Mittens on Hillary and Baltimore:
In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Romney said, “I was concerned that her comments really smacked of the politicization of the terrible tragedies that are going on there.”
“We don’t have mass incarcerations in America. Individuals are brought before tribunals, and they have counsel, they’re given certain rights. Are we not going to lock people up who commit crimes, is that what she’s suggesting?”
Gods above and below, let this man be the 2016 pinata again. Pleeeeeeease.
Open thread otherwise (And May the Fourth be with you!)
Brachiator
I’d like to really smack Romney.
RaflW
Since it’s an open thread (and semi-relatedly) I just enjoyed K-thug’s latest. He usually is less direct in his frustration with his page-mate Bobo. But today, while of course not naming him, he takes Brooksies pet morality theories straight on. Wheee!
Germy Shoemnagler
Jim Kunstler is over on his block suggesting that if teh blacks only spoke proper english, we wouldn’t have all this trouble:
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/english-spoken-here/
I think he’s suffering from brain bubbles. He’s gotten much worse in the past few years.
Germy Shoemnagler
My comment went into moderation because I linked to Jim Kunstler’s blog. He complains about teh blacks not using proper english, but he titles his blog something that gets me thrown into moderation.
Germy Shoemangler
My comment went into moderation because I linked to Jim Kunstler’s blog. He complains about teh blacks not using proper english, but he titles his blog something that gets me thrown into moderation.
Frankensteinbeck
We are brought before tribunals?
askew
Did he really say tribunals? He is so damn weird.
I can’t remember Gore or Kerry (before his SoS stint) being asked their thoughts on so often after they lost. At least with McCain, he is still in the Senate. Romney hasn’t been in elective office for years and no one is clamoring for his return. Who cares what he thinks?
Ruckus
Clueless is as clueless says.
The man with money can hire enough lawyers.
The person without money gets whatever the law gives them. Which is likely these days to be a jail cell. Which is of course rich as that means they can never pay back whatever outrageous fine and sentence which they most likely should never have gotten in the first place.
Cacti
I’m fully in favor of Mitt Romney remaining as visible as possible throughout the 2016 campaign.
sharl
Everyone probably knows by now that Carly Fiorina has officially entered the race for Preznit.
Almost everyone – including maybe even Carly, presuming at least a modicum of self-awareness on her part – should also know that lots of folks, including ex-HP’ers, would be ready for this moment. So she should have registered carlyfiorina.org as a preemptive measure. But someone else apparently got to it first. For those of us who are huge fans of the Demon Sheep, there is even a simple and kinda sweet bonus page at that site.
If someone already posted this, sorry-notsorry! After last night I need the comic relief dammit, and Carly is just the person to bring it (along with Ben Carson, Rick Perry, etc.).
Amir Khalid
@RaflW:
I think there’s a NYT-imposed limit on how hard K-thug gets to smack Bobo.
Patrick
Freddie Gray had NOT committed a crime, yet he was arrested. Can anyone ever imagine that would have happened to a white chap like Romney?
The chutzpah or this guy when I think of how he himself politicized Benghazi.
Betty Cracker
Funny coincidence: millions of voters were concerned that these comments (by Romney) really smacked of the politicization of the terrible tragedies that are going on there (in Benghazi). Luckily, Romney kept right on proceeding during the 2nd presidential debate, leaving no room for doubt on the matter.
Cacti
@sharl:
After losing her only attempt at elected office, Fiorina looks to fail upward in her political career too.
Sandia Blanca
Paging .
Germy Shoemangler
@Amir Khalid: I wonder how many readers K-Thug has vs. Bobo. I’m sure they’re counting every click at the NYT.
Don
I don’t know why anyone gives Romney the time of day. None of the big money backers are going to give a loser a second bite at the apple. He couldn’t win it. Going for the big chair costs too much and happens too infrequently for folks to finance second chances.
Ruckus
@askew:
Those people who think that money equals intelligence. It’s such an easy proposition to refute, look at mitt, his money can’t even buy intelligence.
Liquid
The only problem with Bobo’s column is that it’s too rough when you wipe with it.
Germy Shoemangler
@Frankensteinbeck: Apparently. And they are wise and completely fair. No evidence tampering, no court-appointed lawyers who suffer from narcolepsy and no bigoted judges out to teach a lesson.
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
I suspect they keep K-thug on because he’s authoritative and popular with readers; and Bobo because he fills a spot on the ideological spectrum.
boatboy_srq
@askew:
Much more like it.
@Patrick:
Let off with a stern warning, and possibly a citation (easily cleared up by your attorneys), no doubt. It’s very easy to believe that only Those People commit crimes if nobody you know personally is
Blahincarceratedindictedcriminal.Calouste
Just a whole lot of one-by-one incarcerations. Of course the US has about 4 times the incarceration rate of the next highest first world country (New Zealand), and about 10 times that of social-democratic hellholes like Sweden and Norway.
NonyNony
He really is Kodos in a person suit, isn’t he?
Germy Shoemangler
@Betty Cracker:
Latest headline in NYTimes:
Ex-C.I.A. Official Rebuts Republican Claims on Benghazi Attack in ‘The Great War of Our Time’
“WASHINGTON — The former deputy director of the C.I.A. asserts in a forthcoming book that Republicans, in their eagerness to politicize the killing of the American ambassador to Libya, repeatedly distorted the agency’s analysis of events. But he also argues that the C.I.A. should get out of the business of providing “talking points” for administration officials in national security events that quickly become partisan, as happened after the Benghazi attack in 2012.”
boatboy_srq
@sharl:
Failing up has always worked before: no reason for her to do anything different now.
EDIT: I see Cacti beat me to it.
Cacti
@Calouste:
The US has less than 1/3 the total population of India…
But more than 5-times the prison population.
boatboy_srq
@Germy Shoemangler:
In other words, at least for the next year and a half or so, the CIA should get out of that business altogether – because there’s no “national security event”, and nothing “administration officials” could say about any such event, that could not “quickly become partisan”.
Calouste
@boatboy_srq:
And that both in the figurative and most literally sense. Frank Fiorina was an AT&T executive when Carly worked for AT&T and married him. Which by the way happened the year after her divorce, which isn’t a John McCain like quick timing, but still suggests they might have known each other before the divorce was finalized.
Mandalay
@askew:
FoxNews viewers, and hardly anyone else. Romney is the ultimate yesterday’s man, but I suspect that this won’t be the last time we hear from him.
Since he is not running he can afford to keep lobbing bombs without any consequences, just to see if anything resonates with the general public. If Cruz or Paul or Rubio say “Clinton is politicizing Baltimore!” they can expect a truckload of shit coming back at them from her, but comments from Romney are only going to elicit a shrug.
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: Shorter Rmoney: nobody is in prison that I admit to knowing, so it can’t be happening (at least not to the Right Kind of People).
Bobby B.
Mitt always shows up as a “pundit” on news shows, left or right. It suggests something about the wisdom of news shows. PS now we say Mitt’s “mentally handiCAPABLE”.
Downpuppy
In what empty expanse of a mind could the Baltimore protests, reaction, etc. not be considered a political struggle?
It boggles.
Brachiator
@askew: Mittens is trying to sound presidential. Don’t think it is working.
schrodinger's cat
@Calouste: What is wrong with her face? Its looks weird.
Mandalay
@Calouste:
You remind me of something Bernie Sanders said yesterday on one of the Sunday talk shows:
His political beliefs are a very long way from Margaret Thatcher, but Sanders reminds me of her in that he knows exactly what he believes, and he doesn’t feel any need to formulate or moderate his responses, or apologize for his views.
He may not become president but the ideas of Bernie Sanders are going to get a well deserved hearing in the coming months, and I think Republicans will need to worry about that just as much as Hillary Clinton.
Mike E
@Ruckus: There’s a lot of denial in the pursuit of riches, and tho he’s certainly an intelligent chap, one’s emotional state is a reflection of this character trait…it’s to do with that pesky modicum of empathy around which a fully integrated/healthy personality revolves.
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: It’s been said that to the GOTea, “upward mobility” = “marry a millionaire”.
I completely forgot about her uninspiring stint with Lucent. Chuckle: Governor Ultrasound appointed her to the UVA Board of Visitors, which move has a distinct whiff of Star Scientific to it. Check out also Carly Fiorina Enterprises – which is following a very Rand Paulian path of [not] properly registering that FBN.
sharl
@schrodinger’s cat: Other people have speculated on the “strangeness” of her face, and the theory that seems favored by most is that she has been getting Botox treatments.
boatboy_srq
@Brachiator: Mittens is trying to sound Imperial, not pResidential. It’s even more “his turn now”, and Ann is likely not letting him forget it.
ms_canadada
Jeebus! Doesn’t Mittens have an elevator to ride, a dog to put on his car roof, a company to dissolve, a horse to shoe…something else other than opening his yap?
Paul in KY
@Germy Shoemangler: That man is a bit naive. Every National Security event becomes partisan.
Paul in KY
@Cacti: After seeing coverage of some of the anti-woman crap that goes on in the most backward areas of India, maybe their incarceration rate should be a bit higher.
Ruckus
@Mike E:
I look beyond what some number says, GPA, IQ, diploma, whatever, and take the entire person. What they say, think, believe. If you live in your own little bubble, cradled in greenbacks and can’t even understand the simple terms of our legal system, you are not intelligent. Ruthless, greedy, privileged, he’s all of that, intelligent about the real world that most of us live in? Not a fucking clue.
Yatsuno
@ms_canadada: White Horse Prophecy is a helluva drug.
Germy Shoemangler
Jim Kunstler is over on his blog suggesting that if teh blacks only spoke proper english, we wouldn’t have all this trouble.
I think he’s suffering from brain bubbles. He’s gotten much worse in the past few years…
Calouste
@boatboy_srq: To quote Wikipedia:
Fiorina was reporting directly to Lucent’s CEO during the time of those dubious quarterly numbers, and the axe fell months after she left for AT&T.
sharl
@sharl: I should say, Botox AND/OR a facelift. Speculation in the world of cosmetic modification – a world a know little about – has been vigorous; here’s the lengthy list of Google search results [(botox OR facelift) and “Carly Fiorina”].
Matt McIrvin
All of my Draft Warren friends have now switched 100% to supporting Bernie Sanders, and are enthusing about how he could really go all the way to the White House.
Which makes me start to worry a little that he’ll just screw things up somehow and hand the election to Scott Walker or whoever. I’ll probably feel better once I see some updated poll data.
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: She may not know when to hold’em, fold’em, or run, but she sure knows when to walk away.
Germy Shoemangler
@Calouste: I saw this comment on another site:
boatboy_srq
@Germy Shoemangler: That is brilliant.
Ben Cisco
@sharl: Also, an ASCII Demon Sheep in the code.
Patrick
@Mandalay:
I doubt Mr Stephanopoulos has even ever been in Scandinavia.
Hurling Dervish
Man@Mandalay: that is exactly what makes Bernie so dangerous to the Republicans. They’ve spent years chanting that Obama is a socialist because any kind of government action (other than military) is socialist. And socialist = USSR and, per Jpnah Goldberg, also too, Hitler. And now here comes Bernie saying, wait, this is good stuff and the more we give to the people , the stronger our country is. Really dangerous to the whole Republican line.
Plantsmantx
Romney is right, in a sense. We don’t have true mass incarceration. If we did, the black/white disparities in the incarceration of people who have been arrested, charged, tried, and convicted on drug charges wouldn’t be anywhere near as mind-blowingly large as they are.
sharl
@Germy Shoemangler: Fake Jeff finds inspiration in Fiorina-style management:
Mike in NC
The only thing that ever remotely ‘concerned’ Mitt Rmoney was the size of his bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.
Patricia Kayden
So are we going to have to listen to RMoney’s pearls of wisdom on political matters for the indefinite future? Funny, how none of our Democratic Presidential failed candidates are regularly pressed for their opinions. Wonder why.
Ryan
Boy, there are times when I’m struck by how completely out of touch this guy really is.
Ruckus
@sharl:
He left off the next step. Take the results and merge into the Dept of Fairy Dust.
Solves a couple of conservative issues, government is now smaller, so taxes can be lowered, and it’s totally ineffective. But who cares, FAIRY DUST!
CONGRATULATIONS!
The problem with Richie Rich here is that he looks, talks, and acts like an insufferable rich asshole. He’s the living incarnation of the guy who fired you because “your job costs too much”.
Even the Kochs are better at talking to the public than he is.
Paul in KY
@Hurling Dervish: They’ll go with the “Why, that’s just crazy talk line of attack” & then will try to make him appear senile.
Chris
@Brachiator:
Most Republicans are heinous in one way or other, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that can touch Romney in pure “backpfeifenhesicht” (a face that cries out for a fist in it). That’s before you even get to his politics. The guy just oozes “ludicrously entitled smarmy little shit.”
There’s never been a politician more badly in need of being smacked over the head with the news that you can’t always get what you want no matter how much money you have or who your dad is. And Obama, bless him, delivered exactly that news right where it hurt the most.
Paul in KY
@Chris: Rmoney looks insufferably smug, while Cruz gives off cray-cray-creepy vibes.
boatboy_srq
@Ryan: Funny, I’m struck by that every time he opens his mouth.
goblue72
@Matt McIrvin: He’s not going to be nominated as the Democratic candidate for President. And at same time, he’s not going to screw up Democrats chance to hold the White House.
He’s not – and never has been – a Ralph Nader. He’s not a willfully blind, ego-centric, jackhole.
What he will do, is make the same reasoned, fact-based, unflinching arguments he’s been making his whole career about why it wouldn’t actually be a bad thing if the U.S. economy and social welfare state bore a closer resemblance to Scandinavia. Except now he gets a bigger megaphone, and the possibility we might for once move the Overton Window to a more progressive direction.
People need to stop pooh-poohing his candidacy and give it some actual breathing room. He is quite literally cheerleading the exact kind of public policies that 90% of the Juicetariat here claims to support.
Mike G
When his dad was governor, Rmoney used to dress up in a Michigan State Police uniform to go prank his friends. Of course he was never imprisoned for impersonating a police officer.
He’s spent his entire life in a bubble where cops and courts treat him with nothing but the greatest courtesy and deference. All he brings to the discussion over police brutality and unrest is a staggering level of privileged cluelessness.
Kyle
@Germy Shoemangler:
If we get another Repuke president I have a hankering for California to secede. Maybe Oregon, Washington and BC can come with us.
Visceral
@boatboy_srq:<
Ugh. Lady Macbeth should just run for president on her own. I’m sure the Republicans would love to have their own woman candidate to use against Hillary.
Quaker in a Basement
@Betty Cracker: Well. There it is.
Brachiator
@Chris: Oh, I am a long time Romney hater from waay back. And people forget that Mittens was not just a guy who came from money and a prominent family. Romney’s father had principles, but somewhere along the way, Mitt rejected everything good his father represented and strived to become a cowardly, smarmy, backlighting turd. Voters were wise in rejecting him, but his continuing presidential delusions suggest that he did not get the message.
Chris
@Brachiator:
I’m sure you have me beat on the “way back,” but the moment I decided he was an irredeemable asshole was that townhall meeting when a crippled guy in need of medical marijuana tried to tell him where he was coming from, and Romney just smiled awkwardly for thirty seconds, gave him a line and then walked away. (Which was 2008 campaigning, IIRC).
There ARE ways to handle that gracefully, even if you’re saying no. Tell him how concerned you are about kids dying of marijuana overdoses, how you’re not convinced that medical marijuana can’t be abused, how you really understand his point but there are other human consequences you’re trying to keep in mind. I mean, that’s what any halfway competent politician would’ve done. Romney just couldn’t even be botheredto half ass it. “Go away, peon, you’re bothering me.”
BruceFromOhio
Gosh, it’s not clear, Mittster. You’re still walking around free, what does that tell you?
Brachiator
@Chris: Yeah, that sounds like prime Romney. The double crazy thing is that at times Romney either supported or did not oppose or veto moderate policies. But he has this thing where he thinks that he must sound tough. This is the classic move of the insecure coward who is desperate to prove himself to be a real man. Someone like this would be an unstable disaster as president. And that’s the kindest that I could say about Mitt.
Zinsky
Thurston Howell Romney is such a doorknob. For fucks sake. He just might be the most clueless man to ever trod the planet.
ET
So clueless. SOOOOOOO glad he isn’t president.