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Your daily pass-it-forward, via Digby at Hullabaloo.
Also, I like this comparison from Frank Rich at NYMag:
In the television era, only one hopelessly stiff, awkward, and socially inept candidate has ever been elected to the presidency, Richard Nixon. What he also had in common with Romney was a rogue’s gallery of secret fat-cat donors who would only become known after Election Day, thanks to Watergate.
And from Gail Collins, at the NYTImes:
We do know these things: Republicans do not like income taxes, even for very wealthy people. Possibly particularly for very wealthy people. Barack Obama, who also has royalty income, is a small business. Possibly the only small business the Republicans do not love.
What’s on the agenda for today?
Triassic Sands
Open thread?
What is the strangest food your cat likes to eat? Something that surprises you or might surprise others.
My parents had two cats that loved cantaloupe. I have a cat that goes nuts over saltine crackers. (Even salt free.)
Cantaloupe or crackers…do they seem strange?
NotMax
So will the bluenoses, fundamentalists, modern-day Comstocks and assorted and sundry anti-ladyparts crusaders now shun and get rid of their PCs and all Windows products in feeble protest?
bemused
On Morning Joe, Steve Rattner was just pointing out that the tax raise wouldn’t kick in until you earn more than $250,000 when, surprise, surprise, Joe interrupts. “Hold on, you just confused everybody out there”, paraphrasing. Reliable Joe doing his Republican obfuscation schtick.
WereBear
You won’t hear a peep out of them about it.
Consistency is not part of their skill set.
pluege
Collins is off the mark: republicans hate small businesses. They hate them because they impoverish their customers, i.e., middle and working class Americans. The republican wealth crowd is not a critical part of the clientele of small business – they are hoarders of wealth that take money out of the economy rather than putting it to productive use.
gelfling545
@Triassic Sands: Tomatoes – off the plant only – one bite per tomato. I thought it was wild critters until I caught the cat at it.
c u n d gulag
Mitt is one of the whitest white man to ever run for President.
Keeerist!
Actually, if you make Ike, Goldwater, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, ‘Poppy’ Bush, Dole, ‘Loony’ Bush, and McCain, look like they would fit in better with a gathering of “brothers and sisters” than you, YOU are THE whitest white man to ever run!
Phylllis
@Triassic Sands: My late hubby and I had a kitty who loved to lick the mayo off the knife. Oh, and you had to let her think she was getting away with something by doing it-you know, put the knife in the sink, nonchalantly walk off, and pretend not to hear the thud of her jumping up and the knife clinking against the sink.
Keith G
Robert Reich is saying things that I had been wishing would come out of the White House since….oh… Jan 21 2008. The American people have always needed to be told what is the right thing to do. Our great leaps in social or political progress did not evolve from the reasoning of the grass roots.
Speaking of having the courage to do what is right….
I wish that at the end of Joe Biden’s speech in front of the NAACP here in Houston, Joe would say, “Oh, and one more thing….” And Barak Obama would stride out to the podium and give a barn burning speech about why Romney and the Republicans are wrong about America and why his ideas are the best hope we have.
That is how one fights for progress.
Mark S.
@Triassic Sands:
Crackers, no, but cantaloupe sounds pretty strange.
Frankensteinbeck
I understand what she means, but Republicans do not love small business. They love pretending the interests of big business are the interests of small business. The Reagan Revolution was a series of appealing lies to convince the public Republican policies benefit them. Why do you think they want Reagan back? Those lies worked really well, but Mitt and Santorum have ripped off the mask.
EDIT – @Keith G:
The White House HAS been saying this stuff since day one. Until campaign season, the news media had plenty of excuses to not cover it. Blogs wanted to talk about made up scandals. Obama can’t get credit for anything.
kay
There might be a sliver lining here, in the NAACP flap.
This is a fairly desperate move for Romney to make. It’s mid-July and he can’t even rely on his base without disgusting stunts like this. This was billed as a cynical move to appeal to The Center, by showing his reasonableness and his ability to not to be a gross bigot, but that isn’t what he did.
I wonder if that says something about where he thinks he is, as far as getting elected.
Frankensteinbeck
@Keith G:
I’ll give you this, Reich says it really well and in a very confrontational way Obama can’t get away with. As president and a black man watched 24/7 for signs of Angriness, he has to be very upbeat and encouraging about it all. But yes, he makes all of these points, very politely, on a regular basis. I quite like listening to his speeches when I get the chance, because he really lays out why progressive policies are good ones.
Mark S.
@kay:
Just a silver lining? I was too busy yesterday to read many of the threads, but I did notice a contrarian opinion that getting booed somehow helped Mitt, and I think it’s nonsense. Getting booed by black people only appeals to assholes who were never going to vote for Obama in a million years. Mitt’s job yesterday was to assure non-racist moderates that voting for him isn’t like voting for Pat Buchanan. He barely succeeded at that.
Edited for clarity
amk
@Mark S.:
Hope this is really the case. ‘cos one can never underestimate the stupidity of american voters.
Keith G
Gee wilikers..;..I hear this a lot and I think that it’s an unfortunate formulation leading to incorrect thinking. One can be aggressively optimistic.
kay
@Mark S.:
I don’t know. I don’t know where he is, or where he thinks he is, as far as his strength as a candidate right now. I DO think that what seems to me to be a really desperate move probably means he isn’t all that comfortable with how things are going.
We were told again and again by political professionals that Mitt Romney would move to the center sometime after the primary, but he isn’t doing that. It’s like he’s stuck. He can’t consolidate his base, his donors are unhappy with his approach, he hasn’t really addressed or resolved any of the issues that have been raised (taxes, outsourcing, Romneycare) and now he’s off dog-whistling like crazy. It just doesn’t seem coherent and calm and confident. I was told yesterday that he is leaking that he may “move up” picking his VP. I don’t think that’s a good sign, either. He’s risk averse, and he likes plans. Why is he all over the place? What has him panicky?
sherparick
I would like to suggest that folks check ou this really great article in the Washington Monthly about social and economic transformations of the last 50 years.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/julyaugust_2012/features/the_hole_in_the_bucket038415.php?page=1
I am in better shape than most (in part because my wife and I could not have children, which is somewhat bitter tea, and hence able to set aside much more for retirement savings), had a good paying Government job with a vested retirement system (not as good as old system, but will certainly be better than new system I am sure Romney, Ryan, and McConnell will impose next year if they win control.)
I also understand the resentments people now feel toward Government workers. 20 years ago, most private sector workers were paid better and had about the same benefits as Government workers. The only edge the Government had was a bit more security. Even at the end of the nineties most people did not envy teachers, cops, firemen, and bureaucrats pay and benefit packages. But over the last 12 years, while private sector benefits have declined and nominal incomes have stayed flat, resulting in a substantial decline in real wages, the Goverment work force by just staying even has appeared to become lucky duckies of the working class. When 93 cents of ever dollar of economic growth goes to the top 1%, people start really tearing at each other for that remaining 7 cents, especially when they think those getting that remaining 7 cents belong to another tribe and are not real a’murikans.
Bruuuuce
AFSCME presents The Boehner Bunch (and, IMNSHO, wins an internets)
NonyNony
@kay:
I hope this is true. If this is true it probably either means that the campaign has internal polls that say he’s tanking badly OR he’s got some idiot campaign adviser who thinks winning the weekly news cycle is the same as winning the election.
If he’s moving up the VP pick because he thinks it’s actually important to snagging voters or to winning over the press he’s likely to make a really bad choice. Maybe not a Palin level stupid choice, but a bad choice. I’m no record saying it’ll be Portman or Pawlenty – those are safe choices but they don’t give any reporters “starbursts” or say anything about Mitt other than that he’s not completely a wingnut. If he thinks he needs to do some stunt casting for his VP slot and pick a wingnut that’s a sign of some real desperation.
amk
@kay: He ran an incompetent campaign last time around. So why would he run a competent one now ? I don’t understand how the usual we-must-win-at-any-cost rethugs chose a two-time loser (senate and presidency) this time around.
But for the press fluffing/giving him a wide cover, he would have been losing these pesky polls by double digits by now.
Mark S.
@kay:
I expected McCain to move to the center but he didn’t. I don’t think GOP nominees can move to the center anymore. They’re too afraid of their teabaggin’ base.
NonyNony
@amk:
Did you see their choices? Who were they going to pick instead? Newt Gingrich? Herman Cain? Rick “Frothy” Santorum? Rick Perry? Michelle Bachmann?
Their bench is shallow (in more ways than one). The fact that Mitt Romney was the winner tells us something. Do they have someone better hiding on the back bench who is saving themselves for 2016? Who would it be? Bobby Jindal? Nikki Haley? Jan Brewer? Jim DeMint? Jeb Bush? You think any of those clowns would be in a better position to win this time around?
The GOP has some real systemic problems stemming mainly from the fact that their ideology denies the validity of empirical data as relevant for making decisions. They can’t adjust their tactics to account for reality – they MUST hew to the caricature of conservatism that they’ve built for themselves. And that means that Mitt Romney may very well be the best choice they actually have.
Frankensteinbeck
@Keith G:
Which, as I just pointed out, he is. Talking in terms of positives, he makes all the progressive points in his speeches you could ever ask for. He even disembowels Republican talking points, he just doesn’t get personally nasty about it, which is why his approval ratings are remarkably high for a sitting president and he’s creaming Mitt right now.
Omnes Omnibus
@kay: Unless Romney is shifting the campaign paradigm – and I don’t think he is that talented a politician nor do I think the money alone will do it – he needs to be able credibly to give red meat speeches to his base and reasonable-ish speeches to non-base groups. He can’t seem to do either one particularly effectively. He is just awkward and wrong everywhere on the campaign trail except, I would guess, at the fundraising dinners among the ultra-rich. Hell, even there his post dinner Postum will be odd.
kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I read a comment here that made me laugh. The commenter wrote that Romney still has so many things to do! He has to announce his VP, he has to act (credibly!) as “leader” of the GOP at the Convention, he probably has to give two or three “big” speeches, he has to make an overseas trip, the debates, and on and on.
So that will be fun. To watch.
Frankensteinbeck
@Keith G:
Want a good example? How about his deficit speech, one of his most covered speeches – which isn’t saying much? He spent thirty seconds talking about how the deficit should be fixed, and I know that’s all anybody talked about online, but the entire rest of the speech was about how the deficit is George Bush’s fault, and if we stopped giving tax cuts to the rich and launching unnecessary wars, we’d have plenty of money to spend on helping people and investing in education, renewable energy, and infrastructure. Yes, the White House talks about this stuff and always has.
the Conster
@kay:
I paid no attention to the speech or the discussion of the speech (probably like most normal people) until late last night, and my first thought when I heard what he said was jeebus, he goes to talk to this group of people and then shits in their mouth, and anyone is surprised when they boo? Rly?
I don’t think he’s done himself any favors. He looks like a gaping douche AND a lying sneaky entitled simulacrum. Also, the Boston Globe’s got the goods on his lying ass. Let’s see how far the flying monkeys get inspecting the SEC’s kerning.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@kay: Well at least his overseas trip will be covered by the trip to cheer on Rafalca in London,where he can also get in some fundraising. And for what it’s worth, watching the event in which the Rmoneys’ Olympic star will compete is slightly less interesting than watching paint dry, with more headaches caused by the folks who find it fascinating, and insist you will to. I say that as a lifelong horseman.
mai naem
Watching Mornning Ho. They virtually ignore the “vote for the other guy if you want free stuff.” Jonathan Capehart’s not on the set when they even deign to discuss it. Four white privileged pricks basically kinda sorta talking about it. This is the same bunch of white people who have spent hours talking about Obama hurting the feefees of wealthy Wall Streeters. I wonder if Mittington Nathan Bedford Forrest IV will tell old white people at a luxury assisted living facility in Naples, Fla to vote for the other guy if they want free stuff.
Chris
Nixon had a rogue’s gallery of secret fat cat donors? Of that I was unaware.
MikeJ
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Dressage is like watching mandatory figures in skating. Which are so incredibly boring that almost nobody has ever seen them, because they’re never, ever on TV.
They need to bust out some freestyle horse dancing if they want to get anybody interested.
PeakVT
Why does anyone watch Morning Dead Intern, anyway? Is it really the least bad morning show? Or does the outrage it generates get the blood flowing better than coffee?
MikeJ
@MikeJ: Oh, wikipedia actually mentions that they do have freestyle horse dancing. Cool.
Now to decide if I’m going to climb rattlesnake ridge this morning or get a haircut.
TheMightyTrowel
@PeakVT: it’s hate-watching. or ignorance.
slightly OT: a canadian colleague told me his dad (in rural Saskatch) loves listening to Limbaugh because he loves a good hate-listen and it reminds him how happy he is to be Canadian. Heh.
Omnes Omnibus
@MikeJ: Climb the ridge.
drew42
Yet another reason why Gail Collins sucks at her job. Republicans only love big business, and push policies that only help big business at the expense of smaller businesses.
amk
UE claims in 4-year low of 350,000 in latest week
lacp
Still think the Frothy Mix was the Republican’s best choice, although he’d certainly have his head handed to him by the president.
Agree with Digby that ‘conservative’ needs to be retired – it would theoretically be applicable to Edmund Burke types, but they don’t exist, at least not in this country. ‘Reactionary’ is probably more accurate, but I don’t know if even that quite captures the miserable know-nothingness of the American right. ‘Fascistic delusionalists,’ maybe?
Litlebritdifrnt
@TheMightyTrowel:
I listen to Limbaugh today so I know what the republican talking points will be tomorrow.
PeakVT
I haven’t listened to it yet, but here’s an interview with the guy who wrote the VF article on Mitt’s offshore accounts. The other interviewee wrote an article about America’s onshore tax haven, Delaware.
NonyNony
@lacp:
Really? Santorum? He couldn’t even get a majority of Republicans to think he was a good candidate. If there was ever a case of “the more we know about a candidate the less we like him” it’s Rick Santorum. In some ways he’s worse than Romney because at least Romney can point to his money as a measure of his success – Santorum got kicked out of his Senate seat after just two terms, and IIRC the number of votes he got were pathetic for an incumbent Senator. He has no real accomplishments in his life beyond winning some elections and then the wingnut welfare gravy train – it isn’t like he’s known for being a great legislator or even being a great speaker. He is a good foot soldier for the right-wing religious nuts, but those types don’t make good presidential fodder.
‘Conservative’ is a fine word that describes a broad swath of Democratic politicians and Democratic voters. Many of them are former Republican voters who have been slowly bleeding out of the party since Reagan. It certainly should be retired as a descriptor of the Republican party though, as their agenda is such a radical shift from the status quo that it’s Orwellian newspeak to call it ‘conservative’
Trakker
It doesn’t matter whether coming across as an angry black man would hurt Obama or not because he is incapable of it. He’s one of those people who doesn’t allow himself to get angry. If he tried he’d suck at it.
This is why his campaign should be lining up respected speakers (and not just politicians) capable of expressing moral outrage to act as surrogates and pound home the message that everything the Republicans are for hurts the middle class and the poor.
amk
Globe hits mitt yet again with his own lies about his leaving bain capital.
There doesn’t seem to be a single honest bone in this mofo. I know all pols lie but this guy is beats them all and takes the cake.
General Stuck
@amk:
Romney lied. The truth died.
amk
@General Stuck: stolen.
scav
I’m Personally am working up a list of Free Things I want from the Government and thus reasons to vote for That Other Guy.
Freedom to Vote.
Freedom to have the medically best drug or procedure without regard to the prejudices of someone not directly involved, such as the person behind the counter or the corporate person who owns the building, and
Freedom to make medical decisions concerning my own body and life without being second guessed and having extra procedures involuntarily forced upon me.
Freedom to marry who I want, irregardless of race, gender or creed.
Freedom from cleaning up and paying for the business mistakes of the wealthy and corporate “person” but not for those who actually suffering physically from business mistakes.
Freedom to assemble with other people I work with to influence laws and contracts for the group the same way corporate “people” get together as, um, what do they call themselves, Chamber of Commerce? or Marketing Boards? Lobbyists? do.
Freedom to see a minaret or nothing at all) everywhere there might conceivable be a steeple.
Work in progress, clearly.
the Conster
@amk:
““Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way,’’ according to the footnote. Romney made the same assertion on a financial disclosure form in 2007, during his first run for president.”
He was listed as sole stockholder, chairman of the board, CEO and president. Anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of corporate law knows that that statement cannot possibly be true. The only way to parse that statement in favor of Romney is to focus on the word “operations” because he might not have actually gotten into the weeds of how the entities did what they did, but everything that’s decided in a corporation comes from the stockholder and the board, who authorizes the President to act on its behalf. Romney’s just the lyingest liar who ever lied.
amk
@scav: If you could photoshop that into a jpeg, I would tweet it.
General Stuck
eeeOUCH!!
Obama ad on where in the world is Romney’s Money’s
Romney Response
Obama is a meanie liar liar liar.
I figure we will have high school nostalgia from all the bitch slapping and ad war spitballs. Romney is firing blanks though. Obama brought a bazooka loaded with SEC paperwork.
Cassidy
R-Money is picking Ryan for VP. I can see Mitt thinking of himself as a great mentor and Ryan crass enough to polish his knob and pretend he’s being mentored. It’s going to be ryan.
scav
@amk: Alas! I’d need the freedom to be working on a better computer to do that myself, so I give the poor thing its freedom to be photoshopped by those that can. Allons=y!
JPL
@amk: Just because he signed some SEC papers doesn’t mean he lied… wtf.. is wrong with these people.
FlipYrWhig
@Cassidy: Yup, that’s my call too. It also has the benefit, by Republican standards, of invoking the Wisconsin struggle — which the GOP ultimately won. For the moment.
amk
Dem Rapid Response ad on Mitt Romney’s $ecret $tash.
amk
@scav: If I had the friggin’ photoshop skillz, I’d do it. Alas. Hope some bj’er will volunteer.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@NonyNony:
This phrasing is pure gold.
Consider it ‘borrowed’ (if not stolen).
Keith G
@Frankensteinbeck: So when folks are confused about ACA, tax cuts, or stimulus it’s everybody’s fault but Obama’s team?
Paul in KY
@Triassic Sands: I had a cat (deceased now, RIP Annie) that loved olives, green or black.
Paul in KY
@Chris: Everything Nixon had was a ‘rogues gallery of secret’ (insert person/object here).
Paul in KY
@NonyNony: Sorta like ‘bolshevik’ meaning ‘majority’ when they were decidely not the majority faction.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Trakker:
Probably the best “moral outrage” speech I have ever heard was one given by Joe Biden back in 2008, when he was campaigning in Iowa. He enumerated a long list of outrages the world and our country had suffered at the hands of the Bush Administration, asking, with each enumeration, “Where is the morality?” I had gone to a labor hall event to eyeball a clutch of candidates – he’s the only one whose words I remember from that night.
BTW – the comments on this thread serve as an example of reason no. 1 I keep coming back to Balloon Juice.
Frankensteinbeck
@Keith G:
Pretty much. They did their job, and did it well. The entire rest of the system turned against them, and the White House has very little ability to control the media. I’m sure you noticed that all anybody on television or in newspapers wanted to do was discuss whether death panels were a fair description, and praise the Tea Party and its incredibly tiny rallies as a vast movement of Real American Independents who were angered by Obama’s overreach. This shit is WHY we rail about the media.
Despite all that, he’s had some impressive successes. The ‘the rich don’t pay their fair share’ meme came from that debt speech, and for the first time in thirty years it’s taken hold. But the guy’s been fighting an uphill battle, and I mean ‘sheer vertical cliff’ uphill, since nobody wants to repeat anything he says to the public.
The white house press corps threw a fit once because he told them to their faces that he was giving them an address on the war because if he’d given them an address on the economy, they wouldn’t have covered it.
Frankensteinbeck
@Keith G:
I’m sorry, I have to correct myself. The press wanted to talk about whether the description ‘death panels’ was RUDE, not whether it was ACCURATE. That is the kind of obstacle Obama and his messaging team have faced since day one. In campaign season he can spend non-government money to buy commercials and go on long speech tours, at least. And the media feels obligated to at least admit he’s talking.
Keith G
@Frankensteibeck: One example: Last year on the Diane Ream Show, the former director of White House communications admitted that the White House have handled the death panels episode poorly.
President Obama and his team are humans, fallible humans. We do them and us no good by holding them in some golden haze of imagined perfection. We have elected him to serve us. We owe him our honest feedback.