Last Call

As a Kentucky Democrat, I’d love nothing more than to see Mitch McConnell go down in flames in 2014 and booted out of the Senate.   But Old-Age Mutant Nimrod Turtle didn’t get to be the leader of the GOP Senate Filibuster All-Stars by being a political meathead.  He knows that with no challenger on the D side willing to even commit to a primary at this point, the only thing Mitch really has to worry about is a Tea Party retributive strike, especially if Romney crashes and burns (and this seems more and more likely).  Mitch can read the weather in Frankfort, and as such he’s loading up his campaign with Tea Party “revolutionaries”.

McConnell announced Thursday that he hired Jesse Benton — the tea party political operative who headed Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s presidential primary race — to oversee a campaign that’s still two years away and still lacking an opponent.

“We’re committed to running a presidential-level campaign in Kentucky, and that starts with a presidential campaign manager,” McConnell said in a statement. “Jesse is literally the best in the business at building and organizing conservative grassroots movements, and I’m thrilled he’s chosen to return to Kentucky to lead my campaign.”

Benton also headed the 2010 race of Paul’s son, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul. The Bowling Green eye surgeon rose from relative obscurity to win Kentucky’s other Senate seat over major candidates from both the Republican and Democratic parties.

McConnell had said he was looking for a campaign manager with experience running and winning races in Kentucky and who had a reputation for unifying people. His choice of Benton drew immediate accolades.

Mitch isn’t stupid.  He figures that the only folks that can beat him in 2014 are the Rand Paul Irregulars, and he’s decided the easiest way to get rid of them is to co-opt the hell out of them, starting with Benton.

Now look, I’d love for the Dems to win here, but Mitch muddled through 2008′s challenge from Bruce Lunsford and still won by six points, and that was about the closest race he’s ever had with the most motivated KY Dem turnout in the state in a long, long time.  Jack Conway doesn’t want to get spanked again like he did in 2010, and nobody else has bothered to step up yet.

It’s possible he may lose.  He’s certainly vulnerable.  But what worries me is that the tea party might blow Mitch out of the water anyway and install somebody even worse than Rand Paul, and frankly as much as that might play into the hands of the Dems anywhere else, we don’t exactly have a track record on non-insane Republican senators here.

We’ll see how it shakes out.  A serious TP challenge might weaken Mitch enough to beat him, but who will answer the challenge?

Podcast Versus The Stupid!

Another weekday PVTS bonus show, It's A Foreign Concept To Mitt, as Bon and I cover Mitt's meltdown in the wake of the awful event in Libya and Egypt,  Helicopter Ben pushing the Big Red Button, and Missouri Republicans overriding Gov. Jay Nixon's veto stopping employers from stripping birth control from insurance plans for religious reasons.

Listen to internet radio with Zandar Versus The Stupid on Blog Talk Radio

As always, you can click on the iTunes button to get PVTS to go, or download the episode from our archive page.

Bad Advice Moose

Sarah Palin thinks Mittens just isn't mean enough to win.  The American people want mean, dammit!

Sarah Palin says Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign should be “severely aggressive” in attacking President Barack Obama as “incompetent” and a “socialist.”

Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly asked the former Alaska governor on Tuesday if Romney’s campaign — which has come under fire from Republicans — needs to go after Obama in a “more personal way” and use buzzwords like “incompetent, dangerous, socialist.”

“Those aren’t just buzzwords,” said Palin. “Those are accurate descriptions of the commander in chief.”

“He should be very aggressive, and he should be adamant in his attacks on Obama’s record, which is so dismal, his plan, or lack of a plan of Obama’s, to get his out of these woeful times,” Palin continued. “He needs to be severely aggressive.”

Because when I think of "advice from the most respected political strategist in the game right now", Sarah Palin immediately comes to mind.  Sure.  She's got a proven track record of winni...umm...actually....she's a half-term washout that couldn't handle Alaska with tons of free government welfare, then she cost the GOP the White House, then she fell apart everywhere else.

You know what, Mitt?  You should totally follow her advice.  Yes.  Immediately.  Run the most negative campaign ever devised, relentlessly, using your billionaire buddies and buy up every speck of ad time on TV to call Obama a socialist.  Do this now.

It'll be great.  Trust her!  When has Sarah Palin ever crashed and burned politically?

Honey Boo Boo... Enough Already!

I hadn't watched Toddlers and Tiaras, or any of the reality shows that involve kids.  I get too angry at what I see.  Except for the occasional guilty Bridezilla marathon, I really avoid that stuff in general.  So it took a while for me to see the horror that is Honey Boo Boo.

This little girl was raised to be deranged.  She has no more of an idea of how the world works than a potato.  And actually, I do believe people have tried harder to teach potatoes.  Her parents aren't living in our reality, and they are setting little precious up for a long and ugly fall in the years ahead.  This child actually thinks when she stamps her foot the world will stop and wait for her command.

Normally, I'd say to each their own, but in this case it would be great to see a complete refusal to cooperate and kill this show.  Viewers are adding to the train wreck that is a child's life.  She may not get better, ever, but she sure as hell won't while being encouraged to be as outrageous and obnoxious as possible.  Her parents are nuts, and they are bringing a perfect chip off the crazy old block into this world.  Goody for them.  Meanwhile, good parents aren't exciting enough to watch, and are eating cereal for dinner while Honey Boo Boo and company are at a steakhouse, getting paid to gorge and annoy.

Something is wrong with that formula.

Cowardly Council Faces Backlash

When Springfield City Council approved a bill two weeks ago limiting the penalties for marijuana possession, several members made clear that they did so only to repeal it at the first opportunity.

Monday, 18 speakers signed up to tell council members what they thought of that idea. By and large, it wasn’t complimentary.

“Such a tactic is showing the voting public your distrust in them and makes a mockery of the initiative process,” said Daryl Bertrand, who described himself as a “grateful former medical cannabis user.”

We don't need parents to think for us.  We don't need a city government that uses tricks to get past what it considers to be unworthy of our votes.  We don't need to be told that voting is too expensive, that they will just tell us what to do and we should be grateful for them.  

Maranda Reynolds, who spearheaded efforts to draft and circulate the petition, said the charter guarantees citizens the “power to propose any ordinance ... and to adopt or reject the same at the polls.”

“It does not say they’ll have that power only if council feels like granting it to them,” she said, adding that the more than 2,100 signatures gathered show “it’s clear this issue matters to the people of Springfield.”

It matters to us, and it matters that we are not shafted by the people set there to represent us and look out for our interests.  Our interests are in voting and making our own decisions. 

 

The Worst Campaign Ever

Expanding on today's earlier post that yes, Obama is vulnerable on the events in Bengazi, Charles Pierce makes the argument that Romney really should be cleaning Obama's clock regarding this week's events and has basically been handed the election on a silver platter, only to piss it all away because he's a gigantic moron.

In case you missed it, Barack Obama lost the election over the past few days. Lucky for him, however, he is running against Willard Romney, who is ham-handed, maladroit, and generally the biggest horse's ass of a professional politician this side of the Country of the Houyhnhnms. There is one principle of incumbency beyond the control of presidents, their spinmeisters, the punditocracy, and the voters. That is that Shit Happens. On the day of Jimmy Carter's inauguration, for example, who'd ever heard of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini? In August of 2001, not even anyone in the Bush administration apparently gave a damn about al Qaeda. Over the past few days, Shit has Happened in a such a way as to present the Republican challenger with a Republican's Comstock Lode of talking points, debating tricks, and attack advertisements.

He goes on to point out that the Chicago Teachers Union strike, Bibi's chest-thumping on Iran, Moody's making noises about another credit downgrade and the events in Cairo and Benghazi this week should, if operated by a competent campaign, be vaulting Romney ahead in the polls in what really should amount to the worst week President Obama has had all year.

Instead, Romney has imploded.

Let us be clear. On all four of these issues, the president is clearly vulnerable — most directly on No. 1, because of his close ties to Emanuel and the education "reform" community, and No. 3, because the administration did not make wrecking the lives of the thieves who wrecked the economy a priority upon taking office. He is confronted in this election by a man with a positive gift for spinning gold into straw. Romney was last heard reiterating the sentiments for which he was excoriated for the past 12 hours. Give this man a steak and he'll send it back for shoe leather.

I really can't argue with Pierce's logic, too.  The President really is vulnerable on all of these issues, and yet Mitt Romney still took a huge dump on America's front porch.
That's how awful Mitt Romney is.  We'll see how much the FOX media machine can do to save Mitt.  My guess is a lot.  They'll have to.

But The Mitt Came Back, The Very Next Day

Steve M. plays devil's advocate and counters my thoughts yesterday that Mitt has blown a hole in his own campaign, pointing out that in the end, our FOX-ified public may very well turn on Obama over this on second blush.

But I think we're really jumping to conclusions if we assume the public knows that politics should stop at the water's edge and one shouldn't politicize a tragedy until a decent interval has passed and all that. Also, I think we're giving the public too much credit if we expect them to have instantly absorbed the timeline. They don't necessarily know that the embassy statement came out before the Egypt protests started, or that Romney didn't realize people were dead in Benghazi when he went political.

On the latter, I don't think we should assume the public cares. These niceties make sense to Beltway insiders and politics junkies. I don't know if they make sense to ordinary voters.

That's a decent argument, going back to my 45-45% theory that 90% of America has already made up its mind, and that the last 10% won't care until November 1st.  FOX has already completely ignored the facts of the timeline, and we're already seeing the "Media in the tank for Obama" argument from the right again, bringing us to the second half of Steve's theory, that the only gaffe was lack of security that got our Ambassador killed.  Mitt did nothing wrong...

Americans were attacked in Libya and Egypt by members of a religious faith a lot of the U.S. public has grown to despise, or at least to be very wary of. There was inadequate security in the Benghazi attack, and (as anyone who watched Rachel Maddow's show tonight knows) there have been plenty of signs of a threat to U.S. interests in Libya since the drone killing of a top Al Qaeda figure, Abu Yahya al-Libi -- a Libyan -- in June. So I'm sorry, but the Obama administration has some vulnerabilities on the question of whether there was adequate vigilance.

I'm more inclined to believe that the FOX propaganda machine will simply scream ALL MUZZIES ARE EVIL OBAMA'S IN CAHOOTS HE LET THEM DIE and then the Village will be "forced" to retract its very correct statements on Romney's mendacity.

In the end, after a night's sleep to reflect, I can't discount that there's an decent chance that FOX and friends will be able to turn what should have been a fatal blow to Romney's campaign into a "both sides do it" moment, and in fact even "Obama's fall of the Shah" moment.  We're seeing that go into effect now.  How effective it will be, well gosh, how effective has FOX News been over the last 15 years?

Having said that, the non-FOX media is brutal in its frank assessment of Romney's suitability for President. Gail Collins chronicles "Mitt's Major Meltdown":

It didn’t seem to be a lot to ask, but when the crisis in the Middle East flared up, Romney turned out to have no restraining inner core. All the uneasy feelings you got when he went to London and dissed the Olympic organizers can now come into full bloom. Feel free to worry about anything. That he’d declare war on Malta. Lock himself in a nuclear missile silo and refuse to come out until there’s a tax cut. Hand the country over to space aliens. 

Here is the Republican candidate for president of the United States on Wednesday, explaining why he broke into a moment of rising international tension and denounced the White House as “disgraceful” for a mild statement made by the American Embassy in Cairo about the importance of respecting other people’s religions: 

“They clearly — they clearly sent mixed messages to the world. And — and the statement came from the administration — and the embassy is the administration — the statement that came from the administration was a — was a statement which is akin to apology and I think was a — a — a severe miscalculation.” 

Feel free to reread this when you’re staring at the ceiling at 4 a.m. 

So as with everything else, Mitt will survive this.  If he does lose however, this is the moment where the historians will say the turning point happened and Mitt lost the ball game.

StupidiNews!

• Additional protests outside US embassy compounds in Cairo, Egypt and Sana'a, Yemen continued on Thursday, with crowds chanting and facing riot police.
• A federal judge has issued a permanent injunction against parts of the NDAA signed last year by President Obama, authorizing detention for "US supporters" of terror groups.
• Household incomes in 2011 dropped again and income inequality rose in the latest yearly Census survey of American incomes and poverty.
• The number of Americans without insurance declined for the first time since the Great Recession as 1.3 million Americans gained coverage last year.
• The House has reauthorized the FISA law allowing for revised warrantless wiretapping, but the bill now faces a tougher road in the Senate.

Last Call

Mitt Romney just blew it.  He's done, folks.

Mitt Romney reiterated on Wednesday his claim that President Obama’s “first response” to an attack on a diplomatic compound in Libya that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens was to “sympathize” with Stevens’s attackers.

In a press conference delivered minutes after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the attacks, Romney expanded on his initial statement, accusing Obama of apologizing to Islamic militants.

“We join together in the condemnation of attacks on the American embassies and the loss of American life and join in sympathy for these people,”Romney said. “It’s also important for me — just as it was for the White House, last night by the way — to say that the statements were inappropriate, and in my view a disgraceful statement on the part of our administration to apologize for American values.”

It was the second time in just over 12 hours that Romney had suggested the White House sided with rioters and militants. Romney’s initial statement came late Tuesday, after news had broke that an American officer had been killed in Libya, but before the State Department had confirmed Stevens was among the dead. It inaccurately suggested that the U.S. embassy in Cairo, which also came under attack, had issued a statement condemning an anti-Muslim film online that had sparked the riots as its “first response” to the violence. In fact, the embassy and multiple press reports assert that the statement came before the protests and was intended to head off a confrontation.

To recap, Romney doubled down on his awful, completely political attacks blaming the embassy staff and the President for the deaths in Libya.  Then he smirked and walked away.

Done, folks.  Mitt's toast.  Gonna put this in the Future Stupidity files, but this is Romney's "The fundamentals of this economy are strong" moment when the Dow lost 350.  I think he's lost it for good.

Big Bad Bibi Baby

Josh Marshall notes that Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to, at this point, get Mitt Romney elected.  Josh is worried that we're in an "any means necessary" situation, too.

We have a high-octane tussle tonight between the White House and the Netanyahu government in Israel. It started with a Netanyahu speech suggesting that the US had lost its “moral right” to block an Israeli attack on Iran by failing to put red lines beyond which Iran couldn’t go.

That was followed by a leak from Netanyahu’s team claiming that Netanyahu had requested a meeting with Obama when he travels to the UN — only to be refused. The White House scrambled tonight putting out a flat denial of that claim. In essence, the White House called the Israelis liars.

As I mentioned a moment ago in an impromptu editorial meeting, this has obvious political implications for the US election. But I don’t think the intensity of the engagement is mainly about politics. It’s about policy.

Netanyahu desperately wants an attack on Iran. The White House desperately wants to avoid war. The stakes are quite, quite high. 

I agree, but as Bernard Finel points out at the Juice:

The notion that Israel will launch a unilateral attack on Iran is almost surely a bluff. It is not clear how they would do it, and no analysis I’ve seen suggests that can launch an effective attack by themselves. Natanyahu may be reckless, but Israel is, in the end, a democracy, and there are checks and balances as well as various civil-military constraints on action.

So while the Obama team may not be eager to get into a pissing match with Natanyahu over Iran in the weeks before the election, there isn’t any “reason to fear” that this situation will transform the election. If anything, Obama’s steady foreign policy hand would be a plus when compared to the desperate rants we’re likely to get from the Romney camp.

Israel would have hit Iran long ago if they honestly believed they had no choice.  What Bibi is trying to do is force that no choice scenario, and he's doing so in such a way that he's influencing the US election.  There should be a massive backlash from Congress.   Sadly, it's one bought and paid for, both parties, by AIPAC.  No backlash is coming.

Now Bibi is trying to bully his way to a Romney victory and a green light to hit Iran.  Given the insanity of the GOP and Romney's utter failure in foreign policy credibility, that's a guarantee should Obama lose.

Yet another reason why you need to get out and vote Obama in November, as if you needed another one.

Dirty Pool, Old Man

Now, I know Rahm Emanuel is on the wrong side of this Chicago teachers' strike and all, but there is no call for something like this, folks.




At long last sir, have you no decency?

A Liar By Any Other Name Is Paul Ryan

The Immoral Minority ran a spectacular piece calling Paul Ryan out on his lies.  Because he tells outright and absolute lies here, people.  Notice his eyes don't give a tell.  He doesn't swallow hard, lose his concentration or bat an eye.

The man is a gifted liar, but a liar in any case.

RYAN: No, no — I have to correct on you this, Norah. I voted for a mechanism that says the sequester will occur if we don’t cut $1.2 trillion in government. … We can get into this nomenclature; I voted for the Budget Control Act. But the Obama Administration proposed $478 billion in defense cuts. We don’t agree with that, our budget rejected that, and then on top of that is another $500 billion in defense cuts in the sequester. 

O’DONNELL: Right. A trillion dollars in defense spending, and you voted for it! 

RYAN: No, Norah. I voted for the Budget Control Act.

He tries to shuffle the math (badly) and call it by another name, but when the facts don't add up to what he is saying, he simply pretends Nora O'Donnell doesn't understand the truth.  He tells her she is mistaken, though she is the one presenting provable truths and he is backpedaling and failing.

Please check out the whole thing here.

St. Louis Mayor Tries For DNC 2016

ST. LOUIS -- If St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay has his way, the next Democratic National Conventionwill be in his city.

Slay, a Democrat in heavily-Democratic St. Louis, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ( http://bit.ly/Q2t9q6) that his administration continues to explore making a bid for the 2016 convention.

St. Louis was a finalist for the 2012 presidential nominating convention but lost out to Charlotte, N.C.

A girl can hope.  If so I'll be there covering the entire thing, safety be damned.  Because I can promise you, there will be brawls and shots fired if they allow this to go down in my neck of the woods.

Still, it would be awesome times infinity if it works.

[Zandar's Note:]  Considering St. Louis is basically halfway between where I am in Cincy and where Bon is in Springfield, we'll both be there if that's on.  Count on it.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/09/07/4796444/slay-hopes-to-lure-democratic.html#storylink=cpy

Egypt Me Out Of An Embassy

This might be a problem.

Angry protesters climbed the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on Tuesday and tore down the American flag, apparently in protest of a film thought to insult the Prophet Mohammed.

A volley of warning shots were fired as a large crowd gathered around the compound, said CNN producer Mohammed Fahmy, who was on the scene, though it is not clear who fired the shots.

Egyptian police and army personnel have since formed defensive lines around the facility in an effort to prevent the demonstrators from advancing farther, but not before the protesters affixed their standard atop the embassy.

The black flag, which hangs atop a ladder inside the compound, is adorned with white characters that read, "There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his messenger," an emblem often used in al Qaeda propaganda.

Egypt still is far from stable.  The Morsi government still has to deal with the military council there, and the longer the instability lasts, the worse things are going to get.  I'm hoping that the US can help Egypt find the path to actual freedom, but considering we can't really do that for ourselves, I'm not sure what right we have to interfere, or that we even should.

So what happens now? Either way, I feel better with President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton at the helm here, far more than I am with the GOP.

The problem is, a repeat of this is now going on today in Benghazi, Libya.

A US state department official was killed and at least one other American was wounded when militiamen stormed the US consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

It is believed the protest was held over a US-produced film that is said to be insulting to the Prophet Muhammad.

Armed men raided the compound with grenades before setting it on fire.

On Tuesday, protesters against the film breached the walls of the US embassy in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

In the attack in Benghazi, unidentified armed men stormed the grounds, shooting at buildings and throwing handmade bombs into the compound. 

One of the dead is now reported to be the US Ambassador, Chris Stephens.

The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack on Tuesday in the Libyan city of Benghazi, a Libyan official said.

It was not clear if the ambassador was in his car or the Libyan consulate when the attack occurred.

"The Libyan ambassador and three staff members were killed when gunmen fired rockets at them," the official in Benghazi told Reuters.

This is all getting a bit insane now.

Well, That's One Person Who Can Vote In Pennsylvania

Jim Cramer may be a doofus and is utterly clueless on the economy and markets, but I wouldn't wish Pennsylvania's Voter ID on anyone, even Jim Cramer and his family.  It's so awful, it was keeping his dad from being able to get an ID to vote.

Pennsylvania's voter ID law will no longer be a problem for the father of CNBC host Jim Cramer. Cramer tweeted that his father, a veteran, lacked the specific form of photo identification that would allow him to voter in November under Pennsylvania's voter ID law. Cramer now says that Pennsylvania authorities contacted him and assured him they'll make sure his dad can vote.

I'm glad for Cramer's father, because everyone deserves the right to vote as an American citizen.  But as Ryan J. Reilly points out:

That's one down, hundreds of thousands of registered voters who lack state-issued identification to go.

And so it goes.