The Stupid Legacy of a Lazy Heartless Congress

The Tea Party Republicans are hell-bent on shutting down the government again.

President Obama had harsh words for them over trying to limit the Debt Ceiling once again, calling their actions "extortion" of a sitting President.

Via Time

“You have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt ceiling being used to extort a president or a — a governing party,” Obama told the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs.

Obama said his dispute with House Republicans over a budget for the federal government has also entered uncharted territory, with their demand to link a continuing resolution to postponing the unpopular healthcare law.
“What we now have is a ideological fight that’s been mounted in the House of Representatives that says, we’re not going to pass a budget and we will threaten a government shutdown unless we repeal the Affordable Care Act,” Obama said. “We have not seen this in the past, that a budget is contingent on us eliminating a program that was voted on, passed by both chambers of Congress, ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court, is two weeks from being fully implemented and that helps 30 million people finally get health care coverage — we’ve never seen that become the issue around a budget battle.”

Congress continues their foolish quest to "Repeal Obamacare." This is a Don Quixote-like quest they say is mandated by the voters who sent them to Washington. Unfortunately, those voters don't realize that A) It's never going to happen because the ACA is the law of the land, and B) Members of their own party in the Senate think closing down the government (again) is moronic and a ridiculous waste of time.

Speaker of the House John Boehner is being squeezed between a bunch of rock-heads and a hard place. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called the Tea Party troublemakers "anarchists."

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) vowed Wednesday to push ahead with a bill to defund Obamacare or shut down the government -- an effort that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) panned as an "absurd" ploy inspired by tea party "anarchists."
With Congress facing a Sept. 30 deadline to figure out how to keep paying for the federal government, Boehner said in a Capitol Hill news conference that defunding President Barack Obama's health care reform was a key part of that effort.
"We're going to continue to do everything we can to repeal the president's failed health care law," Boehner said. "This week, the House will pass the CR [continuing resolution] that locks the sequester savings in and defunds Obamacare."
Many mainstream Republicans have repeatedly slammed such an approach as "stupid," and Boehner himself has tried to avoid linking Obamacare to a potential government shutdown.

Congress already has popularity lower than head lice and traffic jams, so why not prove again how stupid they are by voting against the popular Obamacare plan for the 40th - or is it 41st? - Nope 42nd - time?

These are the folks who wasted the past year screaming "Benghazi!!!!" and raking Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice over hot burning coals. Did they "get" Hillary and ruin her chances for a Presidential run? Of course not - Hillary remains as popular as ever. What about Susan Rice? While the GOP kept her from being Ambassador to the UN, they couldn't stop Obama from appointing her as his National Security Adviser, so the joke was on the Tea Party. I'm sure more than a few rather empty heads exploded.

Next, they investigated the IRS, which was supposedly "ordered" by Obama to target the Tea Party groups on their tax-exempt status, but when the dust settled, it turned out that liberal groups got the exact same questionnaires and letters.

So each "BIG" investigation reached a dead end. Feeling frustrated, the usual suspects took up the rallying cries of the anti-Obama Libertarians against the NSA thanks to Edward Snowden's leaks. While emoprog Lefties also jumped on the bandwagon - causing strange bedfellows such as Alan Grayson and Sarah Palin (!), all the nerds on MSNBC haven't managed to drag centrist Democrats along with them. In fact, the only thing to come out of the Snowdenfest is that both far-Left and far-Right are praising Vladimir Putin and giving him credit for diplomacy in Syria over our own peace-loving, Nobel-winning President. This wasn't good for the Dems who need to stay cohesive in the 2014 elections, but especially not good for the Tea Party who readily admit they would rather be on the side of a known ex-KGB dictator than the first African-American President.

History is going to judge the Tea Party in the context that they themselves won't recognize - that right now things are not on the edge of the economic apocalypse they keep predicting. The Stock Market is higher than ever under the Obama Administration, and the Deficit is shrinking. So Obama really fails at being a scary "Socialist." All the draconian measures the Republicans insist are "necessary" merely slow down the economy, and help no one. Economists are not going to leave that out of future studies and books, so the GOP is killing its own legacy.

And this Congress fails America on basic moral grounds as well. This week there was a horrible shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C. by still another mentally ill man who was able to procure weapons and go onto a military base. In spite of the fact that he was known to "hear voices" and had brushes with gun violence in the past, all the screening and background checks failed. 14 people are dead, including the shooter. Flags are flying at half-mast. But this Congress and the Republican Party in general is unlikely to pass any new gun laws. Yeah, fiddle-dee-dee. What's another mass murder to this Congress?

The one bill they might pass - the Farm Bill - cuts $40 billion from the Food Stamp Program - an outrage that has the Obama Admin threatening to Veto the entire mess (Reuters).

In a statement, the White House said lawmakers should instead cut farm and crop insurance subsidies rather than separate millions of people from "one of our nation's strongest defenses against hunger and poverty."
"These cuts would affect a broad array of Americans who are struggling to make ends meet, including working families with children, senior citizens, veterans, and adults who are still looking for work," the White House said.
It was the second time since June that the White House has threatened to veto large cuts in food stamps, the main federal program against hunger.
With Republicans holding a 33-seat advantage in the House, Democrats need to persuade around 20 Republicans to join them to kill the bill. Conversely, Republicans need a party-line vote to prevail. They did that on July 11 roll call to single out food stamps for cuts.

UPDATE: They did it - the heartless GOP Congress cut the Food Stamp Program:

From Washington Post:

Late Thursday, the House of Representatives voted, 217-210, to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly (and popularly) known as food stamps, by $39 billion over the next 10 years, a 5 percent cut relative to current law.

Hello, Legacy, can we talk about hungry children? Can we talk about malnourished families? Meanwhile fat-cat Congressmen like Phil Gingrey (R-GA)and Sean Duffy (R-WI) have the nerve to complain that they don't make enough money. Apparently they don't realize that a salary of $174,000 is many, many times the $15-20,000 a year from minimum wage that many struggle to live on in this country. The disconnect is sad and tragic and infuriating on so many levels.

This Congress will go down in history as the absolute most do-nothing, whiny, incompetent, heartless, and depressing of all time. And stupid.

Senate Gun Bill Fails to Pass, President Obama Fires Back

(Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images)


From Think Progress

The Senate voted down an amendment offered by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) to expand background checks for gun purchases at gun shows and online, in a vote of 54-46. The measure needed 60 votes to be included in the underlining bill. As Vice President Joe Biden called the finally tally, Tucson survivor Patricia Maisch yelled, “Shame on you!” Outside of chamber she said, “They have no soul.”

See Who Voted For and Against the Bill on ProPublica

Obama: "No Coherent Arguments for this. It came down to politics."


From Slate

When the vote came down—54-46, not enough to replace the gun bill with the Manchin-Toomey compromise—an impromptu family of gun control activists was watching from the gallery. The activists looked glum but not surprised; they'd gone into the room aware that the votes weren't there. But before she left, a survivor of the 2011 Tucson killing spree named Patricia Maisch stood up and broke the rules of the Senate.

"Shame on you!" yelled Maisch.


Typically, when someone yells from the gallery, security hustles to bounce the heckler out of the room. Maisch wasn't elbowed out very quickly. Two years ago, she was one of the people who effectively shut down Jared Loughner's rampage. She saw him coming, she lay on the ground, and when Loughner fumbled his reload and was tackled, Maisch snatched away his extra magazine. And no one really ushered her out of the Hill today as she told reporters why she yelled.

"I could not stay still," she said, standing in a scrum of reporters. "They should be ashamed of themselves ... if it had been a yes vote, I wouldn't have said anything. It was spontaneous—but I was prepared to do that."

She gave her info and story a few times before one of the other activists started to usher her out. One reporter asked her what she thought of Sen. Jeff Flake's no vote on the amendment. "Sen. Flake?" she said. "I'm embarrassed. He's a flaky flake."

PEW Poll ~ GOP was Big Loser in Fiscal Cliff Battle

PEW Research has found that a majority of Americans approve of Obama's handling and resolution of the Fiscal Cliff crisis.

That doesn't surprise me. I think that most well-informed people understand that the bitter and vindictive GOP wants Obama to fail and enjoys holding America hostage. But the Tea Party members of Congress have no intention of compromising, and John Boehner cannot control his own caucus.

The poll numbers give me hope that in spite of the scary predictions from the media and doomsayers from both side, Obama will win the next battle over the so-called "Debt Ceiling" as well.

Even Republicans in this Poll saw Obama as the winner, and gave their own Party dreadful marks.

Americans Approve Obama, Disapprove Congress

Overall, 48% approve of how Obama handled the negotiations over the tax legislation, while just 19% approve of the job GOP leaders did hammering out the legislation. While Republicans broadly disapprove of how Obama handled the tax measure (77% disapprove), they give GOP leaders only mixed approval ratings – 40% approve while 45% disapprove.

Just 14% of independents approve of the way Republican leaders handled the fiscal cliff talks while 69% disapprove. Independents are divided over how Obama handled the negotiations (41% approve, 42% disapprove). Democrats overwhelmingly approve of Obama’s handling of the negotiations (81% approve) and disapprove of GOP leaders (79% disapprove).

The House that Boehner Built

"You Built That"
We woke up today to the realization that while the world may have been spared an Apocalypse, Speaker of the House John Boehner actually didn't. In fact, karma went full-Mayan on him last night as the fickle finger of fate socked it to him in the form of his own GOP House members. You can't make this stuff up.

Last night John Boehner took his "Plan B" non-compromise with President Obama to the floor of the House. Rachel Maddow called it a "Republican Wish List." Everyone knew it wouldn't make any difference, since the Senate would never agree to it, and Obama wouldn't sign it because it has nothing to do with the negotiations on the Fiscal Cliff. But hey, it was something, right? It was all in the spirit of NOT going over the Fiscal Cliff on January 1st, which will raise taxes on everyone, including the poorest. So at least they were appearing to work overtime to fix things for the American people, even if misguided and unworkable with the Democrats. They would take a Friday night "purist" vote among Republicans who had signed on earlier in the day, no biggie french fry.

Except that it was. Because at some point, Boehner realized the Tea Party members wouldn't back Plan B after all, and they were pulling the rug out from under him. He was not in control of his people, and after weeks of talks with Obama, and hours of whipping his representatives in the house, the Speaker just didn't have the votes, and he gave up. He just announced he was giving up, and everyone could go home for Christmas, with no way to solve the Fiscal Cliff.

Twitter went nuts, of course, and Democrats and Republicans alike rushed to shame Boehner and House members:
Snark Amendment: Boehner Shambles as Plan B Fails
Snark Amendment: Boehner's Epic Fail in the House

Stunning. Rachel Maddow compared it to the curtain being pulled back on the Great and Powerful Oz, saying the Conservative Movement is "a complete mess." You could also say the Emperor has no Clothes, if Boehner ever did. But then he's dealing with a Tea Party that is run by a group of Mad Hatters.

Now the ball has been tossed back to Obama and Harry Reid in the Senate, and the Republicans have imploded and beclowned themselves again. The problem is, the rest of the country deserves better than the bewildering display last night in the House. They need Republicans to accept the results of the November election and learn to compromise with the sitting President. Once again we are left dangling while the Tea Party takes care of millionaires at the expense of everyone else, including their own constituents. What can stop the madness?

Rumor is the disgraced GOP will return to the House next week after Christmas to try once again to solve this AGAIN before Jan. 1, but don't hold your breath. Happy New Year!

Robert Costa on National Review

Inside the Meltdown
At a quarter to 8 p.m. on Thursday night, House Republicans gathered in the Capitol basement for an urgent, closed-door conference meeting. The scene was hushed and confused. Instead of huddling in a windowless room, members thought they’d spend the evening on the House floor, voting on “Plan B,” Speaker John Boehner’s fiscal-cliff proposal. But as they took their seats and looked at Boehner’s face, the reason for the gathering became clear: The speaker didn’t have the votes. The whipping was over. “Plan B” was dead.
. . . It was Boehner’s tone and body language that caught most Republicans off guard. The speaker looked defeated, unhappy, and exhausted after hours of wrangling. He didn’t want to fight. There was no name-calling. As a devout Roman Catholic, Boehner wanted to pray. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” he told the crowd, according to attendees.
. . . Boehner had spent weeks negotiating with his members and the president. But in this final hour, when he needed Republicans most, he had only a prayer.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Ten Ways Romney/Ryan Helped Obama Win

The Obama Diary has a great post called "Ten Steps to Victory" showcasing the various speeches and debates that helped the President win reelection.

I've been wanting to do something similar, but from the point of view that Romney/Ryan helped Obama win just by being themselves. So here are my top ten ways, and really I could do so many more:

1. Mitt Romney was the most awkward candidate of all time.







2. Romney has a tendency to brag about his status as a super-rich guy which merely alienated him from most Americans. The Obama campaign was able to use this fact in countless ads about Bain and Cayman Islands offshore accounts, and Comedy Central and SNL took up the slack. Romney played right into it by refusing to release his tax returns for more than one year.







3. Romney's World Tour was known by the hashtag "Romneyshambles" on Twitter. Traveling abroad, he managed to tick-off all our allies plus the press corp, whom he kept locked on the bus most of the time. And when they did ask a question, Romney's aide told them to "kiss my a$$." Very un-Presidential. And definitely not worldly-wise.





4. Trust us, we're rich! Ann Romney had a tendency to use the phrase "You People" when talking about the media and people who watch the media - yeah, voters. Her smug condescending comments reminded many of Marie Antoinette saying "Let them eat cake!" reaffirming her husband's 1% status, which certainly didn't help the campaign.





5. Clint Eastwood's Empty Chair Moment upstaged Romney at the RNC. Later it was the only thing anyone could remember.








6. The 47% Video was a bombshell that showed the "Real Romney" at a fundraiser speaking frankly while dismissing half of America as people who were lazy moochers who wouldn't take "personal responsibility" for their lives. It confirmed every bad stereotype associated with Romney and the 1%.








7. Paul Ryan seemed rather sentimental in Florida, talking about his mother and grandmother needing Medicare and Social Security. But then he promised to cut both programs for "anyone under 55," which scared the crap out of middle-aged people everywhere (including me). And why did he think that other mothers and grandmothers would want him to screw over future generations in the name of Ayn Rand? He should have gotten a clue when he was booed by AARP.





8. Romney had the worst campaign team in history, a veritable clown car of ineptitude. From Eric "Etch-A-Sketch" Fehrnstrom to the hapless Andrea Saul who was called a "moron" in a vicious attack by Ann Coulter, they remained consistantly shamble-tastic till the end of the election.





9. Mitt Romney avoided talking about the War on Women or standing up to Rush Limbaugh, although he did slam Planned Parenthood and threatened to "repeal Obamacare." In one of the Presidential debates, Romney was asked about the Lilly Ledbetter Fair-Pay Act, and instead of answering the question Mitt rambled on about needing "binders of women" in order to get them hired. And women said "What???" And Tumblr went crazy with pictures. And Twitter exploded with jokes. And . . . did I mention the whole "binders" thing was a fib?





10. Horses and Bayonets ~ Romney's weak showing in the final Presidential Debate left him open to several zingers from Obama, including the famous lines about "horses and bayonets" and "sink your battleship." Romney had won the first battle in Debate One, but Obama won the "war" with a flourish on this night.

A Cornucopia of Debunking for GOP Theory that Obama Cooked Employment Data

pic by Brian McFadden
The jobless rate today went down to the lowest level since 2009 when Obama was sworn into office. And he gets full credit because the Republicans wouldn't lift a finger in Congress to help American get back to work.

U.S. Jobless Rate Falls to 7.8 percent

The rate declined from 8.1 percent because the number of people who said they were employed soared by 873,000 — an encouraging sign for an economy that’s been struggling to create enough jobs.
The number of unemployed Americans is now 12.1 million, the fewest since January 2009.

. . . The revisions show employers added 146,000 jobs per month from July through September, up from 67,000 in the previous three months.

The 7.8 percent unemployment rate for September matches the rate in January 2009, when Obama took office. In the months after Obama’s inauguration, the rate rose sharply and had topped 8 percent for 43 straight months.
. . . The September employment report may be the last that might sway undecided voters. The October jobs report will be released only four days before Election Day.

This is bad news for Mitt Romney, who wants everyone to believe the economy is in shambles and in need of a business guy like himself to take charge. Mitt would rather compare the U.S. to train wreck economies like Greece and Spain, and insist on cutting programs because we need "austerity." But he can't make that case if more people are going back to work.

So the conservative reaction has been predictable. As with the Poll numbers, they are attacking the messenger and attacking the humbers. The GOP is crying "Conspiracy" again because that's all they have.

From Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric:

Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers
— Jack Welch (@jack_welch) October 5, 2012

Psychological projection much? Jack Welch was once accused of cooking the books for GE and at the time was described as a "modern day robber baron" much like Mitt Romney.

In fact, today all I can think about is Mitt's accountant - now there is a guy who knows how to cook the books.

Conn Carroll of the conservative Washington Examiner tweeted:

I don't think BLS cooked numbers. I think a bunch of Dems lied about getting jobs. That would have same effect.
— Conn Carroll (@conncarroll) October 5, 2012

Here are some others via BuzzFeed

This just proves what a criminal Obama is. He has lied & forced his labor dept to report 7.8% Unemployment with only 114,000 jobs created.
— Fritz Harrod (@bignels2) October 5, 2012

How do 800,000 people leave the work force; 114,000 jobs created and this is touted as good news...? Unemp rate is rigged!
— Barbara Foss (@b_bfoss) October 5, 2012

Another name for the Labor Dept's bogus "7.8 percent" unemployment number -- "Obama's October Surprise." Thanks, Hilda.
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) October 5, 2012

Yeah, sure ~ on the royal orders of Caesar Obama, the lockstep Bureau of Labor Statistics conspired to only call Democratic households to find out if anyone had gotten a job recently, and whoever answered the random phones in those households lied, every single one of them, because they knew Obama needed some good economic news two days after the first debate, which Romney was sure to win. *eyeroll*

Funny, ain't it, that we never heard a claim of statistics fraud when the numbers were bad for the last four years. And now suddenly they are all wrong, and everyone is shooting wildly at the humbers.

Matt Yglesias used logic to debunk attacks on the Bureau of Labor Statisticson Slate:

. . . Trustworthy economic data is a very valuable public good that serves as a useful production input for tons of private businesses. It also helps smaller-scale government agencies and nonprofits make smarter decisions. And last but by no means least, precisely because the BLS is credible presidents know that they'd take an enormous political hit if they were seen as manipulating it.

Keith Hall, former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Wall Street Journal that cooking the books is impossible, even the "Chicago Way" as Jack Welch insinuated:

“There’s nothing wrong with the numbers,” said Mr. Hall. “The only issue is the interpretation of the numbers. The numbers are what they are.”

. . . The unemployment rate estimate is derived from a survey of households, which came up with an estimate that 863,000 jobs were added for the month.

But the separate establishment survey from which the official payrolls number is derived reported a more modest seasonally adjusted gain of 114,000 jobs in September. That was below the consensus forecast of 118,000, though the previous two months were revised higher.

. . . “The household survey is much smaller. When you look at something like labor force and employment levels, the uncertainty of those numbers is much larger,” said Mr. Hall. “Within two months, the household survey could show the unemployment rate eking back up.”

Unfortunately, the debunking is coming too late for Republicans who saw "Morning Joe" on MSNBC this morning, when Scarborough spent several minutes muttering "These numbers just don't add up. It doesn't make sense."

Video via Media Matters


He seems to have missed the part about these being "revised numbers." Doh!

Mark Halperin tried to talk him down, also via Media Matters

If you go just based on Twitter right now, and the people I follow who are conservative - they're about to make a huge mistake. They're gonna say BLS numbers are horrible, some people are already saying the numbers are made up to help the president politically. They have to find a way to talk about the economy and why Governor Romney would be better, not to try to - it's exactly what they did with the polls the last two months, to attack the methodology. These numbers are good. They're not only good symbolically, they represent the economy moving in a better direction.

I'm sure we will hear more of this, the last desperate gasp of a dying party.

Fact Checking the Big Bird Debacle ~ Mitt Needs Educational TV

After watching the debate last night and the Big Bird sympathy all over the internet, I realized the problem is that Mitt just doesn't know much about PBS and how it works.

Nearly every show has a corporate sponsor all ready, from children's shows to Masterpiece Theater, and guess what - they always have! So his new "plan" to defund PBS and make it commercial is redundant and stupid. Same thing with sister channel "Create" - they don't need advertisements because they get sponsors for the products they use for cooking and crafts, and those are displayed at the beginning of the shows. It's a win-win for the network and for the viewers who watch without commercials.

It's as if Romney just wants to strip PBS and NPR bare the way Bain Capital did all those companies before selling them off piece by piece. He's a scorched-earth kinda guy and he likes to prey on the weakest link - in this case, television that helps children, the elderly, shut-ins, and those who need more education.

What Mitt Romney doesn't understand about everything would fill volumes, but if you are going to attack a beloved childhood icons like Big Bird and Sesame Street, at least know what the hell you are talking about!


CNN Interview with PAULA KERGER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, PBS (via telephone):

Joining us now by phone is Paula Kerger the CEO of PBS. Welcome, Paula.

PAULA KERGER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, PBS (via telephone): Thank you for having me on Carol. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you.

COSTELLO: Oh we're excited to talk to you. I mean -- I mean, the Big Bird moment was funny but there's a serious issue here and that is funding for PBS. Were you surprised that Mitt Romney brought up Big Bird?

KERGER: I was. I mean with the enormous problems facing our country, the fact that we are the focus is just unbelievable to me, particularly given the fact that you know at another part of the debate, both candidates talked about the importance of education. We are America's biggest classroom. We touch children across the country in every home, whether -- whether you have books in your home or computer or not, almost everyone has a television set.

And so we're able to bring kids across the country, not just enjoyable programs but programs that really help them prepare and get ready for school with core curriculum and math and science and literacy. So the fact that we're in this debate, this is not about the budget. It has to be about politics.

COSTELLO: So -- so tell us how much money does Big Bird get from the government?

KERGER: Well, actually, Big Bird doesn't get money from the government. In fact, the money that comes from the government into the corporation for Public Broadcasting actually doesn't even come to PBS. It goes to our member stations.

And so that is actually what's at risk if, in fact, we are defunded because the money is going to stations across the country. In aggregate our money is 15 percent of our budget. But you know when you look at it station by station, there are some stations, particularly in rural parts of the country, that they are a part of the federal budget is 50 percent, 60 percent, 70 percent. Those stations will go off the air. And so for people sitting in communities across the country, that is at risk. That is the consequence if, in fact, our money is zeroed out.

We have been for the 40 years of our history a great public/private partnership and we take the federal money and we leverage that with resources that we -- that we raise.

COSTELLO: I want to talk a little bit about Jim Lehrer. Because there are critics this morning just annihilating his performance last night. What did you think of Jim Lehrer's performance?

KERGER: Well I think you know that it was a very complicated debate structure and so you know and I think that in -- and you saw that I think in the debate last night.

COSTELLO: Well, there was criticism even when Jim Lehrer was initially named to be a moderator. People said oh another old white guy. He's too old to be doing this we live in a new world, we don't need an old-fashioned journalist doing these things any longer.

KERGER: Again, I think it was -- it was a complicated structure for the debate. And -- but, I -- you know again, the fact that we were, you know, singled out early in the debate, to me was just -- it was -- it was stunning. It was just a stunning moment.

Earth to GOP: The Polls are Arithmatic

"Skew" is another interesting phrase the GOP loves to use. Here's the defintion via Online Etymology Dictionary:

skew (v.)    late 15c., from O.N.Fr. eskiuer "shy away from, avoid," O.Fr. eschiver (see eschew). Meaning "depict unfairly" first recorded 1872, on notion of being slanted. Statistical sense dates from 1929. Related: Skewed; skewing. The adjectival meaning "slanting, turned to one side" is recorded from c.1600; noun meaning "slant, deviation" first attested 1680s.

It is ridiculous to imply that "all" the polls are "skewed" except for certain bad polls by biased people like Rasmussen or Karl Rove that show their guy Romney leading. Isn't it more likely that they are the ones who are skewed instead of the 15 other pollsters, some of whom are non-partisan or who take a poll of polls average?

But none of that matters if you are Republican clinging to false hope. They just can't accept that the very likable and inspirational - although African American - President Obama is way ahead in the polls. Because . . . arithmatic.

As of tonight, Nate Silver of 538 Blog is giving Barack Obama an 84% chance - well, let's be scientific and say "83.9%" chance of winning the Presidency.

Mitt Romney has, therefore, only 16.1% chance, no rounding necessary.

That's the mathematical truth, unless you are a Republican in denial.

The polls are what they are - just a statistical snapshot of the country's rejection of goofy-strange Mitt Romney as President of the United States. Simple as that.

But denial is strong in them, like the Force. For instance, here's a stammering and sputtering Karl Rove spinning about how "unscientific" the polls are, but even Bill O'Reilly isn't drinking the kool-aid on Fox News:

O'REILLY: . . . Are these polls dishonest?

ROVE: No. Look, we endow them with a false scientific precision they simply don't have. If you've got nine points more Democrats than Republicans and you're nine points more --
(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: You you're going to have a poll that reflects that.

ROVE: -- yes, nine points more Obama. Think about this. Romney and Obama get each roughly the same percentage of Republicans and Democrats as -- as their opponent. That is to say they carry their -- their base overwhelmingly. Romney, among Independents is winning by three points.

So -- so if Romney is winning the Independents and winning the Republicans do you think in a battle ground state like Florida, he's nine points down and the answer is no....

ROVE: . . . So look, we've got to be careful about, you know, we have a proliferation of these polls. There have been 87 national polls in the last 30 days. That's more polls than were run in the last six months of the 1980 presidential race.


O'REILLY: All right.

ROVE: Last week -- last week alone, we had 51 state level polls; and the week before that, 41.
(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: I understand that but -- but here -- here -- look, from my point of view as a news analyst and I believe that the folks know I'm honest in that regard, when news agencies like the CBS News on the radio report the polling and it shows that Barack Obama has leapt out to a big lead in Florida and Ohio, that gets inside people's minds. They remember that. And that can only help the President. That helps the President.

ROVE: Sure.

O'REILLY: Because the perception is he is going to be the winner.

. . . O'REILLY: All right, real quick, real quick, your board, the Karl Rove board where is the race in Ohio and Florida in your opinion?

ROVE: Well, toss-up in both states.

O'REILLY: Toss-up? It could go either way at this point in history.

ROVE: Sure.

O'REILLY: All right, Mr. Rove. We appreciate that.

Then tonight, we have Wolf Blitzer of CNN taking a stand for a change, although he rolls it back quickly to the "toss-up" idea, via Media Matters:


Transcript from CNN

Ashleigh Banfield: CNN's Wolf Blitzer joining me live from Washington, D.C.

Wolf, the Romney camp and their allies are suggesting that a lot of those so-called mainstream polls are skewed in some way, that they're not accurate. I want to play a short clip from Mr. Romney's political director, Rich Beeson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICH BEESON, POLITICAL DIRECTOR, ROMNEY CAMPAIGN: We trust our internal polls. I don't make any campaign decisions based off what I read in the "Washington Post." So I'm not going to get into the specifics of what our polls say or don't say. I trust our numbers and that's what we're basing our decisions off of.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: But he won't give us those numbers.

So, Wolf, here's how it goes. Every time bad numbers come out, I hear campaigns saying, we don't use those numbers, we use our own. But I never hear that when the numbers are good. Am I wrong?

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST, "THE SITUATION ROOM": You're not wrong, but the fundamental fact of what's going on right now is the numbers in these key battleground states, according to almost all of the reputable national polls out there, show that Obama is ahead in most of these key battleground states. That's obviously disconcerting to a lot of Republicans. Some of them, like Karl Rove, for example, have repeatedly gone out there and suggested that these polls are biased against the Republicans because they're oversampling Democrats, for example, as opposed to Republicans. And as a result, don't trust these polls, they're not reliable. So it's sort of convenient for a lot of these Republicans, like Karl Rove, to go after the NBC poll or the ABC poll or CNN polls.

But what they don't say is that the FOX News polls are showing almost exactly the same thing. FOX has some good polls. For example, their most recent battleground states, Ashleigh, in Ohio and Virginia, show Obama ahead of Romney by seven points. In Florida, the FOX News poll shows the President ahead of Romney by five points. Very similar to all these other so-called mainstream poll numbers. You don't hear them complaining about the FOX News polls. They're complaining about the others, so there is an imbalance there.

If you take a look at all these polls, and we at CNN did a poll of polls, you show -- it clearly shows that the President is ahead slightly in almost all of these key battleground states. And I think that's pretty significant.

BANFIELD: We were just showing Virginia, and now here is Florida, and they're saying exactly what you just said, Wolf. And here is the thing. Yes, we're 40 days out. But early voting -- we started the program talking about the significance of early voting and the volumes of people who do early voting. Which brings me to my next question, regardless of what the Romney camp is saying about their internal polls, is it entirely possible they are seeing these polls that are now, as I said, solidifying with early voters and saying it may be time to spend the money on down-ballot contenders and go for the House and go for the Senate because we've lost those states at this point?

[Blogger Note: Wolf immediately rolls back his comments so as not to offend the GOP. Typical. The truth is never enough.]

BLITZER: Yes, I think it's way too premature to say they've lost those states. It's early. I've seen polls turn around the final 40 days of an election. They certainly can turn around in this election. And let's not forget --
(CROSSTALK)

BANFIELD: But even with the early voting numbers, Wolf?

BLITZER: Even with the early voting numbers. This is not over by any means, Ashleigh. There's three presidential debates, one vice presidential debate. And I remember very vividly -- you probably were too young to remember -- the 1980 race.

Romney Losing in Ohio, Race Tightens in Arizona

This morning Nate Silver on 538 gives Obama an 81.9% chance of winning.

He gives Romney just an 18.1% chance of winning.

His "Nowcast" says that if the election were to be held today, Obama would have a 97.8% chance of winning.

Well, actually the election IS being held today because most states have early voting or absentee voting.

Romney has been on a bus tour of Ohio this week, but they may be pulling their advertising out of Ohio to save money because the push isn't working. When you read about how dreadful the rallies are for Romney in that state, it becomes apparent why it might be a lost cause:

From the New York Times

On Wednesday, the Romney campaign reserved $3.4 million worth of advertising time in eight swing states. Nearly half of that — more than $1.5 million — was for Virginia. The rest was spread across Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin. His total ad spending for the week is more than $10 million.

Ohio isn't listed. Now it could be that SuperPac money will rush in with more advertising, but at some point the Republicans will shift towards the down-ticket races instead.

When you read about some of his rallies in Ohio its pretty clear why enthusiasm is evaporating. Read, for instance, this devastating snapshot from The Atlantic:

In the Columbus suburb of Westerville, Romney began his day in a high-school gymnasium bedecked with a confounding array of slogans. A whirling "debt clock" raced upward from 16 trillion; video monitors read "Victory in Ohio"; a bright-blue banner professed "We Need a Real Recovery"; and a powder-blue banner stated "We Can't Afford Four More Years." The governor, John Kasich, welcomed him to the stage with a whiplash-inducing mixed message: "Ohio's coming back! Our families are going back to work!" he said, extolling the state's fast-improving and better-than-average unemployment rate. And then, quickly turning dour: "But every day I have to face the headwinds from this president."

Romney's native-son celebrity endorser, golf legend Jack Nickalus, then gave an excruciating 10-minute speech. Nicklaus, now 72 and a Florida resident, is nicknamed "The Golden Bear" after his Columbus-area high-school mascot, and the crowd held signs reading "The Golden Bear for Romney-Ryan." Romney told the crowd he believed Nicklaus to be "the greatest athlete of the 20th century," inviting some ridicule from the sports world, and gave a mostly lifeless 20-minute spiel in which he assured voters he would not lower their taxes. [b]"By the way, don't be expecting a huge cut in taxes, because I'm also going to get rid of deductions and exemptions," he said.

Nancy Pelosi was on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow last night hinting that Obama might have a chance in Arizona now, and AP is reporting the Dems may start to advertise there. That would be huge and would give Obama another path to victory.

AP Story

Signaling confidence, Obama's team is considering competing in Arizona.

Obama looked at competing in Arizona in 2008, but decided against it because of the support there for home state Sen. John McCain, the GOP nominee. Obama still won 45 percent of the vote.

This year, Obama's team talked early on about running in Arizona, which offers 11 electoral votes, but it never did. Now, with an internal Democratic poll showing Obama narrowly leading Romney, Obama's team might make a play for the state that has seen a 160,000 increase in voter registrations by Democratic-leaning Hispanics over the past four years.

Buying television time in Phoenix, the state's largest city, is expensive and Obama advisers are closely watching their finances.

That's not to say that competing in Arizona would be all about winning: going up on the air in the state — or sending the president in to campaign there, could force Romney to spend valuable resources defending a state he should be able to count on in the quest to reach 270 Electoral College votes needed for victory.

If any other red states begin to move into blue territory, then it's over for Romney. I think lots of Republicans here in Tennessee are going to vote for Obama, we may actually go 50-50 this time.

Mitt's New Plan: Go See Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber

I think a little more bloodletting and some boar's vomit, and he'll be just fine.
~ Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber

Mitt Romney wants everything to go back to the 1950s when people paid doctor bills with hickory nuts and the poor just fended for themselves.

"Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance. If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care."
~ Mitt Romney in an interview with Scott Pelley of CBS's "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday night

His new Health Care plan is actually a rip-off of a Democrat - Alan Grayson of Florida. Remember what he said?

"If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly."


In fact, it's easy to believe that Mitt has become so retro in his ideas, maybe thanks to High Inquisitor and Rape Expert Paul Ryan, that he wants to go much further back . . . to the Middle Ages.

Joan: Will she be alright?

Theodoric of York: Well, I'll do everything humanly possible. Unfortunately, we barbers aren't gods. You know, medicine is not an exact science, but we are learning all the time. Why, just fifty years ago, they thought a disease like your daughter's was caused by demonic possession or witchcraft. But nowadays we know that Isabelle is suffering from an imbalance of bodily humors, perhaps caused by a toad or a small dwarf living in her stomach.

Hmm, he went to the Todd Akin school of Medicine!

Joan: You charlatan! You killed my daughter, just like you killed most of my other children! Why don't you admit it! You don't know what you're doing!

Theodoric of York: [ steps toward the camera ] Wait a minute. Perhaps she's right. Perhaps I've been wrong to blindly folow the medical traditions and superstitions of past centuries. Maybe we barbers should test these assumptions analytically, through experimentation and a "scientific method". Maybe this scientific method could be extended to other fields of learning: the natural sciences, art, architecture, navigation. Perhaps I could lead the way to a new age, an age of rebirth, a Renaissance! [ thinks for a minute ] Naaaaaahhh!

Mitt's Healthcare Plan ~ Go to the ER

As if we needed any more proof that Mitt is unfit to be President, last night he said on CBS's 60 Minutes that going to the emergency room is the best way to get medical care. Oh, but, you know . . . first have a heart attack from all the years you had untreated high blood pressure without health insurance, and that way you'll get in.

Mitt Romney on 60 Minutes Via Huff Post

Mitt Romney on Sunday suggested that emergency room care suffices as a substitute for the uninsured.

"Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance," he said in an interview with Scott Pelley of CBS's "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday night. "If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care."

Complete Transcripts of Romney and Obama Interviews from CBS News

This also proves that the man knows nothing about how the 47% or the 99% live their lives, with or without insurance. Because guess what - it costs plenty to go to the ER even when you have a good health plan. It is not a safety net. It is not a clinic for the poor. We need both of those, but the ER is not the answer.

And everyone knows that the costs of treating the poor are enough to put most hospitals out of business, so their bills get passed along to everyone else. This especially hurts people in rural areas with 47% populations because hospitals don't want to go there, unless the people are elderly and have Medicare of course, because then they can pay. Oh, wait a minute . . . Romney and Ryan want to get rid of Medicare too.

*silent scream*

I think people should have rallies outside emergency rooms carrying signs that say "Mitt Sent Me."

When I heard about this tonight I actually shook with anger. How callous is he going to be? How low can he go? If he ever had real empathy for people in Massachusetts when he passed Romneycare, has he thrown it all away for a chance to be the darling of the "Screw the Poor" Party? And guess what - most Tea Party members don't want to take Grandma or Junior to the ER either!

Twitter is eviscerating Mitt tonight for that remark, so there's hell to pay:

I bet y'all $10K Mitt Romney has never seen the inside of a large hospital's ER.
— Lisa P. Smith (@lpsrocks) September 24, 2012

Some intrepid reporter needs to ask Mitt Romney if he really believes an ER would treat cancer, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, etc.
— Jason Febery (@JasonFebery) September 24, 2012

So Mitt Romney says people without insurance can get medical care in ER and Clinics. Who pays for that, moron? @mittromney
— Crutnacker (@Crutnacker) September 24, 2012

Thanks to Mitt, kids w/special needs can now get treatment by walking over to the ER. They just need to get hit by a bus on the way #p2 #aca
— Sadistic Statist (@TheXclass) September 24, 2012

By the way, Mitt has etch-a-sketched his previous statements about such treatment:

When asked in a March 2010 interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" whether he believes in universal coverage, Romney said, "Oh, sure."

"Look, it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility, particularly if they are people who have sufficient means to pay their own way," he said.

Mitt "Most Unpopular Candidate in History" but Priebus Denies It

Chuck Todd's Swing State Statistics for September 23, 2012     Wow, back during the spring primaries who would have thought that here in September, the day after the Fall Equinox, there would be such a mutiny within the Republican Party. Back then, we might have expected trouble from Santorum or Newt and their followers, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, or the fervid Ron Paulites. But none of that is the problem right now. Now the Republicans have turned on Mitt Romney - the "good" candidate, the easy candidate, the one everybody thought was a shoe-in - because he turned out to be the "Dud" Candidate.


Huffington Post

After a rocky week that saw plenty of conservatives break away from Mitt Romney, New York Times columnist David Brooks summed up the state of affairs on Sunday.

Brooks was one of several panelists on NBC's "Meet The Press" roundtable, which dove into some data surrounding Romney's popularity.

"Look at his high unfavorable ratings," host David Gregory said. "At 50%. The highest of any candidate running in recent memory. This is an image problem that his philosophical statements in this speech in May to fundraisers only exacerbates."

Brooks did not mince words, calling Romney "the least popular candidate in history."

That quote isn't even the worst from this week! Peggy Noonan wrote on Wall Street Journal said:

. . . The Romney campaign has to get turned around. This week I called it incompetent, but only because I was being polite. I really meant "rolling calamity."
A lot of people weighed in, in I suppose expected ways: "Glad you said this," "Mad you said this." But, some surprises. No one that I know of defended the campaign or argued "you're missing some of its quiet excellence." ...
. . . A campaign is a communal exercise. It isn't about individual entrepreneurs. It's people pitching in together, aiming their high talents at one single objective: victory.
Mitt Romney needs to get his head screwed on right in this area.

Ouch!


Meanwhile, Meanwhile, Reince Priebus, the indomitable RNC chairman, is in a world of denial, vowing that Romney had a good week after all and is just bursting with all kinds of specific plans that he might tell us someday if the campaign goes on long enough. Something like that, LOL.

From ABC This Week with George Stephanopoulos:

I think that we had a good week last week, I think in retrospect, in that we were able to frame up the debate last week in the sense of, what future do we want,” Priebus said this morning on “This Week.”
“I think we can look back at last week as a campaign in a couple months and say, this was the defining week in both campaigns,” Priebus said earlier, “where I think both campaigns are crystallizing around a central theme, which is going to be, what kind of future do we want for our kids and grandkids? What type of America do we want for this country?”
. . . he conceded that last week was not the “best” of the campaign for Romney.
“I think Governor Romney’s been pretty clear, it probably wasn’t the best-said moment in the campaign and probably not the best week in the campaign,” Priebus said.

I'll tell you about specifics. First of all, Mitt Romney talks about, all the time, about reducing the GDP spending from 25 cents on the dollar down to 20, reducing small business taxes from 35 to 25, reducing income taxes across the board by 20 percent.

I mean, for crying out loud, we’ve got Paul Ryan on the ticketAs far as specifics go, we're the only ones talking about how to save Medicare. The president's the one that raided Medicare by $700 billion.

I mean, we've got specifics coming out of our eyeballs.

I'm sorry, maybe its just me, but a man who looks so much like Peter Lorre shouldn't really draw attention to his eyeballs. It forced me to make this with Photobucket's edit tool (hint: Liquify) Heh . . .

Paul Ryan's Speech Boo'd by AARP Crowd

The seniors at the AARP conference in New Orleans certainly had Paul Ryan's number and let him know his "message" wasn't welcome. They weren't born yesterday, after all, and while Ryan may think he can appease the elderly with promises not to cut their benefits "for this generation," everyone in the AARP has children, grandchildren, or other dependents who may be right on the edge of disaster without Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, or Obamacare. These are necessary programs to keep our society from falling into chaos.

So they pretty much told Ryan to take a flying flop to Fluckistan:


From Raw Story

“The first step to a stronger Medicare is to repeal Obamacare,” Ryan said, pausing as the audience in New Orleans booed and shouted, “No!”

“I had a feeling there would be mixed reaction,” the candidate said, but the booing continued. “It weakens Medicare for today’s seniors and puts it at risk for the next generation.”

That, too, was met with audible groans and jeers.

“It funnels $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for a new entitlement that we didn’t even ask for,” Ryan insisted.

“No!” people shouted.

Although Ryan seemed to be unfazed by the heckling, his explanations and assurances never convinced the AARP audience, who continued booing him throughout the remainder of his speech.

Mitt's Money Pit ~ Staff Paid Bonuses for Failed Convention

Mitt Romney is running on the campaign promise: "Trust Me, I'm Rich and Therefore Good with Money." But in reality, he is displaying the same traits in managing his campaign that America despises in the corporate world.

For instance, Romney's allegedly unbeatable war chest looks better on paper than in reality as small donors are drying up for him. Plus, Mitt did the same thing many coporations do when they are on the ropes - giving undeserved bonuses and golden parachutes to top staffers even when their job performance is an epic failure.

Tell me again why anyone should believe this guy could run the country?

Washington Post Story

Richard Beeson, Romney’s national political director, received a $37,500 payment on Aug. 31 in addition to his salary, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission.

In addition, records show at least six other top staffers each received $25,000 bonuses on the same date: campaign manager Matt Rhoades, general counsel Kathryn Biber, policy advisor Lanhee Chen, communications director Gail Gitcho, digital director Zach Moffatt and advisor Gabriel Schoenfeld. Two other employees received $10,000 bonuses.

Politico Reports:

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said the bonuses were related to the former Massachusetts governor’s GOP primary performance.

“These were primary win bonuses pursuant to employment agreements paid after the convention,” Saul said in an email Friday morning.

Convention? Oh, you mean that Convention from which Romney/Ryan received absolutely NO bounce, and which is a laughingstock because Romney's own campaign botched the final hour by allowing actor Clint Eastwood to upstage the candidate with an empty chair?

Yeah, that Convention was really worth thousands of dollars in bonuses for staff that clearly don't know how to run a national compaign. But that scenario is right out of the Wall Street playbook. Pay the top tier of staff even as the Titanic is sinking fast.

Romney ought to pay the mainstream media a bonus, too, for spreading the wild rumor all spring and summer that his campaign fundraising was so much greater than the Democrats that Obama was never going to catch up. Not true. Obama is out-fund-raising the Romney camp, especially in donations under $200, and now Mitt is on a budget!

Excuse me while I sit here and quietly laugh over this one.

From Reuters

The FEC reports portray massive spending by both sides in August, as the campaigns approached their party's nominating conventions and sought to establish themes for the fall campaign.

Obama's campaign was particularly active, raising $84.2 million and spending $83.2 million last month as it continued to emphasize Obama's efforts to improve the economy and cast Romney as a wealthy former private equity executive who is out of touch with the concerns of most Americans.

The president's campaign ended the month with $88.8 million, compared with $50.4 million for Romney's campaign.

. . . in August, Romney's key outside "Super PAC" - Restore Our Future - plowed through $21.2 million as its fundraising declined for the second month, according to FEC disclosures.

That left the group with just $7.4 million in cash on hand, raising questions about how much of an ad-buying force it will be in the home stretch.

. . . Romney himself raised $66.1 million in August, according to FEC filings. But the campaign spent $61.2 million and could not dip into a large chunk of its cash because a provision in U.S. campaign law walled it off until after his official nomination at the Republican convention in Tampa in late August.

In fact, because of the law, Romney wound up stretched for cash at the end of August and had to take out a $20 million loan to make it to the general election period.

Sublime Truth from Rick Santorum: GOP is Party of Stupid

Pic from Whovian on Democratic Underground
In a sublime moment of probably unintentional clarity and funniness, Rick Santorum looked out over the Tea Party crowd at the Values Voter Summit and earnestly called them "stupid" and "uneducated." But that's okay - they don't need those elite brainiacs in their party telling them what to do. According to Santorum that's the job of the church.

Somehow this is both an epic fail and an epic win. Truth is good - hearing a conservative speak the truth, priceless.

We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. 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. So our colleges and universities, they’re not going to be on our side.

The conservative movement will always be – and that’s why we founded Patriot Voices – the basic premise of America and American values will always be sustained through two institutions, the church and the family. (Applause.)

And so economic conservatism - libertarian types can say, oh, well, we don’t want to talk about the social issues. Without the church and the family, there is no conservative movement. There is no basic values in America in force, and there is no future for our country. (Applause.)

So it is our job in this election, it is our job, to go out and make a difference. It is our job to go out and talk to fellow believers. And I don’t mean Christians. I mean fellow believers in the American creed, fellow believers in those basic principles that built our country.

Full Transcript of Santorum's Speech on Politico

Romney Listening to All the Wrong People

source: gifsfln.tumblr

When all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.

When the only advice you get from your party is to "be aggressive" and "attack Obama" and you desperately want them all to like you and to never be criticized for being wimpy, that is what you will do. You will attack Obama in every situation, even if it makes no rational sense, and even if it threatens international peace.

Just a few days ago, Romney was getting loads of armchair advice from frustrated Republicans who are livid because he is crashing and burning in every national poll. But their efforts to light even more of a fire under Romney seems to have lit the fuse to the bomb that is Romney's Libya response. For instance:

He (Romney) should be very aggressive and he should be adamant in his attacks . . . he needs to be severely aggressive.
~ Sarah Palin on Fox, via Last Word

Gotta use those buzzwords. Gotta say "socialist." You gotta do that to get people's attention.
Bill O'Reilly on Fox, via Last Word

The Romney campaign's going to have to make some changes. They're going to have to go ideological! They cannot continue on this 'Obama Mr. Nice Guy' bit. They just can't do it. It isn't going to work.
. . . I'm not saying go out and say Obama's a bad guy. But he's got to be tied to this economy. His policies, his ideas, his ideology. Liberalism is still a dirty word in this country - use it!
Rush Limbaugh on his radio show

Speak Up, Mitt!
. . . It’s not enough to float like a butterfly. You have to sting like a bee. No sting, no victory.
~ William Kristol on the Weekly Standard

I keep going back to the millions and millions of dollars paid to these political consultants.
Election after election, we hire people who have lost previous campaigns; who've run campaigns that have failed; who have message campaigns where the message fell flat, and they keep getting re-hired. I don't understand that. I don't know why those are the people you hire.
. . . you're in this, you have one shot, man. This is going to be the first line of your obituary: you won or you lost. It's all on the line for the country, and it's all on the line for you.
~ Conservative Laura Ingraham on her radio show 9-10-12

Ouch - no candidate wants to see the word "obituary" especially when he is sinking in the polls. That's scary talk.

And finally, this from Jennifer Rubin who wrote a scathing analysis of Romney's 9/11 speech on the same day that the campaign decided to push back on Libya. Rubin told them to "seize the moment" and not put things through the "mushy" "Boston Blender," which is a pointed slap at Romney's closest surrogates from his Massachusetts days, the guys Romney trusts to write his policies and speeches:

On Romney's 9/11 Speech to the National Guard Association
This was a wasted opportunity when he could have shown some mettle. His foreign policy message, not unlike his domestic policy message, is getting put through the Boston blender, it seems, coming out mush. That would be mush with no flavor.
. . . Now is not the time for sweet vignettes; it’s time for him to seize the moment. That requires Romney to sharpen and beef up his message.
~ Jennifer Rubin on Washington Post

"Beef it up" guys, or your foreign policy is "mush." I wonder what Jennifer Rubin will write about today, if she still has a job?

All this free advice is looking strategically WRONG on so many levels now, going against the best interest of the candidate and the party. But perhaps they did all the voters a huge favor by throwing the spotlight on Romney's foreign policy incompetance.

On Tuesday night, the Cairo Embassy issued a statement trying to cool things down surrounding a volatile situation involving an anti-Islamic film made by an Israeli, which said:

"The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others."

That's a rather standard representation of the U.S. position on freedom of religion, right? But because it wasn't anti-Islam in a Moslem country, the stupids came out of the woodwork to condemn it.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus On Twitter:

Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt.Sad and pathetic.

— Reince Priebus (@Reince) September 12, 2012

Sarah Palin on Facebook:

Apparently President Obama can’t see Egypt and Libya from his house. On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks ever perpetrated on America, our embassy in Cairo and our consulate in Benghazi were attacked by violent Islamic mobs. In Cairo, they scaled the walls of our embassy, destroyed our flag, and replaced it with a black Islamic banner. In Benghazi, the armed gunmen set fire to our consulate and killed an American staff member. The Islamic radicals claim that these attacks are in protest to some film criticizing Islam. In response to this, the U.S. embassy in Cairo issued a statement that was so outrageous many of us thought it must be a satire. The embassy actually apologized to the violent mob attacking us, and it even went so far as to chastise those who use free speech to “hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” (Funny, the current administration has no problem hurting the “religious feelings” of Catholics.)

But where is the president’s statement about this? These countries represent his much touted “Arab Spring.” How’s that Arab Spring working out for us now? Have we received an apology yet from our “friends” in the Muslim Brotherhood for the assault on our embassy?

It’s about time our president stood up for America and condemned these Islamic extremists. I realize there must be a lot on his mind these days – what with our economy’s abysmal jobless numbers and Moody’s new warning about yet another downgrade to our nation’s credit rating due to the current administration’s failure to come up with a credible deficit reduction plan. And, of course, he has a busy schedule – with all those rounds of golf, softball interviews with the “Pimp with the Limp,” and fundraising dinners with his corporate cronies. But our nation’s security should be of utmost importance to our Commander-in-chief. America can’t afford any more “leading from behind” in such a dangerous world. We already know that President Obama likes to “speak softly” to our enemies. If he doesn’t have a “big stick” to carry, maybe it’s time for him to grow one.

- Sarah Palin

Clearly, Priebus, the guy who compared women to caterpillars, and Ms. Palin Malaprop are two of the stupidest people EVER to reach a level of eminence in our society.

So why does the Romney Camp follow their lead? I guess we have to assume they are just a confederacy of dunces as well. Because look at Romney's statement from Tuesday night, which echoes Palin and Priebus:
via Washington Post

I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.

And from Romney's Press Conference on Wednesday - this sounds as if Palin wrote it!!!

I also believe the administration was wrong to stand by a statement sympathizing with those who had breached our embassy in Egypt, instead of condemning their actions. It’s never too early for the United States government to condemn attacks on Americans and to defend our values.

The White House distanced itself last night from the statement, saying it wasn’t cleared by Washington. That reflects the mixed signals they’re sending to the world.

The attacks in Libya and Egypt underscore that the world remains a dangerous place and that American leadership is still sorely needed. In the face of this violence, American cannot shrink from the responsibility to lead. American leadership is necessary to ensure that events in the region don’t spin out of control. We cannot hesitate to use our influence in the region to support those who share our values and our interests.

Today Republicans want answers about who is running the show:

From Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell

Who told Mr. Romney to issue a political broadside against the commander-in-chief the day after a U.S. ambassador was murdered?
~ Joe Scarborough of MSNBC

O'Donnell points to Richard Williamson, Romney foreign policy adviser, quoted in The Daily Beast:

When asked if the Romney campaign did the right thing by releasing a statement slamming Barack Obama for a failure of leadership in the wake of a series of brutal attacks on foreign embassies in Libya and Egypt, Richard Williamson paused for several seconds before saying just three words: “It was accurate.”
. . . Pressed further if it was right to issue a political statement before the dust had cleared and the death toll was known, a statement that condemned President Obama but didn’t mourn those lost, Williamson said simply, “Sure.”
“Ty Cobb was the greatest hitter of all time and he batted about .355. And he is still the greatest hitter,” Williamson explained later in the interview. “There isn’t something in my 63 years I couldn’t have done better except con my wife into marrying me.”

O'Donnell calls that "The craziest thing I've ever read from a campaign spokesman . . . it is absolutely nutty." And rightly so. Foreign politics, especially in the Middle East, is not a game, so spare us the lame sports analogies. However, with advice like that, it's easy to see why Romney went to Britain and insulted their Olympic Games.

O'Donnell goes on to presume that Williamson would be fired post haste, but I'm not so sure. Look at Eric Fehrnstrom, hapless "etch-a-sketch" guy who is still running Romney into the ground months later. For a man who "likes to fire people," Mitt is almost too loyal to his inner circle of clownish advisers.

That is also the opinion of Washington correspondent Sam Stein of The Huffington Post who said on the show:

"No, I think he'll stay on the payroll, unfortunately. Unfortunately, it's a bad analogy.

There's an issue here which is Mitt Romney could have conceivably waited twelve hours, woken up, seen the news, and said, 'Listen, we all mourn the loss of life here, but it's time to really look at President Obama's strategy, vis-a-vis the Arab Spring.' And that would have sparked a conversation that may have been more damaging to President Obama than what's transpired currently.

The problem I think Mitt Romney has is that there's about three different factions within the Republican Party with respect to foreign policy. There's the people who are unapologetically pro-international engagement, the Neocons who think you can use military might to shape the world in your image. There are people who want to do it more subtlely, they're more realistic. And then there are the people, the Rand Paul types who want to disengage from the international community. So whenever Mitt Romney wants to put out a statement on Libya, he has to contend with three separate factions within his own party about what that statement is. And I think they look at that and say 'It is a lot easier for us to just go after President Obama on character grounds, accuse him of sympathizing with the protestors,' than it is to craft something that might be a little bit confusing to members of their own party.

And that's where he gets in trouble. . . .

. . . What you had this morning was Mitt Romney's advisers literally tearing down a campaign rally to set up a more somber setting so that he could deliver this statement in a sort of drabby dark Jacksonville office. Whereas Obama, all he does is step out into the Rose Garden and by sheer fact that he's President, he looked Presidential. And you know sometimes we look too much at the optics and the setting, and I think in this case the optics and the settings are a huge part of the story.

. . . There was supposed to be a partisan detente yesterday for 9/11. They knew about the embassy being breached. They planned their statement and they actually lifted the embargo to get ahead of the news cycle. They were very much aware of what they were doing. The statement was signed off by Romney himself according to the New York Times report tonight. They knew what was happening and if it were a gaffe they would have backtracked today. Instead they went back and they said 'No, we stand by that statement in condemning what the Cairo Embassy put out.' So no, this planned from the beginning and they totally miscalculated what would happen once they decided to say that Obama was sympathizing with the protestors.

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