Rumproast

Ruined Runes: Another Day, Another Poll, Another Headfuck

2012-05-15T13:32:41Z

According to the top headline at Memeorandum at the moment, a bunch of folks are either whooping it up or uttering bewildered ZOMGs, depending on their political persuasions, over the latest poll from CBS News/New York Times which shows Romney with “a slight edge” of 46—43 over Obama among registered voters:

Washington Post: Both establishment and tea party could lose in Nebraska
Datechguy / Datechguy’s Blog: Demoralized as Hell: Et Tu CBS/NYT poll?
Steve M. / No More Mister Nice Blog: IS ROMNEY GOING TO WIN THIS THING? I STILL DOUBT IT, BUT…
ZIP / Weasel Zippers: New CBS/NYT Poll Finds One In Four Voters Less Likely To Vote For Obama After Gay Marriage Endorsement…
Maggie Haberman / Politico: Romney leads Obama 46- 43 in new NYT/CBS poll
Allahpundit / Hot Air: NYT/CBS poll: Romney 46, Obama 43
Joe Gandelman / The Moderate Voice: CBS News/New York Times Poll: Romney Takes Slight Lead Over Obama
Katrina Trinko / National Review: Poll: Romney’s Pulling Ahead

It should go without saying (and I certainly don’t want to end up having to point this out every frikkin time people who have their own agendas to shore up or who should know better go apeshit over the next pollster freakout) that one poll in isolation—in particular this far out from election day—indicates very little. Without wishing to totally dampen any motivating angst among Democrats, here’s a few other points that make me less than inclined to panic:

* CBS News itself observes: “Romney’s slight advantage remains within the poll’s margin of error, which is plus or minus four percentage points.”
* For those jumping to draw conclusions about any impact of president Obama’s declaration on marriage equality, or his or Romney’s standing among women or independents or whatever, it also observes: “The error for subgroups is higher.”
* It’s a callback poll, re-polling part of the same sample polled in the last CBS News/NYT poll that no doubt caused heads to explode or jubilation to break out when it was released—read the blurb at the bottom of the article: “This poll was conducted by telephone on May 11-13, 2012 among 615 adults nationwide, including 562 registered voters, who were first interviewed for a CBS News/New York Times Poll conducted April 13-17, 2012.” Aside from the smaller sample size, there’s every possibility that those who bothered to respond to the follow-up call were self-selected to be more exercised about certain issues.

It may or may not be a slight improvement on inspecting entrails or observing the flight paths of geese. Maybe somebody someday should stage a controlled experiment.

More: For those who’re interested, National Journal gets into the weeds to explain some more about this type of poll and some of its shortcomings:

The poll is actually a panel-back survey: Respondents to this poll were originally interviewed in mid-April for the previous CBS News/New York Times poll. In the mid-April survey, Obama and Romney ran dead even, with each candidate earning 46 percent of the vote.

Panel-back surveys are conducted for a number of reasons: Some pollsters occasionally consider it instructive to interview the same universe of people before and after a specific event. In other cases, it is simply cheaper to dial phone numbers behind which pollsters know are voters who are willing to answer public-opinion surveys; in doing so, pollsters avoid many of the nearly four-in-five adults who decline to participate in telephone polls.

But the practice also has drawbacks. Not every respondent to the original poll is available or willing to be interviewed again; indeed, of the 852 registered voters interviewed last month, just 562 were re-interviewed for this survey. Some analysts also believe that the experience of being interviewed previously affects how they view the race, potentially making them more likely to seek out information about politics and the presidential race, though the results of the poll are virtually identical to those of the previous survey.

blackwaterdog is back!

2012-05-14T21:47:22Z

Her blog, if for some reason you don’t have it bookmarked, is here. This is good news. To defeat the Republicans we need, as she says, all hands on deck. Make no mistake. If Willard is elected President this is what he and the rest of the Rethuglicans will do to our country.

And I’m really tired of hearing “lesser of two evils” BS. Obama, whatever ponies he failed to deliver or whether you disagree with some of his actions and policies, is not evil. Or incompetent, ineffective or weak. Willard? I think you could make a real argument for his being a basically evil person. We definitely know he’s a bully, he has no empathy for people not in the 1%, he likes to fire people and he luurrves to strip him some assets out of companies to line his pockets and match his silver spoon.

I honestly do believe the future of our country is hanging in the balance here. Time to roll up the shirtsleeves and GOTV. Take back the House while we’re at it!

Romney vs. Paul Primary Fever Continues

2012-05-14T11:22:20Z

Many have noted that during the earlier stages of the GOP primary campaign, Mitt Romney seemed to be soft-pedaling his attacks on Ron Paul, while Paul’s supporters have been exploiting their grasp of how the primary and caucus system actually works to gather loyal delegates, mainly through the cunning ploy of not going home once the initial voting has taken place. Judging by events at the weekend’s State Republican Conventions in Norman, Oklahoma and Phoenix, Arizona, that uneasy truce is getting a little uneasier.

Allan Stevo of Run Ron Paul alleges:

David Van Risseghem, Rick Santorum’s Oklahoma state coordinator, sent out an e-mail May 9 to Oklahoma Republicans attempting to get them to turnout in opposition to Ron Paul and therefore presumably for Mitt Romney, the only other candidate in the race. The note was apparently sent from an e-mail address owned by the suspended Santorum campaign.

The vitriolic note from the Santorum campaign stated, ”It’s time for all values voters to work together to keep our communities safe for the next generation. Several Ron Paul activists want to legalize recreational drug use, decimate obscenity laws, and sanction prostitution.”
...
The note from Santorum’s campaign is again another sign of a struggling Romney campaign in the face of Paul surging. It now looks like Paul may win as many as 12 states and may even have ardent Paul loyalists outnumbering Romney loyalists at the Republican National Convention – the highest legislative body of the Republican Party.

Mitt Romney believed and the media has reported that after Santorum left the race the rest of the nomination process would be easy for Romney. To the contrary, it’s become evident to many watching that he is unfit as a leader in the GOP as he can’t inspire convention goers – the most dedicated of Republicans – and he has so far failed at uniting the party.

A Romney nomination spells defeat for the Republicans, as it will no doubt leave Paul’s supporters feeling alienated, perhaps even searching for a candidate outside of the GOP.

Van Risseghem foresaw trouble ahead:

In the note, Santorum’s campaign theorized that this weekend’s Oklahoma Republican convention might get nasty: “There will assuredly be a passionate struggle for control of the convention, the national delegation, and the party’s future.”

And so it came to pass. KFOR-TV featured eyewitness reports and cellphone footage of a few altercations between Romney and Paul supporters that descended into fisticuffs which spilled out into the parking lot:

Steve Kornacki at Salon notes that one of Mittens’ seemingly endless supply of hapless surrogate sons, Josh “Buzz Lightyear” Romney—profiled in a number of Utah newspapers as potentially a great asset to his father’s campaign—was heckled and booed at the Arizona convention when he broke the groundrules and tried to use his speech to canvass for his father’s slate of candidates.

Kornacki ponders what this may presage for the GOP National Convention in Tampa, FL later in the year:

Similar behavior by Paul backers in Tampa could spoil what for the Romney campaign is supposed to be a nationally televised infomercial. The problem for Romney and convention organizers is that, short of giving up and letting Ron Paul have the nomination, there’s not much they can do to pacify the Paul-ites.

Under the extreme worst-case scenario for Republicans, Paul supporters end up with a giant share of the delegate slots (a quarter of them, say) and launch a four-day heckle-fast, bitterly resist any effort to quiet them or evict them from the hall – a modern version of the chaos that reigned inside Chicago Stadium at the Democrats’ 1968 convention. In a more optimistic scenario, there’s only limited booing from a handful of delegates, and it rates on the nuisance scale somewhere near the annoying air horns that were a little too audible during Ronald Reagan’s 1980 acceptance speech in Detroit.

I hope the Paulites are stocking up on vuvuzelas. Kornacki and others assume that Ron Paul has some overriding strategy behind all this—presumably including securing a slot in the GOP pantheon for his son Rand—and once having secured whatever it is he wants, will rein in his supporters at the Tampa convention. Looking around the various Ron Paul blogs and forums, that seems a tall order at the moment, and events like those at Norman probably won’t help smooth the way ahead.

More: Benjy Sarlin at TPM describes the weekend’s events with added vim and brio:

Mainstream Republicans afraid Ron Paul’s steady accumulation of delegates will cause chaos at their national convention in Tampa just received a terrifying preview of what a worst-case scenario might look like.

In Oklahoma on Saturday, Paul supporters and Romney supporters reportedly came to blows as the Paul side fell short of electing their slate of delegates amid cries of foul play, including the use of a voice vote instead of a more painstaking roll call to decide the outcome. Speaking at the event, Romney surrogates Tim Pawlenty and the state’s own governor, Mary Fallin, drew jeers.

At the state convention in Arizona, also this weekend, the presumptive nominee’s son, Josh Romney, was booed off the stage by Paul supporters, some of whom derided his father as “the white Obama.”

Heh. Ron claims that disruption at the convention is the last thing he wants and that it’s all about “moving an agenda.” How much sway he’ll have over his whipped-up supporters is another matter:

A spokesman for the Paul campaign did not return requests for comment, but Interviews with pro-Paul activists revealed a number of differing goals, including a total win-or-go-home effort to make Paul the nominee and long-term efforts to make sure the movement is poised for stronger runs in 2016 and beyond.

Kelly Nguyen, 27, a web designer in Georgia, is attending next week’s state convention as a Paul delegate. Nguyen is part of an organized effort by grassroots supporters to claim delegates and national committee members for Paul. High on their list is of goals is ensuring that friendly members are in positions in both the state GOP and RNC to make sure establishment Republicans can’t change the nominating process to prevent similar delegate takeovers in the future.
...
But Nguyen doesn’t believe the Republican convention will be a quiet affair.

“I don’t think it’s going to be smooth,” Nguyen said. “But I think that because of our numbers and because of the writing on the wall, they’re going to have to by default recognize that there are Ron Paul supporters, there are new ideas, there are new bodies coming into the Republican Party.”

Kurt Wallace, a spokesman for the independent grassroots site DailyPaul, which has helped organize supporters for state conventions throughout the race, insisted that the Paul delegates were not part of any larger plan beyond the immediate primary race.

“The goal is to win,” Wallace said. “I don’t think they’re thinking ‘Let’s get in there and disrupt the process and be a thorn in the side of the Republican Party.’ It really is a pure intention to get the man that they support elected.”

What they need at this stage is some sort of catchy acronym that encapsulates their efforts—Paulites Undermining Mitt Abominably? Maybe you can do better.

There’s Something About Romney

2012-05-12T12:07:24Z

The Marquis de Mittens’ former Lt. Governor Kerry Healey went on CNN yesterday to counter charges that her old running mate is a heartless prick. As evidence, she cited his reaction during a GOP debate when a certain goofy bastard could not remember all three of the government agencies he vowed to abolish as president:

In defending Romney as “deeply compassionate” and “unfailingly kind,” she pointed to moments during the GOP primary when Romney was “being attacked from every side.”

“His response was always professional, calm, civil,” she pointed out. “In fact, he even intervened on behalf [of] — to try to help — Gov. Perry when he was stumbling [in attempting to remember a talking point during a debate]. His impulses are very kind impulses and there should be no debate about whether or not Gov. Romney is a bully.”

For some reason, I was reminded of this scene from “There’s Something About Mary:”

Matt Dillon’s character is a lot like Romney, only without the gazillions of dollars. He’s a liar who tries hard to be ingratiating but kind of sucks at it.

[X-posted at Balloon Juice]

Worldwide Parody & Satire Industries Collapse

2012-05-11T16:32:43Z

NEW YORK – May 11, 2012 – Roiled by a lengthy Republican primary that featured sickly-wife dumper Newt Gingrich in the role of family values advocate, prissy uterus invader Rick Santorum as a small government champion and multimillionaire vulture capitalist Mitt Romney shedding Armani suits in favor of mom jeans and “work” shirts as he positioned himself as a regular guy (with a car elevator), the global parody and satire industries utterly collapsed Friday.

The market sector had teetered on the verge of collapse this week following an accusation from ~~thrice-married~~ four-times-married drug addict Rush Limbaugh that President Obama had attacked the institution of marriage by coming out in favor of same-sex unions. But some analysts had thought the sector was positioned for recovery.

Those hopes were dashed early Friday when parody and satire futures were bludgeoned by the publication of an opinion piece by 21-year-old single mom Bristol Palin. The daughter of failed vice-presidential candidate and serial quitter Sarah Palin criticized the president for allowing his daughters to influence marriage equality policy, decried the persecution of conservative Christians and urged the president to direct his children since “dads should lead their family.”

“Parody and satire were already on life support thanks to Rush,” said analyst Seymour Butts of the Under the Bleachers Report. “But when Bristol let loose, even hard-bitten industry veterans who had survived the Nixon and Reagan years threw in the towel.”

Most experts were unable to articulate a scenario under which parody and satire could recover. However, at least one long-term analyst envisioned a resurgence contingent upon a direct asteroid strike on the earth that wipes out all existing life, after which single-cell organisms might once more emerge and evolve to acquire language skills.

[X-posted at Balloon Juice]

Mitt Romney Got Away With It. Probably A Lot.

2012-05-11T04:01:40Z

Jason Horowitz’s WaPo piece revealing young Mitt Romney as a “prankster” whose version of pranking involved on one occasion, walking a visually-impaired teacher into a door and on another, involved physically assaulting another student with scissors in the company of a mob, actually turned the screw for me. My original perception of Romney was “clueless”—I thought he suffered from just a bad case of privileged boobery combined with a mild empathy-impairment. I upgraded my estimate to: “and a gutless coward, too” as the only explanation for his squishy weaseling on the issues not long ago. But that article just made me see a sociopath. That wasn’t the behavior of a dumb kid making mistakes. That was a pattern of preying on the weak and thinking their weakness was amusing. It was intolerance of differences. And I don’t think he learned thing one from his experiences because no one bothered to teach him that it was cruel, or wrong.

From the article:

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

(Snip)

The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall. Friedemann, guilt ridden, made a point of not talking about it with his friend and waited to see what form of discipline would befall Romney at the famously strict institution. Nothing happened.

It’s noted later in the article that Lauber was expelled for smoking. They are very different things, after all. Administering a beating and a haircut at the head of a mob is a very different thing when you are the son of someone very important from smoking while being a victimized kid of someone….probably not quite as important. I think the lesson young Mitt would have really learned is all too clear—

Whether he acknowledges how and what he learned is, of course, not quite a task Mr. Romney is up to.

See, Mitt Romney claims he doesn’t actually remember what took place. But I can’t help but ask, as one of the eyewitnesses to the episode asks, how can that be?

For months, the Romney campaign has been trying to turn away from questions about the candidate’s character and focus on his proposals to improve the economy. On Thursday, his aides struggled to deal with the account, first telling The Washington Post that Mr. Romney had no recollection of it. Mr. Maxwell, however, said he was skeptical that Mr. Romney did not remember something that had haunted all of the other men involved, even years later.

“I would think this would be seared in his memory,” said Mr. Maxwell, who identified himself as an independent who tends to vote Democratic. “Certainly for the other people that were involved, nobody has forgotten.”

I’m not so sure how many times Mitt Romney has ever administered non-consensual tonsorial adjustments or beat-downs to fellow students, but I, too, am pretty sure it would be a thing I’d think about.

Now, I’m just saying, even if it wasn’t sincere, the guy could at least try to fake contrition, a little. But this is Mitt-freaking-Romney. He never learned that he should. His life lessons were kiss-up, punch-down all the way (scathingly brilliant take on this by Pierce, as usual) and in his life, he hardly ever had to take a punch.

Which is why this pure example of weaksauce must be noted: his whining about the story being part of an Obama plot.

Romney was asked by Fox News host Neil Cavuto if the he thought the Obama campaign planted the bullying story, and he answered, “Well, I think you’re going to find, throughout this campaign season, that the president’s team will be doing everything in their power to try and hold up very shiny objects many of them will be with regards to me…”

Every shiny object? The bleached hairs of that lonely, trapped boy falling to the floor, the light glinting off of the scissors and the tears in his eyes at the helpless shame he was suffering from a bully who just didn’t like the looks of him? Shiny like that?

And what does all this tell us about how he thinks of the rest of us poncho-wearing cookie-eaters?

Let’s Do the Time Warp Again

2012-05-10T16:27:05Z

Mrs. Mitt seems like a nice enough person—she comes across as exponentially more human than her husband. Admittedly, that’s a low bar since anyone who seemed less human would be relegated to the cargo hold of a commercial airliner without a notarized document from an anthropologist.

But Mrs. Mitt seems as pleasant as a clueless rich lady could possibly be when she’s trying to sell you an animatronic plutocrat with an anti-99%, anti-woman and anti-gay agenda. Sort of like a defanged Lynne Cheney. So I don’t mean to pick on her. But this passage of a Mothers’ Day op-ed she penned for USA Today struck me as odd:

People often ask me what it was like to raise five boys. I won’t sugarcoat it. There were times I wanted to tear my hair out. I can remember visiting my friends’ houses, seeing their daughters’ manners, the way they helped with the chores. Then I would return home to my boys, hoping only that my house was still intact.

Sweet al dente Flying Spaghetti Monster, is she actually suggesting that daughters are universally better mannered and tidier than boys? I’d disabuse her of that notion by posting a picture of my teenage daughter’s room right now, but that would be invading the kid’s privacy. Trust me, I’d stack that girl’s smart mouth and capacity for generating household-roiling mayhem against all five Little Lord Fontleromneys.

But that’s not all that bugs me about the piece. It illustrates something more broad and disturbing—a weird trapped-in-amber vibe to both Romneys, something that can’t really be explained away as a generational thing. They are about the same age as my parents, and though my parents’ political views differ significantly from the Romneys’ (my dad is way to their right and my mom is way to their left—divorced ages ago, obviously!), you can tell my parents experienced the decades that followed 1959 and took away certain lessons, for good or ill.

The Romneys, not so much. To paraphrase a line from “Field of Dreams,” it seems like they had six helpings of the 1950s and landed in the second decade of the 21st century pretty much unscathed. It will be a weird rolling-back in more ways than one if, FSM forbid, Mittens becomes president.

[X-posted at Balloon Juice]

Romney’s De-evolution Flip Flop Flopsweat

2012-05-10T13:56:18Z

Sometimes wedge issues can give you the mother of all wedgies.

“Well, when these issues were raised in my state of Massachusetts, I indicated my view, which is I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender, and I do not favor civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name,” Romney said during a visit to Fort Lupton. “My view is the domestic partnership benefits, hospital visitation rights, and the like are appropriate but that the others are not.”

Mitt Romney, 2012

I have the same view on marriage that I had when I was governor. I believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman.
...
This is a very tender and sensitive topic as are many social issues, but I have the same views I’ve had since running for office.

Mitt Romney, 2012

To the Members of the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts:

I am writing to thank the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts for the advice and support you have given to me during my campaign for the U.S. Senate and to seek the Club’s formal endorsement of my election. The Log Cabin Club has played a vital role in reinvigorating the Republican Party in Massachusetts and your endorsement is important to me because it will provide further confirmation that my campaign and approach to government is consistent with the values and vision of government we share.

I am pleased to have had an opportunity to talk with you and to meet many of you personally during your September meeting. I learned a great deal from those discussions and the many thoughtful questions you posed. As a result of our discussions and other interactions with gay and lesbian voters across the state, I am more convinced than ever before that as we seek to establish full equality for Americas gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent.

I am not unaware of my opponent’s considerable record in the area of civil rights, or the commitment of Massachusetts voters to the principle of equality for all Americans. For some voters it might be enough for me to simply match my opponent’s record in this area. But I believe we can and must do better. If we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern. My opponent cannot do this. I can and will.

We have discussed a number of important issues such as the Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which I have agreed to co-sponsor, and if possible broaden to include housing and credit, and the bill to create a federal panel to find ways to reduce gay and lesbian youth suicide, which I also support. One issue I want to clarify concerns President Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue” military policy. I believe that the Clinton compromise was a step in the right direction. I am also convinced that it is the first of a number of steps that will ultimately lead to gays and lesbians being able to serve openly and honestly in our nation’s military. That goal will only be reached when preventing discrimination against gays and lesbians is a mainstream concern, which is a goal we share.

As we begin the final phase of this campaign, I need your support more than ever. By working together, we will achieve the goals we share for Massachusetts and our Nation.

Sincerely,

W. Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney, 1994

Still, by his own lights, Mittens is consistent. He’s been straddling this issue his whole political career, managing to piss off both social conservatives and conservative gay rights campaigners. Nowadays, it’s far easier just not to talk about it.

Evolution Accomplished

2012-05-09T19:56:04Z

video platform video management video solutions video player

Well done, Mr. President.

[H/T: ABL at Balloon Juice]

Open Thread

2012-05-09T15:32:37Z

Santorum’s “Endorsement” of Romney

2012-05-08T18:54:16Z

Shorter Santorum:

Well, at least the Obamacare-inspiring heretic isn’t a blah person.

An endorsement via email? Isn’t that like breaking up with someone on Facebook?

Honest to god, I have zero faith in the American people’s sagacity (the dumb motherfuckers almost elected George W. Bush twice!), and the economy will probably still be in the shitter this November, which should doom the president’s reelection chances under normal circumstances.

But these aren’t normal circumstances. Romney is just an awful, horrible, terrible, heinous, unlikable candidate, and I’m not sure “at least he’s not Obama” will be enough to put Mittens over the top, since that line really only resonates with people insane enough to think Santorum, Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann, Cain, et al, aren’t bug-eyed loons and/or booger-eating idiots.

It’s not exactly where I’d hoped we’d be in the summer of 2012, but hell, I’ll take it.

[X-posted at Balloon Juice]

The Surprising Adventures of Baron von Mitthausen

2012-05-08T15:34:11Z

One fun thing about a GOP campaign that’s permanently fixated on the current news cycle in a world where everybody has the attention span of a goldfish is that you can never guess what’s coming next, and when it does, you can’t remember what it was once it’s happened. Or apparently that’s the hope among Baron von Mitthausen’s minions.

The Baron—always a marvelous fabulist—is dialing it up to 12 with his latest tall tale, as Noreen Malone at New York Magazine reports:

Mitt Romney Tries to Cast Memory Spell Over Nation

Mitt Romney, infamous for penning a 2008 New York Times anti-bailout op-ed entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” declared yesterday in an interview conducted at a Cleveland auto-parts-maker that, in fact, he deserves a great deal of credit for saving the auto industry, and that President Obama had in fact followed his lead, per the Associated Press.

“I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy, and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet,” said Bloomfield Hills’ native son. “So, I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back.”
...
The new Romney campaign trail feint arrives concurrently with a new ad from the Obama camp, “Go,” in which the president reminds voters of the darkest days of 2008–09, and how Obama handled things like, oh, for instance, the auto bailout with aplomb.

The new Obama ad also echoes a newish Joe Biden catchphrase: Osama Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive. Romney already went after the first half of the slogan with his recent criticisms of Obama’s decision to use the Bin Laden raid as a campaign talking point and by saying it wasn’t exactly a tough call to make (despite his own stance at the time on the wisdom of the operation); now, it seems, he’s trying to deflate the auto-industry half as well — again, despite his own stance at the time on the wisdom of the operation.

Yup, here was the Baron in black and white back in 2008:

Let Detroit go bankrupt
If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for on Tuesday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

He doubled down on that op-ed even after GM had been granted federal aid:

Romney also spoke out on his opposition to the government loaning money to the industry in 2009, placing some of the blame on Bush.

“Bailout of enterprises that are in trouble, that’s not the right way to go,” Romney told CNN’s Larry King in 2009. “I know President Bush started it with the auto industry. I thought it was a mistake.”

Steve Benen’s been following von Mitthausen’s drive to plumb new depths of truthiness for a while now, but even he’s gobsmacked by the audacity of this latest fable. As he observes:

Indeed, at the time, Romney called the administration’s plan “tragic” and “a very sad circumstance for this country.” He wrote another piece in which he said Obama’s plan “would make GM the living dead.”

We now know that Obama was right and Romney was wrong. We now also know that Romney wants “a lot of credit” for the same Obama policy the Republican said wouldn’t work.

Following up on a piece from last week, Romney can condemn the Obama administration’s policy or it can take credit for the Obama administration’s policy, but he can’t do both.

Romney has said, publicly and repeatedly, that he opposed Obama’s industry rescue plan—the one he now wants credit for. The former governor has said repeatedly that GM and Chrysler should rely on private funding to restructure and get back on their feet.

Of course, in early 2009, the credit markets were frozen and there was no private funding available. (When a company called Bain Capital was approached, it refused to invest.) How does Romney reconcile his demands with reality? For the last three years, he hasn’t even tried to explain the contradiction. In fact, he’d prefer if we just overlook the details altogether.

I’ve shone up my crystal ball, and revelations we can expect from the Baron von Mitthausen camp any day now include the twist that it was the Baron who personally decided to storm Osama Bin Laden’s compound with a platoon of mercenaries, led the raid, shot Bin Laden, dumped his body at sea, then didn’t boast about it at the time because he’s a modest sort, unlike that likeable but incompetent braggart Obama. You may have your own crystal balls, in which case we can maybe pool our efforts and explore what Baron von Mitthausen’s next surprising adventures will be. If so, have at it.

Romney Hears A Wha—?

2012-05-08T04:00:01Z

This audience member in Ohio asked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney a question about restoring the Constitutional balance of the branches of government, but not before accusing President Obama of treason and “acting outside of the structure of the Constitution”. She wasn’t specific about what she found treasonous in President Obama’s execution of his office, but without missing a beat, Romney gave an answer regarding the awesomeness of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and some right wing boilerplate complaint about Obama’s statement that the Supreme Court finding the ACA unconstitutional would be unprecedented. (Really? Is another Harvard Law school graduate actually going to accuse Obama of not understanding the process of judicial review, when he was talking about the historical precedents in favor of the commerce clause? Actually, that kind of got to me more than blowing off the treason charge did.)

But, wait—what about that claim of treason? Didn’t Mitt find anything a little weird about that?

Well—no! She did get a little applause for it, after all. These days, I don’t think that sounds too weird to Republicans anymore. He’s been compared to Hitler and to Chamberlain. The Republicans are just looking for an angle to impeach him over, so, what the hell, why not accuse him of treason? After all, the candidate himself has accused Obama of apologizing for America all over the world (and would he be so good as to tell us where those speeches were so we can queue’em up on YouTube? Oh, that’s right, it’s a damn lie.) By saying she wanted to see Obama on trial for treason. she was just saying “hello”. It’s not that Obama has to be guilty of treason, after all.

She’d just like to see him on trial for it, is all. Then watch the sentence and the execution thereof. Nothing to see here—just a Republican who wants a Democratic president facing a firing squad. And candidate Romney understands. So he gave a standard reply: Constitution, good. Declaration of Independence good. Obama, dumber than wet paint.

Now, he does develop a sense of endangered rep when called on it later by journos. But in the moment? Why would it sound funky at all? Of course Obama is guilty of treason. He’s in Mitt Romney’s way.

I’d say it was another episode of Profiles in Something Other Than Courage for Mitt, but if I have to cluck every time he plays the coward I’ll be thinking I’m a chicken before all this is over. And he wasn’t being a coward right there, exactly. He was just being a Republican.

BLR Does Mitt Romney

2012-05-07T20:36:06Z

The Bad Lip Reading folks perform their renowned schtick on Mitt Romney and make it sound like he’s spouting awkward, socially inept, mendacious nonsense.

EDIT: Oops. Sorry. That was Mitt himself speaking. Here’s the BLR version:

Adieu, Sarko. No, I don’t mean au revoir ...

2012-05-07T14:42:01Z

It’s been fun watching the RW blogs’ reaction to the election of the *ZOMG!!!! SOCIALIST!!!!* François Hollande to the French presidency—and in particular the startling revelation that President Obama has reached out in cordial terms and invited President Hollande—did I mention he’s a SOCIALIST!!!!?—to the White House for a bilateral meeting later in the month.

I’m glad to see the back of Sarkozy. It’s not politics, it’s personal. I nearly got arrested in 2007 because of him. Ms. YAFB and I were on holiday in southwest France during the election that saw him take power. This had a couple of drawbacks, as we discovered that the French take their politics seriously, and on the final election weekend, pretty much every shop in the local towns was closed for the duration. Visiting Pau to stock up with some provisions, we made the best of it by going our own ways to explore the old town, planning to meet up in one of the few open cafes later on.

Mooching around the near-deserted streets, I noticed this closed campaign headquarters for the Royal campaign, the sense of desolation of the morning after an unsuccessful bid heightened by the fact that some thoughtful soul had flung a sizeable rock through the window.

I was quite taken with the poster in the background inside, reading “Stop Violence” (which, as any phrasebook will tell you, translates into English as “Stop Violence”), juxtaposed with the smashed glass, so after reaching the endstops of what seemed worth exploring on the streets, on my way back I stopped to take a few photos. I’d have framed the shot a bit better, but I was just positioning myself to find an angle from which the jagged edges of the pane would show up in the sunlight when a woman clutching a phone to her ear darted out of the door and lunged towards me.

I backed off in surprise, but she grabbed my arm and snapped “Restez là!” in between jabbering excitedly to whoever she was talking to (probably Interpol). Once she’d finished and been joined by another guy from inside the office, we conversed as best we could. In my rusty French, I did my utmost to explain that I was just a holidaymaker from Scotland, the auld alliance and all that, the window had been broken when I first saw it half an hour or so earlier, honest, guv, no I hadn’t seen who’d done it, I was disappointed that Mme. Royal hadn’t won (well, truth be told, I was more disappointed that Sarkozy had), and yes, I’d gladly give them my details if the police needed to get in touch with me during their investigations. While her comrade went to fetch a pen and paper, I tried to explain the composition of the photo I was trying to take—I believe the word ironique may have cropped up. Either my French was convincing or so awful that they decided to give up, because they finally let me go on my way.

As for what it means in terms of European politics, well, after the drubbing the Tories took in our council elections last week, we’re all socialists now, hence we’re quite comfortable with our new neighbors, so I’m sure we’ll all live happily ever after.

Use this as the Thank God It’s Monday morning open thread if you want.