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.

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! 

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:

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]

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]

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.

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]

“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

Well done, Mr. President.

[H/T: ABL at Balloon Juice]