Could Willard "Mitt" Romney Be Even More Detestible If He Worked Harder At It?

This is a nutshell version of ol' Willard's plan to boost the economy: More tax breaks for the rich, fuck over the unemployed.

What Willard the Fudge-Packer wants to do is to eliminate unemployment insurance entirely and make the tax cuts for the rich permanent. So if you get laid off, fine, lose your home, starve to death, see if Willard cares.

Just so long as Willard and his buddies don't have to pay taxes, everything will be fine.

So, if you voted for Republicans and you've been laid off from your job, remember this: The people you voted for hate you and want you to die soon.

Have a nice day.

Huckabee on Bush

Mike Huckabee had an article run in Foreign Affairs magazine. The article almost disturbed a hair on Willard M. Romney's helmet, as Huckabee dared voice a criticism of the Chimperor, to wit:

"American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad."

Huckabee then goes off the rails somewhat, in his call to expand the size of the armed forces. While it may be desirable to have a larger army, nobody has ever explained how that is going to happen without either (a) reducing standards for recruits to an absurdly low level or (b) reinstating the draft. As it is now, the Army can barely fill its recruitment quotas now, and that is by taking 20% of the recruits who are below either moral or intelligence standards (in other words, the ranks are being filled with criminals and morons) and by offering extremely large bonuses for those who volunteer for cannon-fodder MOSs.

And let's face it: There will be no draft. Once we start drafting the sons and daughters of the middle and upper classes, the opposition to the Chimperor's Wars will grow exponentially and will resemble the last time a president from Texas confused his balls with the national interest got us severely tangled up in an Asian quagmire.

Willard, on the other hand, is hewing to the Bush policies because his polling data says that is what the Kool-Aid Drinkers want. You know that old flip-flopping Willard is never going to say or do anything that will upset his targeted demographic, which is why if the Kool-Aid Drinkers thought that sipping the blood of live puppies was a key to good health, Willard would be out there with a Labrador Retriever, a razor blade and a straw.

Willard Tortures English

"I'm an English literature major," he added, after the questions didn't stop. "When we say I saw the Patriots win the World Series, it doesn't necessarily mean you were there."

For crying out loud. I've got a better idea, Willard: If you are going to torture the English language to get the meaning that you want, why not write a fifty-page thesis on what the meaning of "is" is?

Here is a bit of free legal advice, Willard: If you ever get up on a witness stand and say "I saw him do it" and then it turns out that you weren't there and you didn't see him with your own eyeballs, there are two other words you should be prepared to give a discourse on: Lying and perjury.

Yes, it is true that when you say "I saw what he meant", you're not talking about vision. That use of the verb has to do with mental constructs, ideas, and knowledge of facts. "I see that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor" means that I learned that fact. "I saw the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor" means that I am claiming to have been present for the event.

Willard obviously slept through his classes if he is trying to hang his hat on that distinction. And he is patently assuming that most Republican voters are complete idiots. But then again, since the Republicans chose Bush, the latter assumption may be a valid one.

Beyond that, this moron was the Governor of Massachusetts. The only way he could have ever seen the "Patriots win the World Series" would be if he was doing LSD at the time.

Generic Rmoney: "I Like (Name of Sport), Some of My Friends Own (Name of Sport) Teams."

Willard, Willard, Willard. Once again, ol' Willard Milton Romney managed to jam his foot securely in his mouth.

Rich and clueless. Didn't we have enough of that between 2001 and 2009?

You Know What, Mitt?

... go fuck yourself, your kids, and the dog that you strapped to the roof of your SUV.

Mittens paid fifteen percent of his income in taxes. That's been true for the last dozen or so years, since he quote-retured-unquote from his job as a vulture capitalist.

Which means that for the past umticlutch years, I've paid more of my income in taxes than ol' Willard the Liar, and I made less than a hundredth as much. Maybe a thousandth.

But I still paid more of my income in taxes.*

(H/T)

How is this fucking fair? Just because rich douchenozzles like Mittens get the Congress to write the tax laws so that pirates and sponges pay less a percentage of their income in taxes than people who actually work for a fucking living?

Oh, and according to what I heard on the TV, ol' Willard was saying that he earned "a little bit" in speaking fees for his last tax year.   "A little bit" to Mittens was somewhere around a quarter of a million dollars.  You can be in the top 1% in most areas of this country with just making what that insulated jackoff regards as "a little bit".

A quarter of a million bucks is nothing but chump change to Willard M. Romney

Can we get to rolling out the tumbrels

and building the guillotines?

______________________________________
* Until I was laid off.

It Is Not "Gotcha Journalism"

when reporters point out that Ol' Willard has a problem with the truth. It's called "journalism."

Claiming he saw things that he didn't see. Claiming he was endorsed by groups that didn't endorse him. Claiming he was a "lifelong hunter" when he had been hunting twice. Misremembering when he graduated law school by three years. Saying he "cracked down on meth" when all that happened was he proposed doing so.

Willard seems to have a problem with the facts. The Wingnuts who went nuts over Al Gore's failings in that regard have nothing to complain about. He seems to have the same problem with English that Bill Clinton did, in that Willard twists definitions around so it doesn't seem as though he was mis-speaking or lying.

Willard??

Did you know that Mitt Romney's real first name is "Willard?"

I sure didn't.

I gather that "Willard M. Romney for President" didn't play so well in the focus groups.

Oh, Give Me a Fucking Break; GOP Campaign Edition

"Mitt Romney's eyes filled with tears Monday as the Republican presidential contender recalled watching the casket of a soldier killed in Iraq return to the United States and imagined if it were one of his five sons."

Riight. You know, the five boys who are "serving their country by trying to get [Willard M. Romney] elected." So somebody wrote the subroutine into RoboWillard's operating system to trigger tears, big whoop.

Willard is as phony as they come, and in this age of plasticized political candidates, that's saying something.

Super Duper Tuesday

And the beat goes on. And the beat goes on.

It would have been nice if John McCain could have taken Massachusetts from Willard M. Romney, but it's probably better that the three Republicans have to keep slugging it out for awhile. The Republicans are also showing that while it's nice to have a large war chest in order to run for president, at the core, you have to have a heart. Which is why ol' Willard isn't doing as well as he thought he would.

Romney: It's Easy to be Unemployed on Twenty Million Smackers a Year!

Remember when ol' Willard said that he was "unemployed"? Well, it seems that unemployment isn't too harsh for Mittens, since his investments pay him over twenty million dollars a year.

That's four hundred thousand dollars a week. No wonder he thought that his speaking fees weren't "much money". In comparison, if you made thirty grand a year and you had a side job where you took in an extra six hundred dollars: That would be comparable to the scale of Romney's little side work.

Remember Romney's offer to bet ten grand with Baby Dubya? That'd be like most people offering to bet fifteen or twenty bucks.

And if you make thirty grand a year, you're not parking a few million in a Swiss bank account. Not like Willard the Wealthy.

I suspect that anyone who believes that Mitt the Ripper cares about middle class Americans, let alone the working poor, probably needs to have their head examined.

Robo-Willard's Tears

The widdle Robo-Willard cwies. He thinks he's human!


How very special. The soul-less flip-flopper get teary-eyed over Mom's apple pie, no doubt. Unless that isn't popular, in which case, he'd pee on it.

Or maybe he was tearing up over the idea of using offshore shell companies to avoid having to pay taxes. That would be entirely consistent with the Republican idea that taxes are what working stiffs pay, not rich folks.

More Bullshit From Willard Romney

So ol' RoboWillard stages a photo op with an unemployed single mother in Michigan to show that Mr. Helmut Hair really cares about people who are worth under $100 million.

Seems, though, that the unemployed single mom happens to be the mother of a Romney staff puke. A paid staff puke, at that.

So Willard had to drag in one of his minion's mothers in order to look as though he cares.

Pathetic.

Willard M. Romney: Show Us the Tax Returns

Romney is refusing to release his tax returns.

Since Watergate, presidential candidates have released their tax returns. But Mittens doesn't want to.

Which presumably means that there is all sorts of shit in there that he wants to keep secret. Such as maybe he is still getting millions of dollars a year from his former firm of corporate pirates. Or that he is paying an unconscionably low tax rate.

Where are your tax returns, Willard?

RSA Took 30 Pieces of Silver From the NSA (and Other Bits of NSA Fuckery)

There is a story out that RSA, a leader in encryption software, took $10 million from the NSA in return for designing in a back-door into its products for the NSA. RSA denies it, but their denial is not exactly ironclad. What's telling is that RSA continued to use the Dual EC DRBG random number generator as the BSAFE default RNG for six years after concerns were first raised that Dual EC DRBG had a backdoor.

The General Counsel for the Director of National Intelligence has issued a statement that the Director of National Intelligence, Mr. James Clapper, Jr. (known in this blog as "Jimmie the Perjurer") really didn't lie to Congress when he denied that the NSA was collecting data on millions (ie, 90% or so) of Americans. The denial essentially concedes, instead, that Clapper is a bit of an imbecile, in that he cannot be trusted to answer questions if he hasn't been provided with a written copy of the questions in advance.

Which makes him a little different from, oh, every other witness in any sort of court proceeding or congressional hearing, who is expected to be able to answer questions to the best of their ability without being pre-briefed. Not answering a question truthfully is a bit of a crime.

The FISA Court wielded their rubber-stamp again, approving the collection of everyone's use of every type of electronic communication for another 90 days.

The NSA has neither confirmed nor denied that it is spying on members of Congress. My feeling is that a "we can neither confirm nor deny" is pretty much a tacit confirmation.

Oh, and for one bit of non-NSA-related news, noted security expert Willard M. Romney has opined that the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia will be safe.

Thoughts on the New Hampshire Primary

Ah, fuck it.

Go read the stories at McClatchy or the London Times or the New York Times or the Washington Post or even Pravda. (Though I had to search in Pravda's site to find it, they're more concerned with Russia's loss of its diesel engine manufacturing.)

This is the nice thing about blogging: If I don't feel like writing something, I don't have to.

Though John Stewart last night did have a funny clip about Romney denying that he called McCain's immigration plan an "amnesty plan" and then, when confronted with the ad saying that, denying he had ever seen it, even though the end of the ad has him saying "I approve this message." Willard may have taken the "silver" in Iowa in New Hampshire (translation: "I lost, but not as badly as Guiliani"), but he has a lock on the land speed record in the flip-flopping event.

Quote of the Day

"Everything about [Mitt] Romney tells the tale of the man who just fired your dad."-- John Oliver, on the Daily Show.

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That and "Rick Perry has an Achilles's head"...

The Romney campaign is sending out his mother wife to counter the perception that ol' Willard is nothing more than a rich douchebag who would gladly run over his dog if he could see a profit in it.

Sarah Palin is the Most Qualified Republican to be Vice President

Ayup. Sure she is.

Even if they were limiting it to women, I guess Kaye Bailey Hutchinson, Olympia Snowe and M. Jodi Rell had other plans.

Willard M. Romney threw in the towel on February 8th. That means that John McCain had almost seven months to do an exhaustive and deliberate search for his running mate.

Seven fucking months. There is no sign that he used that time for any kind of deliberate search; rather, when his advisers convinced him last week that he couldn't go with Joe Lieberman, McCain panicked and basically pulled Palin's name out of a hat. It is fair to use this pick to question how John McCain makes decisions. How will he decide how to handle world problems; wait to the very last second and then pull something out of his ass?

Frankly, I suspect that the dirty old lecher chose someone who would not be too hard on his eyes. He didn't care that she was trying to rig an ethics investigation or that she had ties to a secessionist movement.

And now, they are going to resort to the same ploy that every politician who is in trouble for shitty-ass things does: Blame the media for reporting it.

The Kool-Aid drinkers will suck it up, too. Betcher ass on that!

Hey, Mitt, Maybe Your NASCAR Team-Owning Buddies Will Give You a Rebel Flag to Pin Up In Your Garage!

Mitt Romney got in touch with his inner Southerner on Thursday during a campaign stop in the heart of Mississippi, telling a crowd of supporters he was "learning to say 'y'all' " and developing a taste for grits.

After accepting Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant's endorsement, Romney turned his attention to his bodyguard, Garrett Jackson — a Mississippi native — whom he credits for his transformation into an "unofficial Southerner."

"He is now turning me into an, I don't know, an unofficial Southerner," Romney said. "And I'm learning to say 'y'all' and I like grits. Strange things are happening to me."

Rmoney has to seriously think that most Southerners flunked out around fifth grade if he thinks that people are going to buy this swill.

There's a fine line between "pandering' and "patronizing" and it seems to me that ol' Willard has tromped over it with both of his handmade-loafer-shod feet.

They Don't Like Him. They Really Don't Like Him,

Willard M. Romney, that is:

Rick Santorum had a breakthrough night Tuesday, winning GOP presidential contests in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado, all of which is expected to breathe life into his struggling campaign and slow Mitt Romney’s march to the Republican presidential nomination.

Romney has a shitloat of money, both his own and the cash that his predatory capitalist buddies have been dumping into Mitt's super-pac. Team Mittens is going around the nation, telling Republicans that he alone has the money to bury the others in advertising buys and that since he's going to win anyway, everyone should shut up, be a bunch of good little Germans, and fall into line behind Mitt the Inevitable.

Except that the GOP's conservative base apparently despises Romney and they made their displeasure known last night.

Mr. Romney has had deep problems so far with the Republican base, going 1-for-4 in caucus states where turnout is dominated by highly conservative voters. Mr. Romney is 0-for-3 so far in the Midwest, a region that is often decisive in the general election. He had tepid support among major blocks of Republican voters like evangelicals and Tea Party supporters, those voters making under $50,000 per year, and those in rural areas.

As others have pointed out, Romney won Minnesota in 2008 and last night, even with T-Paw's endorsement, he came in a distant third.

A long nominating contest isn't, of itself, bad. It can energize the members of a party. The protracted battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama didn't hurt him. Of course, things were different four years ago. McCain committed a serious unforced error when he listened to his groin and chose the Wasilla Whackaloon as his running mate. The near-collapse of the banking sector hurt McCain, as he flailed around in response. And the level of animosity between the center-right and left-wing Democrats in 2008 was far lower than the animosity that I see inside the GOP. There is really a war going on between what I would call the party of Hoover and the party of the Confederacy.

Santorum would be beaten like a gong in the general election. I don't think that point is arguable.

The problem for Romney is a modern one. Historically, candidates have sought to pander to the party faithful and then, once the nomination has been secured, move to the center of the spectrum to work on the independents and the moderates in the opposing party. A candidate could say some truly obnoxious things in Dubuque in January and all that they'd face is maybe some ad quoting him in September, where some deep-voiced announcer read the quote.

But those days are gone, thanks to digital hard drives. Every word that a presidential candidate speaks before a camera ends up on a hard drive for the other party. Everything that Romney says in order to over the right-wing voters who, for good reasons, don't trust him will be thrown back in Romney's face this fall. Every hard word he has for immigrants, minorities, the poor, workers, and women will be used against him. Stephen Colbert's attack ad will, by comparison, look like a love tap.

The Obama campaign and its allies might not even have to work that hard. The polls seem to be indicating that the more people across the country learn of Romney, the less they like him. As somebody once put it, Romney looks the the robotic guy who fired your father without feeling a qualm. Romney comes across as the kind of decent-looking guy who, if you had a drink with him, would roofie your drink, steal your wallet, rape you, slit your throat, ransack your home, torch the place and then leave with a spring in his step and a song in his heart.

Mitt-- Separated at birth? --Ted

And you can bet that you'll see ads alluding to that this fall, that is, if Gingrich doesn't run them before then.

Party Like It's 1992

In 1991, the incumbent president, George H.W. Bush was hugely popular. The Persian Gulf War had ended with very few American casualties. As it was then time to plan campaigns for the upcoming election, the senior stars of the Democratic party apparently did not see a road to victory. So they chose to sit that one out and wait for 1996, when the Republicans would probably be stuck with Danny Quayle as their candidate. They apparently thought that it would be a good race for the younger Democrats with presidential aspirations to get their feet wet in the game.

As we know now, things didn't work out so well for either Bush or those Democrats. The savings and loan debacle* triggered a recession that lasted for several years. President Bush also agreed to raise taxes in order to help bring the deficit under control,** a deficit which had been more than tripled by both his and the Reagan Administrations. But since Republican voters like to prattle about the deficit, but they hate doing anything about it that doesn't solely land on the backs of the poor and working classes, Bush was not very popular with the pre-Tea party wing of the GOP.

Into the election fray stepped a truly batshit-crazy egomaniac by the name of Henry Ross Perot.*** Perot siphoned off the similarly batshit-nutso GOP voters, as well as a certain percentage of the disaffected independents. On the other hand, the Democratic voters pretty much stuck with their party's candidate, a young man from Arkansas who was heretofore best known for giving an half-hour-long speech at the 1988 convention that almost resulted in his being arrested for "murder by boredom".

Clinton got just under 45 million votes which, in a two-man race at the time, probably would have sent him home. Perot siphoned off just under 20 million votes and Bush got 39 million votes. I know that there was a lot of polling on this subject, but my gut feeling then was that, regardless of what they told the pollsters, without Perot, enough voters would have held their noses and voted "R" so that Bush would have squeaked by.

I bring this up because I believe that, without some spoiling event, that 2012 will see Obama re-elected. The stronger Republicans have chosen to sit this one out, despite the entreaties of the party stalwarts. You don't have to look very hard to find conservatives bemoaning the pack of chowderheads who make up the ABM candidates and their sinking suspicion that Romney will be the electoral equivalent of Barbaro. The GOP nominating structure seems designed to squeeze its candidates into positions that will be indefensible during the general election campaign. And there is no sign that any well-financed liberal will step up to challenge this President in either the primary or general elections.

Which is why I believe that Obama will win.****
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* Brought on by deregulation of the S&Ls, both Federally and especially in Texas.
** It worked, only to be undone by his idiot son.
*** He preferred to go by his middle name, like John Edgar Hoover and Willard Mitt Romney.
**** On the other hand, I thought Kerry would win in `04. (And yes, I know the credible allegations that the GOP stole the election in Ohio, so spare me that point.)