long last! After making a shambles of his first two stops on his foreign policy junket and angering any number of dignitaries along the way, Willard Romney met with one leader, well a former leader, who gladly handed the Republican presumptive nominee his unofficial endorsement.

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Lech Walesa, once known as a formidable pro-union activist, praised Romney effusively -- using four variations of the word "success" but not really saying much else.

Then, following his half hour encounter with the nominee, Walesa turned to Polish news to declare that Charisma is something Mr. Romney "doesn't really yet have," suggesting he needs to do "some rallying," according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Romney puts friendly FOX in petting zoo

"There has been no press access to Governor Romney since we landed in Poland. We (press) are in a holding pattern (I can’t help but feel a bit like the press is a modified petting zoo since we are trapped in a bus while Polish citizens take pictures of us.)  Under the headline 'Governor Romney won’t like this' we saw a big sign in the crowd for Rep Ron Paul."
- Greta Van Susteren

Now is this any way to treat The Help your traveling staff?

Romney falling star made Atlas weep

I just have to ask: What the hell is the deal with Republicans and their 15-minute Hall of Famers who embody the opposite of the snake oil they're trying to sell?
 
Last election cycle, the GOP candidates spammed us with Joe "Not a Licensed Plumber and Whose Name Isn't Even Joe" Wurzelbacher and anticipated that rational Americans would buy his schtick. He was crafted into a Conservative icon based on the fact that he was able to wake up one morning, walk his neighborhood and form a cogent (if fact-free) question.

Willard's stab at wrapping Reagan in own wimpdom misfires terribly

Willard Romney has spent most of his time campaigning in the US issuing that old childhood taunt of "I'm rubber, you're glue; whatever you say bounces off me and sticks on you."

In conservative circles, that approach works just swimmingly when the target of such attacks is President Barack Obama but, when the target becomes the Republican Right Reverend Ronald Reagan, it's a tactic that takes on a toxicity that draws immediate return fire from a faithful flock.

In a recent attempt to absolve himself of his lack of national security bona fides, Mitt and his Mittwits took a shot at Reagan by invoking an anecdote culled from the memory of Reagan's Secretary of State James Baker. It just didn't work.

Backlash begins ... The Wimp Factor

Hmmm ... Only time will tell who the real wimps are here: the bully-become-coward or the wimps who comprise our press. We'll only know for sure when the lies get called lies and the tax returns relentlessy pursued.

Ghost of Visit Past haunts Team Willard in Jerusalem

Man in London points, laughs at Romney. Photo: Stephen Crowley/NYT

After receiving a public drubbing at the hands of the British press and public officials then earning his own humiliating hashtag (#Romneyshambles) on Twitter, Romney hastily retreated from London headed for Israel. There, he was immediately met with reminders of his very big, very bad couple of days developing a "special relationship" that was nothing short of an American embarrassment.

Then, as though cultivating a hostile press had inexplicably replaced the campaign's previous goal of cultivating good will among allies, the Mitt wits broke agreement with its traveling corps and barred them from covering a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser.

Why was Mitt Romney chosen as CEO of '02 Olympics?

In a brilliantly written and researched article on Willard Romney's time presiding over the Salt Lake Organizing Committee during the 2002 Winter Olympics, an author writing under the handle DeanDemocrat provides a detailed peek behind the veil Romney has attempted to throw over the inner workings of that tenure. Try as I might, I can add little of substance to this amazing piece culled from contemporaneous reports of that time.

Taking enough of that writing to both stay within the bounds of fair use and encourage readers to click through at the end to conclude a stunning read, I present the opening salvo of this incredible research without further comment.

Seeing as Mitt Romney is in London playing the part of the Ugly American, and seeing as this has brought some new focus onto Mitt Romney's own tenure as head of the Olympic Games; I find myself asking why Mitt Romney was chosen as CEO of the 2002 Olympic Games in the first place?

In fact this is a question I find myself asking every time someone on TV mentions Romney's role in "saving" the 2002 Winter games from corruption and scandal. No matter how hard I look I cannot find an answer to this question. And I have done some extensive searching. Every article from the era seems to glance right over the question of why Mitt Romney was chosen and instead focuses on the question of how it will benefit him politically.

The Boston Globe covered the story of the 2002 Olympic Games very closely and I will be quoting extensively from the articles they wrote at the time. But even they seemingly failed to answer this basic question.

Here is a little timeline for those who haven't looked into it very much.

Read more »

Willard Romney - US Olympic standard bearer in UK?

British Olympic minister Hugh Robertson breaks into laughter after a BBC2 Newsnight presenter raises the possibility of Mitt Romney carrying the Olympic torch in opening ceremonies. Robertson replies “certainly not after today” and chuckles  at the suggestion that America's Mr Olympics be involved in the tribute.

Willard should retroactively cancel foreign excursion

How could a trip so tailor made for "a guy from Great Britain" who enjoys such a "special relationship" with his "Anglo-Saxon" forebears go so horribly wrong in one day? That answer might just stem from a condescension-laden, misinformed description of the host country on the first leg of his three-country tour that can be found in his fantasy novel, No Apology..

England [sic] is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn't been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler's ambitions.