I’m amazed they’re going to get away with this again:
Mitt Romney promised “complete transparency” when he took charge of the scandal-plagued Salt Lake City Olympics, a pledge that included access to his own correspondence and plans for an extensive public archive of documents related to the Games.
But some who worked with Romney describe a close-to-the-vest chief executive unwilling to share so much as a budget with a state board responsible for spending oversight. Archivists now say most key records about the Games’ internal workings were destroyed under the supervision of a staff member shortly after the flame was extinguished at Olympic Cauldron Park, after Romney had returned to Massachusetts.“Transparency? There was none with [the Salt Lake Organizing Committee] when he was there,” said Kenneth Bullock, a committee member who represented the Utah League of Cities and Towns. “Their transparency became a black hole. It was nonexistent.”
According to Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul, “Mitt Romney resigned from SLOC in early 2002 to run for governor of Massachusetts and was not involved in the decision-making regarding the final disposition of records.”
You know, the truth is no one knows how Mitt Romney managed the Olympics, because they destroyed all the records. Now that it’s become clear that Romney was less than truthful about his role at Bain (despite the claims of the various fact-check franchises that rushed to his rescue before waiting for the facts to come out) I think his claims about the Olympics deserve scrutiny.
Romney and his campaign hacks sound like they’re sitting at a deposition when they’re asked these very simple questions. There’s this insane reliance on specific dates, where Mitt Romney was or was not “actively” running things, or retroactively retired, or whatever.
I’m almost looking forward to the part where we get to Romney’s Massachusetts record, so Andrea Saul can tell us Mitt Romney had left Massachusetts by the time “X” occurred, to begin running for President. She wasn’t laughed out of the room with this Olympic denial, which is virtually identical to the Bain denial. Why stop there? Why not try it for Romneycare? Was Romney “actively governing” at that point? Put the fact-check franchises on it, and see what they come up with. It may be another grey area.
I’m not asking for much here. My hope is the fact check crew can hold off on exonerating Romney and give the Boston journalists a chance to find some facts on Romney’s role in destroying records. They don’t have to DO anything, the fact-checkers.Just wait for someone else to get a chance to do their job.
Rafer Janders
Ah, but how do we know he wasn’t making decisions retroactively? What if, when he was governor of Massachusetts in 2005, he used his powers to reach back in time three years — just as he did when head of SLOC in 2002 to resign from Bain in 1999 — and retroactively gave the order to destroy those records?
MattF
New Romney slogan: “Who, me?”
TS
Mitt was not responsible for Bain, the Olympics nor his Governorship. When he loses his campaign for President he will have retrospectively resigned from campaigning to spend some time with friends in London – and whatever poor soul becomes his running mate will be the reason the race was lost. Maybe he will select Sarah Palin? She cost McCain an election, what’s another old white man between friends.
beltane
@Rafer Janders: For all we know, Mitt Romney is retroactively acting as governor of Massachusetts. Physicists say time travel to the past is an impossibility, but Mitt Romney has proven them wrong.
Cassidy
Has he ever been involved in any decision making or does he actively skip town every time a hard decision comes up?
Cassidy
Rmoney has better time traveling powers than Obama. Now if only he’d do one decent thing with his life and go back and squeeze the testicles on spatula’s sperm donor and keep that shit from happening.
MattF
Romney definition of ‘transparency’: “The quality of not appearing to be where you are looking.”
amk
As long as the msm hacks are willing to pimp for mittbot, for whatever reasons, he will even get away with the proverbial dead male in the room.
amk
@MattF: Tweeting that.
Kay
What day did he resign and what day was the decision made to destroy all the records? I insist we have a full Bain replay, where every Republican robotically repeats a date: : March 13, March 13, March 13….”
Then we’ll have to check and see if he made trips back to Salt Lake City, I suppose, and define “active” versus “passive” again.
Rommie
So, he’s running for President to not make decisions then? Why do it?
>>> sees looong number describing $$$ held in Social Security “lockbox” >>>
Oh.
c u n d gulag
If Mitt were a Democrat, and running the same mendacious campaign, and had covered-up as much of his past dealings as possible – that he had made his fortune gutting companies and selling-off the profitable pieces, off-shoring jobs in the meantime, and keeping his profits as tax-free as possible in foreign banks accounts, and had run an Olympics which Federal tax money helped save, and any records of his involvement in those games have disappeared, is there any doubt that the outcry from Republicans, nationally, would be that he needs to step-aside and let another Democrat run?
How, after all, can this man be trusted with this great, “exceptional” nation, if we can trust him because he’s hiding everything he possibly can?
Mitt as a Democrat would be vilified as an unfit candidate for national office.
And that’s all the more reason to protect him, since he’s a Republican!
Kay
It’s eerie, because Andrea Saul sounds like a person testifying at a congressional hearing, and he’s not even President yet. He’s not even the nominee, yet, officially, and he’s parsing words and the whole team are sticking to dates.
Chyron HR
If Romney wasn’t in charge at all, who did save the Olympics? I’m going to say it was me. You’re welcome, America!
Aimai
Rimney famously had all his minions buy their own computers and hard drives from the state and then destroy them after being governor. This was legal but had never been done before so the laws hadn’t caught up with romneys deep pickets. A few thousand for a used state computer and he destroyed all records of his time in office.
Aimai
Rimney famously had all his minions buy their own computers and hard drives from the state and then destroy them after being governor. This was legal but had never been done before so the laws hadn’t caught up with romneys deep pickets. A few thousand for a used state computer and he destroyed all records of his time in office.
Downpuppy
One problem with this story is that massive destruction of public records is exactly what he did when leaving the governors office.
(Curses! Aimai beat me by 2 minutes, while I found a link)
Even journamalists have a problem with the same stunt twice.
dmsilev
Hmmm. Not that I’m going to actually going to check, but I wonder what Mitt’s book about the Olympics has to say about when he gave up control. Of course, that book was written in 2004, so it’s retroactively inaccurate.
GregB
Honestly, he’s given you people all you need to know.
dmsilev
Also, too, this section of the Rmoney Wikipedia entry (about the 2002 MA-GOV race) is hilarious:
rikyrah
when Isolated Incidents
are neither
ISOLATED
nor
INCIDENTAL
they form a PATTERN.
see what the Pattern tells you.
Accept it.
And proceed accordingly.
there is a narrative coming together quite well, IMO.
A narrative just ripe for political ads.
JPL
@rikyrah: That type of ad costs a lot of money. Since journalists refuse to do their job, it’s up to all of us to spread the word.
Wag
Of course Romney didn’t perform the action of inking the decision to destroy the Olympic records. He made it clear to his minions what he wanted to have happen and conviently left the building while his hit men pulled the trigger.
Just like at Bain.
And just like in MA.
And just like he hopes to do to America.
EconWatcher
Everybody has had a boss like this at one time or another–claiming credit for whatever goes well, and looking for a way to pass the blame when anything goes wrong. He’s setting Obama up for another devastating ad.
PeakVT
You need to read to the third page to find this out, but the key bit that there was an agreement made, but it was somewhat vague, and the SLOC exploited it.
You know what else is somewhat vague? The US oath of office.
EconWatcher
@PeakVT:
“uphold” is a very ambiguous word
Culture of Truth
.
Legalize
Willard is correct. I saved the Olympics. Retroactively!
NonyNony
So let’s see if I have this straight.
We should elect Mitt Romney on his record as governor of MA. Except that we’re not supposed to look at that because he wasn’t responsible for anything that happened while he was governor of MA.
Instead we should elect Mitt Romney based on his record as a “job creator” at Bain. Except Bain destroyed a lot of jobs so we should ignore that part. Oh and he left before the really bad stuff that we should also ignore.
So let’s forget that and elect Mitt Romney because he saved the Olympics. Except that he did it by getting the Federal government to bail him out and “allegedly” ran one of the most corrupt Olympics ever – “allegedly” because no one can prove it was because the records were destroyed after he left which is TOTALLY not his fault because he quit before that happened.
Do I have that storyline straight? I gotta tell you – if Mitt Romney was a movie presidential candidate that movie would probably get a 0% on RottenTomatoes because nobody would believe that anyone would have the chutzpah to try to run for President on a record like that.
And he’s STILL GOING TO GET 45% of the popular vote.
El Cid
Can someone ask Romney to do a timeline of when and at what times he was responsible for which decisions for which organizations?
Wag
@NonyNony
If things keep up maybe he’ll only get 27%
YellowJournalism
@Wag: That last part sounds like an effective ad to me.
danielx
Is there anything in his business and political careers for which Mitt Romney is responsible?
Kay
@dmsilev:
Yay! There’s a book. Clues. My hope is Andrea has to come up with a date again.
I was thinking about the reason he gave for not releasing his tax returns too, which is another really amazing precedent, if allowed to stand.
“I will not release documents that my opponent could use against me”. Wow. It’s every politician’s dream come true. Why didn’t anyone else think of that? That’s why he made the big bucks at Bain, I guess.
NonyNony
@Wag:
McCain got 45% and he had Palin hung around his neck. (Some may argue that Palin was a net plus for McCain – I would argue that the people who saw Sarah Palin as a positive for McCain were the same folks who were going to crawl across broken glass to pull the lever for a tree stump so long as the tree stump was a Republican and made a promise not to raise their taxes).
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Destroyed all the records? That seems to be a pattern with Mittens.
rlrr
It’s not like the President actually has to make decisions…
Culture of Truth
“I can’t release these records, I’m running for President for pete’s sake!”
MattF
It is possible that Romney is honest. But his actions look dishonest, sound dishonest, smell dishonest, and feel dishonest. Pointing this out may hurt his feelings, but there it is.
scav
@El Cid: It’d probably be fractal. “Rombot had masterly control of the presidentially useful decisions that occurred between 9:26 and 10:02 am and retroactively left the room when the mass slaughter of kittens was agreed to at 10:04. A uncaffeinated soft-drink spill unfortunately destroyed that exact page of the minutes. But, at 10:07 he strode back in magnificently and broad-shouldered a bi-partisan consensus that they would break for lunch early at 11:45. No one really knows what happened at the end-stae of the 12-course lunch that day, although footage of Rombott with several grandchildren at a gated-community polo game can be found on you-tube and fragments of a check seemingly cut by the govt. to cover the costs of the meal were spotted by alert, if ignored, researchers. Partisan and ungrateful members of the nameless non-class that offered refreshment at said noontime event have been heard to mutter about the lack of a ‘tip’, a sozializt and coercive practice of mooching off one’s betters.”
grandpa john
Hey! j ust what the country needs, a president who doesn’t involve himself in decision making. if you never make any decisions then you can never fuckup. perfect CYA for the big cheese,,that what the underlings are for to take the blame for fuckups
Culture of Truth
Q: What do Mitt Romney and Michael Phelps have in common?
A: Both destroyed a lot of records.
NonyNony
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
Romney just keeps lining up the ammunition for campaign ads against him. I guess he’s figuring that UNLIMITED SUPERPAC MONEY will let him buy up all the ad time between the conventions and election day so that those ads don’t get a chance to run or something.
dead existentialist
Fuck it. I’m voting for VICTORY! When Obambi is replaced with Mitt, Iraq and Afghanistan will NOT be history! The Rbot3000 will erase those horrible years and replace them with . . . REAGAN!!
(I’m going back to bed.)
FlipYrWhig
This really is amazing, how there’s always someone else primarily at fault when anything in Mitt Romney’s life goes awry. He does realize that people in executive positions in the financial sector are always several degrees removed from the activities they sign off on funding, yes? I just can’t get over how his campaign is simultaneously based on how business people do everything for themselves AND that someone else in the organization is always responsible for the bad stuff.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
And yet Americans 2-to-1 still think Romney’s got such excellent business acumen that he’d brilliantly steer our economy right if he were elected.
Of course he’s going to get away with it Kay, because the (R) by his name means he doesn’t have to be accountable for jack shit in this country.
Ash Can
@ Kay:
I’m not so sure they got away with it the first time. The story of the SEC documents showing Romney staying at Bain longer than he claimed got pretty good coverage, to the point that Bain is no longer the asset on Romney’s resume that it used to be. If contradictory evidence turns up again — and in light of the fact that it’s already happened once, I imagine more reporters will be digging for info this time, hoping for a similar scoop — then the 2002 Olympics will cease being an asset as well.
p.a.
if mitt says he was not actively involved in running Mass. past a certain date it might be one of his few truthful statements. TPM and utube have documented his many speeches before conservative groups where he insults the people of Mass. even WHILE HE WAS THEIR ELECTED GOVERNOR. Always classy, mitt.
Brian R.
In 1999, Romney “left” Bain in such a cloud that no one was sure if he’d really gone for three more years.
In 2002, Romney destroyed the records of his work on the Olympics when he left.
In 2006, Romney bought up all the hard drives and the records of his work as governor when he left there too.
In 2012, Romney won’t even release a full tax return for a single year. He won’t discuss his Swiss bank account or his tax shelters in the Caymans. He won’t reveal the names of his bundlers. He won’t tell us the details of anything he’d do in office either.
Man, it’s almost like this guy has something to hide.
It’s amazing that conservatives insist that Obama hasn’t been vetted, but are readily backing a cross of Chauncey Gardener and Kesyer Soze as their presidential candidate.
aimai
I exchanged emails with a republican who explained to me patiently that although they “don’t listen to anything that comes out of washington” still, “everyone” had admitted that Romney’s SEC filings indicated he was nothing more than a pro-forma head during those years. How this was distinguished from previous years when he was an active head, she didn’t know or care. We really are battling for a very small number of persuadable people because anyone who habitually votes Republican will just pull the lever for Romney regardless of any information that comes out. They are just too well defended (though I gave it my best shot with this woman and let her have it with the full details.)
aimai
RobNYNY1957
The strangest thing about Romney’s denials of acting as CEO of Bain from 1999-2002 is that no one has stepped forward to assert that he or she was the person acting as CEO during that period. Something that simple would put the matter to rest.
Brian R.
@Culture of Truth:
Q: What do Mitt Romney and Michael Phelps have in common?
A: Both destroyed a lot of records.
That’s outstanding.
You could also add “broke some laws” too.
xian
@FlipYrWhig: remember the deal he negotiated with Bain that said if Bain Capital tanked, a cover story (lie) would retroactively absolve him of all responsibility.
redoubt
I’m sure this has been mentioned elsewhere, but didn’t the corruption behind the 2002 Olympics get so obvious that IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch finally stepped down?
NonyNony
@RobNYNY1957:
IANAL, but my understanding is that this would basically force the SEC to open an investigation into the fraudulent filing of paperwork with the SEC. So long as nobody pushes it, the SEC can sit back and assume that Romney lied on his FEC paperwork and theirs is accurate. The FEC can assume that Romney lied on his SEC paperwork and theirs is accurate and everybody can wait until after the election is over to figure out what to do (so they won’t be accused of interfering in the election process).
If someone stepped forward and confirmed that the company had filed fraudulent paperwork – paperwork that Romney himself signed off on – someone would have to do something. You can kind of see the corner that Romney put himself in when he decided he wanted to take all the credit and none of the blame for any job he’s ever done in his entire life.
Rick Taylor
Again and again I look back and marvel that as bad as Romney keeps repeating himself to be, he was arguably the best of the Republican Presidential candidates running; certainly the best of the ones that had any chance of winning the nomination.
Valdivia
Nothing is ever this guy’s responsibility. And he wants to be President?
LAC
Does this Mofo have ANY responsibility for ANYTHING he has been a part of since birth? He is what Mattel thinks a president looks like. Complete with a Barbie Time Machine.
Yutsano
@Valdivia: He privatizes his successes and socializes his failures. IOW, he’s the ideal 1%er.
Villago Delenda Est
The problem for the “fact checkers” is that the facts have a liberal bias. As we all know.
So if they actually check the facts, and report honestly, the wingtards will scream that they’re “liberals”. Which will hurt the fee fees of the “fact checkers”, who are, after all, creatures of the corporate mentality, which has no use for truth, only has use for profit.
The facts hate the wingtards, hate the Rethugs, hate the Galtian overlords. The facts, those nasty terrible facts, are stupid things, and are very stubborn things. Stubbornly against the mentally ill mind set of the wingtards. Vehemently in opposition to the fantasy based ideology of the wingtards.
Patricia Kayden
“no one knows how Mitt Romney managed the Olympics, because they destroyed all the records.”
Wow. Is that the norm? Romneybot 2.0 is a creepy dude. Can’t (and don’t want to) imagine what he’ll be like as the President.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brian R.:
Not so amazing when you consider that they’re all intellectually dishonest sacks of shit.
jl
@Valdivia:
@Yutsano:
It’s SOP. We should work hard to keep him from being elected. But, if a good chance you may lose your morals and get rich enough, you should take notes, for this is how it is done. Romney is taking the MO public. I wonder what the public reaction to the flim flam will be after another 3 months of this.
geg6
@Valdivia:
This is what just astounds me. The guy takes no responsibilty for anything ever. And this is the standard bearer for the party that fashions itself as “the party of responsibility”?
I swear, we live in The Onion’s world. Nothing is too absurd to be the truth.
PeakVT
OT: OnPoint (with Wade Goodwyn, not Asbrook) is doing a whole hour on the voter suppression laws right now.
Villago Delenda Est
@Wag:
“Oh, won’t someone rid me of these meddlesome records of all the things I did over the last few years?”
rlrr
@Valdivia:
To be fair, he wants to be a Republican President.
Yutsano
@rlrr: They never forgot their real lesson from Nixon: destroy everything.
Valdivia
@Yutsano:
pretty scary when you think this is how he wants to run the country.
Valdivia
@geg6:
@jl:
I hope there is a way of weaponizing this flaw. Nothing would make me happy that he being brought down by this exactly.
@rlrr:
of course! He just seems to be more blatant than any other before.
NotMax
@NonyNony
It’s straight-faced farce.
What didn’t Romney know and when didn’t he know it?
Any similarities to actual disreputable imbroglio participants, living or dead, are purely coincidental. No greenbacks were harmed in the making of this presentation. This has been an Avaricious Hairsplitting Production.
Schlemizel
Willard is the picture of the modern CEO! Responsible for any good results which would never have happened without his steady hand and beautiful mind at the tiller but totally unaware, not involved and not the least bit responsible for any failure, misdeed or screw up within the organization.
These are our overlords.
Yutsano
@Valdivia: The real reason he’s running for President is simple: White Horse Prophecy. Plus his personal chances to enrich himself become just that much greater. He will be a total failure because he just does not possess the diplomatic skills necessary to deal with even a possible hostile Congress, much less the rest of the world.
Sigh. I can come to Costa Rica with you if Willard wins right? I could make a killing being a tax liaison for American expats. :)
OT: gay marriage is about to be legalised in Scotland! Will hunt up more details after my professional beating up. :)
Shawn in ShowMe
If Romney loses by 20 points in the televised debates our corporate media will feed us Bizarro headlines such as “Mitt calm under pressure” and “Romney exceeds expectations”. Conversely, a lopsided electoral victory by that black guy in the White House means “Obama faces a divided nation.” Can’t wait.
I’m beginning to come around to George Carlin’s point of view. We all have front row seats to watch the ultimate circus — the unraveling of a civilization. What a bunch of lucky duckies.
jl
@Valdivia:
” I hope there is a way of weaponizing this flaw. ”
I think Mitt is doing a pretty good job all by himself. I am more confident now that Obama and Biden will work hard to get it pointed in the right direction.
Linda
How are you so sure he’s gonna get away with it? Because he SAID so? Why are progressives so sure we will lose all the time? Buck up! The battleship of convention wisdom is turning. It’s just turning damn slow.
Valdivia
@Yutsano:
I am happy to have you come to CR with me. Though we still way way behind over there in gay rights. But a pretty vibrant gay community.
I have to confess I am getting to the point I just loathe loath that man. The latest Anglo-Saxon bs has me seeing red.
@jl:
lol. self weaponizing. Love that image.
pseudonymous in nc
Careful on the Olympic corruption thing: the stuff that got publicised was the bribery involved to win the bidding contest in the mid-90s, and that was long before Rmoney got involved — back then, he was busy doing his day job of flipping companies and stowing the profits in Caribbean tax havens.
Anyway, Mittens reinvents an old saying: success has just one father, but failure belongs to an entirely different family.
g
The idea of the guy who’s hiding his tax returns claiming to be a paragon of transparency is hilarious.
slag
Mitt couldn’t have participated in the decision-making here because he was too busy medaling in the lesser known Evasion Olympics. I understand that event did wonders for the Evasion economy.
Lurking Canadian
Now I see why they were so worked up over the claim that Mrs. Romney never worked a day in her life.
It turns out that Mr. Romney has never worked a day in his life, either.
Origuy
@Yutsano:
From the BBC:
I know a B&B in Oban that’s for sale. (That’s a stereotype, I know, but it was the first thing that came to mind.)
presquevu
Wouldn’t post-9/11 emails be preserved in the all-seeing intelligence-gathering apparatus a former administration set up? Can FOIA requests reveal them?
Mnemosyne
@g:
Well, that’s the fun thing about being a Republican — all you have to do is claim to be something and the entire right wing will gather around you to defend it as the truth.
It doesn’t matter whether or not you actually are or did what you claim — the fact that you made the claim is proof enough, QED. This is why twice-divorced Newt Gingrich can lecture us all on the sanctity of marriage.
TOP123
@Kay: Nixon didn’t have a fully funded 24 hour GOP television channel behind him.
Jennifer
There needs to be a new ad about how Romney has never been in charge of any of the organizations he’s touted as proving his “leadership.” It needs to collect and relate all of these claims of “retroactive resignation” and “not involved in decisions about how best to cover up his actions” and so forth, and it needs to end with “if Mitt Romney wins the presidency, who will make the actual decisions? Because all we know from what Romney says about his past is that it won’t be him. If you vote for Romney, you’re voting for a question mark – because someone you didn’t elect will be calling the shots.”
maya
@Yutsano:
So: If Rmoney wins yur going to Costa Rica. If Obama wins Rushbo’s going there. You both should over-book the same suite.
Costa Rica, my heart’s devotion. Let it slink back in the ocean.
TOP123
@Jennifer: Perhaps, simply, this:
montypython.net/scripts/bravesir.php
decitect
@Villago Delenda Est: ah… Talking Heads
“Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don’t do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don’t stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape
I’m still waiting…” (c) Byrne/Eno
marian
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air—
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!
…
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place—MACAVITY WASN’T THERE !…
Macavity the Mystery Cat (T.S. Eliot)
gene108
I think the MSM are a bunch of submissives, who enjoy a strong guy to run rough shod all over them.
I think with Romney’s dodging about tax returns, involvement at Bain Capital post-1999 and now the SLOC, the “writings on the wall” that a Romney administration would make the secretive Bush, Jr. Administration seem like a bunch of chatty Cathy’s by comparison.
I really wish someone would try to determine how Romney would rule, because I don’t see him being anything but a conduit for pushing the modern day Republican agenda.
fuzed
culpable deniability! movie of Romney at work! youtube.com/watch?v=rxcoe1Y2Ua8
Ruckus
@LAC:
Mattel has more scruples. Of course my shoes have more scruples than mittens.
Maude
@Ruckus:
My gloves have more scruples than Mittens.
Ruckus
@Maude:
I shouldn’t ask but what type of gloves are we talking about? My shoes have more scruples and they will step in dog shit.
Valdivia
@maya:
sorry maya, you got the wrong country, since we are not an island very little chance of sinking in the ocean
/pedant about the constant Puerto Rico=Costa Rica meme.
NonyNony
@gene108:
Please – you don’t need to go into too much psychology to understand our current media overlords. Most of our media is controlled by a few large corporations. Those very large corporations are controlled by men who make a lot of money. Those men do not like to pay taxes.
Those men own television stations and cable networks. These networks employ reporters and talking heads. The talking heads (who fill the bulk of the time in a 24 hour news channel) make six figures a year (at least). Many of the reporters also make six figures a year. These talking heads and reporters do not like to pay taxes.
Conservatives perceive the media as “liberal” because the talking heads and reporters tend to be well educated, and well educated people in the 20th century tended to be egalitarian. Social conservatism hates egalitarianism with the white hot passion of a thousand firey suns. Therefore the media is full of liberals. Even though to liberals it’s obvious that the media is rigged against economic justice.
There’s a reason why “Centrism” and it’s halfwit cousin “Libertarianism” are much, much more popular among the chattering classes in the media than they are in real life. And it’s because these philosophies line up with their actual core ideology – social liberalism and economic conservatism. “You mean I can have my low taxes without hating on gay people and getting birth control? Sign me up!”
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@danielx: Enriching himself. That’s the most important thing. The rest is just details, and they’ve already given you people all the details you need to know.
LanceThruster
That POS Rmoney makes me recall of this gem of dialogue in the movie “Inherit the Wind.”
Matthew Harrison Brady: I do not think about things I do not think about.
Henry Drummond: Do you ever think about things that you do think about?
Tonal Crow
Romney: totally in charge and entirely uninvolved.
LanceThruster
@marian:
This is the World of Commander Mitt Bragg
Your hair will curl in the World of Mitt Bragg.
He fights monsters galore
And then asks for still more
Or so says the brag of Mitt Bragg.
When on the hill the marines plant a flag
They may be led by Commander Mitt Bragg.
With a cannon in hand
He can beat any band
Or so says the brag of Mitt Bragg.
Fencing and fighting and round table knighting
And slaying of dragons, too.
Shipping and sailing and great harpoon whaling
There’s nothing Mitt Bragg can’t do.
Hunting and trapping and gold miner mapping
And flying to Timbuktu.
Roping and riding and Indian guiding
Commander Mitt Bragg comes through.
This is the World of Commander Mitt Bragg
Your head will whirl in the World of Mitt Bragg.
He can do anything
In his world he’s a king
Or so says the brag of Mitt Bragg.
source: lyricsondemand.com/…..yrics.html
LAC
@Ruckus: LOL – agreed. At least with a Mattel toy, you would get instructions. With a Mitt doll by Acme, all you would get is the doll and a feeling that it should be placed somewhere high in order to look down on you.
sherparick
@Wag: Unfortunately, the fact that Romney is running an incomptent and mendacious campaign, perhaps one of the most incompetent and mendatcious in history, may not prevent him from winning. Every day the economic news is getting worse and worse and the idiots over in Europe (who share a lot the same views and ideologies that Romney and Ryan have) seem determine to plunge the Continent’s economy into a deep depression, and partly as a result, our economy is slowing with it and may already be entering another recession. The President, and I am afraid because of his mistakes from mid-2009 through mid 2011 not completely inappropriately, will get the blame and Romney will get in because a majority of voters will believe that Obama deserves to be fired to appease the economic gods.
Since Romney’s campaign has been mendacious and incompetent, we can expect a very mendacious and incompetent Government under Romney. And the Movement Conservatives will probably see this as the opportunity to reverse the Great Society, the New Deal, and the Progressive era in a stroke, and to limit the vote with the hope that no matter how generally unpopular they become, they cannot be voted out of office. A very dark and depressing time.
Snarki, child of Loki
“…leaving a trail of shredded documents, Romney touts ‘transparency’..”
if only we had a real media
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@sherparick:
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What we will get is the Nixon administration, minus Nixon’s (admittedly perverted) sense of US patriotism, and his extensive knowledge of both US domestic politics and world affairs, but this time we will get it with a lapdog media and a compliant Congress. There will be no Watergate. It will be a perfect recipe for corruption, criminality and catastrophe; by way of comparison we will end up missing the halcyon days of the GWB administration.
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The iron rule of modern Republicanism is that each administration is worse than what came before.
redoubt
@LanceThruster: Quite.
LanceThruster
Terrifying though accurate.
LanceThruster
@redoubt:
xD – You are a true fan!
ruemara
@Brian R.: Mind if I borrow that quote for an ad?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@aimai: Doing it backwards. Demand she explain to you why Romney would make a good president and refuse to accept the “Obummer sucks” stuff from her. It’s easy for someone to shut their ears and not listen.