(Drew Sheneman via GoComics.com)
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Blog favorite Mr. Charles P. Pierce, at his Esquire Daily Politics blog, had some particularly must-read pieces today. Apart from recommending the damning details on Romney as the real crony capitalist, I wish to attest my entire agreement, as a fellow Massachusetts citizen, with the following observation:
… It is helpful always to remind yourself that, in the mind of Willard Romney, there are only two kinds of people — himself and his family, and The Help. Throughout his career, and especially throughout his brief political career, Romney has treated The Help with a kind of lordly disdain. It was there when he swooped down from snowy Olympus and shoved an incumbent Republican governor named Jane Swift under a train. It was there in the general election in 2002, when he glibly pushed aside the Democratic candidate, state treasurer Shannon O’Brien, who raised almost all the same issues against Romney that the president and his people are belaboring him with today. The only time it didn’t work was in his race against Senator Edward Kennedy, when Romney found himself up against a candidate with so much money that he couldn’t outspend him, and so much historical gravitas that he couldn’t ignore him.
The Help has no right to go pawing through the family books, giggling at the obvious loopholes and tax dodges, running amok through all the tax shelters, and probably getting their chocolate-y fingerprints all over the pages of the Romney family ledger. And, certainly, those members of The Help in the employ of the president of the United States, who is also part of The Help, have no right to use the nearly comically ostentatious wealth of the Romney as some sort of scrimey political weapon. He does not have to answer to The Help. I mean, jeepers, he’s running for office.
This isn’t stubbornness. That’s often an acquired trait. What this is, fundamentally, is contempt. Contempt for the process, and contempt for the people who make their living in that process, and contempt for the people whose lives depend on that process. There are rules for The Help with which Willard Romney never has had to abide, and he has no intention of starting now.
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Apart from schadenfreude at the futile whinging from the Romney headquarters, what’s on the agenda tonight?
El Cid
Adam Smith would fucking vomit if you told him Mitt Romney and the pseudo-capitalist shitbags at cheap-ass fake money ‘loaned’ buyout firms like Bain were what was to be celebrated as Free Interprize Heroz a couple hundred years after his Magnum Opus.
lamh35
don’t knw if ths has been posted, but POTUS& FLOTUS were at the USA vs Brazil game and the kiss cam came there where:
http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/terminal05/2012/7/16/21/enhanced-buzz-16383-1342490051-7.jpg
Violet
Mr. Pierce has nailed it, as usual. Romney does seem to view almost everyone else with contempt. No wonder people don’t like him.
@lamh35:
Cute. My favorite is the kid next to them. He looks put out by the whole thing.
El Cid
The only way to save America is to nominate the greatest genius the world has ever known, the man who single-handedly stands between civilization and chaos.
Who else? Who else could grasp the reins of destiny and steer us toward a survivable tomorrow?
Why, none other than Newton Le Roi Gingrich.
If we fail to recognize His genius at such a crucial moment, then, why, it’s only our fault if humanity perishes.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
Why, I believe I don’t have much room or energy for an agenda tonight. The schadenfreude has taken it all.
It does my heart good to know that no matter how much I screw things up, I’m still doing better than the Romney campaign did this weekend. Just wow.
lamh35
@Violet: so whats the over/under in when Ann & Mitt follow the leader so to speak? my money is on them having a kiss cam at Olympics
Hill Dweller
@lamh35: Strictly from a PR perspective, that was a pretty great night for the Obama campaign. The President’s halftime interview was especially good.
jwb
@lamh35, @Hill Dweller: Can hardly wait for the whinging about the kiss-cam redo.
WaynersT
How does anyone end up with $100 million in an IRA? I still haven’t seen any explanation for that? And isn’t Romney at the age he can be withdrawing from that now?
And how much money did the federal pension insurance bail spend bailing out the companies Bain bankrupted? How do they get millions of dollars in pension bailouts after Bain got millions in fees?
I got so many questions about what that guys been up to it’s driving me batty. Geez, at least you know McCain made all his money by marrying the beer heiress – things were so much simpler then.
WaynersT
How does anyone end up with $100 million in an IRA? I still haven’t seen any explanation for that? And isn’t Romney at the age he can be withdrawing from that now?
And how much money did the federal pension insurance bail spend bailing out the companies Bain bankrupted? How do they get millions of dollars in pension bailouts after Bain got millions in fees?
I got so many questions about what that guys been up to it’s driving me batty. Geez, at least you know McCain made all his money by marrying the beer heiress – things were so much simpler then.
There are more red flags with that guys than a nascar pile up.
WaynersT
How does anyone end up with $100 million in an IRA? I still haven’t seen any explanation for that? And isn’t Romney at the age he can be withdrawing from that now?
And how much money did the federal pension insurance bail spend bailing out the companies Bain bankrupted? How do they get millions of dollars in pension bailouts after Bain got millions in fees?
I got so many questions about what that guys been up to it’s driving me batty. Geez, at least you know McCain made all his money by marrying the beer heiress – things were so much simpler then.
There are more red flags with that guy than a nascar pile up.
Bnut
Anyone on here play mandolin? I know that is a strange question, but I found a mandolin in my storage unit today, i think I might have bought it on a whim several years ago and forgot about it. I would love if anyone had some advice on what the best books, videos, sites, etc. are for learning to play.
mdblanche
Can somebody explain just what was in that ad Mitt put out today? Some of us had to work late and couldn’t try and watch the video until after it was taken down for copyright infringement(?).
lamh35
speaking of Romney, yeah this happened: Romney says waiters at fundraiser “aren’t having a good year”
um…WOW!
Davis X. Machina
@Bnut: If you can learn off the printed page, or know your way around an instrument or two already, this is helpful for the mando: Folk of the Wood. And Mandolin Cafe I found them both useful when YouTube was still in its infancy and I was starting out. (Of course, I’m still starting out…)
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Bnut: I don’t know much from mandolin, but a great place to start for books, CDs, DVDs etc for acoustic instruments is Elderly Instruments, http://www.elderly.com.
If there are any DVDs from Homespun for mandolin, I’d recommend them. I’ve gotten some for bottleneck and dobro and they’re good.
Davis X. Machina
House of Musical Traditions and Lark in the Morning, too.
Donut
Way back in the GOP primary season (‘member those halcyon days, kids?) one of the front pagers asked for tag suggestions relevant to the presidential race.
So, I call upon the blog overlords, again, to create a tag/post category “I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake”
still the most relevant phrase of 2012, IMO.
Linnaeus
RIP, Donald J. Sobol. Encyclopedia Brown was a staple of my childhood reading.
LanceThruster
@jwb: Terrorist lip bump!
M. Bouffant
@mdblanche:
In a stroke of originality, the ad featured The Prez singing a few lines from “Still in Love W/ You,” the Al Green classic. The jerks at BMG Music Group asked YouTube to remove it as a copyright violation. Ha ha. Wonder if they’ll demand public performance royalties from Obama as well.
Jebediah
@Bnut:
Mandolin? Cool! I see you have already gotten some actual advice, so here’s what you DON’T do with a mandolin: join a “country rock” band with choreographed moves and hair flips (and utterly childish rhyme schemes in your lyrics) and get a really long strap and play the thing way down by your waist so you can try to pretend it’s an electric guitar and then have a concert special that airs on DirecTV where I accidentally see it. It fucking ISN’T a guitar, it’s a perfectly wonderful instrument, don’t act like it isn’t by pretending you’re Slash.
But I am pretty sure you would never do something that unforgivable. Have fun with it!
pattonbt
@lamh35: Jebus, how tone deaf can the man be?
“Look, everyone, these little people here who serve us our fine food are struggling. I think we need more tax cuts so we can trickle down some more to them. What do you think people? A round of applause for the little people who serve us and more tax cuts for us to help them along. And Im sure this wonderful minimum wage job they have here serving their masters has great medical benefits. No need for nasty Obamacare, we don’t want them to get anything for free now.”.
“Now get lost and bring out dessert you moochers”.
Meanwhile Tyler Durden is in the kitchen “seasoning” their food.
mdblanche
@M. Bouffant: I must still be missing something. Was it just “Obama’s attacking Romney for singing, so we’ll show him singing too”? Because if it is, in the words of Wolfgang Pauli, that’s not right, it’s not even wrong.
YellowJournalism
@pattonbt: I sincerely hope that someone spit in his food or added some special “garnish” of some kind.
pattonbt
Just on the whole Romney rebuttal ad FAIL with the Pres signing (and looking and sounding good doing it). It reminds me of how juvenile the R’s have become. How bereft of policy they are.
I was immediately reminded of the tire gauge wisecracking in 2008 (and then the eventual FAIL recognition and egg on face for being so dumb). A bunch of echo chamber, dunderhead frat boys thinking they are so clever and funny. Hee Hee – Tire Gauges. Waving around tire gauges with Obamas Energy Plan on them looking like out of touch children.
It’s like Beavis and Butthead are running their campaigns.
pattonbt
So is Rafalca like a helper Monkey for Anne?
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Contempt for everyone not Romney pretty much nails it.