From the “YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS SHIT UP” category:
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign on Wednesday partied with wealthy donors on a 150-foot yacht that flies the flag of the Cayman Islands, according to an ABC News report.
Members of the Romney Victory Council, who have each raised more than $1 million for the candidate, mingled with Romney’s brother, Scott, and other relatives in Tampa aboard the luxury yacht “Cracker Bay.”
While they waited outside the unadvertised event, ABC News snapped photos of the Cayman Islands civil ensign flag flying on the yacht’s stern.
I can’t wait for Mark Halperin to explain this is good news for John McCain.
WJS
The Stars and Bars were not available for display?
David Hunt
For a serious answer to a (darkly) humorous question: we let it happen.
Scott S.
That’s just delightful.
I keep telling myself they can’t possibly be stupid enough to let Hologram Reagan or Palin or Nugent or Buchanan have their spotlight in the convention, but stuff like this just keeps showing that Romney and his campaign have an Infinite Well of Stupid to draw from…
OGLiberal
Halperin is still in a swoon over Mrs. Romney. Too many starbursts for him to even notice this.
MikeJ
Betty did say she might swing by and see if there was anything to report. Who expected her to get this far behind enemy lines?
tamied
Cracker Bay? How appropriate.
Linnaeus
Cracker Bay? Hmm….I could go there.
Jerzy Russian
Speaking for myself, I have not done anything remotely good enough to deserve this.
Doesn’t Mitt know that most middle class folks don’t have 150 foot yachts? I think the average for people on my block is somewhere in the 25 to 30 foot range.
Darkrose
Seriously? “Cracker Bay”??? Was “Honkey Haven” taken?
dead existentialist
It was flying the skull and crossbones, also too. Arhg!
beltane
I support Mitt Romney’s campaign for the presidency of the Cayman Islands.
BGinCHI
Man I bet that yacht was full of freedoms.
Mattminus
Cracker, please.
Shirt
Flying the Cayman flag? Did they check his birth certificate or his certificate of deposit?
The Ancient Randonneur
Here is something else you can’t make up:
So, WE DID BUILD THIS, motherfvckrs!
Elizabelle
Cracker Bay seems to be a place name. In South Africa on the coast.
There’s Cracker Bay Road and Cracker Bay B&B.
I’d be very curious about any foreign money that might be flowing to the Romney campaign.
Know they’re already looking at the dreadful Sheldon Adelson.
What else?
pseudonymous in nc
And Cracker Bay has its own “Superyachts” profile.
Its owner, Gary Morse, is apparently worth $2.5bn out of developing a load of retirement megavillages, which means that Rmoney’s not fit to swab his decks.
lamh35
Why (and How) Romney is Playing the Race Card
By Ron Fournier
Wow who put truth serum in Fournier’s cheerios this morning. Turning point??
Felinious Wench
I….love…it.
Romney has the most incompetent handlers ever. Can you see Team Obama ever letting that happen?
dmsilev
That only happens if there’s video of Mitt Romney being unable to remember how many 150 foot yachts he and his supporters own.
rlrr
How hard would it have been to find an American flagged yacht with an name other than Cracker Bay?
Davis X. Machina
Nothing, not even baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet, says “America” to me like high-end tax avoidance schemes.
While you’re up, throw another pass-through entity on the grill for me, will ya, and hand me a Pabst.
mai naem
Apparently Cracker Barrel was used up by Countess Anne’s yacht. And the other of the His and Hers yachts owned by the Romneys is called Tighty Whitey.
lamh35
BTW, OT, but can I say that Romney’s tone deaf Isaac joke is really going over well with my NOLA fam…
Violet
I posted a link to Brian Ross of ABC’s piece on rich donors and how they want to hide from everyone.
.
Elizabelle
Here’s a link on Google Maps.
Cracker Bay Road, Hibberdene, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Looks gorgeous.
MikeJ
@Felinious Wench:
ON the very first campaign I ever worked on, they always asked everybody if they would mind picking up VIPS from the airport, etc. The main rule for whoever went was that they had to drive an American car.
Bokonon
They can spin and spin, and lie and lie, and wave Anne Romney in our faces on prime time television … but ultimately, these people just can’t hide their true culture and viewpoints.
Nobody realized that having a fundraiser on a foreign-flagged yacht would create an optics problem because in Mitt Romney’s set, this sort of thing NEVER IS A PROBLEM. This is a guy who uses shell companies out of the Caymans after all, and keeps money in Cayman banks … so whatsamatta? Mitt and his contributors are all used to it, and didn’t even think of hoisting the US flag for cosmetic purposes.
And I will bet that the yacht is registered in the Caymans for tax purposes as well.
Elizabelle
Cracker Bay B&B in South Africa.
Which is actually a luxurious resort.
Who owns it?
Gravenstone
Somewhere the ghost of the Monkey Business stirs and smiles at the thought of a sister ship taking down another overconfident candidate.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@The Ancient Randonneur: So basically Romney legitamtly paid no taxes because his company essentially failed and had to take a hand out. So that’s why Romeny don’t want anyone, right or left, see his taxes. OMG, I think I just climaxed at the very thought of it.
Captain Haddock
But if you knew Mitt, like Ann knows Mitt, you’d know that the Caymen Island flag was just an ironic joke played by the warmest, most cuddly, not robotic at all, Mitt.
General Stuck
Like Bryan Ross said for ABC, they will be on the lookout for this kind of thing at the dem convention. I hope the DNC, and or the Obama folks don’t pull the same shit. I don’t think they will, this time. Though from what I gather, no one making over 250 large, or many folks like that want anything to do with democrats and their populist tax message.
Culture of Truth
Christ on a Cracker!
Elizabelle
@Bokonon:
People need to realize that Mitt Romney is a citizen of the world.
It was charming when John Lennon claimed to be one, in the spirit of having an expansive mind, but it’s not charming when applied to mega-capitalists who can and will live wherever it best suits them. And pull up stakes when they need to move on.
Which Americans in failed towns without jobs or manufacturing, or anyone to buy their homes (with fracked well water, even) CANNOT DO.
Mitt Romney and — to a greater extent — his guests and fellow Republicans — have learned that it’s easier to buy the Congress and government offices than to work with them.
Culture of Truth
Hmmmm… sounds foreign…
Felinious Wench
@MikeJ:
Smart campaign.
kindness
The tone deafness….it hurts!
Culture of Truth
what the roots of Romney’s rage?
Brachiator
That’s just gotta be the $$ Cracker Bay.
MikeJ
@Elizabelle: It was built by a Dutch shipyard. When I saw the name Haakvoort I first guessed it was also South African, but their yard is actually just outside Amsterdam.
Paul
I think this is the flag of Bermuda, not Cayman Islands.
Elie
@Felinious Wench:
I tell ya — for all their money, they are the most incompetent campaign EVAH… Leaves you just shaking your head
rlrr
@MikeJ:
Not even an American made yacht. tsk tsk
Elizabelle
@MikeJ:
Thanks Mike.
I was wondering about the resort in South Africa too. Website didn’t say.
Wondering if it’s tied in at all, or owned by an Adelson type … or just a coincidence.
pragmatism
@WJS:
It is irresponsible not to speculate that Allen West took the flag SCUBA diving.
http://www.upi.com/News_Photos/Features/Learn-to-dive-month/5252/
Felinious Wench
@Paul:
It’s one of the Cayman flags…they have several. Others have been making the same mistake about thinking it’s Bermuda.
Culture of Truth
Even if true, it’s Obama’s fault for driving our yacht-manufacturing and wealth creating overseas.
Paul
@Felinious Wench:
Thanks for clarifying.
NancyDarling
Isn’t Gary Morse the guy who developed and owns The Villages?
MikeJ
@Felinious Wench: Marinetraffic agrees that it’s Cayman.
Linnaeus
@NancyDarling:
Yes, that’s him.
hhex65
You bring such joy in Cracker Bay Palace
No matter where you roam know our love is true
Culture of Truth
Ann and Mitt sadly lived in the basement of a yacht
Elizabelle
Whenever I hear the term “cracker”, I think of Grady McWhiney’s “Cracker Culture”, a “controversial” book:
My prof deemed this book interesting but didn’t prove its point, in the end. And there are several other huge diffs between the North and South.
Sounds like a good starting place, though.
EconWatcher
I suspect that Obama’s team is holding a can of whupass to open right after the Republican convention ends. The stuff until now has just been a teaser, to get some ideas and questions floating: Tax cheat? Corporate vulture? Crony capitalist?
Unless I’m sadly mistaken, they’re waiting for the right time to flesh these themes out with some juicy details.
As I’ve said before, Romney is not an opponent. He is Exhibit A in explaining how and why America went wrong.
trollhattan
@Felinious Wench:
If you allow as to how he’d only get on board to serve cocktails in the first place yeah, the optics would be pretty bad.
Nevertheless, since Willard can’t actually surprise anybody at this point, I doubt Cracker Boy will have the resonance of Monkey Business.
cathyx
@Culture of Truth: And ate lots of tuna fish while they struggled through school.
JPL
@Culture of Truth: In order to afford that Mitt had to use some of his trust fund.
Elie
@Elizabelle:
I have read this and found it very a very interesting book. As your prof said, its accurate in its descriptions but not sure it completely proves its point. Still, it does paint an intriguing picture of why we see what we see in Southeners. In any case, no one else seems to have a better explanation….
seanindc
because reddit runs the world, Obama is doing an AMA at 4:30 – for reelz yo.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z1c9z/i_am_barack_obama_president_of_the_united_states/
Elisabeth
@lamh35:
This former MS Gulf Coast resident is not amused either.
e.a.f.
I want to see Romney’s birth certificate! He’s flying a flag other than an American? He is running for president of the U.S.A. sounds like some sort of foreginer to me. need to check that guy out.
Romney’s team just doesn’t get it. Partying on a 150 ft. boat? Not good optics. Many Americans would like to just have a 150 sq. ft. apartment to call their own, let alone a boat of 150 ft. The fact he registered it in another country say much about him & his politics. He is running to be the president of the U.S.A. but won’t even register his boat in his own country. Doesn’t sound like a real enthusiastic american to me.
J.D. Rhoades
They’re either totally clueless about optics or they’ve just stopped giving a fuck.
JPL
@lamh35: How are they doing?
Linnaeus
@J.D. Rhoades:
I’m betting on the latter. They’ve calculated that most people won’t care enough for it to affect their votes. They can just keep lying about Obama and welfare.
? Martin
@seanindc: Yeah, Reddit doesn’t own enough servers for that.
JPL
@Culture of Truth: BTW, you could sell that cracker on ebay and make big bucks.
wrb
@The Ancient Randonneur: I nominate that article for the front page. There is a lot in it.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
@The Ancient Randonneur: I really wish we hadn’t. Romney would then be just a minor Wall Street affirmative action hire because his pop had the right connections.
lamh35
@JPL: my moms, my sister and the majority of my younger cousins left the city on Monday for sites beyond (Baton Rouge, Houston, DFW) and they are good. Some of my older family stayed behind and they are safe and sound too. Dry and so far not flooded, but without electricity off and on. Still though way better than Katrina was and way better than Plaquemines Parish.
JimF
@Elisabeth: Over 4.3k comments already. I wonder how he is going to choose.
feebog
@ J.D. Rhoades:
I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. They certainly are totally clueless about optics, and the recent Welfare ads lead me to believe that they don’t give a fuck either.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
@Darkrose: Yes. As was the Ku Klux Klipper.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
@Darkrose: Yes. As was the Ku Klux Klipper.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
@Darkrose: Yes. As was The Ku Klux Klipper.
SiubhanDuinne
@lamh35:
@Elisabeth:
I’ve been trying to find out what he said but whatever I Google click on comes up empty. What did he say?
jgaugust
@JimF: O/T I don’t really understand how to use Reddit (one of the few tech things I just have never really taken the time to get to know). At this point he’s only answered one question on the space program, right? Just trying to follow along.
On topic, this is hysterical. I hope that the Obama campaign takes the still photos from this and puts it into an immediate ad. Could be a good one.
The Moar You Know
@Elizabelle: I was the first non-Southerner in my family, born in California. My family, previously, had been in the South since the late 1700s.
His ideas are attractive, brutally simplistic, and utter crap. To this day I’ve never met any Southerner who had any Scottish ancestry at all – they were almost all British – or in the case of half of my family, who were weird outliers, French.
The South is what the South is for two reasons only: The catastrophic legacy of the institution of slavery, and the utter incompetence of the North in dealing with the South’s reintegration into the Union following the Civil War.
For an example of how you deal with such societies, look to how MacArthur dealt with the Japanese. THAT was effective rehabilitation. We let the South back into the Union without even making them apologize. Bad fucking move.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
@Darkrose: and Segregationist Sound. This is fun.
pragmatism
@Elisabeth:
I read this as you won the Ms. Gulf Coast Resident pageant. I refuse to believe otherwise. You carried yourself with distinction during your reign.
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
I haven’t read the book, maybe doing so would change my mind, but I’m generally wary of those kinds of cultural explanations like “Celts and Southerners were characteristically violent.” So I think I agree with you…
Ah, the origin of the double standard where 1) we coddle right wing fanatics in the hopes that they’ll love us back, 2) black people and other “not like us” people pay the price for our lovely reconciliation, and 3) the right wing fanatics only hate us more.
Potentially in the South’s defense – did the U.S. government direct efforts towards economic reconstruction in the same way that it did in Japan and Western Europe? You hear a lot about the Union troops and race relations aspects of Reconstruction, but I don’t know much about the economics of it.
JC
We’ve got a supine press – CNN won’t even put up a basic story on what happened to their correspondent. Ads about welfare, lie, and lie, and lie, and lie.
Medicare ALONE, as Doug has said, we should be screaming from the rooftops, that the plan turns Medicare into a VOUCHER program.
Again, and again, and again, say that.
The ‘plan’ to turn around the economy, is a plan that is Bush’s plan – and that worked so well, didn’t it?
AND – the plan RAISES taxes on most americans, only lowering them on the richest.
I’m still concerned that the ads – those everpresent Ad Buys by the fatcat groups – will sway the voters who are not paying attention. It seems to be happening, given the new sets of numbers we have been seeing.
elftx
It appears Pres.Obama is doing an AMA on Reddit right now, but I can’t get into the thread..keep getting message reddit is overloaded..dang!!!
crap..see it’s been noticed already..carryon
Steeplejack (phone)
@Elie:
Albion’s Seed. Link later.
mai naem
@The Ancient Randonneur: I do believe you are telling me that Mitty did not build it. How’s Countess Ann going to deal with that?
BTW, this may sound like a stupid question but why did the FDIC bargain with Bain, I don’t understand why they were going to gain anything by helping Bain out. There were private loans made by the banks, I thought banks were suppposed to carry the risk on their loans so why would they not just eat the loss.
mai naem
@The Ancient Randonneur: I do believe you are telling me that Mitty did not build it. How’s Countess Ann going to deal with that?
BTW, this may sound like a stupid question but why did the FDIC bargain with Bain, I don’t understand why they were going to gain anything by helping Bain out. There were private loans made by the banks, I thought banks were suppposed to carry the risk on their loans so why would they not just eat the loss.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Elie:
Try “Albion’s Seed”. We’re still fighting the English Civil War between the Roundheads (New England) and the Cavaliers (Southern aristocracy). Throw in the Borderers (Appalachians) and the Quakers and you’ve got all the English factions over here.
JC
This election is GIFT WRAPPED, really.
Win the seniors? Continue to point out again and again the truth about Vouchercare, every day. Josh Marshall, others, should do what was done with the privatize social security scare. Keep at it, every day, day in and day out, raise the alarm on what that plan does, until our collective hue and cry, forces the media to ask daily about the plan.
Win the working man? Obama lowers your taxes, Romney raises them – what is so hard about that?
Debt? no one care, of course – but simply point out that Romney has no credibility, and neither does the Republican party.
Geoduck
@SiubhanDuinne:
Something about being glad he was on dry land.
LanceThruster
Does the Romney-bot drink virgin daiquiris, or is that too foreign?
...now I try to be amused
It’s not the Cayman Islands flag on the yacht; that flag is blue. It might be the Bermuda flag, but there a lot of national flags with a red field and the Union Jack in the corner.
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack (phone):
Ah, yes.
I was going to ask Elie and Moar if they’d read “Albion’s Seed.”
I’ve read neither that nor “Cracker Culture”, but always meant to. (Own a copy of “Seed.”)
...now I try to be amused
It’s not the Cayman Islands flag on the yacht; that flag is blue. It might be the Bermuda flag, but there a lot of national flags with a red field and the Union Jack in the corner.
lamh35
OT, but can we say Condeleeza Rice just got “Katie Couric-ed” by Norah O’Donnell in an interview.
Condi Rice Can’t Name A Specific Obama Foreign Policy Failure
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack (phone):
Ah, yes.
I was going to ask Elie and Moar if they’d read “Albion’s Seed.”
I’ve read neither that nor “Cracker Culture”, but always meant to. (Own a copy of “Seed.”)
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack (phone):
Ah, yes.
I was going to ask Elie and Moar if they’d read “Albion’s Seed.”
I’ve read neither that nor “Cracker Culture”, but always meant to. (Own a copy of “Seed.”)
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack (phone):
Ah, yes.
I was going to ask Elie and Moar if they’d read “Albion’s Seed.”
I’ve read neither that nor “Cracker Culture”, but always meant to. (Own a copy of “Seed.”)
jgaugust
On Reddit, of all places, Obama floats the idea of passing a Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United. Am I the only one who thinks this is a pretty huge policy announcement?
RareSanity
@Elie:
Like I tried to explain to my friends, when C+ Augustus was President, there’s a big difference between “incompetent” and “don’t care”.
This move wasn’t incompetent, it was an act of hubris…they don’t care if you see them on a yacht with a foreign flag flying. Why should they? They know that nobody can or will do anything about it, and there will be no consequences for it.
As to my earlier example, Bush wasn’t “incompetent” in handling Katrina, he just didn’t give a damn about it until it actually started hurting him politically.
Remember the video of him receiving a guitar (from somebody whose name escapes me right now) at his ranch while New Orleans was drowning? It didn’t affect him then, so he didn’t care.
Romney doesn’t give a shit. He’s never had to deal any consequences for actions he’s taken up to this point in his life. Why should he start caring now?
jgaugust
On Reddit, of all places, Obama floats the idea of passing a Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United. Am I the only one who thinks this is a pretty huge policy announcement?
jgaugust
Obama floats constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. Pretty legitimate policy recommendation. And it was made on Reddit, of all places.
JustRuss
So Mitt held a party for his millionaire fund raisers on a Cayman-flagged boat called Cracker Bay. Good Lord, is The Onion running his campaign now?
jp7505a
Some one on a nearby boat thought it was fitting that Mittens had his party on a boat that doesn’t pay any taxes in the US
jp7505a
Some one on a nearby boat thought it was fitting that Mittens had his party on a boat that doesn’t pay any taxes in the US
jp7505a
Some one on a nearby boat thought it was fitting that Mittens had his party on a boat that doesn’t pay any taxes in the US
MikeJ
@…now I try to be amused: No, it’s a Cayman flag.
jgaugust
Sorry for the spam folks, for some reason after posting my comment on WP, it never showed up (even after refreshing the page independently).
Jamey
I found an engraved invite for the event on Morse’s yacht. It said, “You are invited to join the upper crust at “The Cream on the Cracker.” Unintended SE Hinton-style hijinks to ensue…
? Martin
So, the welfare lie is Romneys Sarah Palin moment. Behind in the polling, they throw the hail mary and hope it works out. Without it, they would have lost anyway, so no regrets, no remorse.
shortstop
@Elizabelle: It’s well worth a read.
The Moar You Know
@Chris: That’s where it gets interesting. The answer is “yes” but with a huge “but”.
Under every subsequent administration policy changed, from “burn, raze, and salt the ground” to “send ’em a ton of money, give them all their titles and jobs back, and Jim Crow the Negro so he can’t vote”. Seesawing between eliminationism and total coddling. You can see which approach won out in the end, but for a good forty years in the South, no one could have told you anything about what U.S. policy was towards them because it changed almost every day, and varied wildly by region.
Mishandled start to finish, and look at it now. Total clusterfuck. We’re probably going to end up fighting that goddamned war again because the aftermath was so brutally mishandled.
Just like Iraq.
Just like Afghanistan.
You gotta have a plan for peace as well as war. FDR had teams working on both Europe and Japanese post-war rebuilding as far back as 1942. Shame we can’t learn from our successes.
TaMara (BHF)
@lamh35: Glad to hear all that. I’ve been out of the loop – what RMoney joke are we talking about now?
The Moar You Know
@RareSanity: The guitar was from Carvin Guitars, here in San Diego, although I don’t think they were the actual donor.
I built acoustic guitars for many years. It wouldn’t stand out to most folks like a car would have, but it did to me: the guitar was Korean-made. Carvin imports them.
jp7505a
Poor ann Romney. seems when she was a young working Mom she spent ‘Those “long, long, rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once.”
Wonder which of the five houses she is referring to
Yutsano
It’s Christmas at Ground Zero!!
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
Yeah, I can see how the lack of continuity would be a huge problem.
The reason I asked was, our policy towards Germany and Japan was basically “stomp the shit out of their ideology, but invest enough in economic development that the people have reason to believe in the new system.” Whereas our policy towards the South, whatever our intentions, ended up being “leave them in poverty but leave them their ideology as a consolation prize.” So you ended up with a poverty-stricken hellhole where the only thing people had to hold onto was an ideology of racial supremacy and historical resentment. Is it any wonder it turned out like it did?
Well that, and as you pointed out, you’ve gotta have some continuity in your policies, which we got in Europe and Japan thanks to the “liberal consensus” of the era. I don’t like to imagine what a fucking disaster Europe would’ve been if Robert Taft and his Gilded Age nostalgists had been in charge of postwar foreign policy.
But hell, ignoring all the successes of the FDR/Truman era has been one of the central facts of political culture for the last thirty years. Largely because they were, in fact, successes, when all the predictions in GOP ideology says they shouldn’t have been, and if the facts don’t fit the script, well, you just have to shout what’s in the script that much louder…
wrb
@Elizabelle:
Romney pushed his concerns aside and flew to Miami in mid-1984 to meet with the Salvadorans at a local bank.
__
It was a lucrative trip. The Central Americans provided roughly $9 million — 40 percent — of Bain Capital’s initial outside funding, the Los Angeles Times reported recently. And they became valued clients.
__
“Over the years, these Latin American friends have loyally rolled over investments in succeeding funds, actively participated in Bain Capital’s May investor meetings, and are still today one of the largest investor groups in Bain Capital,” Strachan wrote in his memoir in 2008. Strachan declined to be interviewed for this story.
__
When Romney launched another venture that needed funding — his first presidential campaign — he returned to Miami.
__
…omney could also have thanked investors from two other wealthy and powerful Central American clans — the de Sola and Salaverria families, who the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe have reported were founding investors in Bain Capital.
__
While they were on the lookout for investments in the United States, members of some of these prominent families — including the Salaverria, Poma, de Sola and Dueñas clans — were also at the time financing, either directly or through political parties, death squads in El Salvador. The ruling classes were deploying the death squads to beat back left-wing guerrillas and reformers during El Salvador’s civil war.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/08/mitt-romney-death-squads-bain_n_1710133.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/19/nation/la-na-bain-creation-20120719
wrb
FYWP
quannlace
“I appreciate the invitation to join you on dry land this afternoon …
Romney’s little ‘joke’ before his comments about hurricane Isaac.
Lately, I’ve heard more RW pundits blathering about how they know exactly what Romney needs to do to WIN!
My simple answer. Just shut the fuck up. Forget the impromptu comments that are supposed to ‘endear’ you to the gutter-trash, and just stick to your teleprompter. Sorry, but you are just too damned odd when you spontaneously open your yap.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
This man is criminally inept at campaigning. Keep the cameras rolling and the mics hot people.
trollhattan
Obama campaign drops an ad focusing on Paul Ryan. They have some very clever folks on board.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWkPoS3Jj1A
Mike E
You cannot get kicked off the Cracker Bay for eating crackers, oddly enough.
Ben Franklin
@trollhattan:
They have some very clever folks on board.
Why was it smart?
Elisabeth
@pragmatism:
Hahahaha! I at least outshone (outshined?) Miss South Carolina.
PurpleGirl
@Ben Franklin: Using vintage news footage to evoke the earlier time periods was well done.
Elisabeth
@? Martin:
Just saw via twitter that Fox News has cancelled Palin’s interview for tonight. Hmmmmm
Elisabeth
@SiubhanDuinne:
quannlace @120 has the quote. Romney couldn’t buy a clue with all his money.
Ben Franklin
@PurpleGirl:
That’s what i thought/effective. Did understand correctly, they removed it?
pragmatism
@Elisabeth: you should select a court from the BJ crowd. you totes outshindeded Miss SC.
The Moar You Know
@Chris: Most of you statement is dead on but I do have one quibble. Their ideology towards black folks wasn’t “theirs”. It was the nation’s. Yeah, we fought because slavery was bullshit and everyone knew it, but even the most ardent abolitionist of the day would have shot you dead without a second thought if you’d suggested his daughter marry a Negro. Or that the nation elect a black man as President.
Their ideology of “we should be allowed to do whatever the fuck we want” I think was the real turd in the punchbowl, and one that never got the pushback it needed.
Calouste
@MikeJ:
And particularly, that flag is the Civil Ensign of the Cayman Islands, which is what is flown on non-warships. For most countries, the Civil Ensign and the National Flag are identical, but the Brits and their dependencies use different ones.
Catsy
@quannlace: Romney’s getting a bum rap for his “dry land” comment. All he was trying to say was that the sea level there was the right height.
Elisabeth
@pragmatism:
And risk a mutiny?! I think not.
JustAnotherBob
@Culture of Truth:
“Even if true, it’s Obama’s fault for driving our yacht-manufacturing and wealth creating overseas.”
Reagan did that. Long time age. 10% luxury tax on “Made in America” products.
Rich folks started meeting their foreign-built yachts two miles offshore in international waters to take possession and do a legal import.
Many American yacht building companies went under.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@mai naem:
Probably a safe assumption that somebody at FDIC went to “the right school” with somebody at Bain.
We’ve become more UK than the UK at this point.
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
I’m of two minds on the South and racism; the fair minded (liberal) part of me will point out that yes, racism was the nation’s sin and not just the South’s. Northern cities have nothing to brag about when it comes to the treatment of blacks, Northern WASPs ended up supplying just as many KKK members as the South, the U.S. Army that beat the C.S.A. went on to practice ethnic cleansing in the West… etc etc etc…
The other part of me will point out though that the South was (to my knowledge) the only part of the country where racism was such a huge issue that people were willing to secede from the country and start a war over it, and also the only part of the country that later bred a third party based on the single platform of “segregation now, segregation forever” (twice).
I don’t think the South is more racist than the rest of the country, exactly. It’s more that the racism seems (or at least seems to have been) central to ideology and identity in the South to a degree that it wasn’t elsewhere. I welcome any correction especially from someone with an actual Southern background – it’s just how it seems to me as an outsider.
MikeJ
@Calouste: To add to the confusion, British territories/possessions/former colonies tend to use a blue field on land and a red field at sea. Bermuda screws everyone up because they use a red field everywhere because of their close ties to Canada.
? Martin
@JustAnotherBob: The CA GOP felt that even standard sales tax was too much for yachts and carved out a loophole. Didn’t matter. We still get a fair number of our yachts from southeast Asia and South America. While the sales tax might have deterred a few local builders, the subsidies from smuggling drugs in on those yachts are what really sent production abroad.
The setup is pretty well known. Have a friend who was a ‘yacht importer’ before he was busted and did 5 years for his service.
pragmatism
@Elisabeth: fair ‘nough. I’m never gonna get to wear a sash!
Villago Delenda Est
@danah gaz (fka gaz):
His lack of self-awareness is breathtaking.
Apparently his handlers are so badly cowed by him that none will do anything to stop him from using a damn Uzi to shoot himself, repeatedly, on full auto, in the foot.
I’d almost feel sorry for him if he wasn’t such a ur-asshole, with an asshole wife and asshole spawn.
Davis X. Machina
@Villago Delenda Est: In many corporations, on the TO & E, or the org chart, there’s a special job description/terminology for the guy who tells the CEO “On this one, you’re wrong”.
It’s “Unemployed”.
This is what ‘Run the government like a business’ means…..
Insomniac
Test.
Elisabeth
@pragmatism:
Oh well hell, you can borrow mine. But the tiara? Never!
Dream On
This is how the sociopaths role when they hit the water. Now where’s that $2000 designer life-preserver? Perhaps it’s being sat on by the poodle.
Lord Mitt of Romney is almost as tone-deaf as Mark E. Smith. And far less rewarding.
Felanius Kootea
@Elizabelle: The yacht (cracker Bay) used to be named Campbell Bay. Is the owner South African?
catclub
@Chris: This.
Think of it this way. An inability to back down gracefully.
Once you say that the world will end if those black children swim in a swimming pool with our white children, backing down becomes difficult.
SBJules
@Darkrose:
He has a brother?
AxelFoley
@Darkrose:
ROFLMAO!!!
nastybrutishntall
Cracker Bay? I’d be delighted.