Obama's Worst vs. RMoney's Best

In case you're still thinking about it.

From Divine Irony:

What If Repugs Put Their Money Where Their Mouth Are?

No, of course they don't believe their own bullshit. Because if Mitt Romney really thought the private sector could do a better job of disaster response than FEMA, he wouldn't have collected canned goods.

Mugsy at Crooks and Liars with what he would have done, and why he didn't:

.... Now, being a good Conservative and Wealthy Corporate Executive, you're already on the record as suggesting the possible privatization of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, impressing upon the American people your solemn belief that Private Industry is far better suited to handle such matters than the bureaucracy of Big Government™. So while the President is out looking all "Presidential", don'tcha think NOW would make for the PERFECT opportunity to put your money where your mouth is and show the country that a Corporate Leader can rally Corporate America to step up and do a better job of disaster relief than the Federal government?
Or do you host a bake sale?

Because what Mitt Romney did yesterday/Tuesday hosting a donation drive in Ohio for the Red Cross, was not much more helpful than that... in fact, an ACTUAL "bake sale" might have been MORE helpful since the Red Cross says what they really need right now is money, not provisions that need to be checked, cleaned and distributed... all of which requires manpower they just can't spare in the midst of a crisis.

No, what Gov. Romney SHOULD have been doing in this crisis is call up his fellow corporate titans and organize corporate-sponsored relief efforts, supplying money, services, food & water, and heavy machinery to the cleanup effort. But he didn't. And you know why. Because they'd laugh in his face.

Corporations don't do anything for free unless they think it will make them more money down the road. If they tried to do everything FEMA does every time there's a disaster, they'd go broke in a month.

Romney also suggested in his 2011 debate response [ibid first link] of possibly "turning disaster relief over to the states". More Libertarian nonsense. The ONLY way the country can afford to pay out tens of Billions in Disaster Relief is BECAUSE the entire nation is paying for it with their tax dollars. Taxes paid in California and Nebraska go to pay for Hurricane relief in Florida & Virginia. And taxes paid in Michigan & Texas aid California following an earthquake. To dump the entire cost off on individual states would plunge them into bankruptcy overnight.

Well... maybe not "overnight", Individual states might be able to hang on for at least a few months before going belly up... unlike Corporate America

Covering Up Mitt's Stupidity

Digby wonders what repugs are really trying to do by pimping this Benghazi non-story:

Pat Buchanan responded to Eleanor Clift's similar question by saying they all lied to protect Obama's reputation as a terrorist killer. That's the best explanation I've heard for why the right is pimping this so-called scandal, but it's mighty thin in my opinion. Most of the country doesn't even know where Benghazi is and don't consider a "terrorist attack" there to be particularly relevant to their lives. To think they would vote for Romney on this basis strikes me as a reach.

On the other hand, it is a perfectly magnificent example of their ongoing power to invoke "the smell test" with the political press and create a controversy out of confusion. It's always telling when they can't really tell you what it is they suspect is happening, but it just "looks bad."

SNIP

Clearly, the deaths were a tragedy and an investigation should take place. Americans have a right to know exactly what's going on in Libya. But obsessing over what the administration said in the first days after the attack is the stupidest right-wing manufactured pseudo-scandal I've come across in quite some time. And it's pathetic that the mainstream press is still so willing to chase after these shiny objects.

Isn't it obvious? Attacking what President Obama said about the attacks that killed four Americans is a distraction from Mitt Romney's stupid, ridiculous and un-American remarks attacking American diplomats in Libya.

When Ambassador Stevens died,  Romney was the object of near-universal opprobrium for criticizing our diplomats while they were under attack. He was revealed as dangerously unprepared to be president - until the repug lie machine geared up and turned the attention to what President Obama said.

Romney's near-treason fell off the media radar and hasn't been heard from since.

Mission accomplished.

Silencing Workers

Whatever else you may think about a particular union or unions in general, there is one basic law of workplace physics that cannot be denied:

The only institution on the planet that has as its operating principle, its raison d'etre, its single purpose protecting workers against management, is the union.

And the existence of unions in the economy is the only thing standing between corporations and their goal of turning all workers into dependent serfs without rights.

Which is why the number one goal of corporations and the repug politicians who support them is not eliminating taxes, but eliminating unions.

 

John Nichols at The Nation:

Mitt Romney may have trouble delivering a clear message on most issues. But there’s no mistaking where he and his allies stand on the question of whether working people and their unions should have a voice in American politics. The candidate, who has relied on the support of billionaire-funded Super PACs to stay in the running, told NBC’s Education Nation Summit in late September, “We simply can’t have a setting where the teachers unions are able to contribute tens of millions of dollars to the campaigns of politicians…. I think we’ve got to get the money out of the teachers unions going into campaigns. It’s the wrong way for us to go.”

Republicans like Romney and their biggest donors know that after Supreme Court rulings like Citizens United, corporations and wealthy individuals can dominate the debate through unlimited spending. They also know that as long as union members are able to pool dues and small contributions to challenge the corporate agenda of cutbacks, layoffs and privatization, there is going to be a debate on fundamental questions about education, social services and whether America is going to have a middle class.

So Romney wants to silence the voices of teachers, cops, sanitation workers and firefighters. And he’s not alone. Some of the biggest donors to GOP campaigns—including the billionaire Koch brothers—have gathered their resources to do just that. Working with the ultraconservative Lincoln Club of Orange County, a key player in the Citizens United case, they spent millions to get an initiative on the California ballot in November. Proposition 32 would bar automatic deductions from the paychecks of union members to fund campaigns on their behalf. But it doesn’t stop there; Prop 32 would prevent public and private sector unions from aiding state and local candidates.

Unions like the California Teachers Association and the California State Council of Service Employees are among the largest and most politically engaged in the nation, and though they are often outspent, they have held their own against the campaigns of GOP candidates like Meg Whitman and billionaire-funded initiative proposals. If Prop 32 passes, however, unions “could become almost extinct in California politics,” says UC San Diego political science professor Thad Kousser. Labor activists agree. “First they silence our voice,” says the California Labor Federation. “Then they will come after our jobs, wages and retirement.”

SNIP

In an honest fight, voters will protect collective bargaining rights, as they did last fall in Ohio by a 62–38 margin. That’s why Mitt Romney, the Koch brothers and their billionaire pals are spending so heavily—and campaigning so dishonestly—to silence the voice of unions. And that’s why, as important as the presidential race is, it’s also vital to win fights to maintain the capacity of working people to speak truth to power.

Deficit Hysterics Still in Charge

Since President Obama failed to call out RMoney's lies about the deficit during last night's debate (no, it doesn't matter and no, repugs don't care about it anyway), we can safely assume that the Grand Bargain by Democrats to gut Social Security and Medicare in return for sofa change from the rich is still planned for the end of the year.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

FINEMAN: "And if we're going to be cutting Medicare at some point, which I think most voters understand, I thin kright now looking at these alternatives they'd rather have a Democrat they know than a Republican who never supported the program to begin with."

Do most voters really "understand" that we're going to be cutting Medicare? Or has the Village decided that we're going to cut Medicare, and that it's going to happen no matter what the American people actually want?

Let's be clear on two things: first, from a policy stand there is no need for any cuts to Medicare. What is needed is universal insurance so that the wasteful profit motive is removed from the healthcare system. But granted the political impossibility of accomplishing that, if Medicare does become insolvent then the gradual cuts will take place automatically--no need to frontload them in advance with austerity measures. If one does want to be proactive as one should, then the program can be made solvent by slightly raising the maximum cap on which Medicare taxes are assessed. If all else fails, an alternate funding stream could be developed. There are numerous possibilities that do not involve cutting Medicare. To continue funding corporate welfare, wasteful wars and tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy while telling voters that Grandma should eat cat food is insane and immoral.

But second, Fineman is disastrously wrong on the politics. For a Democrat to cut Medicare would be politically disastrous.

If the Congress and the President take up Simpson-Bowles during the lame duck session or the new year and enact minor tip money tax increases for the wealthy in exchange for cuts to the most vulnerable, a majority of Republicans will oppose the deal. Democrats will be left holding the bag, insisting on being the "bipartisan adults in the room."

Voters will hate the deal. Republicans will run successfully against Democrats for the next twenty years, accusing us of cutting Medicare and raising taxes. And when Republicans easily win that argument and gain Executive and Legislative power, President Christie and Speaker Ryan will voucherize Medicare, restore the funding for current seniors, and act as the cavalry riding to America's and Medicare's rescue.

The Village Consensus is awful, immoral policy. It's also suicidal politics. And Howard Fineman and friends appear to be walking into it with open eyes and open arms.

Quote of the Day

From Charlie Pierce:

The problem with the Romney campaign is not the alleged ideological incoherence of his political resume. The problem is that he's trying to appeal to a party full of moral monsters.

The Hard Work and Heavy Responsibility of Being Poor

I'll take Baby Wonk's explanation to its logical conclusion: the richer you are, the LESS responsible and hard-working you are. Only those with lots of money can be truly lazy.

From Digby:

 But America's poor and disenfranchised are hardly lazy if they are getting government benefits. As Ezra Klein points out in this piece:

Still, for my money, the worst of Romney’s comments were these: “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

When he said this, Romney didn’t just write off half the country behind closed doors. He also confirmed the worst suspicions about who he is: an entitled rich guy with no understanding of how people who aren’t rich actually live.

The thing about not having much money is you have to take much more responsibility for your life. You can’t pay people to watch your kids or clean your house or fix your meals. You can’t necessarily afford a car or a washing machine or a home in a good school district. That’s what money buys you: goods and services that make your life easier.

That’s what money has bought Romney, too. He’s a guy who sold his dad’s stock to pay for college, who built an elevator to ensure easier access to his multiple cars and who was able to support his wife’s decision to be a stay-at-home mom. That’s great! That’s the dream.

The problem is that he doesn’t seem to realize how difficult it is to focus on college when you’re also working full time, how much planning it takes to reliably commute to work without a car, or the agonizing choices faced by families in which both parents work and a child falls ill. The working poor haven’t abdicated responsibility for their lives. They’re drowning in it.

I've always found it so amusing that the right wingers believe, for instance, that illegal immigrants are all on welfare. Clearly, they have no idea how many hoops one has to go through to get on the rolls and neither have they ever considered the absurdity of the idea that people who live in daily fear of the authorities would walk willingly into a government building and submit themselves to close inspection by security and government bureaucrats. They are convinced that these people are in the US to take advantage of our allegedly generous welfare benefits --- and to steal our jobs. But they are still lazy Mexicans who don't know the meaning of a hard days work.

They truly believe that they work harder than anyone else, that their lives are more complicated, that they are the ones who are doing everything, while the poor have it easy. I used to hear it from the wives of Hollywood executives who literally spent their days getting pampered from head to toe by immigrants who worked 80 hours a week and made less than minimum wage. I could never tell if they really believed it or if they just had to say it out loud in order to live with themselves. I suspected the former. There was not the tiniest bit of self-awareness in their complaints.

This is the dark side of America's Puritan work ethic. In order to justify their wealth the upper classes must pretend that those who are poorer have done it to themselves through their laziness and sloth. Otherwise, they wouldn't "deserve" what they have and their whole value system would collapse.

RMoney and his billionaire buddies wouldn't last five minutes busing tables, pouring concrete, nursing the elderly or teaching forty 12-year-olds all day. But I would love to watch the motherfuckers try.

The Fault, Dear Repugs, Is Not in Your Candidate, But in Yourselves

Because until the analpundits of the Beltway acknowledge that, and force repugs to face it, every defeat will just further enrage them and fuel their madness.

 

Steve M. at No More Mister Niceblog:

Romney isn't a particularly skilled politician, and his campaign is making a lot of mistakes. But in the event of a Romney loss, I fear we'll forget that he has a lousy message. He wants to cut taxes on the wealthy. He wants to gut programs like Medicare and Social Security. On social issues, he embraces the far right. On foreign policy, he wants to be another Bush. Pundits, please: don't forget that this is an important part of why he's losing. The Obama campaign has framed him as a heartless bastard and another George W. Bush because that's an accurate summation of his own stated stands on issues.

The country may be rejecting Romney personally, and it may be rejecting his campaign, but it's also rejecting Republicanism.

A failure to acknowledge that means the Beltway will be eager to give Republicans another do-over in 2014, just the way they got one in 2010 after Bush crashed and burned, and just the way they got one in 2000 after Newt Gingrich's fall from grace. We can't let that happen again.

Thank You, GOP, for Nominating a Psychopath

I don't care if you're the most gay-hating, homophobic asshole in the world, you can figure out how to be minimally civil to a fellow human being.

Unless, apparently, you are the GOP nominee for president.

Wonkette:

Here is a fun fact about gay people that Mitt Romney learned courtesy of a group of hero gay rights activists: gay people have families! YES, actual families. But wait, you might be thinking, how is it possible that Mitt Romney had gone his whole life not knowing where gay babies come from? Is he originally from Iran, where there are no gay people? No, of course he is not from Iran, so what could possibly explain the fact that he actually said “I didn’t know you had families,” to a group of gay rights activists? And can this same explanation also help us better contextualize all the other horrible things he said to those gay right activists during that meeting?

Wonkette commenter whattheholyheck:

It's important to note that Goodridge told the entire story of her difficult childbirth and how her partner wasn't allowed into the L&D room because they weren't legally family. He sat through her narrative with a blank stare, according to eyewitnesses, and then made clear with his replies that he hadn't even been listening.

I rarely want to punch the ever living fuck out of another person with my own hands, but this is a sterling exception.

He's not inhuman; he's a fucking psychopath.

More on this here.

Rallying 'Round That Ni**er in the White House

I am the last person to underestimate the power of racism - and voter suppression - to hand the presidency to RMoney.

 

But I think it's possible that RMoney's stunningly stupid response to the assassination of the American ambassador to Libya has buried his campaign.

 

Here's why: his attack on President Obama in the middle of a foreign policy crisis - a time when Americans reflexively rally around the president, regardless of party - has done what a billion dollars of Democratic Party advertising could not do: turn Barack Hussein Obama into "our president" for millions of doubting Americans.

 

Not the hardcore Kenyan Usurper nuts, of course, but the sometime voters who never felt comfortable with a president who looks so different from the ones we grew up with. The sometime voters who are now sitting up and paying attention because of foreign policy. 

 

The foundation for this was laid by the death of Osama bin Laden, of course. Nothing gets a president bipartisan love like a righteous blow to a despised enemy. Ordering the execution of bin Laden opened the door for the doubters to start thinking of Barack Obama as a "real" president.

 

The murders in Libya by themselves might not have tipped them over into outright defense of Obama, but a public, partisan attack on the presidency while the bodies of murdered Americans were still warm is too much.

 

Sitting here in Nobama country, I swear I could hear a low roar of outraged patriotism: "How DARE you attack the president when we are under attack!" 

This is Not Fact-Checking. This is Truth-Fucking.

Somebody tells you she is going to drive the 500 miles from Washington, D.C. to Lexington, Ky in five hours. OK, you say, it's interstate all the way, so if you've got a really fast car and you're a trained driver, and you do it in the middle of the night, you mighrt be able to average 100 miles an hour. But you'd be breaking the speed limit the whole way.

 

No, no, she says; I'll drive the 500 miles in five hours without breaking the speed limit.

 

Impossible! you say. You have to speed. If you're going to drive 500 miles in five hours, you are going to speed.

 

The person turns to FactCheck.org, which calls you out for lying because the person promises not to break the speed limit and therefore is telling the truth.

 

Think Progress:

San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro cited a well-known study from the Tax Policy Center when he stated that Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s tax plan would “raise taxes on the middle class.” FactCheck.org, however, found that claim to be misleading because Romney “has promised he won’t” raise middle-class taxes:

The keynote speaker and others claimed the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, would raise taxes on the “middle class.” He has promised he won’t. Democrats base their claim on a study that doesn’t necessarily lead to that conclusion.

FactCheck.org is right that Romney’s plan “doesn’t necessarily” raise taxes on the middle class, but it is absurd to base that conclusion on the candidate’s promises. Romney has, indeed, promised not to raise taxes on the middle class. But he has also promised that his tax plan will maintain current revenue levels.

Those promises, by any measure, are totally incompatible, something the Tax Policy Center study made abundantly clear when it found that Romney couldn’t possibly raise enough revenue to maintain current revenue levels by closing tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy. Thus, Romney’s plan will either add to the deficit or raise middle-class taxes, unless he forgoes his 20 percent rate reduction altogether.

Arithmetic is hard. Lying is easy. Stupid is contagious.

Reminding Democrats Why They Are Democrats

You may have heard about the devastating debate attacks leveled on Mitt Romney during the first night of the Democratic Convention - in a video tribute to Senator Edward M. Kennedy. 

But that video was much more than just the source of hilarity at RMoney's expense. That video was the inspirational reminder to every Democratic voter in the nation of Who. We. Are. and What. We. Stand. For.

John Nichols at The Nation:

“I love this—seeing that debate again,” said Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern, a progressive Democrat and frequent ally of Kennedy in foreign-policy fights with the Bush administration. “You know why Ted Kennedy won that debate? You know why he beat Mitt Romney? Because Ted Kennedy was a real Democrat. He didn’t have to worry about getting the talking points right; he didn’t have to check the polls. He spoke from the heart, spoke for his principles. And people loved it. There’s a lesson there for Democrats this year.”

McGovern hit on something important there. The Kennedy moment at the 2012 convention was not just about recalling a fight with Mitt Romney. It was about renewing a progressive program that is too often tempered and softened by Democrats who do not get it.

It was about being against someone, it was and must be about being for something.

So it was that, when the delegates were done laughing at Romney, the senator took the delegates back to where they came from.

There on the screen was the last of the Kennedy brothers explaining once more the point of debates and campaigns and election victories: to advance not just a candidate, not just a party but a set of ideals: healthcare for all; social justice for people of color, for women, for lesbians and gays and immigrants; economic justice for workers and peace.

“When I stopped crying, I remembered how much we miss him,” said Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy.

“There is a void,” said Congressman McGovern. “Ted Kennedy was the conscience of the party. But he was also the master strategist. He knew that we could win by standing on principle. In fact, that’s the way we win best, and biggest.”

On the other side of the hall, a few minutes later, Ted Kennedy Jr. smiled. “My father comes back every four years to remind Democrats why they are Democrats. He did it one more time.”

How RMoney Creates Jobs

Via Crooks and Liars, Matt Taibbi cuts to the heart of RMoney's lies about jobs.

Are you kidding? Mitt Romney was the guy that fired you from that $22.50 an hour job, and helped you replace it with two $9 an hour jobs! He was a pioneer in the area of eliminating the well-paying job with benefits and replacing it with the McJob that offered no benefits at all. One of the things that killed him in the Senate race against Ted Kennedy were Kennedy ads that reminded voters that Mitt’s takeovers resulted in slashed wages and lost benefits. He was exactly the guy that eliminated that classic $22.50 manufacturing job, like in the case of GST Steel, where Bain took over with an initial investment of $8 million, paid itself a $36 million dividend, ended up walking away with $50 million, and left GST saddled with over $500 million in debt. 750 of those well-paying jobs were lost.

What kinds of jobs were left for those fired workers to look for? Well, in the best-case scenario, you might have found one at Ampad, another Bain takeover target, where workers had their pay slashed from $10.22 to $7.88 an hour, tripled co-pays, and eliminated the retirement plan.

So a guy who eliminated hundreds of $22 an hour jobs and slashed hundreds more jobs to below $9 an hour blasts Barack Obama for not giving you the better life you deserved, after you lost your $22/hour job and had to take two $9/hour jobs. Are we all high or something? Did that really just happen?

Romney's Gay Confession: "I Am What I Am"

A friend writes:

Did you see Romney's big declaration today "I am what I am"?  Funny that the media has put a Popeye spin to it.  Were I Mr. Romney, I would be worried that more people heard "La Cage aux Folles" when they saw the headline.  Heaven knows, his -- and the Republican party's -- policies don't recognize other people's rights to be what they are.  Maybe someone should play the music for them????  :-)

La Cage Aux Folles - I Am What I Am Lyrics

I am what I am
I am my own special creation
So come take a look
Give me the hook or the ovation

It's my world that I want to take a little pride in
My world and it's not a place I have to hide in
Life's not worth a damn
Till you can say, "Hey world, I am what I am"

I am what I am
I don't want praise, I don't want pity
I bang my own drum
Some think it's noise, I think it's pretty

And so what, if I love each feather and each spangle
Why not try and see things from a different angle?
Your life is a sham till you can shout out loud
I am what I am

I am what I am
And what I am needs no excuses
I deal my own deck
Sometimes the ace
Sometimes the deuces

There's one life
And there's no return and no deposit
One life, so it's time to open up your closet
Life's not worth a damn till you can say
"Hey world, I am what I am"

Uploaded by Quartzoluxe on Mar 11, 2008

President RMoney-Ryan = Chaos

Oh, do I ever have the perfect Monday morning post for you. Before reading it, please remove all weapons, sharp objects, open flames, prescription narcotics, belts and shoe laces from your immediate vicinity.

Eric Alterman at The Nation:

A Romney victory would likely bring with it a large majority in the House and quite possibly a Republican Senate as well, and hence a tsunami of regressive legislation. As the longtime nonpartisan analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein argue, a Republican victory in November will likely prove a key turning point in modern American history. It will offer Republicans the opportunity, in Mann’s words, to put “in place a radical view of policy that goes well beyond anything Republicans have proposed in the past,” one that has moved so far rightward that “no Republican president in the modern era would have felt comfortable being a part of [it].” What’s more, they will likely succeed owing not only to Romney’s eagerness to blow with whatever winds may be buffeting him, but also, as Mann and Ornstein put it, to his party’s “demonstrated willingness to bend, break, or change legislative rules and customs that have stood in the way of radical change in the past.”

If you think the Tea Party has gone away, think again. Its members are not holding demonstrations so much anymore because they are staffing campaigns, winning Republican primaries (often against veteran incumbents and well-funded establishment favorites), or replacing the staffers of those they have scared into submission. As Dave Weigel writes in the Washington Monthly, “After 2010, the movement evolved. Activists got jobs with newly elected Republicans. Political organizations like the [corporate and conservative billionaire-funded and -controlled] Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks grew their staffs and budgets. Elected Republicans continued to draw on them for strength, support, and warm bodies at campaign events.” Under a Romney administration, many of these ignorant fanatics will be called upon to staff a significant number of the more than 3,000 federal appointments that a president makes, and his hundreds of potential judicial appointments as well.
The result, should Romney become president, will be a mixture of policies that favor the superwealthy, punish the poor and middle class, restrict the rights of average Americans, and—I say this without hyperbole—cause a degree of almost unimaginable and unprecedented chaos in virtually every area of American public life.

Read the details, if you dare.

Robert Reich has the short version.

And Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars has the best real-world-consequences post I've seen yet:

This is a blog post written by a long-time Wisconsin reader of my own site who, against daunting odds, pulled herself out of a crappy minimum wage job, chronic poverty, a bad relationship, and an assortment of major health issues (both hers and her daughter's) and put herself in college, where she's doing quite well and has, I hope, much more of a future before her - at least, if Wisconsin doesn't cut the programs on which she and her daughter depend. I thought this was important to share:

enlarge

See that low-income-program-cuts graph?

Daughter is on SSI – Supplemental Security Income. My tuition is covered by Pell Grants, with secured loans and grants making up the rest. We both are on Medicare-Medicaid. We live in low-income housing. We get Food Share.

We got into all of these programs WHILE I WAS WORKING FULL-TIME, just so you don’t think I’m some low-life slacker.

So. If Paul Ryan has his way (poor people are not suffering enough) I will be homeless. Maybe my daughter will be too, I don’t know. I’ll have to quit school, but all that – homeless, out of school – will be moot, because without health insurance I’ll be dead. My prescriptions run well over $500 a month. I get one of them, the $350/month one, through low-income support programs that the pharmaceutical companies run, so their drugs will be covered on some federal insurance programs. Do you think that will continue when Medicaid gets cut? I don’t.

But rich people will pay less in taxes.

I’m taking it pretty personally. You would be too, if somebody thought you didn’t deserve to be alive.

Now send this to every Republican voter you know. You never know, one might accidentally learn something.

No, DON'T send it to any repugs. Send it to every DEMOCRATIC voter you know - especially the ones who are not counting the days to Nov. 6 and champing at the bit to vote for President Obama and against RMoney-Ryan.

Send this to all the disappointed democrats, all those Obama supporters who don't plan to vote, every dem leaner who can't be bothered to haul her fat ass out of the barcalounger to cast a vote to prevent the fucking apocalypse.

As Alterman concludes:

Despite the many disappointments of his presidency, Barack Obama remains a vehicle for progressive change in America, one whose weaknesses reflect the weaknesses of the left in a system dominated by money, democratic dysfunction and a myopic media. Those are our real problems—not the attitude of the individual in the White House. And not one of them will improve once the power of the presidency is bestowed upon those who have created those problems and continue to profit by them. Indeed, nearly all of them will reach (and some may exceed) crisis proportions. And what that will lead to, no one—certainly not your author—can predict, save for one thing: chaos.

The $4,000 Mitt Will Make You Pay to His Billionaire Friends

Because if you deserved a tax cut, you'd be rich.

Think Progress:

That’s right: according to the TPC analysis — which, again, uses the most generous assumptions to fill in the blanks Romney left in the plan — the Romney plan would raise the average middle class family’s tax rate by as much as $4,000 to finance trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the rich and corporations. That includes the cost of a transition to a tax system that not only dramatically lowers the amount corporations will pay on domestic profits, but also the amount they pay on profits earned overseas and return to the U.S. — a system that will encourage outsourcing and further stashing of profits in offshore tax havens.

Shut up, you peasants, and get back to work.

KY Repug Challenger Gets Convention Spot

All of three people not in Candy Barr's immediate family will be watching, but let's not let this opportunity slip away.

Let's find out just how kill-grandma, illegitimate-rape, no-taxes-on-rich-people, get-that-ni**er-out-of-the-white-house Barr thinks he has to get to beat DINO Ben Cowardly Worm Chandler in the new, bluer Sixth.

Jack Brammer at the Herald

Andy Barr, the Republican nominee for Central Kentucky's 6th Congressional District race, has been selected to address the Republican National Convention during its first evening session on Monday.

Barr, whom the National Republican Congressional Committee has designated as one of the most promising Republican challengers nationwide, said he does not know when or how long he will get to speak.

SNIP

Barr, a Lexington attorney, is in a rematch this year against Democratic incumbent Ben Chandler of Woodford County. Barr lost to Chandler in 2010 by 647 votes.

"I look forward to telling America how the vision of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will enable Kentuckians to dream again — unleashing our limitless potential to create jobs and opportunity," Barr said in a statement.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/08/20/2305161/andy-barr-selected-to-speak-at.html#storylink=cpy

The DCCC has Benny's back, pouring buckets of cash into defending a Blue Dog traitor who votes the way John Boehner tells him to. Meanwhile, dozens of Real Democrats nationwide with real chances to defeat repug incumbents go begging.

So the question is whether Candy Barr is as repug as Benny Boy. Brammer fails to ask these questions:

Does Candy agree with Todd Adkin, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney that rape victims should be forced to give birth, even if it kills them?

Does Candy agree with Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney that it's OK to strip Medicare down to a coupon program as long as people over 55 get to keep the real thing?

Does Candy agree with Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney that $4.7 trillion in tax cuts for the rich minus $1.4 trillion in budgets cuts will magically cut the deficit instead of sending it spiralling out of control?

Does Candy agree with Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney that the only way to stop Iran from starting a nuclear war in the Middle East is for the U.S. and Israel to attack, thus starting a nuclear war in the Middle East?

Does Candy agree with Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney that the best way to restore the economy is to hand the keys of the Treasury back to the meth-addled gamblers on Wall Street?

Does Candy agree with Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney that 650,000 working Kentuckians without health insurance don't deserve Medicare? That people with pre-existing conditions shouldn't have health insurance at all? That women working minimum-wage jobs don't deserve mammograms and pap smears?

The 2012 republican presidential ticket is so extremist the word has lost its meaning. Repug congressional candidates all over the country are scrambling to disavow it. In Tampa next Monday, will Candy Barr defend it?

Still Despicable After All These Years

Yes, the repugs really are racist motherfuckers. They always have been racist motherfuckers. They always will be racist motherfuckers.

They're not even trying to hide it any more - hell, they're not even denying it.

So call them out for what they are. Make them pay for every racist crime from the three-fifths compromise through the murder of ACORN.

Any attempt to fight them on any other ground is doomed to failure.

Ed Kilgore at Political Animal:

I’ve been examining my conscience to figure out exactly why the Romney-Ryan campaign’s “Obama killed welfare work requirement” large and continuing series of ads and speech references and talking points enrages me so very much.

Yes, I used to be something of a welfare policy wonk, and know how incredibly mendacious and wrong-minded this line of attack is, and how deeply hypocritical Republicans are for complaining that Obama doesn’t want welfare recipients to work even as they are trying to destroy every single public policy that “makes work pay” for people trapped in poverty. And when Romney’s ads and surrogates claim that the administration’s willingness to entertain state waivers from the specific rules of the 1996 law represent a “gutting” of that law, it does trip across memories of the perpetual willingness of Republicans prior to and ever since 1996 to dump the whole income-maintenance issue on the states with no strings.

But lying and hypocrisy have become standard weapons in Team Mitt’s arsenal, going back to the savage primary attacks on fellow-Republicans, so why does this particular example bother me egregiously?

And then the obvious finally hit me: the Romney campaign is reviving the single oldest tactic of southern reactionaries: race-baiting white working class voters to distract them from the many issues on which this segment of the electorate is naturally unsympathetic to policies that reinforce economic and social privilege. It’s how the Bourbons reasserted control over the Populists in the late nineteenth century. It’s how conservatives undermined southern support for the economic policies of the New Deal and Fair Deal and New Frontier and Great Society. It was ultimately the fulcrum for the realignment of the whole region from the Democratic to the Republican Party.

So it’s a familiar tactic, but what makes it novel is that it is not being narrow-cast into North Carolina or Virginia or northern and western Florida or Missouri, but broadcast everywhere. And there is zero way it can be rationalized as a part of an overall GOP message supposedly focused on economic recovery and job creation—or even, given the ridiculously small quantities of federal money that go to the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) program, as part of a budget austerity message. It’s a flat-out racial appeal aimed at convincing non-college educated white voters that this black president wants to take their tax dollars to give them to his shiftless black brothers and sisters.

This very non-southern national Republican ticket is going far out of its way to replicate the most despicable tactics of old-school southern racial demagoguery, and is apparently so invested in this strategy that no end of fact-checking and shaming will convince them to let up for a moment. I should hope that any fair-minded Republicans (and yes, there are some left, impotent as they often are in party counsels) or “neutral” MSM observers, regardless of what they think about the two campaigns generally, would bury this particular blast from the disreputable past in an avalanche of denunciation. If not, then progressives owe it to the country to raise hell about it until it stops or is repudiated by voters.

Digby:

They'd better hope this works because elderly whites are their only growing demographic. If they can't run this game, there's not much hope for their national prospects over the long haul and probably not over the short haul either. It's going to require some fancy footwork --- as much as these voters may resent Obama giving "their" healthcare to the you-know-whos, the know better than anyone which Party has been trying to destroy Medicare and Social Security for over half a century. They were there, after all.

The Millionaire RMoney Thinks Is a Typical Farmer

This is proof RMoney has no fucking clue that people who aren't millionaires even exist. Or rather that he thinks people who aren't millionaires aren't really "people."

 

This guy is RMoney's idea of someone who needs government help.

 

Stephen Lacey at Think Progress:

If Mitt Romney wants to change perceptions that he’s out of touch with the average American, he might want to try a little harder.

In an attempt to show his concern for farmers hit by the devastating drought that has swept 78 percent of the country, Romney had a photo-op with Iowa “farmer” Lemar Koethe. However, Koethe isn’t exactly the rugged down-home farmer struggling to keep his operation going that you might expect.

Or should I say operations — 54 of them. Yes, according to the Des Moines Register, Koethe owns 54 soy and corn farms. And that’s just one of his jobs.

In previous reports on his activity over the years from the Des Moines Register, Koethe is also a described as a millionaire, a real estate mogul, and a former concert promoter who booked acts like Slipknot at his 24,000 square foot event center.

SNIP
Finally, according to figures from the EWG Farm Subsidies database, Koethe has received $130,575 in conservation payments from the federal government. Conservation payments, which add up to about $5 billion in federal spending each year, are typically used by the government to encourage farmers not to grow crops — sometimes to stabilize prices and sometimes to preserve land.

RMoney wants to apply means testing to Medicare and Social Security so that the rich don't get benefits needed by the less fortunate. The real purpose of means-testing universal benefits like Social Security and Medicare, of course, is to tar them with the "undeserving poor getting welfare" image so it's easy to eliminate them.

Tell ya what, Mitt: let's try means-testing corporate welfare and subsidies-for-the-rich first. If your buddy Koethe is too well-off for Social Security and Medicare, surely he's too well off for farm payments.

Quote of the Day

Scott Lemiuex at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

... implying that Ryan cares about the deficit is conceding too much. He cares about upper-class tax cuts, he cares about funding stupid wars, he cares about slashing any federal program that might benefit a non-affluent person, but he doesn’t care at all about deficits.