The new Pope Francis from Venezuela is considered a "man of the people" who said the other day he wants a "Poor Church to Feed the Poor." And he is trying harder than any Pope within living memory to prove that early in his Papacy.
Pope Francis ditches bullet-proof "pope mobile" for open Jeep and frequent stops to embrace Easter week crowds. @thenation @hardball
The square overflowed with some 250,000 pilgrims, tourists and Romans eager to join the new pope at the start of solemn Holy Week ceremonies, which lead up to Easter, Christianity's most important day.
. . . Francis even climbed down from the vehicle, kissed a woman in the crowd and chatted briefly with her, and another man in the crowd leaned over a barrier to squeeze the pontiff on a shoulder — an unheard of familiarity in the previous pontificate of the reserved Benedict XVI.
. . . Francis said Jesus "awakened so many hopes in the heart, above all among humble, simple, poor, forgotten people, those who don't matter in the eyes of the world."
Francis then told an off-the-cuff story from his childhood in Argentina. "My grandmother used to say, 'children, burial shrouds don't have' pockets'" the pope said, in a variation of "you can't take it with you."
So lately I've been thinking about Joan Osborne's hit "What if God was One of Us?" When the song came out many people thought it was somehow sacrilegious, but I never understood that criticism. She is asking age-old questions about faith and belief that all real Christians consider. She sings about Jesus being a human, which according to scripture he was, which is the whole point of the New Testament and all his sermons. Jesus experienced human life and let his disciples ask him questions. He was a man of the people and went out amongst the sinners. He didn't shun the poor, the unwell, or the prostitutes (which the GOP would call "sluts"). He led by example. He never said a single thing about hating gay people, or black people, or anyone with a different religion. Yes, the Church has unfortunately had leaders who felt that way over the centuries, but that is not the message of Jesus or a reason to hate all Christians.
Gandhi said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
Exactly. Many so-called Christians have forgotten the actual teachings of Christ, just as many denominations that consider themselves Protestant have drifted away from the simplicity of Martin Luther. Some churches have became more and more ostentatious and outrageous as they try to out-do the churches down the street instead of using their tithes to help the indigent and feed poor children. Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the Temple, and I think he would have the same reaction to all the politics in the church today. For instance, the Tea Partiers are so focused on what they think is "right" about abortion and the unborn that they want to sacrifice those who have been born, who are already existing and need our help: the elderly, the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden.
Many so-called Christians have spent the last ten years preparing for Armageddon, or the Rapture, or the Mayan Apocalypse. And because they consider themselves to be "The Chosen" because of which church they followed, they became so self-absorbed with either death or survival that they just didn't care about anyone else. That is not what the church teaches at all.
They even made fun of it on the Simpsons several times: once in "Bart's Comet", when Ned Flanders builds a Bunker just large enough to save his family and his neighbors, but then the whole town shows up; and in Thank God It's Doomsday in which Homer is scared by the Left Behind movies and believes the Rapture is coming soon, but discovers he isn't much of a Prophet after all. Unfortunately for modern Christianity, Homer-as-Everyman isn't far from reality. And throughout history the church has dealt with "false prophets." An aunt of mine who recently died said people would frighten children with the same stories back in the 1920s, and my Grandmother told me years ago that Haley's Comet caused the same fear at the turn of the century. Human nature just doesn't change very much.
But I still think it's much more sacrilegious to pretend to be a Catholic, Protestant, Jew - whatever - and ask "What would Ayn Rand do?" Or even worse, "What would Grover Norquist do?" Ugh. The GOP cynicism they spout while expecting us to believe they are devoutly religious has nothing to do with God or Jesus. They are NOT "one of us," nor do they care anything about the slobs on the bus. Christianity did not "create" the Congress we have right now, but I'm happy to say the elections last year when the "people" spoke are a good first step in getting the hypocrite Pharisees out of our government.
You can't make this stuff up. With the whole world watching, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) guzzled his way to infamy last night as he stopped in the middle of the GOP response to the State of the Union to reach off-camera and grab a bottle of water.
.
While the whole thing is absurd and may seem petty, this was Rubio's big chance to show he is Presidential enough to get the nomination from his party in 2016. And yet all anyone will remember is his dry mouth and overwhelming thirst. He apparently forgot about Bobby Jindal's weak response to the 2009 SOTU, Paul Ryan guzzling water during the Veep Debate, and the Mitt Romney parody on SNL showing him guzzling plain white milk to drown his sorrows. Now Rubio has joined the group of sweaty politicians who look nervous on camera and who need more libation than the average guy. Not a good place to be.
It's amazing how many people discuss John Boehner's tears on the internet. Love him or hate him, his crying jags are definitely fascinating. He even cried on the first day of Congress, blowing his nose into a very large handkerchief that he probably buys in bulk.
And I'm not judging him, since I've been known to cry over episodes of The Waltons, or children's birthday parties, or even on the Fourth of July. Certain movies are guaranteed to make me tear up - just put in Tender Mercies or Out of Africa and there I go again. Play certain songs and I get absolutely weepy.
I always wonder if Boehner gets emotional at times because he feels privileged to be there, considering he had a rather tough childhood. Or perhaps he is just overwhelmed with the responsibility and the byzantine politics, and can't control himself. I think it's a little of both, but who knows? Some say he just drinks too much, but I don't hold that against him either.
What it tells me is that in spite of his bluster and his confused stance on many issues, somewhere in there is a human being with a heart. I can't imagine Paul Ryan or Eric Cantor EVER crying in public, or really crying at all - they are cold fish compared to Boehner.
Crying in public - I can't take it! Somebody needs to say this: I don't get the crying in public all the time. And I like John Boehner but this is ridiculous. If anything we ought to be crying because America's on the brink of bankruptcy. That's something to cry about.
Does it really surprise anyone that a scumbag like Hannity would be puzzled by an emotional display?
And maybe that's why Boehner cries so much: he is trapped in the craziest party in history with a bunch of sociopaths who lack basic empathy and show him no respect. David Axelrod called the Tea Party Caucus "John Boehner's Unruly Children," and I think that's the perfect characterization. A Speaker of the House is supposed to be a figurehead and a mentor to the others in his or her party. The trouble is, the GOP members of the House not only don't love him - they don't even like him.
And maybe that's why President Obama keeps trying to deal with him, since the Democrats are often quick to dismiss him as a failed President, too, even when he gets Congress to vote for his bills with good things for everyone. Nothing is ever enough for extremists in either party, so I think that's their real common ground.
But Boehner is no Obama, and the Speakership is probably the only power he will ever have. I'm sure that sometimes Boehner wishes he could run down the hall and jump out the window like the Cowardly Lion, but he tries to pull himself together and blunders on, which seems pretty brave.
I wouldn't trade places with him for all the money in the world.
There are some unforgettable sights of Election 2012, and I'm not even sure this list is complete or can do justice to what is here. But these are images burned into our minds and retinas forever.
Callista sat directly in front of me during our CafeMom Coffee Break with Newt Gingrich a few weeks ago, and I kept sneaking peeks at her hair throughout the event. Under the lights, it practically glowed. She looked like some sort of fussy, retro angel.
I'm just dying to touch that hair!
~ Lindsay Ferrier on The Stir
I Almost Got Callista Gingrich's Hair
. . . The color alone took three hours to achieve. Three hours of bleach and gloss and glaze and goop and my head being knocked about left and right. The gloss (or maybe it was the glaze?) burned my scalp; when I mentioned this, Pejman looked right at me and said, “Beauty tingles.” Holly Allen on Salon
Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family’s hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon’s roof rack. He’d built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.
As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ”Dad!” he yelled. ”Gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.
As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.
~ Time Swampland, quoting the original Boston Globe story
Among those who professed shock at the story was Fox News host Chris Wallace. "I have a yellow lab named Winston. I would no sooner put him in a kennel on the roof of my car than I would one of my children. Question: What were you thinking?" Wallace asked the former governor.
Replied Romney with a nervous laugh, "This is a completely airtight kennel, mounted on the top of our car. He climbed up there regularly, enjoyed himself, he was in a kennel at home a great deal of the time as well. We loved the dog, it was where he was comfortable and we had five kids inside the car and my guess is he liked it a lot better in his kennel than he would have liked it inside."
~ Reported by NPR
HOST on CNN: Is there a concern that Santorum and Gingrich might force the governor to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election? Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney Advisor: Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again.
~ Think Progress
What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex -- what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.
. . . So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.
~ Rush Limbaugh talking about Sandra Fluke
I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God, and I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.
~ Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock, R-Indiana (lost)
The firm today has at least 138 funds organized in the Cayman Islands, and Romney himself has personal interests in at least 12, worth as much as $30 million, hidden behind controversial confidentiality disclaimers. Again, the Romney campaign insists he saves no tax by using them, but there is no way to check this.
~ Vanity Fair
Today we’re learning more about Mitt Romney’s bets against America. Vanity Fair’s raising important questions about Romney’s offshore accounts in foreign tax havens, including his mysterious corporation in Bermuda, his funds in the Cayman Islands, and the Swiss bank account he opened. The question is, why? Was he avoiding paying his fair share of U.S. taxes? Was he hedging against the dollar? Until he releases his tax returns from that period, Americans will never know. This raises serious questions. If he has nothing to hide, why doesn’t he just release his tax returns?
~ Obama Spokesman Ben LaBolt
BREAKING: In latest unscripted gaffe, Romney pledges to be a President for all "offshore tax havens" abcnews.go.com/Blotter/romney…
— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) August 29, 2012
BREAKING: Tagg Romney says I wanted to be First Horse less than any horse he's ever met. #NoFHOTUS
— Rafalca Romney (@RafalcaRomney) December 24, 2012
As a living, breathing, clippety-cloppeting, velvet-nosed and liquid-eyed avatar of Romney’s extreme wealth, she’s given her uncle Mitt the kind of handicap his advisers fear might make his path to the White House heavy going. That may be why the Republican presidential hopeful betrays scant interest in his wife’s four-legged protégé.
During Romney’s accident-prone sojourn in London in late July, he told NBC‘s Brian Williams that he didn’t even know when Rafalca would be appearing at the Games — “I have to tell you,” he said, “this is Ann’s sport.”
~ Time Magazine
Obama is going to need all the help he can get because Romney is surging, thanks in part to his new secret weapon. Long time viewers know that every year I declare a sport of the summer. Last year it was the elegant art of canoe dancing....Last week I declared that this year's sport of the summer will be Dressage, or "Horse Ballet."
. . . The Romneys are the proud owners of a German Oldenburg mare named Rafalca. There is no better way to dispel the myth that Romney is a detached patrician elite than competitive horse prancing. I mean, it's basically Nascar in a velvet top hat.
~ Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central
~~~~~~~~~~~~
8. The Romney Shambles
Americans: This Mitt person is some sort of American Borat, right? #romneyshambles
Romney could not have played more into the image of the callow American if he’d showed up at Buckingham Palace in Dockers. In his honor, the nation even resurrected a little-used epithet, “wazzock,” which refers to, as John Cassidy wrote, “a hapless idiot who blunders around saying or doing things he or she shouldn’t” (or, literally, a bull’s penis). This weekend, the BBC reported that, according to Harvey Weinstein, David Cameron, the Tory Prime Minister, has told people that Romney’s graceless performance has won him “the unique distinction of uniting all of England against him with his various remarks.”
~ Lauren Collins on The New Yorker
Who is this klutz, this clodhopper, this lawn sprinkler of national insult? Well, he`s Mitt Romney. Remember him, the guy who promised to restore and upgrade the special relationship with Great Britain and has instead barfed on the Buckingham Palace lawn?
~ Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball
— Path2Enlightenment (@Path2Enlighten) July 27, 2012
Is there anything about Romney's Rolling Ruckus that would inspire confidence in his ability to lead US foreign policy?apne.ws/Qrc0J0
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) July 30, 2012
We've given all you people need to know and understand about our financial situation and about how we live our life. . .
~ Ann Romney to Robin Roberts on ABC News
. . . The other thing they have to understand is that Mitt is honest, his integrity is just golden. We pay our taxes, we are absolutely . . . beyond paying our taxes we also give 10% of our income to charity, so we have no issues that way.
The only reason we don't disclose anymore is, you know, we just become a bigger target.
~ NBC Interview with Natalie Morales
This is hard and, you know, it's an important thing that we're doing right now and it's an important election and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt's qualifications and experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.
~ Ann on Radio Iowa
Ann Romney has a hard life-she manages 4 homes, multiple maids, nannies + sometimes a broken car elevator. #Youpeople should leave her alone
— DC Debbie (@DCdebbie) July 19, 2012
~~~~~~~~~~~~
10. Birtherism
My investigators believe that the long-form birth certificate was manufactured electronically and that it did not originate in a paper format as claimed by the White House.
~ Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona via LA Times
He said he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia… Now they’re saying it was a mistake. Just like his Kenyan grandmother said he was born in Kenya, and she pointed down the road to the hospital, and after people started screaming at her she said, ‘Oh, I mean Hawaii.’ Give me a break.”
~ Donald Trump on Daily Beast
Speaking about his Michigan roots, he said, "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised." The joke was received with hearty applause by the audience. . . .
~ Mitt Romney Speaking in Michigan, via Huff Post
FACT: By FULLY embracing Donald Trump, Romney is legitimizing his insane birther conspiracy theories thkpr.gs/JqrubZ
— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) May 24, 2012
HH: Are you still running?
PR: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or yes.
HH: But you did run marathons at some point?
PR: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.
HH: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?
PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.
HH: Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…
PR: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.
~ Paul Ryan Radio Interview with Hugh Hewitt as he lies about his Marathon Time
Runner's World checked 11 years of results for Grandma's Marathon, from 1988 through 1998, and found a finisher in the 1990 race by the name of Paul D. Ryan, 20, of Minneapolis.
Ryan's middle name is Davis, and he was 20 in 1990. The finishing time listed was 4 hours, 1 minute and 25 seconds.
~ Research by Runner's World Magazine proving that Ryan was Lying
On Paul Ryan's Republican National Convention Speech: "Three Words: Dazzling, Deceiving, Distracting"
. . . to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.
~ Sally Kohn on Fox News
~~~~~~~~~~~~
12. Clint Eastwood Talks to an Empty Chair
If Clint Eastwood insisted on talking to an inanimate object he could've just chatted with Mitt Romney. #RNC2012
— daddyfiles (@DaddyFiles) August 31, 2012
I don't . . . I don't . . . I don't know . . . Clint Eastwood is 82 years old. And I don't know if that's what was going on there . . . That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen at a political convention in my entire life, and it will be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen if I live to be one hundred.”
~ Rachel Maddow on MSNBC
I could never wrap my head around why the world and the President that Republicans describe bears so little resemblance to the world and the President that I experience. And now I know why.
There is a President Obama that only Republicans can see.
~ Jon Stewart on The Daily Show
Here was Romney raw and unplugged—sort of unscripted. With this crowd of fellow millionaires, he apparently felt free to utter what he really believes and would never dare say out in the open. He displayed a high degree of disgust for nearly half of his fellow citizens, lumping all Obama voters into a mass of shiftless moochers who don't contribute much, if anything, to society, and he indicated that he viewed the election as a battle between strivers (such as himself and the donors before him) and parasitic free-riders who lack character, fortitude, and initiative.
~ Journalist David Corn, who leaked the 47% video with the help of the Anonymous filmmaker and James Carter IV, grandson of President Jimmy Carter
All of us make mistakes. . . . What people want to know, though, is you're not writing off a big chunk of the country because the way our democracy works.
This is a big country. And people disagree a lot, but one thing I’ve never tried to do – and I think none of us can do in public office – is suggest that because someone doesn’t agree with me that they’re victims or they’re unpatriotic.
~ President Obama on CBS, The David Letterman Show
Today Mitt Romney Lost the Election
You can mark my prediction now: A secret recording from a closed-door Mitt Romney fundraiser, released today by David Corn at Mother Jones, has killed Mitt Romney's campaign for president.
~ Josh Barro on Bloomberg
What things would I cut from spending? Well, first of all, I will eliminate all programs by this test, if they don't pass it: Is the program so critical it's worth borrowing money from China to pay for it? And if not, I'll get rid of it. Obamacare's on my list. ... I'm sorry, Jim, I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually like you, too. But I'm not going to -- I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. That's number one.
~ Mitt Romney to PBS Moderator Jim Leher during First Presidential Debate
Mitt Romney definitely looked poised and confident. Especially when he looked America in the eyes & threatened to kill Big Bird.
— Benari (@BenariLee) October 4, 2012
And I -- and I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are -- are all men." They said, "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications." And I said, "Well, gosh, can't we -- can't we find some -- some women that are also qualified?"
And -- and so we -- we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.
I went to a number of women's groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women.
~ Mitt Romney During Presidential Debate, via ABC News
The President talked about women as breadwinners for Americans families; Mitt Romney talked about them as resumes in a binder. #TeamBarack
And as the word "binder" left his lips, all comedians burst into tears of tender gratitude. #binder#debate
— Mike Doughty (@Mike_Doughty_) October 17, 2012
Mr. Biden, clearly delighted to come to President Obama’s rescue, relished his role, addressing his opponent as “my friend” but dismissing his arguments as “malarkey.” He laughed at Mr. Ryan’s remarks so often and so heartily that at times he seemed like a guest at a comedy club roast, not a vice president debating the fate of the nation with his opponent.
~ New York Times
It reminded me ... of watching a musk ox run across the tundra with somebody underfoot. And in this case, when it came to style, it was Paul Ryan underfoot....
~ Previoiusly Debated VP Candidate Sarah Palin
You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.
~ Barack Obama During 3rd Debate
When your sense of winning a debate depends on proving that horses and bayonets are still relevant, you've probably lost.
— Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) October 23, 2012
If President Obama wins re-election on Tuesday, the historical memory of the race might turn on the role played by Hurricane Sandy.
Already, some analysts are describing the storm as an “October surprise” that allowed Mr. Obama to regain his footing after stumbling badly in the first presidential debate and struggling to get back on course. Some Republicans seem prepared to blame a potential defeat for Mitt Romney on the storm, and the embrace of Mr. Obama by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and other public officials.
~ Nate Silver on the importance of Hurricane Sandy
The election isn't gonna be moved. It's gonna happen Tuesday. Of course, the opposite theory is, “What the hell is Christie doing? He's giving Obama a chance to look presidential, clean up a state, look competent, look like he cares and so forth. What's a Republican doing propping up Obama?"
~ Rush Limbaugh
Other states getting federal storm relief without kissing Obama's rear.Does Christie not know RINO's are an endangered species?
Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the “Mr. New Castrati” voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program. In fact, Silver could easily be the poster child for the New Castrati in both image and sound. Nate Silver, like most liberal and leftist celebrities and favorites, might be of average intelligence but is surely not the genius he's made out to be. His political analyses are average at best and his projections, at least this year, are extremely biased in favor of the Democrats.
~ Dean Chambers, founder of Unskewed Polls, on Examiner ~ this paragraph has now been edited out of the article
Nate Silver: Patron Saint of Confirmation Bias
. . . When the left wakes up on Wednesday, surveying the electoral wreckage around them, they may regret allowing themselves to be lulled into such a false sense of security.
~ Michael Flynn on Breitbart
This is a bad day for Republican pollsters, and it’s something that they should be held accountable for. You have to tell your clients the truth, and you have to be accurate. And to miss so many states and to be this far off, your Fox News viewers ought to be outraged, because day in and day out they were told that Mitt Romney was going to win, and the fact is Ohio was never up, Wisconsin was never up, Pennsylvania was never up…the published polls were correct. Nate Silver was correct. But the Republican establishment polls were wrong.
~ Republican Pollster Frank Luntz
That happened (the re-election of Barack Obama). That really happened.
We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe versus Wade.
There will be no more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos added to this court.
We're not going to repeal health reform.
Nobody is going to kill Medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get health insurance.
We are not going to do that.
We are not going to give a 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid's insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut.
We'll not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you're on.
We are not going to redefine rape.
We are not going to amend the United States Constitution to stop gay people from getting married.
We are not going to double Guantanamo.
We are not eliminating the department of energy or the department of education or housing at the federal level.
We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military does not want.
We are not scaling back on student loans, because the country's new plan is that you should borrow money from their parents.
We are not vetoing the Dream Act.
We are not self-deporting.
We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt.
We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January.
We are not going to have, as a President, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help, and there was no apology not ever.
We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton.
We are not bringing Dick Cheney back.
We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War.
We are not going to do it.
We had the choice to do that if we wanted to do that as a country, and we said no last night, loudly.
Ohio really did go to President Obama last night.
And he really did win.
And he really was born in Hawaii.
And he really is legitimately President of the United States, again.
And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month.
And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy.
And the polls were not screwed to oversample Democrats.
And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math.
And climate change is real.
And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes.
And evolution is a thing.
And Benghazi was an attack on us, it was not a scandal by us.
And nobody is taking away anyone's guns.
And taxes have not gone up.
And the deficit is dropping, actually.
And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.
And the moon landing was real.
And FEMA is not building concentration camps.
And U.N. election observers are not taking over Texas.
And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as communism.
. . . And the if the Republican party and the conservative movement and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum-sealed door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived as a nation of the constructive debate about competing feasible ideas about real problems.
Last night the Republicans got shellacked, and they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them in realtime, in real humiliating time, not believe it, even as it was happening to them. And unless they are going to secede, they are going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside if they do not want to get shellacked again, and that will be a painful process for them, but it will be good for the whole country, left, right, and center.
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.
For years Republicans have enjoyed pointing out that if Al Gore had won his home state of Tennessee in the presidential election, he wouldn't have needed Florida, and the vote wouldn't have been decided by the Supreme Court in favor of George W. Bush.
Let's ignore the fact that Gore was much more a citizen of Washington D.C. than Nashville, plus the fact the he knew he seemed further to the left than Bill Clinton on most issues so Tennesseans wouldn't vote for him. He never had an illusions of sweeping all areas of the country, and some would say that Gore actually won Florida, but moving on . . .
This year, Obama won not only his birth-state of Hawaii, but his adopted home state of Illinois. Hawaii matters because of the crazy birthers who seem to forget that Hawaii IS a state of the union, but also because it is a diverse state reflecting the demographic changes that are coming for the rest of the country.
Romney lost Michigan, his birthplace, where he bragged no one needed to ask for his birth certificate. He can blame it on his previous statement that "Detroit should go bankrupt," but the fact remains that he made multiple trips to Michigan and named-dropped his father George, who was once Governor of Michigan, yet it did him absolutely no good.
Romney lost Massachusetts where he was governor once back in his "moderate left-leaning" days. Once Romney swung far to the left and began rubbing elbows with Donald Trump and quoting Rush Limbaugh, he was never going to win the Bay State.
Romney lost New Hampshire where he has the "lake house" even though he campaigned hard there and never took it out of his equation to get to 270 electoral votes.
Romney lost California where the cars in his special elevator garage live. But obviously - he was never going to win there in Blue Land.
He did win Utah, where he graduated summa cum laude from Brigham Young University and "saved the Olympics" as they say. But seriously - any Republican on the ticket was going to win Utah, a solidly red state full of Mormons. Did I mention Romney is a Mormon? So yeah, he won Utah.
But his running mate Paul Ryan had even more trouble connecting with the hometown crowd, if that's possible.
Part of Ryan's stump speech for months - and really for all of his career - was "I'm from the small-town of Janesville, Wisconsin, where my family has lived for decades," or something of that nature. He said it in every interview, in every town-hall meeting, in every speech. His wife and kids live in Janesville instead of Washington and I suspect part of that is so his children can grow up there and use it in their own campaign speeches someday.
But on election night, Janesville said "thanks but no thanks" to Paul Ryan. He not only didn't win the town of Janesville, he didn't win the district, or the state of Wisconsin.
Yet in post-election interviews Ryan is blaming the "urban" voters for his loss, which is ridiculous. Janesville isn't "urban" and I assume most of the town is as white as Paul Ryan. He can't accept that he is out of step with his own hometown.
. . . the Romney-Ryan ticket didn’t exactly connect with the voters back in Janesville, either.
A struggling blue-collar manufacturing town of 63,575, Janesville lies on the eastern edge of Rock County, Wis., and unofficial election tabulations from the county clerk there show that only 37% of Ryan’s hometown neighbors voted for him and his running mate. Meanwhile, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden got 62% of the Janesville vote.
The results were even slightly worse for Ryan from his own polling place at the Hedberg Public Library. Out of 1,428 votes cast there, 65% went for Obama-Biden and just 34% for Romney-Ryan.
. . . in Janesville proper, Ryan fared only a little better in his congressional run than he did in the vice presidential one. Zerban grabbed 54% of the Janesville vote to 44% for Ryan. And at the Hedberg library polling spot, Ryan was the choice of just 41% of voters to 58% for Zerban.
Ryan explained it this way, admitting he lost Janesville due to being too far right, but coming back to this "urban" thesis to explain it away (I guess he is talking about Milwawkee?. Whatever - the truth hurts.
"Well, as you know, Janesville is a very Democratic town, but I'm a Republican," Ryan said in an interview with Janesville radio station WCLO. "But I've always done very well here, because more people saw me not as a Republican but just as a Janesville guy."
"When you join a national ticket for a party, you become more seen as a Republican guy than necessarily a Janesville guy," he continued. "So I think my image, or the thought people had in their minds of me once I joined the Republican ticket, was more 'Paul Ryan, Republican,' than 'Paul Ryan, Janesville guy.'"
At 11.5 points, Ryan's congressional victory margin in the state was the smallest of his eight House campaigns.
During the interview, Ryan also admitted that President Barack Obama's reelection team ran a better campaign than the Romney/Ryan folks, chalking the Democrats' win up to their ability to mobilize the "urban" vote.
"What the president and his campaign excelled at doing is mobilizing turnout in their critical base areas, and they expanded the turnout above the norms," he said. "They had record turnout in urban areas and all of our polling did not project that kind of turnout, and that's why we thought we had a very good chance at winning this race going into election day."
“I wish we could have an honest and respectful dialogue about these complicated issues,” Fey said. “But it seems like we can’t right now. And if I have to listen to one more gray-faced man with a two-dollar haircut explain to me what rape is, I’m gonna lose my mind.”
“I watch these guys and I’m like what is happening? Am I a secretary on ‘Mad Men’?” Fey joked.
Fey then tried to summarize Akin’s views on pregnancy and rape, concluding “It’s making me dumber when I say it. But it’s something about the body not being able to get pregnant when it’s under physical stress. Mr. Akin I think you are confusing the phrase ‘legitimate rape’ with the phrase ‘competitive gymnastics.’”
I see many people on Twitter and elsewhere pretending the War on Women is a joke made up by "hysterical" Dems. But there are real things going on in government that are aimed at controlling and limiting women for years to come. No one should close their eyes. No one should think these guys (and some women) in the GOP are kidding around or that they "don't really mean it." They do. This is not a joke.Other politicians take them at their word and we should too.
This is not a game and we Democrats are not "hysterical" if we fight back every way we can.
Need a reminder of what the War on Women is all about?
The jokes from the Biden - Ryan debate almost wrote themselves. Here's the Gregory Brothers Autotune as well as Saturday Night Live's funny spin on the debate.
